Contradicting Berry, and the report, at every opportunity was Abigail Thernstrom, the sole registered Republican on the commission and the first commissioner appointed by President George W. Bush. Thernstrom slammed the document for being full of politically charged rhetoric and broad assumptions of injustice with little statistical backup.

And she had a point. Along with the pages of personal stories collected from commission hearings in Florida shortly after the election, the report includes sidelong swipes at Harris and Bush. For example, in the chapter titled “Responsibility Without Accountability?” the panel takes issue with Gov. Jeb Bush’s testimony that county election supervisors were ultimately responsible for logistical problems that plagued the voting. That might be a cop-out, but the report sneers, “Under the Florida Constitution, the governor is charged with ensuring that ‘the laws be faithfully executed.’ Governor Bush apparently delegated the responsibility to ensure that the election laws are faithfully executed.”

The report also promiscuously employs terms like “several” or “many” when trying to account for the number of victims of all races who were locked out of the polls by the foul-ups in Florida. In describing the problems encountered by disabled voters, the report states that “numerous [disabled] Florida residents encountered obstacles to polling precincts and were thus disenfranchised.” Whether that “numerous” means tens, hundreds or thousands of voters, the report gives no clue. In another chapter, the panel describes “countless” would-be voters who arrived at polling stations and found their names missing from the rolls.

Perhaps in an attempt to account for the dearth of hard numbers about just how many voters were lost to barriers of language or access, missing registration information and bad communication between state election offices, Chapter 9 of the report claims, “Perhaps the most dramatic undercount in Florida’s election was the nonexistent ballots of countless unknown eligible voters, who were turned away, or wrongfully purged from the voter registration rolls by various procedures and practices and were prevented from exercising the franchise.”

There were more specific figures in the report concerning the numbers and races of people bumped off the voter rolls by Florida’s reliance on felon purge information provided by ChoicePoint, a Texas data analysis firm, claiming that more than 51 percent of those incorrectly scrubbed off the voter rolls were African-American.

Blaming a “lack of leadership” by Florida state officials, the panel also concluded that the state provided an inadequate education for poll workers and voters, denied proper access to disabled individuals, failed to outline proper procedure for handling disputed voter registration, did not provide language help for non-English speaking voters and carelessly purged the voter rolls based on a faulty list of “felons.” The report surmised that these factors led to “widespread voter disenfranchisement” that Berry said “fell most harshly on the shoulders of African-Americans.”

The panel’s majority made its strongest statistical case about racially disparate outcomes in its review of Florida’s 170,000 spoiled ballots, 107,000 of them “overvotes” where more than one candidate had been selected, and 63,000 “undervotes,” the notorious dimpled, hanging or pregnant chad ballots which registered no vote at all.

For this, the panel’s majority brought in outside help. Professor Allan Lichtman, chair of American University’s department of history and a veteran voting rights lawyer, provided the commission’s statistics about the disproportionate effect of voter disenfranchisement on African-Americans. “I came to this as a skeptic,” Lichtman said. His aim, Lichtman said, was simply to answer the question “Were there differences in the rate at which ballots were rejected by African-Americans and non-African-Americans?”

Lichtman’s answer was a resounding “yes.” He concluded that 14.4 percent of the ballots cast by Florida’s African-American voters were rejected, compared to a 1.6 percent rejection rate for non-blacks. He reached those conclusions by studying the rejection rates in predominantly black precincts of Dade, Duval and Palm Beach counties, which accounted for 47 percent of bad ballots. While Lichtman refused to say that African-American voters were disenfranchised as a consequence of their race, he did say that “there is a relationship here that is suggestive of a strong relationship between the racial composition of counties and the percent of rejected ballots.” At one point, Lichtman suggested that up to 54 percent of all spoiled ballots cast in Florida came from black voters.

Thernstrom wasn’t having any of that. “I have serious concerns about your methodology,” she said, sparring good-naturedly with Lichtman, a longtime associate whom she spoke of in friendly terms in the hearing. That didn’t stop her from slamming Lichtman for failing to study factors other than race, like education and voting experience, that she believed could have resulted in high numbers of faulty ballots. Though he acknowledged that he hadn’t studied those factors, Lichtman stood by his assertion that race was the common thread in vote rejection rates.

“I remain dissatisfied,” Thernstrom replied. “We’ll slug this out later,” she said.

