Smearing David Brock

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, has requested the Shaheen Report from both the Department of Justice and the Office of Independent Counsel, but his requests have been denied. He has also been unable to obtain Arkansas Project records from the American Spectator. On Saturday, Leahy called on Hatch to join him in a bipartisan probe into the confusion surrounding Olson's role in the project.

In his response to Leahy on Tuesday, Hatch argued that the conclusions of the Shaheen report corroborate Olson's testimony. In his letter, Hatch writes, "I am concerned that ... the definition of the 'Arkansas Project' appears to have blurred to mean anything related to criticism of President Clinton that appeared in the American Spectator. Such a definition is unworkable."

But the most serious charges leveled in regard to the Arkansas Project were over the alleged payments to Hale, and they raised questions about whether the American Spectator violated nonprofit tax laws by conducting partisan opposition research. Executives at the American Spectator Educational Foundation were concerned about such violations, and prepared for an audit of Tyrrell's use of Spectator funds. Documents show that Tyrrell's $598,000 home in McLean, Va., was owned by the nonprofit foundation that publishes the magazine, and that his lavish lifestyle was augmented by a generous salary that reached $318,000 a year.

According to Hatch's letter to Leahy, the investigation into the Hale charges, led by Shaheen, found no substance to the allegations. "At the conclusion of their review, they issued a statement on July 27, 1999, in which they concurred with the conclusions of the Shaheen Report that no prosecutions were warranted and that 'many of the allegations, suggestions and insinuations regarding the tendering and receipt of things of value were shown to be unsubstantiated or, in some cases, untrue.'"

Hatch also disputes Leahy's assertion that he was denied access to the report by the Justice Department and the Office of Independent Counsel. "I believe you are mistaken. On May 2, 2001, the Office of Independent Counsel came to the Judiciary Committee offices and made available all relevant non-grand jury material from the Shaheen Report for review by you and I and one designated staff member each." In his reply to Leahy, Olson echoed Hatch. The Shaheen Report "apparently concluded that the allegations that had prompted the investigation were unsubstantiated, exaggerated or altogether false." But then he offered something more interesting, noting, "I had not seen the report until last week when heavily redacted portions of it were made available to me after those same portions, with lesser redactions, had been made available to Senator Leahy and/or his staff."

And that's the problem. In their 1999 public statement about the Shaheen Report, retired federal Judges Arlin Adams and Charles Renfrew issued extraordinarily vague language about the findings: "Many of the allegations," they said, were "unsubstantiated or, in some cases, untrue." However, without access to the report in its entirety, the context of the allegations and the investigation remains unclear, and heavily redacted copies probably would prove even less illuminating.

And sources, including former Spectator employees, have questioned the magazine's use of funds in conducting the Arkansas Project. "This wasn't a legitimate use of tax-exempt moneys," a former Spectator employee told Salon in 1998. "I would suggest that what was going on here was opposition research, which would be fine if the American Spectator were a private business. But it is a tax-exempt 501(c)3."

Brock has similarly claimed that the Arkansas Project operatives were engaged in partisan opposition research rather than journalism. In the Post interview, Brock described how he had sought out advice from Olson on the Arkansas Project-commissioned story about the death of former White House attorney Vince Foster. Brock believed the piece to be unsubstantiated and tried to get Olson to intervene on his behalf with Spectator editor in chief Tyrrell. Brock told the Post that Olson told him that "while he didn't place any stock in the piece, it was worth publishing because the role of the Spectator was to write Clinton scandal stories in hopes of 'shaking scandals loose.'" If true, the accusation suggests that the magazine was engaged in partisan dirty tricks that could be seen as illegal under tax rules for 501(c)3 organizations.

However, Olson denies the allegation in his letter to Hatch. "As I told Mr. Brock at the time," Olson wrote, "the article did not appear to be libelous or to raise any legal issues that would preclude its publication. I made it plain to Mr. Brock that I was not the magazine's editor, and did not intend to start telling the Editor-in-Chief of nearly three decades what should appear in the magazine.

"Mr. Brock felt that the article was too controversial or speculative, and I responded that the style and tone of a magazine such as this was not a matter for the expertise of lawyers, and that I was not in a position to help him," Olson wrote.

Next Page: Lucianne to Brock: "Don't you know there are pictures out there?"

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