Temper, Temper, Temper ...

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Committee Democrats have investigated another charge that Bolton tried to have a State Department lawyer who disagreed with him removed from a case in October. The dispute involved a request by a Louisiana-based company for a waiver to import goods from a Chinese company on which the U.S. had recently imposed sanctions. Sources familiar with the incident tell TIME that Bolton, who opposed the waiver, became angry when he learned that the State Department's legal division supported it. He went to William Taft, the department's top lawyer, to demand that Taft's subordinate be taken off the case. A witness to their discussion described Bolton as "shouting" and "yelling" at Taft. "But that was nothing unusual," a former official who was present tells TIME, "because John was always a strong friend of his own opinion." Taft stood by the lawyer and refused to remove him.

Democrats say they are also troubled by the fact that on 10 separate occasions over the past four years, Bolton asked the super-secret National Security Agency (NSA) to divulge the names of U.S. citizens whose conversations with foreigners were intercepted and transcribed. While some intel officials dismissed Bolton's requests as routine, others took a darker view. One former senior NSA official tells TIME he was "shocked" to learn Bolton had requested the names of Americans deleted from such intercepts. "It's extremely unusual for someone at Bolton's level to make those requests," the official says. "The NSA shouldn't be handing these over. They're not paid to hand around gossip." Senate sources tell TIME that Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has asked the NSA to turn over the Bolton intercepts, including the American names that interested him.

The biggest danger facing Bolton is suspicion that he deliberately misled Senators in his public testimony defending himself against these challenges. Already they have statements from Thomas Hubbard, who was President Bush's ambassador to South Korea during his first term, saying Bolton misrepresented Hubbard's views about the bitingly anti--North Korea speech Bolton gave in July 2003, just days before the launch of delicate six-nation talks aimed at persuading Pyongyang to give up its nuclear-weapons program. The speech--in which Bolton vilified Kim Jong Il as a "tyrannical dictator" and said life in North Korea was a "hellish nightmare"--infuriated the North Korean government and, U.S. diplomats say, nearly torpedoed the talks. In defending his undiplomatic language, Bolton told Senators that it had been cleared by relevant officials and that Hubbard had personally thanked him for it.

Hubbard contacted the committee last week and said he had, in fact, opposed the speech and had thanked Bolton only for making some specific minor changes to it that Hubbard had requested. According to a memo obtained by TIME describing Hubbard's interview last Friday with committee Republicans, the former ambassador "says he strongly disagreed with the tone of the speech, especially at the sensitive time in the negotiating process, and asked Mr. Bolton to tone it down. He did not." Retired Ambassador Charles Pritchard, who was then special envoy for negotiations with North Korea, tells TIME he never approved Bolton's speech either. "I had a chance to see [a draft of] the speech in advance and refused to clear it," says Pritchard.