And so they did. In remarks after his testimony ended, Lichtman backed off the assertion that 54 percent of bad ballots came from blacks, warning that the figure should be “interpreted cautiously.” But he insisted that his conclusions were based on the “best available data.” Thernstrom, for her part, dismissed Lichtman’s protests that he was an impartial witness, asserting that he was on television “as a regular talking head for Gore” throughout the recount process.

Thernstrom didn’t wait to step outside the room to tangle with Berry, however. Berry asked early on that the commissioners “behave toward each other in a spirit of friendliness and collegiality. Do not personalize … your comments, because this is about policy, not about whether you like somebody or don’t like somebody.” But that didn’t keep Thernstrom from rolling her eyes at statements about racially disparate treatment in Florida, or repeatedly asserting that the report’s conclusions were “bewildering,” or that the three days the commissioners were given to review the findings were inadequate. When Thernstrom said that the commission had “compromised its integrity,” Berry cut her off, telling Thernstrom that “your feelings about the integrity of this commission” were irrelevant.

After the gavel sounded, Thernstrom accused the majority of the commissioners of partisanship, said that they had fatally compromised their moral authority, and said the report “could’ve been written by [Democratic National Committee Chair] Terry McAuliffe.”

Redenbaugh, who had been silent for most of the meeting, called the commission “intellectually bankrupt.” When asked what the solution was to the bias she saw in the commission, Thernstrom said she’d plant a bug in the president’s ear to clean house. “It’s definitely time for new ideas.”

But this wasn’t Jenna’s first time. She pleaded no contest to a charge of alcohol possession by a minor on May 16, making the Chuy’s charge her second in less than a month. Now one Texas newspaper is reporting that this is the third time Jenna has run afoul of the law over alcohol, and could potentially put her in line for the slammer, thanks to the tough-on-booze policies her dad signed as governor.

The Houston Chronicle reported that the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission has a record of another alcohol-related incident involving Bush, dated Dec. 31, 1997. Since the incident occurred when Jenna was 16, the TABC would not reveal a full report on it, and according to the Chronicle, “commission officials would not say whether Jenna Bush’s name appears for a citation, a warning or an administrative action.” However, says D’Ann Johnson, executive director of the Texas Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, it could be factored into the sentencing procedure if Bush is convicted in this most recent incident.

As governor, Bush signed “zero tolerance” into law in June of 1997, six months before his daughter’s alleged first brush with the TABC, and the law went into force in September of that year. Under the provision, a third underage alcohol offense carries a possible 180-day jail sentence and a fine of between $250 and $2,000. For a second offense, there’s a fine of up to $500, 20 to 40 hours of community service and a 60-day driver’s license suspension, while first-time offenders faced the same fine, with eight to 12 hours of community service, a 30-day driver’s license suspension and an alcohol education course. Before “zero tolerance,” an underage drinker faced a $25 to $200 fine for any and all offenses, and that was it.

The state had a financial incentive to adopt the newer, tougher laws in 1997. Federal authorities were threatening to withhold $77 million in highway funds for the state unless Texas developed a stricter code for underage drunken drivers. Before zero tolerance, an under-21 driver could have up to a .07 blood alcohol level before being cited for a violation of law. That was tougher than the .10 level required for an adult to be charged, but it still let younger drivers get away with ignoring the state’s legal drinking age of 21.

So Texas reacted in a big way. The new legislation made it possible for teen drivers to be arrested if they were found behind the wheel with only a trace of alcohol in their systems. Police weren’t even required to give a blood-alcohol test before issuing a citation; an officer’s word that a minor’s breath smelled of alcohol was enough for a charge.

Despite the severity of the penalties and the thin requirements for evidence, the law passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and little noticeable protest. Bush signed the law after Texas state Sen. Royce West, a Democrat, shepherded the bill through the Legislature where it was unanimously approved by both houses.

Johnson said that, at the time, there was no upside for legislators to question or resist Mothers Against Drunk Driving, the primary advocates of get-tough-on-alcohol policies. “The criminal defense lawyers always tried to speak out on [those] issues,” Johnson said, though they usually met deaf ears among lawmakers. “Legislators don’t say ‘I really want to know what criminal defense lawyers think.’”

Especially not in 1997, when the Texas Legislature was getting tough with young lawbreakers of all kinds. Along with the new drinking laws, Texas imposed stiff fines for minors found in possession of tobacco and made teens caught putting graffiti on buildings subject to jail time. But Johnson claims that Bush’s crime-and-punishment agenda made it difficult for the most dogged activist to spend much energy on standing up for the juveniles affected by such laws.

