O.K., one more. Here’s an e-mail that asks an interesting question:
nobody has asked this yet, but, whenever you walk down a hotel lobby, can you please tell me what you might find to pick up and throw at someone? Was it a room service tray? Soap off the maid’s cart? A chocolate mint? Townsel has never detailed what was thrown at her. All these details from her, except what was thrown. Curious, to say the least.
ME: Actually in a USA Today interview Townsel says it was a file folder and a plastic tape dispenser that he threw at her. Now, this is different from the impression created by her letter, (available here) which seems to suggest he was chasing her AND throwing things at her in the hallway. That might be just be a product of sloppy writing.
But her USA Today account seems to suggest that the incidents happened in an office, and the IBTCI people have said it was a bullpen-style office where such fireworks wouldn’t have gone unnoticed.
Also, in her letter she says she couldn’t leave her hotel room for two weeks because she was under Bolton’s abusive siege. For two weeks. But no on working at the hotel noticed?
In her letter, she further says that Bolton kept berating her when they both were in Bishkek, Kyrgzstan. But here is yet another letter in support of Bolton sent to the committee by former IBTCI officer, Edwin Hullander. He says that when Bolton and Townsel overlapped in Moscow Bolton had nothing to do with the dispute over Townsel’s Bishkek work. Eventually, Bolton was assigned to look into it and went to Bishkek. But by then Townsel had been relieved from her job and left the city, according to Hullander.
In the USA Today piece, there is another Townsel corroborator, Kirby James. But the only specific thing the paper reports James corroborating is that she told him Bolton was accusing her of stealing money. Since IBTCI had ousted her partly over concerns over her financial management and Bolton was asked to look into the whole matter, this seems more plausible–and not outrageous.
Uno Ramat, the other corroborator, is reported by the Times today as saying that Townsel told him about the hotel abuse at the time. Uno didn’t return my call or e-mail today. But I did notice that the other day a Texas newspaper only reported that Ramat told them Bolton went to Bishkek and told the office that Townsel “was under investigation and she was being accused of various things, including stealing money.” Again, not the sort of thing that should get someone banned from public service.
More later…