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 n
the Year of Monica, one of the liberals' refrains was that it was
"time to move on." Oddly, even though their side
prevailed
in the impeachment contest, it is they who have not moved on. They
are still trying to hunt down members of the vast right-wing conspiracy
they blame for causing Bill Clinton's woes. Their latest target
is Theodore Olson, President Bush's nominee for solicitor general.
Their campaign against him is entirely scurrilous.
The liberals accuse Olson of 1) participating in a shadowy conspiracy
to bring down President Clinton called "the Arkansas Project" and
2) lying about his participation to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Because of this second accusation, Democrats delayed a vote on Olson's
confirmation and made Republicans agree to a limited investigation.
The Arkansas Project was an attempt by the conservative magazine
The American Spectator to look into Clinton's activities
when he was governor. It was a flop, chaotically organized and unproductive.
Olson told the Judiciary Committee that he learned about the project
for the first time when he joined the Spectator's board,
which did an audit of it and shut it down.
Olson's critics have been able to prove that Olson was more deeply
involved than he claims only by defining involvement in the Arkansas
Project extremely broadly. So, for example, Olson is said to have
done project business by talking about Clinton scandals over dinners
with the Spectator's editor. David Brock, a disgruntled former
employee of the magazine with a grudge against Olson and his wife,
accused Olson of lying because the two men had discussed an anti-Clinton
article the magazine was considering publishing. But Brock had to
admit that the words "Arkansas Project" never even came up.
In addition, project funds were used to pay for the legal research
Olson and a colleague did in preparing an anti-Clinton article in
the magazine. Olson denies knowing that the funds came from the
project, and his denial is plausible. His correspondence with the
magazine does not mention the project, and the checks were from
the Spectator. Only in the Spectator's internal accounts
were the payments attributed to the project, and that was of no
concern to Olson (who was not yet on the magazine's board). Project
funds often went to non-project business: The project's funder,
Richard Mellon Scaife, eventually complained about the practice.
Liberal opinionists have criticized Olson for being "Clintonian"
because his defense amounts to saying that it depends on the definition
of "Arkansas Project." But he has been forced to split hairs only
because the accusation against him is so vague. From moment to moment,
the accusation shifts from involvement in a plot to bring down the
president to mere cocktail-party griping about Clinton.
Olson's critics have various motives. Salon, the sleazy liberal
website that has pushed this non-story most actively, is keeping
its torch lit for Clinton; partisan Democrats are using Olson to
warn the president not to nominate conservative lawyers for the
Supreme Court; Brock has an ax to grind and a book to sell. (His
exposé of the Right's anti-Clinton hijinks is due out this November,
although his publisher is talking about moving up the date because
of his involvement in the Olson controversy.) They have brought
more discredit on themselves, none on Ted Olson.
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