The Olson Project: Democrats against a Bush nominee.(Theodore Olsen, Democrats' plans to undermine President Bush's political appointments)

On May 17, in a small Senate hearing room jammed with journalists, it was payback time. Theodore Olson is eminently qualified to be solicitor general, and everyone in the room knew it. Unfortunately, the Democrats in the room also knew he had been George W. Bush's Supreme Court advocate in the Florida recount controversy-so they wanted to punish him. And sadly, the Olson flap is not just payback, but prelude: It reveals the scorched-earth tactics determined Democrats are prepared to employ to block any Bush judicial nominee they don't want to see on the bench.

The Democrats were basically putting Bush on notice: Even nominees that he thinks non-controversial might not be spared the Olson treatment- because controversies, if none exist, can simply be manufactured. Sen. Patrick Leahy, top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, claims that Olson misled the committee at his confirmation hearing. At the hearing in question, Leahy noted that Richard Mellon Scaife had funded The American Spectator and its "Arkansas Project," and asked Olson if he had been involved "in the so-called Arkansas Project at any time." Olson replied that he had become aware of the project when he served on the magazine's board of directors, but "I was not involved in the project in its origin or its management."

Leahy and Olson both understood that the "Arkansas Project" was a five- year effort funded by Scaife, beginning in 1993, to investigate President Clinton's Arkansas days. In 1997, following a review of the project, the Spectator's board shut it down. Eight people familiar with the project, including the magazine's top editors and the project's chief writer, confirm that Olson was not involved in the Scaife-funded efforts. Furthermore, Olson's lack of involvement shouldn't surprise the liberal writers of Salon magazine, who obsess about the Arkansas Project as the wellspring of the "vast right-wing conspiracy." In their book, The Hunting of the President, Salon writer Joe Conason and his cowriter Gene Lyons explained: "From its inception in November 1993, the Arkansas Project was kept so quiet that even senior staff members of the American Spectator had little notion of what the project was intended to do . . ."

Reformed Clinton scourge David Brock, of "Troopergate" fame, insists that Olson was involved in the Arkansas Project; Brock is the sole source contradicting Olson's sworn, and corroborated, testimony. But Brock appears to be using a unique definition of the Arkansas Project, under which all of the scores of people who talked with American Spectator staff about Clinton scandal stories were unknowingly involved in the project. As Brock told the New York Times, "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." Although this definition of the project differs from Sen. Leahy's own, Leahy relies on Brock's allegations to find the "discrepancies" that he claims raise questions about Olson's truthfulness. Leahy accuses Ted Olson of "playing word games," but Leahy himself seems to be guilty of that offense.

However tissue-thin a Democratic accusation might be, some media friendly can be counted on to trumpet it. In Olson's case, the Washington Post was willing to credit David Brock-despite his clear animus against his former colleagues-and to recycle discredited Salon stories about Olson and the Spectator. A week after the Post story that Democrats cited as ...