Brock's Anita Hill book portrayed Judge Patricia Wald, Silberman's colleague on the D.C. Circuit Court, as a "conspirator in the campaign against Thomas," as he wrote in "Blinded by the Right." "Of course it was none other than Judge Silberman who gave me the false information on his colleague Pat Wald, whom he hated with a passion," Brock wrote.

Silberman was more than just a source to Brock: He was also Brock's guide and advisor. Brock says Silberman would read drafts of the Anita Hill book and comment on them, and writes that he thought of the Silbermans as "surrogate parents."

And it was the Silbermans who encouraged him as he became one of the chief propagandists of the right's anti-Clinton jihad. In 1993, Brock wrote "Troopergate" for the American Spectator. A lascivious would-be exposé about Clinton's sex life, its mention of a woman named "Paula" spurred Paula Jones to introduce herself to the world at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where she held a press conference to claim that Clinton had sexually harassed her. It was that story that ultimately led to the impeachment of Clinton.

Brock had been ambivalent about publishing the article at all. He didn't doubt the truth of the troopers' stories -- that came later -- but he says, "My doubts had to do with taking what seemed to be an unprecedented step in violating the personal privacy of the president." He asked several people for advice and got mixed responses, but Silberman was extremely encouraging.

"He wrapped his advice in an appeal to my ego," Brock writes. "The trooper story would be much bigger than the Anita Hill book, he predicted. Clinton would be 'devastated,' and therefore the story could only greatly enhance my reputation. Sitting in his favorite tan chair, Scotch in hand, the judge told me he felt sure that if the same story had been written about Ronald Reagan, it would have toppled him from office. Clinton, he surmised, might be toppled as well. Of course, the liberal media might ignore the story to protect Clinton, but in conservative circles, I would be king. When I heard that, I was over the fence. I left the Silbermans' house with a racing pulse."

"When I look back on it, I think it's possible that maybe if he had thought otherwise, the article never would have been published," Brock says.

Both Silberman and his wife continued to play important behind-the-scenes roles in the Clinton investigations, something that didn't stop the judge from ruling on important aspects of the case. As Brock reports, Ricky Silberman founded an anti-feminist group, the Independent Women's Forum, which received backing from Clinton-hating sugar daddy Richard Mellon Scaife (Lynne Cheney, wife of Dick, was a member of its board) and which filed a friend of the court brief in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. Ricky Silberman approached Ken Starr to handle the brief. It was his introduction to the case. He turned it down, but he later consulted with Jones' lawyers in telephone conferences.

Later, a panel of judges headed by David Sentelle appointed Starr to investigate Whitewater -- which morphed into the Lewinsky investigation.

During that investigation, the Clinton administration claimed executive privilege to prevent the Secret Service from testifying about Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Silberman sat on the Federal Appellate Panel that heard the case.

As Jonathan Broder reported in Salon at the time, "U.S. Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote a scathing opinion that accused [Attorney General Janet] Reno of acting not on behalf of the U.S. government, but in the personal interests of President Clinton. Then, using language seldom seen in the federal judiciary, Silberman questioned whether Clinton himself, by allowing his aides to attack Starr, was 'declaring war on the United States.'"

Of course, if Brock's allegations against Silberman are true -- and, as the Alliance for Justice points out, neither Silberman nor his allies have ever refuted or even challenged them -- then Silberman shouldn't have been ruling on the case at all.

Indeed, that's why the Alliance for Justice was planning its report on Silberman even before Bush chose him to head the intelligence panel. The investigation was intended as a case study in the danger of elevating the kind of far-right judicial nominees Bush has put forward.

"The Judicial Selection Project of the Alliance for Justice has prepared this report on the record of Judge Silberman before and after taking the bench," it begins. "Why? Because federal judges should not do what Brock claims Silberman did. They are supposed to be impartial arbiters, not partisan advocates. Because a judge like Silberman enjoys an enormous amount of influence in this country, and not just by virtue of his seat on the second most prestigious and powerful court in this country; he is known as a 'feeder judge,' having sent some twenty of his clerks to the Supreme Court and, according to former clerk Paul Clement, a 'tremendous number' of Silberman's former clerks are currently working in the Bush administration. Because even those cynics who believe that federal judges are guided on the bench by partisan ideology should be dismayed by Silberman's alleged conduct off the bench."

For Silberman's critics, naming him to get to the bottom of one of the most divisive political controversies of our time is even more egregious than Bush's attempt to put Henry Kissinger in charge of the 9/11 investigation.

"Even the word 'chutzpah' does not describe this appointment of Silberman," Phillips said. "This is not bravado, but arrogance."

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