Temper, Temper, Temper ...

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Bolton's supporters acknowledge he has a temper and may not always have treated subordinates kindly, but they say Democrats are using Bolton's abrasive personality as an excuse to kill a nomination they oppose on ideological grounds. "If being occasionally tough and aggressive and abrasive were a problem," chided Vice President Dick Cheney, "a lot of members of the United States Senate wouldn't qualify." Said Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank where Bolton once worked: "This is not the outrage of sincere grownups over the malfeasance of a senior executive. John is not about making the world safe for cocktail parties."

But opponents say the problem is more than a matter of bad manners and bruised egos: Bolton's pattern of intimidation, they claim, was also aimed at distorting vital intelligence. Government sources tell TIME that during President Bush's first term, Bolton frequently tried to push the CIA to produce information to conform to--and confirm--his views. "Whenever his staff sent testimony, speeches over for clearance, often it was full of stuff which was not based on anything we could find," says a retired official familiar with the intelligence-clearance process. "So the notes that would go back to him were fairly extensive, saying the intelligence just didn't back up that line."

Those episodes, sources say, frequently involved statements Bolton wanted to make about the malign intentions and weapons capabilities of Cuba and North Korea. Two analysts--one at the State Department and the other at the CIA--told the committee they had run afoul of Bolton in 2002 after they warned that he was making assertions in a speech about Cuba's weapons programs that could not be backed up by U.S. intelligence. Bolton, they said, tried to have them removed from their jobs. Witnesses say that after one of the analysts, Christian Westermann, wrote an internal memo warning of Bolton's embellishments, he was summoned to Bolton's office and subjected to a finger-wagging tirade. Westermann's boss at the time, Carl W. Ford Jr., told the committee in a public hearing two weeks ago that he considered Bolton "a serial abuser" of underlings and "a quintessential kiss-up, kickdown sort of guy."

Fulton Armstrong, then head of the Latin American division at the CIA's National Intelligence Council, told the committee in private that he was subjected to similar mistreatment by Bolton after he raised objections to the contents of the Cuba speech. Bolton denies pushing to get anyone fired, and his supporters point out that neither Westermann nor Armstrong lost his job. Bolton testified that he did ask to have Armstrong reassigned because he had "lost confidence" in him, although he never worked with him or even met him.