My heartfelt sympathy goes out to Ted Olson for his immeasurable loss.
Posted on 09/13/2001 5:15:38 PM PDT by Pokey78
Oh well, the message is worth repeating! God bless Barbara Olsen!
Is it ok to LOL? I'm sure Barbara is!
God rest you, dear lady. What a tremendous loss.
BARBARA OLSON, who has been killed aged 45 when her flight was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the Pentagon, came to prominence as an investigator for the United States Congress during the Clinton scandals of the 1990s and as the author of Hell to Pay (1999), an excoriating, no-holds-barred biography of Hillary Clinton.
A clever, tough, brave lawyer, Barbara Olson was a frequent and outspoken pundit on such American television talk shows as Larry King Live and Crossfire at the time of the scandals surrounding Monica Lewinsky and, more recently, Chandra Levy. Married to the US Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a close aide and friend of President George W Bush, she was a prominent member of Washington's conservative elite; this group, which also included the Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas and the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, prompted Hillary Clinton to complain of a "vast right-wing conspiracy".
Barbara Olson was born Barbara Bracher at Houston, Texas, on December 27 1955. After graduating with a BA from Houston's University of St Thomas in 1978, she became a professional ballet dancer, performing in Houston, New York and San Francisco. She then went to Los Angeles to become a producer and save enough money to finance her law degree, which she received in 1989 from the Benjamin Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University in New York. She spent three years working for the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, before serving as an assistant US attorney for the District of Columbia from 1992 until 1995, prosecuting drug cases.
From 1995 to 1996 Barbara Olson served as Chief Investigative Counsel for the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight. There she proved herself an intrepid collector and reviewer of documents regarding Hillary Clinton's supposed involvement in the White House's controversial firing of employees at its travel office, and the White House's murky acquisition of more than 900 FBI security files of past White House employees, mostly Republicans.
Barbara Olson had seen to it that Mrs Clinton answered written interrogatories under oath regarding the travel office dismissals and hence opened herself to perjury. The final judgment of Independent Counsel Robert Ray was that although Mrs Clinton had not been truthful she would not be prosecuted.
In 1996, Barbara Olson went on to serve as General Counsel to Senate Assistant Majority Leader, Senator Don Nickles. There she worked on the campaign finance investigation into President Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign.
After her work on the various congressional committees, Barbara Olson wrote Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The book, which accused Mrs Clinton of trying to "foment revolutionary changes from the uniform of a pink suit" was highly critical of the Clintons and sold very well. Hillary Clinton got her own back by voting against Ted Olson's appointment as Solicitor General when it came before the Senate in May 2001. Just weeks ago Senator Clinton was introduced to Barbara Olson in the Senate dining room; Hillary Clinton turned from Barbara Olson after saying: "I know who you are." Unabashed, Barbara Olson shot back: "And I know who you are. I wrote 300 pages about you."
On her numerous television and radio appearances Barbara Olson could always be relied upon to say what she thought with humour and audacity. She was a forceful advocate for the principles of Reagan conservatism, and was also often called on to analyse the legal elements in political scandals. Most recently, she was invited to discuss the role of Congressman Gary Condit in the mysterious disappearance of Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old intern with whom he had allegedly been having an affair.
Before that Barbara Olson had had much to say about the executive pardons that Bill Clinton granted in his last days in the presidency and the Clintons' removal of White House furnishings before they left. She recently finished a book about the Clintons' departure from the White House entitled The Final Days, which is due to be published this autumn.
Besides being a courageous adversary, known for her quick wit and sharp political and legal analysis, Barbara Olson was noted for her stylish dress sense - she favoured royal blue power suits with skirts erring just on the right side of decency - and blonde, blue-eyed, all-American good looks. At 45, she still turned heads.
She and her husband lived in an attractive country house outside Washington in the rolling hills of northern Virginia. There she kept two Australian shepherd dogs, Reagan (Ted Olson had been the 40th president's lawyer) and Maggie, named after another of their conservative heroes, Baroness Thatcher.
Barbara Olson was utterly untouched by self-importance, and one of Washington's most popular hostesses - each year she and her husband held a lively outdoor dinner in the grounds of their home for the Federalist Society, a legal association that has become the Bush Administration's chief pool for Federal court appointees.
On the day she died, Barbara Olson had delayed her planned flight so that she could have breakfast with her husband on his 61st birthday. Shortly after take-off, she called the Justice Department, where her husband worked, to say that the aircraft had been hijacked and the passengers had been herded into the back.
