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Whopper of the Week: Ted Olson

Timothy NoahPosted Friday, May 11, 2001, at 3:15 PM ET

"Only as a member of the board of directors of the American Spectator. It has been alleged that I was somehow involved in that so-called project; I was not involved in the project, in its origin or its management."

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--Solicitor-general nominee Theodore Olson, testifying before the Senate Judiciary committee, in response to the question, "Were you involved with the so-called Arkansas Project at any time?" The Arkansas Project was the American Spectator's $2 million scandal investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton funded by conservative philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife. Olson's remarks were quoted on May 3 by Jake Tapper in Salon, and on May 10 by Thomas B. Edsall in the Washington Post. Tapper was following up on earlier Salon stories by Joe Conason and Alicia Montgomery.

"[David] Brock, who was one of the Spectator's leading investigative reporters in the Arkansas Project but who left the magazine after a series of disagreements, said Olson attended a number of dinner meetings at the home of R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., president and chairman of the Spectator, which were explicitly 'brainstorming' sessions about the Arkansas Project.

"'There were several dinners at Bob Tyrrell's house, editorial planning sessions, on articles on the Clintons in Arkansas,' Brock said. 'Ted [Olson] was sometimes there, occasionally Barbara Olson [Ted Olson's wife] as well.'

"Olson, according to Brock, was an active participant in discussions of possible stories, of methods to investigate scandal allegations and of ways to cultivate sources who would be familiar with the Clintons' political and financial dealings."

--Edsall's May 10 Post story

"[Spectator Editor in Chief R. Emmett] Tyrrell and Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, then a top editor, said that project story ideas, legal issues involving the stories produced by the project and other directly related matters were discussed with Olson by staff members, and at dinner parties of Spectator staffers and board members.

"Pleszczynski said Brock, who was the leading investigator of the Clintons' activities in Arkansas, 'talked to Ted off and on about issues' involved in his stories."

--Thomas B. Edsall and Robert G. Kaiser, "Panel Postpones Vote on Olson Nomination," in May 11 Washington Post

"A 1995 audit of the Arkansas Project's books showed that the American Spectator nonprofit funding the Arkansas Project paid more than $14,000 to Olson's law firm of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, from March until August of 1994."

--Tapper's May 3 Salon story

"Records of the Spectator provided by a source who performed work for the magazine included a multipage 'Expense Analysis--Arkansas Project.' Among more than 100 expenses listed for June 1995, the only month covered in the documents, are a series of payments totaling about $8,000 to Olson's law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher."

--Edsall's May 10 Post story

"Criminal Laws Implicated by the Clinton Scandals: A Partial List"

--Headline on a February 1994 American Spectator article co-authored pseudonymously by Olson.

Note: The Spectator's Pleszczynski disputes Chatterbox's characterization of Olson's remarks as a Whopper. Click here to read his response.

Got a whopper? Send it to . To be considered, an entry must be an unambiguously false statement paired with an unambiguous refutation, and both must be derived from some appropriately reliable public source. Preference will be given to newspapers and other documents that Chatterbox can link to online.

Whopper Archive:

May 4, 2001:Rear Admiral Craig Quigley
April 27, 2001: Ben Affleck
April 20, 2001: South Carolina state legislator Chip Limehouse
April 13, 2001: Gray Davis
April 6, 2001: Sumner Redstone
March 30, 2001: Spencer Abraham
March 23, 2001: George W. Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department
March 16, 2001: George W. Bush
March 9, 2001: Russ Freyman, spokesman, National Association of Manufacturers
March 2, 2001: Paul O'Neill
Feb. 23, 2001: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton
Feb. 16, 2001: Oscar spokesman John Pavlik
Feb. 9, 2001: Lynne Cheney
Feb. 2, 2001: Bobby Thomson
Jan 26, 2001: Denise Rich

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

Reader Comment From The Fray:

For months on end the right pelted the intelligence of the nation with an insufferable series of callow, sanctimonious homilies about "the rule of law:" Perjury in a civil case may be a minor offense, but the rule of law can make no exceptions; the President must go.

Now we have the spectacle of one of the minions of the republican night, the would-be Solicitor General and erstwhile political hatchet man, Ted Olson, telling bald faced lies under oath. Not that this is in any way surprising.

No one even speculates any longer about whether there is a bottom to the to the depraved cynicism of the right. Everyone knows that the republican view of morality is strictly instrumental. Righteous indignation is nothing more a device, a means to a utilitarian end. Republicans did not then and do not now give a damn about perjury, the rule of law or anything else that implies principle or scruples.

We certainly did need Mr. Olson to add his example to see the moral bankruptcy of the right, but there you have it anyway; another day, another creature of the republican darkness sucking the life out of the nation's soul.

--Balzac

(To reply, click here.)

(5/13)

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