Since returning to private practice at the Washington offices of Gibson, Dunn, he has become not only a prominent appellate attorney but an eminence grise in the capital's conservative circles.

Like his wife, he has served on the boards of various conservative foundations and think tanks, including the Washington Legal Foundation and the Independent Women's Forum, many of which are financed by Pittsburgh billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. The Olsons' home in McLean, Va., is virtually a cocktail lounge for the likes of Starr, defeated Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and other right-wing celebrities.

But it is Olson's role in the anti-Clinton activities of the American Spectator that could become a severe embarrassment to him in confirmation hearings. The "Arkansas Project," also paid for by Scaife, was created in his law firm's offices in late 1993, around the time that Olson agreed to represent David Hale, the corrupt Little Rock judge who eventually became Starr's chief witness against Bill Clinton in the Whitewater case.

Although the American Spectator is published by a tax-exempt foundation that cannot use its funds for partisan purposes, Scaife's millions were used by the magazine in a covert effort to destroy Clinton and other Democrats. After the project was exposed in 1998 by Salon and other news organizations, a special counsel was appointed by Starr and the Justice Department to determine whether any money was used to illicitly influence Hale's testimony.

That special counsel, former Justice Department official Michael Shaheen, eventually filed a 168-page report that found Hale had not been paid to testify. But the rest of the Shaheen report, which presumably details the unsavory activities of the Arkansas Project and its detectives, has remained under seal. Its contents may be of interest to Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee as they consider an Olson nomination.

They may also ask Olson to explain the circumstances behind his role in Monica Lewinsky's interview by Barbara Walters on ABC in 1999. The former White House intern's plea agreement with Starr required her to obtain his permission before any media appearance. Somehow Starr's friend Olson ended up representing Lewinksy -- for a hefty fee of $25,000, paid by ABC -- when she sought and received Starr's approval of the Walters interview.

The pertinent questions regarding Olson go beyond his anti-Clinton entanglements. Among his colleagues in the federal bar, he is just as well known for his strongly conservative stance on civil rights and affirmative action.

If the cases he has handled represent his personal views, then Olson apparently worries much more about discrimination against white men than against minorities, women and gays.

He defended the Virginia Military Institute's prerogative to exclude women, despite the school's state funding. He also defended the Colorado initiative that would have barred cities and towns from enacting gay rights statutes. Although he lost both of those cases in the Supreme Court, he won a landmark case that overturned affirmative action in admissions to the University of Texas Law School.

And of course there is the lingering matter of his advocacy on behalf of Bush in Florida, where civil-rights groups are preparing to sue state officials over alleged abuses of minority voters.

Olson's nomination as solicitor general might be a mere prelude to something even bigger. He certainly wouldn't be the first occupant of that office later named to the Supreme Court. The last, and the most notorious, was his old friend Robert Bork.

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