She had locked herself in the lavatory and had to call 10 times before she could persuade the operators to accept the call charges. Her last words to her husband - who had time to tell her that two planes had already hit the World Trade Centre - were "What do I tell the pilot to do?"
My heartfelt sympathy goes out to Ted Olson for his immeasurable loss.
At least she finished her next Clinton book which will, no doubt, be a best seller.
Rush Limbaugh: My Conversation With Barbara Olson
Crime/Corruption Opinion (Published) Keywords: HELL TO PAY, HILLARY CLINTON Source: Limbaugh Letter Published: January 2000 Author: Rush Limbaugh/Barbara Olson Posted on 01/10/2000 15:13:57 PST by JeanS
I was delighted to speak with a founder of the Independent Women's Forum, the brilliant former federal prosecutor, chief counsel for the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee investigating Travelgate and Filegate, and author of the must-read Hell to Pay:
Rush: Well, well, well, Barbara, how are you? You're out there at the same time that Gail Sheehy's Hillary book is. Obviously I think that of the two there's only one worth reading, and that's yours. How are you finding it?
Olson:: Well, thank you. Not very friendly. And Rush, you've been a godsend. I did a lot of shows for a lot of people during the impeachment. I regularly went on NBC, CBS, and ABC news shows. Yet they all interviewed Gail Sheehy with no mention of my book at all. It was as if it didn't exist for the mainstream media.
Rush: One of the reasons, Barbara, and it's something I'm sure you know, is that we live in an era where emotions trump logic and intellect every day of the week. Sheehy's got a psychobabble book with Hillary on the couch. That book is a soap opera.
Olson: It is. But the thing that's so frustrating is — and you recognize this — Gail makes Hillary into the victim again. You know, it's all because of her daddy; she's not responsible for anything she does that's bad; Bill's causing it. And that's exactly what Hillary's camp wants. I think it's interesting that every day now The Washington Post is chronicling "Gail's goof corner,'' detailing misinformation from her book. It's amazing. She interviewed Hillary's friends and actually believed them, and now she's saying, "I feel like I've been misled." Well, I interviewed those people, too. I participated in 125 depositions, put them under oath, and they lied — so I'm not surprised that Gail feels as though she was lied to. Her mistake was believing them in the first place.
Rush: Is it your impression that she participated in, via this book, a rehabilitation project for Hillary? She's chosen sides; she's on Hillary's side. So this is not a book that is ultimately designed to embarrass or harm Hillary, right?
Olson: Oh, no. There are a couple of tough things in there so the publisher could promote it, but in the end what Gail is doing is finding the excuse for Hillary's actions. If Hillary seems a little hard, if Hillary has done things we don't agree with, it's either her domineering father's problem or her husband's infidelities.
Rush: It's so full of contradictions. On the one hand, Hillary is the most brilliant woman in the world - but then she doesn't believe Gennifer Flowers for 20 years.
Olson: It's because she's addicted to Bill — didn't you know that? We all have addictions; no one is responsible for their actions anymore. We're not responsible for our acts. Bill's problem, the reason he has sex with young girls, is because his mother and grandmother fought over him.
Rush: Right.
Olson: Hillary's father was domineering; that's why she sticks with a man like Bill Clinton. But the view that I tried to describe in my book is that Bill and Hillary Clinton have both used each other. Hillary knew who he was; she knew he was cheating on her before he even married her. During the early campaign, Hillary was tearing up phone numbers of girls at the end of each day. It was a pact she made because she knew this man was ambitious, she knew he was a good front. He knew she was going to do the hard work on paper, and they've been a great partnership.
Rush: The line on Hillary is that she's the smartest woman in the world, with a resume of endless achievements. On my program I replayed a portion of an interview Chris Matthews did with her spokesman Howard Wolfson, asking: "What has she done?" The answer: "She cares about people." There's not one achievement, Barbara. There's not one thing she can list. She's going to have to either make it up or say, "Well, our patriarchal society required that I act through a surrogate; this Administration was actually all me." She's done nothing but fail, in my view. Can you name for me, from your research, a solid achievement in her post-academic life that if properly broadcast and announced, would gain her credit and favor, and add credibility and make her somebody truly electable?
Olson: No, there is not an achievement she's done on her own. We all know about universal health care, which failed because she refused to negotiate. She's a take-no-prisoners kind of politician.
