The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House [Hardcover]

Barbara Olson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2001

Olson turns her razor sharp vision on the Clintons' shocking excesses in their final days of office: the outrageous pardons to political cronies and friends, the looting of the White House, the executive orders that were sheer abuses of presidential power, the presidential library that is becoming a massive boondoogle of vanity more appropriate for a Third World dictator, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

What would conservative writer Olson have opined about the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States? We will never know, because she was on board the airliner that dove into the Pentagon that day. But one can guess: she might have decried President Clinton's failure to confront Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network or cited it as just another of the policy failures of the most corrupt President in American history. For in this, her last book, she drags fact after fact into the light of day and bitterly, even sneeringly, rails against the Clintons, their characters and lifestyles, their liberal friends and radical causes, their moral failures and shady activities. She is clearly preaching to the choir, but what an indictment she brings-especially regarding the Clinton pardons of Marc Rich and a pro-Communist terrorist and many, many others. Olson had particular distaste for former First Lady Hillary Clinton, finding elements of her Senate campaign unutterably corrupt; she didn't much like her personally either. This over-the-top approach will, for many listeners, dilute her message but, still, the book is hard to ignore. Reader Kimberly Schraf proceeds with a measured cadence somewhat distant from the words, and that is probably the best approach to listening to an angry tract such as this. Libraries with a modern political history collection will find this work flying off the shelf, at least until the Clintons pass from the American scene.
Don Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Former federal prosecutor Barbara Olson served as the Chief Investigative Counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, where she spearheaded the investigation of the Clinton administration's travel office firings and eventually uncovered the explosive "filegate" scandal. She also served as the Principal Assistant General Counsel and Solicitor to the House.

Barbara Olson was killed on September 11, 2001, when the airplane she had just boarded for Los Angeles was hijacked by terrorists and crashed into the Pentagon. Though invariably charming and gracious, Barbara was both passionate and courageous. She held strong opinions, and nobody who was in the same room with her ever had any doubt about what she believed. She did not apologize for what she thought or said, and she always spoke her mind articulately and clearly. Barbara Olson was a champion of freedom. And she was a champion of the rule of law--of the need to maintain a free and civil society by means of a well-defined body of law that protects the individual from government tyranny. All of us at Regnery Publishing are deeply saddened by the loss of our author and friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with her husband, Solicitor General Ted Olson, and the thousands of other relatives and friends who have lost their loved ones in the terrorist attacks on our country.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing; FEP Cuttout edition (October 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0895261677
• ISBN-13: 978-0895261670
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (120 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #956,364 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #94 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > People, A-Z > ( C ) > Clinton, Bill

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

63 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Incriminating Indictment on the Clinton "Presidency", November 19, 2001

By A Customer

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This review is from: The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (Hardcover)

Barbara Olson left behind as part of her legacy a truly engrossing account of the greed driven Clinton administration, particularly in its last months. Barbara's literary style is breezy but compelling. When I completed reading this book I was paradoxically filled with admiration for the author, who presented a detailed and damning story on the subject matter, and at the same time I was filled with revulsion toward both Bill and Hillary Clinton. Such greed and abuse of power on both their parts likened them to me in my mind to the Marcos regime in the Phillipines during their reign of power in the 70's and 80's. Their collective attitudes could be summed up with the following: Do the right thing? What's in it for me? Do the wrong thing? Grease my palm and I'll consider it. Those who value history should consider Ms. Olson's book for their personal library. It's a keeper and a call to vigilance to voters when they again consider questionable characters for high office.

194 of 241 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'He just can't stand law enforcement.', November 8, 2001

By 

Andrew S. Rogers (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (Hardcover)

Jefferson has Dumas Malone, Lincoln has Carl Sandburg, and Bill Clinton has Barbara Olson -- the biographer who, if there's any justice in the world (for him, if not for her), will be associated with his name for the rest of time.

Olson's final book is a chronicling of the last weeks of Bill and Hillary Clinton's co-presidency. She gives us a quick, but important, survey of a number of Clintonian outrages, including massive land and power-grabs, Senator-to-be Hillary's shameless and desperate panhandling of expensive gifts before she fell under the Senate's ethics rules, and Slick's international 'farewell tour' of foreign countries -- a field trip that cost taxpayers billions and gained us, diplomatically, less than nothing.

But where Olson's analysis really shines is in her efforts to get to the bottom of 'Pardongate,' the wave of commutations, clemencies, and pardons that Clinton dished out, some literally in his last minutes in office. About a quarter of the book is spent detailing Clinton's most outrageous pardon, that of multi-billion dollar tax cheat Marc Rich. The last quarter or so discusses his other pardons, handed out to a rogue's gallery consisting largely of relatives, business partners, ex-girlfriends, Cabinet members, and cocaine dealers.

Even as skilled a reporter as Barbara Olson is at a loss to explain why Clinton chose to pardon who he did, or why he consulted so few people before issuing the pardons. One of Olson's theses -- both provocative and believable -- is that Clinton was so outraged at being compelled, on his last full day in office, to sign a deal with the independent counsel admitting his wrongdoing in the Lewinsky case and disbarring himself from the practice of law, that Clinton chose to lash out at his own 'persecutors' by granting clemency to criminals whom police and prosecutors had spent years pursuing. As one of Clinton's own Justice Department lawyers noted, 'He [Clinton] just can't stand law enforcement' (p. 141).

Ultimately, Olson helps us put Clinton in context, marshalling observers from Left and Right before drawing her own conclusions. Forrest McDonald, acclaimed historian of the American presidency, asks simply, 'What did [Clinton] get done? Was there any major legislation he was responsible for? ... Everyone approves of what he's doing, but no one can say anything he did' (p. 212). More directly, Andrew Sullivan of The New Republic notes, 'In Bill Clinton, we had for eight years a truly irrational person in the White House, someone who, I think, lived on the edge of serious mental illness. He was and is a psychologically sick man' (p. 199).