“The voice of reason was a quiet whine,” Johnson said. Those who wanted to fight to make the Texas criminal justice system more fair under Bush, she said, were much more focused on monitoring the relaxation of rules covering bail bondsmen and correcting the inequities of the death penalty system.

Because the civil libertarians were frying bigger fish in 1997, the president’s daughter could be headed to jail after her next trip to court, if, say, that first incident listed by the TABC was an actual conviction of illegal possession. But Lou Bright, general counsel of the TABC, points out the listing of the 1997 incident “could mean any of 10,000 different things.”

Under any circumstances, Bright said, a judge would have wide latitude in considering the juvenile TABC record of an underage drinker. From the sentence Bush received after pleading no contest to an alcohol possession citation in May, it seems to indicate that the 1997 incident either was not on the Texas justice system’s radar screen, or did not merit any mention from the judge. At that time, Bush was required to pay a $51.25 fine, attend an alcohol education course and serve eight hours of community service, a sentence consistent with a first offense.

And the police on Tuesday also appeared willing to go easy on the first daughters. “[The cop] suggested that I turn the other cheek,” Chuy’s manager Mia Lawrence told the Austin American-Statesman. “I said I felt the police should do what they normally do.”

But the most severe penalty may come this weekend, when the twins face their father at Camp David. At least Jenna could offer him a suggestion that would keep her on the right side of Texas law while still getting the occasional margarita: In Texas, it’s legal for minors to drink in restaurants, as long as their parents are present and buy their drinks. And in her case, drinking with Daddy would also come with an added safety feature: Since he swore off the stuff years ago, she’d always have a designated driver.

Olson’s success was a remarkable reversal of fortune. When word spread earlier in the week that Sen. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., would be abandoning the GOP to become an independent, it slowly became clear that the Democrats would win control of the Senate, and Olson’s chances began to look grim. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., predicted Wednesday that, under Democratic Senate rule, “Ted Olson will be practicing law, making a lot of money” in the private sector.

By Thursday morning, Margaret Aitken, Biden’s press secretary, tried to soften her boss’s earlier statement. “I don’t think it’s really clear yet how it’s going to shake out,” she said. “I think it is too early to speculate about that.”

Actually, it was already too late.

In less extraordinary times, Olson’s nomination would already have been long dead. On May 18, the Senate Judiciary Committee split 9-9 over Olson, with Democrats still loudly questioning his answers under questioning about his ties to the Arkansas Project, the anti-Clinton scandal-hunt run through the American Spectator and funded by Richard Mellon Scaife during the mid-1990s. In ordinary times, a tie vote is a losing vote in the Senate. But the Republicans and Democrats in the evenly split Senate had agreed in December to allow Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., to break such deadlocks by filing a “discharge motion.”

Lott did that last week, so Olson’s nomination could’ve been moved to the floor any time after that. But committee Republicans, in deference to continued Democratic complaints and possibly in fear of a filibuster, allowed the minority members to continue probing Olson.

But when it became clear that the Democrats would assume control of the Senate, Lott set the Olson vote, frustrating opponents, including a prime target of the Arkansas Project. “It strikes me as a desperate measure,” New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters, accusing the GOP of “try[ing] to jam this through while they still control the floor.”

For Clinton, this nomination was personal. While Republicans publicly accused Democrats of opposing Olson purely for his role in successfully representing George W. Bush before the Supreme Court in the decision that effectively awarded Bush the presidency, they shied away from the virulent role the Spectator — and Olson — played during the 1990s as a critic of the Clintons. Olson himself, writing under a pseudonym, coauthored an outlandish article outlining the possible crimes that had been committed by President Clinton and Hillary Clinton and how stiff the penalties might be for those crimes. His wife, former federal prosecutor and conservative cable-TV pundit Barbara Olson wrote “Hell to Pay,” the bible of anti-Hillary books among the far right, in which she described the former first lady as a woman “who has gone to the brink of criminality to amass wealth and power.”

Clinton made an appearance before reporters to attack Olson, a man she said didn’t “meet the standards that we should expect from somebody nominated for solicitor general.”

But as the day wore on, even Leahy’s office began to downplay the need to continue with a probe. “The bipartisan inquiry has gone on all week,” said Leahy’s press secretary, David Carle, when asked if the vote would cut off the probe prematurely. As for whether all Leahy’s questions about Olson had been answered, a flustered Carle replied, “Yes.”