Rush: Right. You call her "darkly Nixonian in her outlook and methods."
Olson: Yes. The irony is Hillary Clinton became more "Nixonian" than Nixon ever was. In the end, Richard Nixon couldn't destroy the tapes, and he couldn't drag the country through an impeachment inquiry. What Hillary learned is that any compromise with a criminal investigation can be fatal. She learned to stonewall, deny, destroy evidence and then destroy the accuser — and you'll survive. Nixon never did the things he was accused of to the extent that she, within the Clinton Administration, did — such as use of the FBI, the IRS, purges of individuals employed in the White House. Her White House database was a virtual enemies list.
Rush: Barbara, is she convictable on anything? And will they ever be proved?
Olson: I drafted the interrogatories that Hillary Clinton signed under penalty of perjury in Travelgate. In those interrogatories, she claims she did not have a hand in the firing of the travel office employees. We collected a body of evidence indicating that she not only had a hand in it, but she was a driving force. And papers don't lie. Now the prosecutors are going to look at that. I believe that she lied under oath, and I believe it could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt.
The problem is, we've now had three trials in Whitewater where the jury acquitted — one was a hung jury — because they didn't care what the evidence was, they refused to convict. Jury nullification is a huge problem right now. I think a prosecutor's going to look at that and say, A) the charge of perjury has really been demeaned, and B) it is going to be hard, because most of these people "don't recall" things under oath. I deposed most of them. If you've got witnesses who don't recall, they can't be impeached. I don't think you could have a successful prosecution of Hillary Clinton, although I do believe she lied under oath.
Rush: So she's going to get away with it?
Olson:: I think she will. The Independent Counsel is going to go to report. I think they're going to talk about the FBI files; I think they're going to talk about the travel office; I think they're going to talk about the billing records; and I don't think she's going to be prosecuted.
Rush: Is the replacement Independent Counsel of the same mentality Ken Starr was? I recall that Starr did not want anything he did to have an impact on the outcome of elections. Will this Independent Counsel time or word his report so as to be of no impact on her campaign if she actually proceeds with one?
Olson:: From what I heard they discussed that issue, and people felt as though he was going to follow that same policy.
Rush: When are we going to learn to play the game? When are we going to get somebody like Lawrence Walsh, who will indict one of these guys a weekend before an election?
Olson:: I know. You're absolutely right. We're always the ones who turn the other cheek. And they know that; they've used it to the full extent. I just don't think they're going to follow through.
Rush: You've got to be frustrated as a lawyer, as somebody who respects the Constitution. I'm sure writing this book, while eminently worthwhile, has got to have been a frustrating thing — plus to have gone through the personal attacks that you were subjected to as one who offered yourself on television to speak up for the pro-Independent Counsel side of this.
Olson: Yes. When I was sitting there in the Senate, all these former federal prosecutors were making statements about the Ken Starr investigation that I knew weren't true. My dad used to tell me: Don't complain about something if you aren't willing to do something about it. So I decided I would, and that's also why I did this book.
Two years ago, I thought Hillary Clinton was preparing to run for President. The more I found out about her, the more I looked at her, the more I thought it. I was the one who started the whole discussion about her heading up the World Bank. I realized her roommate from Wellesley, Jan Piercy, is there. World Bank doesn't require Senate confirmation. As she did at L.S.C. Legal Services Corp., where she handed out all the money to the left, the World Bank would give her hundreds of billions of dollars to pay back the left, and would give her a foreign policy resume for a run for the White House. I do think Hilary's going to take some foreign policy appointment if not elected.
Everybody wants to know: "How does she put up with him?" He has been a great candidate. She's been his campaign manager. When she sat there and talked about the "vast right-wing conspiracy," people say she didn't know that the affair with Monica Lewinsky was true. Well, she knew about 20 other women in Bill's past. She hired a private detective down in Arkansas, Ivan Duda, to tell her about women. And not because she was a wife who had been cheated on, but because she needed to figure out where the skeletons were and how to protect her candidate.
Rush: See, there's another contradiction in the Sheehy book. She is the smartest woman in the world, yet she "didn't know." Hillary's Choice, Sheehy's title, was supposedly to ignore the women — yet, she's hiring private eyes.