It's clear to see why -- if reports are correct -- Hillary Clinton was so anxious to get this book silenced following Barbara Olson's death. If, as it's said, people in democracies get the leaders they deserve, we can at least repay the favor by making sure our 'leaders' get the biographers they deserve. There's no question that Barbara Olson is the biographer Bill and Hillary Clinton deserve, and it's just one of many reasons to mourn her untimely death that she will no longer be able to chronicle this venal and dangerous politician ... and her husband, America's most corrupt president.

Let this book be (part of) her memorial.

40 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Line Between Acting Lawfully and Testifying Falsely, September 18, 2003

By 

Ben Hekster (Fremont, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (Hardcover)

In the final days of their co-presidency, the Clintons flipped off the American people one last time. After two terms of lies, corruption, slander, and immorality that were their trademark, was another book about the Clintons really needed? If only to reveal their contempt for the nation and Constitution, if only to see that eventually even Democrats had had enough-- yes, this book was tremendously necessary.

The Clinton presidency was like none other. The man who called late at night to proposition Cyd Dunlop in the hotel room where she stayed with her husband, who was forced to confess on national television to his affair with Gennifer Flowers, brought a New Republic editor to conclude that his persistent adulterizing revealed "a frightening lack of self-control." Arkansas troopers admitted that they had procured more than a hundred women for Clinton.

One of those women refused to be cowed and became the bane of his presidency: Paula Corbin Jones would pay dearly at the hand of the savage Clinton slander machine. Eight years later, in return for immunity from prosecution, Clinton landed a sweetheart deal in which he admitted knowingly violating a judge's order to tell the truth. A federal court held him in contempt for making false statements in a federal proceeding, and Arkansas disbarred him for five years.

Upon leaving the White House, they rather unsubtly opened gift registries with luxury retailers, and Clinton acolytes took the hint. Expensive White House art was shipped to the Clinton Library, and furniture to their new upstate New York home. Terry McAuliffe financed that home and was rewarded with the leadership of the Democratic National Committee.

When Newt Gingrich accepted a $4.5 million book advance, Democrats howled in protest, so he returned the advance and settled symbolically for one dollar. When Mr and Mrs Clinton accepted $8 and $10 million respectively for their ghostwritten books, there was no outcry. Senator Hillary refused to have her deal vetted by the Ethics Committee.

Hillary is one tough cookie. Author Michael Tomasky: "With Hillary, there was something about the way she answered questions that only raised other questions." In 1991 she reportedly chewed out an Arkansas state trooper: "Where is the [g-dm] [f-ing] flag? I want the [g-dm] [f-ing] flag up every [f-ing] morning at [f-ing] sunrise." Did she really once claim her husband and daughters's used underwear as a tax deduction? She interned for Communist Party lawyer and Stalinist Robert Treuhaft and later admitted to a journalist that "I want to run something."

She demonstrated her respect for New York taxpayers by renting her Manhattan offices at more than half a million dollars per year, more than double the amount paid by her co-Senator Charles Schumer. Bill billed the government $830,000 for the entire 56th floor of the Carnegie Hall Towers, almost three times more than any other president.

But most flagrant was the spasm of executive orders and pardons issued on the very last day of his presidency:

* Drug offenders, including one money launderer for the Colombian Cali cartel.

* Major cocaine dealers: one made a $200,000 payment to Hillary's brother, and another $200,000 went to his law firm one day after convicted swindler Braswell was pardoned. A $175,000 donation from this same crook to the Republican campaign was returned when they learned of his felony record.

* An automobile dealer convicted of fraud was pardoned two weeks after his friend made a $500,000 pledge to the Clinton Library.

* Symbionese Liberation Army guerilla Patty Hearst, and hard-Left celebrity Susan Rosenberg of the Weather Underground who had killed a guard and two police officers.

* In return for votes for Hillary's campaign, FALN terrorists (who hadn't even petitioned for a pardon) and four ultra-orthodox New Square fraudsters.

* Whitewater partner Susan McDougal, three of his Cabinet-level appointees (Espy, Cisneros, and Deutch), and the first ever presidential pardon of a family member (his half-brother Roger).

* Billionaire Marc Rich, who sold oil to South Africa (then a pariah nation), traded with Iran after Carter had embargoed it for holding the American Embassy staff hostage, terrorist Libya in contradiction of an embargo, the Soviet Union, and Cuba. He tried to buy oil from Iraq during its embargo after invading Kuwait, and committed the largest tax fraud in American history. Having fled to Switzerland and living in luxury, his wife donated $15 million to Clinton causes. Rudolph Giuliani was so incredulous that he asked an aide to recheck the news, and still refused to believe that Clinton would have pardoned this fugitive who had avoided a trial and never spent a day in prison.

Seeminly unruffled during the preceding eight years of perfidy, this last orgy of abuse was too much even for fellow Democrats and liberals.

A DNC official: "Mr Clinton didn't just take the White House china; he took its soul and flushed it down the toilet." Chief of Staff under Carter, Hamilton Jordan declared that if he had petitioned a pardon of a contributor to his library "he would [...] probably have fired me on the spot." New York Times columnist Bob Herbert: "With Mr Clinton at the controls, the party won the White House twice. But in the process it lost its bearings and maybe even its soul." Dick Morris, who helped his 1996 reelection, opined that history would judge Clinton as "one of the most corrupt US presidents."

And New Republic columnist Andrew Sullivan: "We asked for it. We elected him."