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

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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.

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.

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."

Barbara Olson gave a very personal account of Bill and Hillaray's granting of favors, lying, and manipulating during the last years in the White House. It was a powerful read because of Barbara's professional relationship with the Clintons as a lawyer charged by the US Goverment to aquire information on suspected misdeeds of Hillary. I was a little put off by Barbara's pejorative tone at times but I came to understand her attitude after reading "Hell to Pay." She has devoted years of research into these two people and has shown how their past ideologies have been inflicted in a secretive, manipulative way on the unsuspecting citizens of America. I feel it should be required reading for anyone who wants to support Hillary in any further elected office. It is well worth anyone's time who wants to have a better understanding of what really happened behind the closed doors. It is very readable because Barbara's writing style keeps the reader engaged.

I've just finished reading this book and agree with those who gave it five stars...It's well written, deals with facts, with touches of Barbara's humor, and with excellent notes backing up the quotations...It's interesting to note that many of the most damning observations come from George Stephanopolous's book, as he was a close advisor to Clinton during his administration, and certainly knew the Clintons as well as anyone did. If I have any criticism of the book it might be that it is a much better assessment and portrayal of Hilary than of Bill, probably because Barbara had previously written an excellent book about Hilary, which I am now reading, Hell to Pay.

I hope everyone who cares about democracy will read The Final Days.

Reading this book is a poignant experience for several reasons. First, reading about the last days of the Clinton administration seems like thinking about the good old days compared to our current trauma with the terrorist attacks on September 11. Second, Ms. Olson, the book's author, died in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on that day that will live in infamy. Third, the issues she raises in this book no longer receive any significant attention . . . yet are probably a greater threat to our democracy than any group of terrorists ever can be.

Democracies require honest leaders as well as leaders who appear to be honest. Regardless of what you think about former president Clinton and Senator Clinton, the latter standard was breached. Many people will feel that the former standard was also breached. What this book provides is a fairly detailed outline of the actions taken in the last few weeks during the Clinton presidency, and explores the actions for their meaning. Although you will have read about almost all of these matters before, there's a cumulative sense of inappropriateness that is overwhelming when they are considered together.

The president has the unlimited right under the Constitution to pardon anyone for any crime against the United States. There is no review of this right. The book details the 140 pardons and 36 sentence commutations that Mr. Clinton provided on his own authority in the waning days of his administration. Many of these went to those with access, political clout, and who had made political contributions and payments that benefited the Clintons. The most outrageous one was to Marc Rich, a tax-fraud fugitive from justice, who had been running his billionaire operations from Switzerland for years, through contacts made by his former wife and co-owner of his holdings, and generous contributor to the Democrats and Clintons. Other than Marc Rich and his ex-wife, there is probably no one who thought Mr. Rich should be pardoned. Big-time drug dealers were released. The president's brother, Roger, was pardoned. Susan McDougal, who was in prison for contempt for refusing to testify about the Clintons' involvement with Whitewater, was also pardoned. You may also remember that Puerto Rican terrorists were part of the group, just before the New York senate election (where there are 2 million Puerto Ricans). Many of these pardons and sentence commutations were not reviewed or recommended by the Department of Justice in the normal legal process. You get the idea of how all this appears. At one point, Senator Clinton's brother was even accepting payments to represent those seeking pardons. He reportedly agreed to return the money after this became public, but Ms. Olson was not able to find a record that this occurred.

The Final Days also describes the way that Senator Clinton maneuvered the timing of her book advance so that she would not be subject to the Senate's ethics rules, and receive $8 million.

What was new to me was that there was concerted fund-raising to get furniture for the Clintons' new house in Chappaqua, New York. Furniture and art from the White House were also sent there, apparently including some that belong to the United States.

Senator Clinton's new office will cost the taxpayers twice what Senator Schumer's office does in the same neighborhood because Senator Clinton took twice as much space. You probably remember that the president's new office near Carnegie Hall was going to cost so much that he decided to move into less expensive space in Harlem, after a major uproar in the press.