Olson: Exactly. If your child has stolen 20 cookies and he's accused of stealing the 21st, you don't say, "Oh, I think he's just ministering to a troubled person." You know he's done it. But Hillary always has to find an enemy. She did it with Ken Starr; she invented the vast right-wing conspiracy because she had no enemy with Monica Lewinsky, she'd used up the Ken Starr enemy line. You've been the enemy, Rush. She has to always find an enemy. The reason I discuss Saul Alinsky so much in my book is because he was her mentor at Wellesley, and Alinsky's whole theory is: "Find an enemy — pick your target, freeze it, personalized it, polarize it." He talks about ridicule as man's most potent weapon. All of this is really the genesis of Hillary's War Room.
Rush: Will it work with Giuliani? Starr is an entirely different personality, a non-political guy. Will it work with Rudy?
Olson: With Rudy, they're polling the question: "Who do you think can work best with other Senators and form coalitions — Rudy Giuliani or Hillary Clinton?" Her numbers are very good there. They're accusing Rudy of being a pit bull, an attack dog, even when he's not attacking. That does two things. It makes Rudy the enemy, and it also makes him a bully. She's going to try to become a victim again. Everybody turns her into a victim, and her numbers go way up. In January her numbers were never so high as when she was the first victim. And boy, if she can turn herself into a victim with Rudy, she knows her numbers will go back up. I really think that's what they're trying to do with Rudy. You start hearing that language: "he's a pit bull"; "he's nasty." Howard Wolfson is using that line regularly.
Rush: And they've got this homeless issue, which they've ignored for seven years, that just miraculously they've dredged up.
Olson: If she cares so much, how come she's out in Westchester in a $1.7 million home? I think she needs to get all those special interest groups agitated and activated for her and against Rudy. The greenies, the gays, the feminists — she's going to start pulling those strings so she can make sure they're active and vocal, so she can be their champion, and they'll start attacking Rudy.
Rush: Back to Saul Alinsky, let's analyze this: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it." What does this actually mean, for my readers, so they can spot it when she's doing it, say, against Rudy or any other enemy?
Olson: Saul Alinsky was a radical organizer. He wrote a book, Rules for Radicals. You have to define your enemy so that you can defeat them. You must pick the target; you must always have an enemy —
Rush: — even if you have to manufacture it?
Olson:: Exactly. Even if it has to be "the vast, right-wing conspiracy," you must have an enemy. The other thing that Alinsky says is, "Let the enemy move first, and use his momentum against him." All of these things are how radical organizers work. Another thing: "Use your middle class roots to infiltrate and change from within." Instead of going to work for Alinsky after college — he offered Hillary a job and she applied to a school to train organizers — she said, "I can do more by going to law school." Alinsky said that the way for true revolution, radical change, is not to go out there with the long hair and protest and scare the middle class. He said: "Use your middle class roots to infiltrate and change, take on the coloration of others to win their trust. Then you find your enemy, and you polarize it, and you freeze it and you personalize it and you identify it and you triumph over it." It's a war. Politics is war. There are no prisoners with Hillary Clinton. There is no compromise. It is really that kind of philosophy that you see when anyone opposes her, which is why the James Carvilles are so successful. They're part of that War Room mentality.
Rush: Carville claims he's going to go to New York to "volunteer,'' set up these "anti-thug" committees. He, by the way, made a big point of saying he's going to work for free, but I know that guys who buy media get 15 percent of the buy. So he can be off payroll and be given, say, a portion of the TV budget and make some money on this. But who gives who orders in this case? Who's the brains of that duo?
Olson:: I think Carville brings his own intelligence-gathering to the table. I once asked Mary Matalin, "Why did he do this? It's so despicable, and he's not a despicable person." She said, "Because they made him successful, and he feels loyalty." I think he feels that loyalty to Hillary. And don't forget what Carville did with Barak over in Israel. He went over there and won the election. It's not a coincidence. She needs that and he could help her. Carville will also bring that War Room strategy that I don't think she has the time to be as involved in as she was when Bill Clinton was out front. She needs a James Carville to head up the War Room, to find where to attack, who the targets are, so she can be out there in her pink suit talking about children and families and all these wonderful government services she's bringing.
He's got to demonize Rudy Giuliani for her. You know how they use their surrogates. So that she can sit there and say — because she's already said: "I don't control James Carville." How many times have we heard that?
Rush: I know. If it ever got to the point that it harmed them, all it would take is one word from them and he'd shut up.
Olson: Absolutely. But let me tell you a little something else about Saul Alinsky. You know Hillary's thesis that's been under seal and no one's read? I have it.