But the committee planned on asking more questions for David Brock, an American Spectator reporter who has been the chief source contradicting Olson’s account of his involvement with the Arkansas Project. The Spectator was the home of Scaife’s effort. In recent weeks, Brock has offered a far different account of the project and Olson’s part in it than the nominee had testified to, and Brock’s words provided a foundation for the suspicions of Democrats. As a result, Hatch had issued an invitation to Brock on Tuesday to speak to Senate investigators as soon as possible, but a date was never scheduled.

Investigators also didn’t get a chance to hear from Ronald Burr, former publisher of the American Spectator who left the publication in a cloud reportedly after criticizing the Arkansas Project. Salon has previously reported that Burr, after receiving a $350,000 severance package from the Spectator, signed a non-disclosure agreement that prohibits him from making public statements about the company.

Though Burr hasn’t spoken for himself, Ralph Lemley, his advisor and friend at the time of departure from the Spectator, declared earlier Thursday in a letter that Olson had been a part of the Arkansas Project from the beginning, and that Burr was pushed out of his post because he objected to the Arkansas Project, and had asked for an internal “fraud audit” of the enterprise. Salon obtained and published that letter on Thursday afternoon, about an hour before the Senate voted to confirm Olson. Lemley had earlier sent a copy of the letter to the Judiciary Committee, but after discussion had already begun on the floor of the Senate.

Had that letter come out earlier, according to Clinton spokesman Jim Kennedy, it may well have affected the outcome. “The Republicans seemed eager to cut off any further inquiry,” he said. Kennedy added that the quick vote virtually ended Democratic hopes to engineer a filibuster. “There just wasn’t enough time,” Kennedy said.

That could account for the tone of grumpy resignation that characterized Leahy’s remarks after the Olson vote. “We could have held him up forever,” Leahy hypothesized before reporters outside the Senate chambers. But Leahy, putting a brave face on defeat, said that he didn’t want the first Democratic Senate majority since 1994 to take over in an atmosphere of gridlock. “I don’t believe in doing the kinds of things they did for six years,” he said.

Biden — predicting Olson’s doom just a day earlier — seemed anxious to put the fight in the past. “What’s done is done,” he said, leaving the Capitol. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., struck a more defiant stance, claiming that the 47 votes against Olson would “send a message” to Bush. “It proves that we will not be a rubber stamp for his nominees,” he said.

Meanwhile, Olson’s conservative allies were celebrating his good fortune. R. Emmett Tyrrell, editor in chief of the Spectator, responded angrily to inquiries for a reaction. “You have never run anything accurate in Salon magazine about me, Ted Olson or the so-called Arkansas Project,” he said. Wladyslaw Pleszczynski called inquiries about the Arkansas Project “a ghoulish, nightmarish attempt” to rewrite the history of legitimate Spectator criticism of the Clintons. He described the experience as “Kafkaesque.”

Salon published investigations in 1998 that first raised questions about the Arkansas Project and its dealings with David Hale, the controversial main witness in the Whitewater investigation against the Clintons. The relationship between Hale and the Spectator was ultimately the subject of a federal investigation. Olson’s relationship with Hale, whom he represented when Hale fought a federal subpoena, was also a subject of the federal probe. The articles in Salon, as well as “The Hunting of the President,” a book by Salon columnist Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, were frequently used in documents that Leahy presented to bolster his case against the Olson bid.

Some W keys were discovered “taped on top of the doorways,” while others were broken.

The report was more cute than cutting, with Grove quoting former Al Gore spokesman Chris Lehane, who quipped: “I think the missing W’s can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work.”

But within two days, Grove’s playful item had morphed into one more full-blown Clinton scandal. Suddenly newspapers and TV news shows were featuring extensive reports of Clinton administration “vandalism,” stretching from the EOB offices of former Vice President Gore to the West Wing. Reports alleged expletive-ridden graffiti, sliced computer and telephone wires, file cabinets glued shut, presidential seals steamed off doors, stolen pictures and so-called porn bombs, which were never exactly described.

The technological problems the vandals wrought were so severe that, according to a report in the New York Daily News, “a telecommunications staffer with more than a quarter-century of service was seen sobbing.”

“Phone lines cut, drawers filled with glue, door locks jimmied so that arriving Bush staff got locked inside their new offices,” a disapproving Andrea Mitchell reported on NBC News. The message seemed clear: The trailer-trash Clintons and their staff had enjoyed one last bacchanal at taxpayer expense.