In The Final Days, you will also learn about last minute judicial appointments (something many presidents have done), creating new commissions and making appointments to them, 4000 pages of new government regulations, and creating 5.6 million acres of new national monuments.

The details of the president's plea bargaining over his lying in the Paula Jones case deposition are also included here.

Ms. Olson also questions the $500 million spent on foreign travel by the Clintons, using the president's trip to Vietnam as an example of how relatively unimportant these visits often were. Cumulatively, one year out of the eight that the president spent in office was involved in foreign travel.

As a way to put these actions in context, Ms. Olson quotes liberally from what political figures and press commentators had to say. In some cases, she only had to quote Democrats to make her point.

The pattern that emerges is that the Clintons would stick their necks out to gain an advantage. If no one complained, fine. If someone did and there was a political backlash, they would slowly backpedal. For example, Senator Clinton complained about the Puerto Rican terrorists being pardoned. The defense would often be a legalistic one, that would probably be appropriate, if extreme, for a private citizen.

The book's weakness is that the author has a flair for dropping extreme rhetoric into her descriptions that exceed the details that she presents. "Think of a suburban swap meet combined with an open house at a bail bondsman's office." "Liberal-left progressive politics meets traditional corruption resulting in a synthesis of boundless arrogance and entitlements." These characterizations were really unnecessary because quotes from the Clintons themselves could have provided all of the rhetoric anyone needed for this book. As the former president said about his choice of a new office in Harlem after the protest about the expense of a mid-town site, "That's why I went to Harlem . . . Because I think I am the first black president."

Where do your actions cast doubt on your motives and honesty? How can you both be honest . . . and appear to be so as well?

I closely followed the daily news stories during the Clinton Administration and wondered if Olson's book would be only a simple retelling of Clinton scandals already too familiar. It is not and that is what makes it an engrossing read well worth the time. For example, in these times after September 11, 2001 we are concerned to give no quarter to terrorists, yet exaqctly two years earlier fourteen of sixteen convicted and unrepentant violent Puerto Rican terrorists from the FALN accepted a clemency offer made by Bill Clinton, in spite of the strenuous counsel and objections of every law enforcement agency and of Puerto Rican authorities, themselves. Clinton's unprecendented offer coincided with Hillary's bid for election as New York's junior senator and an effort to gain support in the Hispanic community there. Olson describes in detail the normal criteria for presidential pardons, gives a history of government policy toward Puerto Rican radicals beginning with the Truman years, and describes the reaction of both prosecutors and victims of those released to live freely among us. These things are background material we did not often get in our newspapers and TV news programs.

In more than eight years of the two Clintons we became numb to the daily dribble of news bits about scandals. Olson's book gives a good concise reminder of what the Clinton's were and are so that those who read it might not become seduced by their kind again. The book is especially good as a reminder of Hillary's determined ambitions to be powerful coupled with the extent of her Marxist indoctrination. This book is recommended reading for anyone who might be faced with the choice of voting for Hillary or Bill for public office. Now I am eager to read Olson's book on Hillary "Hell to Pay."

This is not a simple Clinton bashing book. It is a timely, well-documented reminder of the principles on which our nation is based and how even ardent supporters of the Clintons finally decried the many ways the Clintons flushed those principles down the toilet for personal gain.

Barbara always was a tireless defender of decency, her final gift to us was this book. She chronicles the staggering level of corruption and abuse during the final days of the Clinton Reign. Most chilling of all, she sends a warning about Clinton's dismissive attitude toward terrorists, and his complete refusal to heed those in his own cabinet who tried to block his pardons of no less than 16 vicious terrorists as well as those who never could convince Clinton that politics does *not* always come first, above national security.
It's especially tragic that she lost her life as a result. Keep this book on hand as a reminder.

Barbara Olson's skill as an investigator comes through well in the writing of this book. She focuses very exclusively on the abuses of power that occured in the last few days and hours of the Clinton presidency. She uncovers the arrogance that was commonplace in their administration. While I was always tempted to give the Clintons the benefit of a doubt, this book totally changed how I viewed the Clinton presidency.