Rush: No kidding.
Olson:: The thesis she wrote is an analysis of the Alinsky model.
Rush: This is at Wellesley?
Olson:: Yes. It was put under seal when Bill Clinton won the Presidency. No one's read it. Oh, she got an "A" on it; she wrote it the second of May, 1969. She interviewed Saul Alinsky and worked with him on this thesis. It's very interesting, because he was in the process of writing his book Rule for Radicals, which came out in 1971. This whole thesis is full of his prepublication thoughts on the rules for radicals. Hillary talks about enemies. She talks about organizing.
Rush: Barbara, if you make this public, are you worried for yourself?
Olson: I am, but I'm not. We've been attacked, my husband's been attacked. I really do feel as though you have to do what you think is right. I think Hillary is a dangerous woman.
Rush: I would love to see that thesis.
Olson: I will send it to you. No one has it. In the beginning, when the professor gives her an "A," he says: "As you appear headed to law school, we will no doubt in time hear more of your organizing efforts." Hillary talks about power as the very essence of life, the dynamic of life. That is what Saul Alinsky teaches. "Be prepared for conflict." It really does talk about how to organize people, about how you have to have an enemy in order to translate community interests into community action.
Rush: Barbara, why would anybody want to live their life this way? Take just the last four years of the Clintons' marriage. Even though they have the power of the White House, can you imagine living this way? And look at this thesis. Here's a woman who's graduated from college, and her life is going to consist of making enemies in order to achieve and maintain power. I cannot relate to that. I cannot possibly understand wanting to live my life that way.
Olson: But Rush, she's a radical organizer. Hillary Clinton really does want to affect a government-wide change. She is a socialist. I really traced her politics in my book. She worked for Robert Treuhaft, the Communist Party lawyer. She spent a summer at his law firm in Berkeley. His wife, Jessica Mitford, was an avowed Stalinist. Hillary attended the Black Panther trial to make sure that their civil rights weren't violated. Forget the civil rights that they had violated, the murder of police informants and others. They tortured a man suspected of being a police informant.
This was not just a kid who was being a 60s protester. She became steeped in the deep underground leftist movement, and that's where her politics come from. She really believes she needs to revolutionize our country from within. And she does believe in socialism. She thinks government programs are what we need, because you and I are way too stupid to decide how to raise our children, how to spend our money and how to take care of ourselves when we're old. It's that arrogance that permeates Hillary Clinton's policies, and she believes it so much that she's put up with Bill Clinton in order to effect part of that agenda.
Rush: She has had to do everything she's done through him. Has she been content to do that, waiting for this opportunity now? Or has she been eternally frustrated having to go about it the way she has?
Olson: I think she has wound up eternally frustrated. I think she was content for a period, in Arkansas. She had a pretty free reign and she was working with various legal service groups, New World foundation, and a lot of outside organizations. But in the White House, when she came in as the co-president, I think she became frustrated when Bill Clinton started moving to the center. I think you saw the frustration grow when you saw her realize that she was going to have to go off on her own to finish their agenda.
Rush: So the Monica stuff didn't make her mad maritally, but politically.
Olson:: Exactly. Because he put in danger everything they had done. We now know if Hillary and others had not been on the phone calling the Democrat Senators, that they were ready to come to the White House. They thought all was lost. I think what really upset Hillary was that he had done this in a way that jeopardized their agenda. And she had worked long and hard for that.
Rush: What about this business that she ordered the Kosovo bombing after eight months of not talking to the lug?
Olson: It's just more Hillary babble. Can you imagine? As a woman I have to say, there's no way she didn't talk to him for eight months. If you remember back then, leading up to the bombing of Kosovo, things were already in place. I think her statement is that she talked to him and the bombing began the next day. Go back into the clips back then; there were a lot of actions leading up to the bombing. I just think that's more of Gail Sheehy's psychobabble. It falls in the same lines with, "We didn't talk about whether he would move into the house"; or, "We didn't talk about the FALN." Hillary has the same sort of little lies — the latest lie being, "I'm going through my storage to see what furniture to recover." You realize they haven't lived in a private home since 1982. So if she has storage, it's got to be a couch from 1982. And where is that storage? Perhaps we might find the missing billing records!
Rush: We all know taxpayers will furnish that house.
Olson:' Well, of course we do. Someone suggested to me that she didn't identify what "storage" it was, and maybe it's the National Archives that she's looking through.
