Fearing that his confirmation could be derailed by the allegations, Olson has attempted to downplay his role in the Arkansas Project, but with each new response, he seems to backpedal from his original account even further.

Olson's evasiveness drew a rebuke from the ranking Democrat on the committee. "The credibility of the person appointed to be the Solicitor General is of paramount importance," Leahy warned in a May 4 letter that followed Olson's written responses to additional questions forwarded by the committee following his April 5 confirmation hearing.

In 1998, Salon ran a number of stories investigating Olson's relationship with the right-wing magazine American Spectator, under whose auspices the Arkansas Project was run, and the circumstances under which he came to provide pro-bono legal representation for key Whitewater witness David Hale. Salon's reporting refutes many of the statements made by Olson at his confirmation hearing and in his subsequent written responses and raises serious questions about his fitness for the office of solicitor general.

Salon compared the testimony provided by Olson at his confirmation hearing and his subsequent written answers to follow-up questions by the committee with the findings of exhaustive investigative reporting conducted by Murray Waas, Joe Conason and Jonathan Broder for Salon during the investigation of President Clinton. Here's what we found:

On Olson's role in the Arkansas Project:

Leahy: Were you involved in the so-called Arkansas Project at any time?

Olson: Only as a member of the board of directors of the American Spectator I became aware of that. It has been alleged that I was somehow involved in that so-called project. I was not involved in the project in its origin or its management.

The facts: An investigation by Murray Waas revealed that Olson "provided legal advice to both the American Spectator and the Arkansas Project," in addition to serving on the boards of four conservative political groups funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, the reclusive Pittsburgh billionaire who has funded and has ties to many prominent right-wing groups, including the Federalist Society, which has served as a veritable breeding ground for Bush's judiciary appointments. Both Olson and his then-colleague John Mintz at the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher advised the Arkansas Project from its inception in 1993. "Olson is somebody who Scaife would trust to see that nothing went wrong and that his money would not be wasted," a source told Waas at the time.

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