Barbara Olson - Career

Career

As a newcomer, she achieved a surprising measure of success, working for HBO and Stacy Keach Productions. In the early 1990s, she worked as an associate at the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Wilmer Cutler & Pickering where she did civil litigation for several years before becoming an Assistant U.S. Attorney.

Olson's support in 1991 of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas led to the formation of the Independent Women's Forum. At that time, Olson and friend Rosalie (Ricky) Gaull Silberman started an informal network of women who supported the Thomas nomination to the Supreme Court despite allegations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill, a former subordinate of Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Olson, who had also worked under Thomas at the EEOC and was a close friend of Thomas, spoke out on his behalf during his contentious Senate confirmation hearings. Olson later helped edit The Real Anita Hill, a book by David Brock that savaged Hill and portrayed the harassment claim as a political dirty trick (Brock later recanted his claims and apologized to Hill). The Independent Women's Forum continued on with a goal of remaining a high profile group of women to advocate for economic and political freedom and personal responsibility.

In 1994, Olson became chief investigative counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. In that position, she led the Travelgate and Filegate investigations into the Clinton administration. She was later a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the Birmingham, Alabama law firm Balch & Bingham.

She married Theodore Olson in 1996. Theodore went on to successfully represent presidential candidate George W. Bush in the Supreme Court case of Bush v. Gore, and subsequently served as U.S. Solicitor General in the Bush administration.

Olson was a frequent critic of the Bill Clinton administration and wrote a book about then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton (1999). Olson was working on her second book, The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (published October 2001) at the time of her death. She was a resident of Great Falls, Virginia.