Rush: Anything's possible. The thing that strikes me is, here's a woman with this thesis, and with this background, and all these desires, and if she's honest with herself, she has to admit total failure. Or are we wrong? Is she really winning while we're not looking?
Olson:: I think she's won it on the margins. Government has grown right along. I think she really has decided she needs a stepping stone for a run for the White House. People think it's crazy, but if you look at Hillary's background, there is a resume she's been building for a run for the White House.
In my book I discuss her story about trying to join the Marines. This is when she was going to marry Bill Clinton. She was teaching law in Arkansas. And all of a sudden, what does a young girl about to be married do? She marches down to the Marine office to become one of America's "few good men." But this is Hillary's story; she's been creating the legacy. Everyone knows the next best thing to having a military career is trying to have one. I think it creates a resume. The same thing when we hear that story that's been told so many times about her childhood, you know, the girl punches her and her mother says, "We don't have cowards in this house," so she goes out and punches her back, and then claims she now can run with the boys. That's another one of Hillary's stories. These are all legacy. Gail Sheehy and others who write books, they take these stories as true. They're Hillary lore. They're creating her own PT-109. I expect to see it in a film at a Democratic Convention. It's the same thing with Hillary's dad being such a tough guy. First of all, Hillary's dad was a Depression era parent, which I had, we all had in this generation.
Rush: But he paid for Bill's campaign in Arkansas, didn't he? Drove down, dropping off signs out of a Cadillac?
Olson: Right. The first thing he does, Rush, is send his daughter to Wellesley — not a cheap school. I mean, my dad sent me to state university. So that's one thing; he spends a lot of money for his little girl to go to an exclusive, private women's school. Then she backpacks that summer across Alaska. She doesn't have to get a job, pay back her college tuition. And you're right. When she was at Watergate working on the committee, she called Dad. Bill was running around. Dad, who's a conservative Republican, goes down to Little Rock and campaigns for her boyfriend. Don't tell me that sounds like a tough dad. The family moved to Little Rock to be near her and Chelsea. These are parents who have been doting on her. I just think it's more Hillary lore; it makes her look like she overcame hardships — rather than the very privileged, upper middle class life that she's always had.
The first thing I looked at when Hillary Clinton announced she was running for the Senate —
Rush: — she hasn't yet, though.
Olson:: She's intending to run, and she's intending to answer questions, and she's intending to tell us what her policies are. But I looked at it saying, Why in the world would she do this when she has so much to lose? And then I realized, if she loses in November, there's a window of opportunity between November and January 20th, 2001 where she can still get her World Bank or other foreign policy appointment.
Rush: Exactly.
Olson:: These are the things I looked at: foreign policy. She made 51 trips abroad. She didn't do it because she cares about these people. She figured this would be a great platform. The World Bank: no Senate confirmation, hundreds of billions of dollars to give to the left. And Jan Piercy, her old roommate is there. The President of the United States appoints the head of the World Bank. I just heard today from someone who was at the World Bank that James Wolfensohn grudgingly took the reappointment, that he's not all that anxious to continue. So he may still be a place holder for her if she loses in November, or if she decides not to run in February.
Rush: Right, and you've got Andrew Cuomo all of a sudden now becoming prominent and ready to step into her role. They got Nina Lowey out of the way so that he could step in. I've never been convinced that she was going to run.
Olson:: When she did her "intend to run" a few weeks ago, they asked her about her policies on education. She refused to answer. She always says, "I intend to answer"; "I intend to talk about these things"; "I'm going to." I agree with you, Rush, in February they're going to take a hard look at the numbers.
Rush: There's too much at stake to lose here.
Olson: And she's already done what she wants to do. She separated herself from just being the First Lady, she's now a viable candidate. She's had a national platform, and so she's already benefitted. She's brought herself out of the shadow already with this listening tour, and she hasn't had to face the press.
Rush: You've studied her probably in a more intellectual way than anybody else has. Is there a way to defeat and discredit this woman to the point that she is no longer a force in public policy the rest of her life?
Olson: If you exposed her real policies, you've exposed her real politics. When she says, "I am for women and children," you expose what that means. When she says she's for children, and she's for children's rights. I want to read you just two sentences that she wrote that I think really explain what Hillary is for when she talks about children. In 1978, she wrote an essay on children's rights: "Decisions about motherhood and abortion, schooling, cosmetic surgery, treatment of venereal disease or employment, where the decision or lack of one will significantly affect the child's future, should not be made unilaterally by the parents."