Now it seems those closely detailed stories were largely bunk. Last week it was revealed that a formal review by the General Accounting Office, Congress’ investigative agency, “had found no damage to the offices of the White House’s East or West Wings or EOB” and that Bush’s own representatives had reported “there is no record of damage that may have been deliberately caused by the employees of the Clinton administration.”

While cautious GSA staffers won’t issue a blanket exoneration of the Clinton team, Bernard Ungar, the agency’s director of physical infrastructure, told Salon the media clearly exaggerated the extent of the damage. According to the terse GSA statement that formed the basis of Ungar’s conclusion, “the condition of the real property was consistent with what we would expect to encounter when tenants vacate office space after an extended occupancy.”

Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., the ardent Clinton foe who requested the GAO review, has tried to interpret the agency’s findings to mean no “record of damage” had been compiled, not that no damage had occurred. But the lack of records “cataloging” any damages — which Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer promised in January the White House would compile — would seem to suggest one thing: Widespread acts of vandalism never occurred.

So how did the vandal scandal that wasn’t get blown into a media firestorm?

“Certainly people inside the [Bush] administration fed this story,” says an angry John Podesta, Clinton’s former chief of staff. “At least they got what they wanted out of it.”

A close look at the way the scandal mushroomed bolsters Podesta’s view: The Bush administration helped the vandal scandal along, publicly appearing to try to douse the flames, while privately fanning them with detailed, off-the-record allegations of damage. On Tuesday, after the GAO’s review was made public, Fleischer was left trying to spin himself out of a very deep hole, insisting he had tried to “knock down” the vandal story when it first emerged.

But a transcript of Fleischer’s Jan. 25 briefing on the issue contradicts him. It shows the Bush spokesman coyly encouraging reporters’ suspicions about the vandal scandal, while refusing to confirm or deny the reports of damage. According to one leading White House reporter, the story was also nudged along by two unnamed Bush aides.

Fleischer and the off-the-record Bush staffers, meanwhile, got a lot of help from a press corps eager for early scoops from a new administration. For some reporters and pundits, the White House vandalism story was just too good to pass up.

The Post’s Grove gave the vandal scandal its debut, but it took off a day later thanks to Matt Drudge, who quoted a “close Bush adviser” saying the damage went “way beyond pranks, to vandalism.”

Then online columnist Rich Galen, a former Republican strategist, reported that Tipper Gore personally called Lynne Cheney, wife of the new vice president, to apologize.

The Bush White House, for its part, handled initial questions about the damage with surprising good humor, at least publicly. When Fleischer was asked for his reaction, he told reporters, “It would have been ‘Wow,’ but the ‘W’ was removed, so now it’s just ‘O.’”

Meanwhile, Clinton was getting pummeled over his controversial pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, and the vandalism story simmered for a day, bubbling up mostly on low-rent TV talk shows. But while Fleischer downplayed the seriousness of the supposed damage, two Bush staffers identified by White House reporters as “midlevel” aides started telling the media, off the record, that the damage went far beyond some missing keyboard W’s. White House reporters quickly took the bait.

“There’s a lot of criticism about the pack journalism when it comes to the press corps,” says one White House reporter. “The dangerous thing is that you have a group of people who are itching to be the first to call something a big story. [Reporters] were so worried about not being the first one on the story that I think they jumped the gun.”

That Thursday, Jan. 25, Fleischer gave reporters the tidbit they needed to move with a vandal scandal story. Asked whether there would be a “serious investigation” of the damage, Fleischer responded, “There is no investigation. What we are doing is cataloging that which took place.”

That was enough: The White House found the damage vast enough to “catalog.” Clearly, there was something worth writing about.

Then, asked to detail the damage, Fleischer responded, “I choose not to. I choose not to describe what acts were done that we found upon arrival because I think that’s part of changing the tone in Washington.”

That led to an avalanche of questions:

“Well, what’s the catalog?”

“Yeah, why give them — if you’re going to give them a pass, why bother to catalogue?”

“How much? Is there a dollar figure?”

“Is there any estimate on how much this damage has done?”

“You’ve got to blame somebody,” a reporter began, before being cut off by Fleischer. “President Bush is not going to come to Washington for the point of blaming somebody in this town,” Fleischer said. “And it’s a different way of governing, it’s a different way of leading.”

Fleischer was then questioned about the rumor started two days earlier in Galen’s column that Tipper Gore had called Lynne Cheney.

“I know that a phone call was made to the vice president’s office,” he replied coyly, “but I really — I don’t recall who made it.”

