-Caveat Lector-
NYTimes
May 16, 2001
In Senate Battle, Specter of Clinton Wars
By NEIL A. LEWIS
WASHINGTON, May 15 - Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are heading
toward a confrontation over the nomination of Theodore B. Olson to be
solicitor general, a fight that is for many the latest chapter in the
partisan wars of the last few years involving Bill and Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
To some Democrats, the effort to impede Mr. Olson's nomination carries
with it the exquisite pleasure of payback to Mr. Olson and his wife,
Barbara, who were major figures in the campaign of relentless criticism
of the Clintons waged by an assortment of opponents. (Mr. Olson also
argued on behalf of the Bush campaign in its lawsuit in the Supreme
Court that led to Mr. Bush's winning the presidency.)
Many Republicans also regard what is happening as payback for the
Olsons' criticism of the Clintons, although they describe it as wholly
unfair.
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on Mr.
Olson's nomination after having already delayed it a week.
Committee Democrats led by Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont have
called for another postponement. Mr.
Leahy said more time was needed to examine whether Mr. Olson misled the
committee when he said he was not involved directly in an enterprise at
The American Spectator magazine in which a $2.4 million fund was
established to pay to dig up damaging information about the Clintons'
actions in Arkansas. That venture, financed by Richard Mellon Scaife, a
wealthy Clinton opponent, was known as the Arkansas Project.
But Senator Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican who is the committee
chairman, said today that the record clearly upheld Mr. Olson's
version, and he refused to agree to another delay.
That left the Democrats with the choice of going along on Thursday or
trying to block the nomination and escalate the issue by either a
filibuster in committee or a walkout to prevent a vote.
"It's becoming a kind of high- stakes poker game right now," a senior
Democratic staff aide said.
At issue are the unequivocal statements Mr. Olson made to the committee
that he had no connection with the Arkansas Project even though he and
his wife were staunch opponents of the Clintons and frequent public
critics.
But Mr. Olson has differentiated those efforts from the Arkansas
Project, which he said he learned of only in 1997 and then worked to
shut down.
"I was not involved in its inception, organization or ongoing
supervision," Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Leahy last week.
One senior Democratic staff aide said today that Mr. Olson's effort to
distinguish between his role as a major opponent of the Clintons and
involvement in the Arkansas Project was similar to some of the careful
language parsing for which Mr. Olson criticized former President Bill
Clinton.
"There is a certain sweetness to watching this," said the aide, who
spoke on condition of anonymity.
David Brock, a former writer for The American Spectator, said in an
interview that he had told the committee he believed Mr. Olson was
familiar with many of the efforts under way at the magazine to find
damaging information about the Clintons as early as 1994.
"It was my understanding that all of the pieces dating back to 1994 that
dealt with investigating scandals pertaining to the Clintons,
particularly those that related to his time in Arkansas, were all under
the Arkansas Project," Mr.
Brock said. Mr. Brock suggested that James Ring Adams, a former writer
for the magazine who was the chief writer for the Arkansas Project,
would have a similar view.
But Mr. Adams sent a letter to the committee today that supported Mr.
Olson's version. "It is false and wrong to assert that Mr. Olson had
any role whatsoever in managing or directing what is referred to as `the
Arkansas Project,' " he wrote.
Mr. Brock, who once regularly wrote articles for conservative
publications, has since undergone an abrupt ideological conversion and
has publicly regretted his earlier journalistic efforts directed against
the Clintons. In a widely noted article in the July 1997 Esquire, "My
Life as a Right-Wing Hit Man," Mr. Brock wrote about his annoyance when
he was uninvited by Barbara Olson to a party she and Mr. Olson were
holding with leading Washington conservatives.
Mr. Hatch, in fact, has said he believes Mr. Brock is acting out of
hostility to Mr. Olson and his wife. In a letter today to Mr. Leahy,
Mr. Hatch said any delay in voting on the nomination could feed the
notion that there was a desire for retaliation over Mr. Olson's
successful fight on behalf of Mr. Bush.
"I think it's part of this endless cycle of character assassination,"
said Barbara Ledeen, who is involved with Mrs. Olson in conservative
groups. "They are paying back Ted and Barbara for their outspokenness
about the rule of law in the previous administration."
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
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The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
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