Rush: And she still holds to this?
Olson: This is the whole children's rights view. When she talks about a village she says the future for children is not family, but the larger village of teachers, pediatricians and social workers. That is a socialist concept. You and I recognize that. You destroy the American nuclear family and you suddenly have everyone depending upon government. She slowly progressed from the state government to the federal government, and that's exactly where Saul Alinsky was going when he was writing his Rules for Radicals. He was no longer going to be a community organizer. He was going on a much broader base, to organize nationwide, because that's where power is.
Rush: Ultimately, they don't believe it, because they don't live it. Chelsea's life is not at all like Hillary wants everybody else's child to be.
Olson: Of course it's not. Although her campaign keeps saying that Chelsea's a full-time student at Stanford. Well, how could full-time students take the foreign trips and everything she has done? They've dragged her out for photo-ops. I think we all have burned in our minds that picture of Chelsea walking to the helicopter in between Hillary and Bill, as they went off to their vacation this summer. They really have used her.
I started my book with a chapter called "Hillary's Baby." Do you remember in '96, the polling numbers were looking very bad, Bill was going to have a tough run? They started talking about adopting a child. They were going to be empty nesters, with Chelsea going away, and the reaction was, "Oh, how wonderful — a child will go into the White House; what a country we have." Well, the polling numbers went up, and you never heard another word about adopting a child. That shows Hilary Clinton will use anything and anyone for her political purpose.
Rush: You write, 'I've never experienced a cooler or more hardened operator than Hillary Rodham Clinton." Do you think you'll ever meet anybody like her again?
Olson:: I don't. That's why I wrote this book. I don't think I wanted to spend five years of my life on anyone else in political life, but I thought it was so important to explain who Hillary is. I have had regular death threats, they started when I was defending Ken Starr. My husband opens our mail now. He doesn't let me see half of it, and he says he's worried. But you can't live that way. If no one's going to come forward, then I can't sit and complain. Boy, I used to sit and scream at the television, and I thought, I've got to go do something about this woman.
Rush: Do you feel like you're making any headway?
Olson: I think I am, Rush. As you know, I'm doing a lot of talk radio across the country. And when I present her speeches, her writings, her own words, a lot of people tell me: "This is a book that's got the facts; it's not just an opinion piece." And at least some people say, "I'II read the book with an open mind." The fact that I'm taking her seriously and not blaming it on someone else, is something I hope people start to do. I hope they start to say, "Look, this woman's going to be around, she's very powerful." But if it wasn't for you, Rush, I've got to say, my book would not even be a topic. You really resurrected me and I just can't tell you how much I appreciate it.
Rush: Everybody they come in touch with, they corrupt. All of their friends, anybody who ends up working for them, ends up corrupted — or dead. It's amazing the number of people. How many people do you know, Barbara, who have been indicted, convicted, killed, committed suicide? It's amazing when you look at that list of casualties around these people.
Olson: Yes. Vince Foster was incredibly depressed. I read his diary that he was writing up until his death. It was sort of a stream of consciousness diary. Hillary was moving him away, she had been yelling at him, he wasn't handling the scandals. He was writing how he was no longer at meetings, he was being shut out, and he was just torn up inside over it all. At first I wondered, "How does she live with herself, knowing that her agenda destroyed this man?" It didn't seem to bother her. The first thing she does is call all her troops and make sure they search the office. Forget that she never called Lisa Foster. I mean, they're old friends. When Vince died, she called Maggie Williams, she called Harry Thomason, she called Susan Thomason. It was damage control. It wasn't: Let me at least make one phone call to a friend we've had for years who just lost her husband.
It just never crosses Hillary's mind. Now Bill, I think it sort of does. He's despicable, but he's not an ideologue. She's the ideologue. He's Saturday Night Bill, he's good-time Charlie.
Rush: Trying to enjoy life a little bit, while she's out there scratching her fingernails on a chalk board.
Olson: Yes. She is the ideologue that is, I think, the driving force behind all of the agenda. Which makes her the more dangerous of the two.
Rush: Well, it's time to stop them. I'm glad to be on your team, and best of luck with this. I'll keep touting the book, because people need to read it.
Olson: Rush, I can't tell you how much that means. You can actually watch the sales numbers on the book move as you talk about it. I watch Amazon.com, and the numbers just move like lightning. Thank you.
Rush: All the best — and stay safe.
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