WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- Sometimes short books say the most.
This is certainly true about Barbara Olson's "The Final Days" (Regnery, 240 pages, $27.95), a chronicle of the Clinton's last days in the White House.
Olson, a Washington attorney and television commentator, was killed on Sept. 11 when her Los Angeles-bound airplane was hijacked and crashed into the Pentagon. According to her publisher, she completed all the editorial and prepublication work before she died, making the book her own work. It is a stunning tribute to her tenacity and her commitment to exposing the moral and ethical failings of the former first couple and their political allies.
Not one for a deft turn of phrase, Olson used her typewriter like a sledgehammer, laying the final weeks out for all to see, albeit with a generous helping of her own feelings about what transpired.
To the extent that the book will be reviewed -- an Olson pet peeve was that her book about Hillary Rodham Clinton, "Hell to Pay," was never reviewed in so-called important venues even though it hit the top ten of The New York Times best-seller list -- there will be those who label it a partisan screed, finding fault with Olson and the connections she and her husband, U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, had to what Mrs. Clinton called "a vast right-wing conspiracy."
That same tactic was used to defend the former president during the many scandals for which he and his wife were called to account during his second term. As television commentator Chris Matthews put it about Mrs. Clinton, she "admits what is provable, denies what is not" and, he might have added, attacks accusers to blur the issue.
Supporters of the Clintons will not like this book.
Olson, who at one time served on the staff of congressional committees investigating the allegations of corruption made against the Clintons, is able to put her knowledge of the subject to good use here.
The primary focus of the book is the last days, but it is important that these events be continually placed in the context of what had gone before, which Olson does.
Clinton's abuse of the pardon process as he was leaving office receives the lion's share of the attention. As Olson writes, "The president's most irreversible, almost God-like power is the authority ... (to) grant a pardon before a trial, after a trial, or without a trial. Once granted, a pardon can never be taken away."
And, as egregious as many of the pardons were -- Olson agrees that some had merit -- the abuse of the process through which they came about should have received just as much attention at the time.
Many of the pardons went to political cronies of Clinton allies, including a former cabinet member, the son of another cabinet member, and a former congressman closely allied to one of the president's most important public defenders.
Several times Olson hammers home that certain of the pardons, including that of fugitive financier Marc Rich, were the product of efforts of lobbying by outsiders where the standard rules of the pardon process were ignored.
She cites Michael Kelly, writing in the Washington Post, on this very point just after a Bill Clinton op-ed explaining the pardons appeared in the New York Times.
Taking issue with the everyone-does it-argument that Clinton put forward in citing the controversial pardons made by some of his predecessors, Kelly writes: "No president ever did what Clinton did ... (None) sought to corrupt the pardoning process on a wholesale basis. None set up a special shop to bypass his own government and speed through the special pleas of the well connected and the well heeled. None sent the Justice Department dozens of names on inauguration morning, too late for the department to run even cursory checks."
In the opinion of Olson, Kelly and most of the American people, many of the pardons were the product of a corrupt bargain where something of value was given in exchange for clemency. And while no one has been able to prove a quid pro quo was in force, in part because several key players in the issue are sitting on their Fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, the known evidence suggest that people are right to be suspicious.
One of the nicest things about Olson's last book is that readers will get to hear her state her case against the Clintons without Alan Dershowitz, Peter Fenn, or James Carville jumping in all the time. The constant stream of noise coming from the White House and from pro-Clinton pundits during the different scandals was used to great effect to blunt the impact of the charges. The issues were complex and could not be explained in a sound bite.
The everybody-does-it defense, Olson writes, was combined with what she calls "the regularly successful Clinton gambit ... engage in some marginally lawful and blatantly abusive conduct, often actually violating existing laws. When caught in the act, they could call for new laws making their prior conduct illegal and decry the flaws in the system that allowed them to misbehave in the first place."
The Final Days is not a great piece of literature; indeed, these kinds of books rarely are. What it is, though, is a thorough recounting of what went on in the final days of the Clinton administration and, more importantly, why it was wrong. It is a shame that Olson's voice has been silenced; her analysis of the final report of the Office of the Independent Counsel would likely have been a ripping good read as well.
