Reply #23: The first Ted Olson scandal ...assistant attorney general to President Reagan

[L. Coyote]

The first Ted Olson scandal
By David Neiwert - May 14, 2001
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/05/14/independent_counsel/index.html

... pattern of ruthlessness and deception began during his tenure in the Reagan administration.
... In the mid-1980s, he became the focus of an independent counsel's investigation for ... giving misleading testimony to Congress -- some charged it was perjury -- that was intended to cover up his own misbehavior.

Olson's current problems stem from his failure to be forthcoming before the Senate Judiciary Committee ... evasive answers about his participation in dirt-digging expeditions ...

... the last time Olson served as a top presidential legal counselor, he left behind a political disaster area strewn with bad legal advice, wrecked careers and lingering scandals ... assistant attorney general to President Reagan from 1981 to 1983, Olson advised the president to claim executive privilege to block an investigation by congressional Democrats into the scandal-plagued Superfund program, based on assertions that later proved fatally false ...

... . He earned a full investigation by an independent counsel, for perjury and obstruction of justice ... the independent counsel scrupulously ruled that, though Olson's testimony was "misleading and disingenuous," it did not rise to the level of prosecutable perjury ...

... Olson's complete record reveals a troubling portrait of a counselor willing to risk everything -- including the credibility of his president, and his political colleagues' careers -- in pursuit of a highly charged partisan agenda ...