I wanted to write to give everybody an update on the Melody Townsel/John Bolton situation.
First, I want to thank everybody on Kos for creating such a buzz about her letter that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had no choice but to at least hear her out. The support and words of encouragement she read here have definitely helped keep her spirits up. As you can imagine, this has been a difficult weekend (although, it pales in comparison to the weeks she spent in Moscow being hounded by our probable future U.N. ambassador).
I know some of you have your doubts about her veracity--that she may be planting a patently false story that would set us up for another Rathergate--and you are certainly entitled to your skepticism. Hers is unfortunately not a neat, tidy story that can simply be confirmed by producing a few documents and/or corroborating witnesses. What documents there are may have already been destroyed by her lawyers (because this occurred more than 10 years ago), and the one person who can corroborate her story is justifiably worried about what stepping forward could mean for her career.
Besides, even with corroboration, it still mostly comes down to he said/she said.
Melody did two brief interviews with the L.A. Times and Air America, but won't be doing any more media. She believes, and I concur, that it's in her best interests to leave the matter with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She is, as we speak, preparing an affidavit that she will submit to the committee. Whether her affidavit will make a difference in tomorrow's vote is anybody's guess.
The L.A. Times has so far written two stories about her allegations. Not surprisingly, her allegations are being disputed. From today's story:
"But on Sunday, Ed Hullander, who worked with Townsel on the AID contract and now is an AID senior economist, said it was Townsel, and not Bolton, who acted irrationally. "She would get belligerent at times," Hullander said.
"He said that although he was not at the hotel at that time, he would have heard about any misbehavior. "It would not have gone unnoticed," Hullander said. "The security there was so tight, they would not have allowed anything like that in the hotel hallways."
He added, "Anyone who knows John, running through the hall doesn't make sense at all. It's too outrageous even to think about."
Here is Melody's response to that (which she sent to the L.A. Times):
"Not that I'm at all surprised by Mr. Hullander's characterization of me, given the stakes surrounding this issue, but I should point out for the record that Mr. Hullander was working for IBTCI, the prime contractor whose performance I questioned while serving as the team leader of the project, and Mr. Bolton was IBTCI's attorney at the time.
"Mr. Bolton was working out of IBTCI's offices in the Aerostar Hotel, the hotel I was staying in (options were limited in Moscow), which is why he was able to hound me so readily.
"To say that Mr. Hullander was working with me on the project is, in fact, not accurate. Mr. Hullander was working with IBTCI back in the home office as a corporate officer for IBTCI -- and, along with the rest of his colleagues, was so busy working on pursuing additional contracts under an ongoing omnibus contracting procedure that they were collectively unable to perform well on their existing contract in Kyrgyzstan.
"It is my understanding that Mr. Bolton and IBTCI continued to do business for a long time after the contractual dispute between my company and theirs was laid to rest -- and, as an existing contractor to US AID, I believe this stakes surrounding this matter are quite high for IBTCI as well."
"As for charges of belligerency, I would, again, point out that Mr. Hullander was the corporate officer of a company that I was accusing, rightly, of poor performance, and that I continued on to serve as the leader of a series of additional projects for US AID -- and as a corporate officer of two companies before starting my own business -- with no similar incident."
So, that's where it stands today. Thanks again for bringing this to the attention of the Senate committee. The blogosphere is truly awesome (using the definition of the word before it was applied to pizza).