Olson picks apart each Clintonian denial and points out their faults with solid evidence. Whether or not you liked Bill Clinton, this book will open your eyes. I was personally surprised at how many legislators from Clinton's own party criticized his 11th-hour actions.

Although "The Final Days" can get a bit dry in sections, and is perhaps a bit long-winded, it gets the point across well.

Barbara Olson lived a life of such unflinching integrity and veracity that even in death she continues to defy terrorists. Sadly ironic in its title, "Final Days" is a clarion articulation of the former first grifters in their ultimate Clintonian moment. Beyond Monica, Paula, Jaunita, Kathleen and legions of Jane Does, more so than Travelgate, Filegate, Pay-per-slumber parties in the Lincoln Bedroom, campaign finance chicanery, quid pro quo contributions from Communist China, and the who' who of other ethical transgressions, even outdoing Waco, the Elian Gonzalez raid and kidnapping, missiles fired at questionable targets merely to create diversions etc.: perhaps no disreputable shenanigan was as quintessentially Clinton as the unfathomably dissolute shamelessness that marked his/their last days in office.

The much talked about Marc Rich pardon has become an appropriate symbol of the entire eight years, but Mrs. Olson does a commendable service by clearly detailing the effrontery of his (Rich's) misdeeds, and an even more skillful demonstration of the President's specious and insulting attempt to justify this shocking act. To add fuel to her raging fire, she quotes former President Jimmy Carter who openly stated "I don't think there is any doubt that some of the factors in his pardon were attributable to his large gifts. In my opinion that was disgraceful."

However it is her dissection of the many other pardons that really makes this work a vital read. The hodgepodge of unrepentant drug dealers, swindlers, and--with tragic irony--terrorists who received Clinton's boundless 11th hour clemency should elevate the 42nd president to a unique plateau in American history; one currently occupied by Benedict Arnold.

As in Mrs. Olson' previous handling, "Hell to Pay," she authentically treats the Clintons as an entity of one. Few would deny that their loveless marriage is anything more than another one of their poorly concealed shams, but the conjugal co-conspirators are forever intertwined. Both know where countless bodies are buried, and if their self-perpetuating union ever comes asunder, each would gleefully destroy the other. Both are experts at dishonestly denying any knowledge of their sins, and while the trust that graces most marriages is visibly absent, either Clinton will artfully lie to save the other one.

"Final Days" is not only a fitting obituary to the Clinton Presidency; it is also a tribute to its author. Throughout the heavily annotated work she meticulously skewers the Clintons' for their devotion to nothing more than their own advancement, and by truthfully uncovering their tracks, she reveals what kind of person she was. Of the Clintons, she writes, "it all came down to one thing: Character. Here the gage rests firmly on empty." In Barbara Olson's tank the gage constantly registered "full to overflowing." As in her frequent TV appearances, Mrs. Olson never shies away from telling it like it is. On occasion her frank quotes from the depths of the Clintons' well-known, foul vocabularies will make readers cringe, but these are among the unpleasant details essential to truly grasp the multifarious quiddity of two power-lusting libertines.

No doubt the Clintons depravity was particularly revolting to the author because it stood in stark contrast to the way she lived and died--calmly warning her husband of the terrorist attack as it was in progress. As tragic as her death was, some comfort can be taken from the fact that she died knowing America had ridden itself of the scourge of Clintonism. Modesty may have compelled her to ignore the fact, but even before this posthumous publication, Barbara Olson was an American hero for the tireless way she elucidated the true nature of the couple from Arkansas who went to New York and stomped on the Constitution on their way.

No line from the book better delineates the antipodal essences of Mrs. Olson and the Clintons than a comment she made in relation to the former first couple's lackadaisical attitude toward terrorism, "Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet Aggression has been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats from Timothy MacVeigh to Osama Bin Laden." Her murder makes the accuracy of that insight almost unbearably pungent.

Rest in peace Barbara! There is a place in Heaven for you among America's other heroes; many of whom arrived there on the same day you did.