Asked where the most damage had been done, he responded: “You know, I really stopped paying attention to all the different places.”

The briefing went on, hitting other topics before circling back to the alleged vandalism. Fleischer talked about the renovations going on in the office complex, to be expected during a presidential transition, and he noted that the work included carpets being torn out and rewiring. So, a reporter asked, could some of the rumored damages, besides the obvious pranks, be the result of renovations?

“Well,” Fleischer responded, “I don’t think that the people who were professionals, who make their business to go in and prepare a White House for new arrivals, would cut wires.”

Fleischer’s statement about “cut wires” indicated a greater breadth of damage than he had confirmed earlier. But before reporters could get in any more questions, the briefing ended. No matter: Fleischer had already given them more than enough.

The next day the Washington Post ran a front-page story by Mike Allen reporting that the White House was “cataloging numerous acts of apparent vandalism” that included “sliced phone and computer lines, obscene messages left in copy machines and champagne flutes missing from an Air Force jet.”

The cute story that had appeared in the Post earlier in the week had officially ballooned into one more tawdry Clinton scandal. Now, according to the Post, “Bush officials described serious damage that has taken taxpayer money to repair.” There was a full accounting of the pranks that some Democrats now, on background, confirmed: the missing “W” keys, the placement of phony signs on certain doors with titles like “Office of Strategery,” “Office of Subliminable Messages” and “Division of Uniting,” and reports that Clinton staffers had “interspersed blank photocopy paper with a fake Time magazine cover — widely circulated on the Internet during the Florida recount litigation — featuring a photo of an unhappy Bush saying “Oh shit.”

Allen’s front-page story included even more damaging allegations, quoting one unnamed Bush official who accused Clinton staffers “of taking White House paintings and trying to have them shipped to themselves. Others are said to have steamed official seals off office doors and tried to have them shipped.” In fact, according to the story, “the incoming Bush administration ordered all packages X-rayed starting at noon” the day it moved in.

As if the portrait of Clinton’s staff members loading their pickups with White House valuables wasn’t enough, readers were treated to the heartwarming image of a service staff grateful that their rightful rulers had returned. “Some of the kitchen staff hugged members of the Bush family, the official said, adding, ‘You could sense an attitude, like, ‘Thank God you’re here.’”

Other news reports were more muted. The Los Angeles Times quoted Fleischer’s remarks and ran a list of many of the alleged acts of vandalism, but kept them in the “rumor” category. But it also debunked Galen’s Tipper Gore-Lynne Cheney story — which Fleischer had notably not debunked when given the chance — by placing a call to Al Gore. (Dick Cheney also later disputed the rumor, but Galen still says he stands by his story.)

The Associated Press’ coverage repeated Fleischer’s comments uncritically, but did include near the end of its report a comment from Karen Tramontano, counselor to Clinton’s chief of staff Podesta, saying, “We left everything in good condition.” The New York Times mentioned the vandalism “cataloging” only briefly in a Week in Review feature.

The day after running an inflammatory front-page story, the Washington Post ran another scandal story inside, noting that Fleischer “had scaled back his description of a review the White House is conducting of purported vandalism.” The “cataloging” Fleischer had previously discussed now consisted of an aide “keeping track in his head” of any damage.

But the vandal scandal story was already in play, snowballing along with allegations about the looting of Air Force One by departing Clintonites (an erroneous tale that would be debunked by Bush himself two weeks later) and the Clintons’ “gift scandal” (which was also inaccurately reported) into a final damning picture that seemed to confirm everything his Republican critics had been saying about the Democratic president.

Editorialists across the country were soon in high dudgeon. Typical was the Indianapolis Star, which opined: “President Bush is being too civil and a bit too charitable in putting a lid on the trashing of the White House and looting of Air Force One … These vandals deserve to be exposed.”

“Such trashy behavior and disrespect for the White House comes as little surprise,” scolded the Houston Chronicle. “Sad that what was supposed to have been ‘the most ethical administration in history’ ends as the gang that couldn’t loot straight.”

The scandal played well for the new administration. “We learned more about the pardons. We learned about the gifts. We learned about a little bit of vandalizing of the White House and the Old Executive Office Building,” Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol pointed out to Fox News. “It’s been really great for Bush to have people — and including many Gore voters, I think — just look up and think, ‘You know what? Maybe I didn’t want Bush to be president, but I am glad that Bill Clinton is gone.’”

By the time the scandals began to fade from the media, in the first weeks of February, Bush’s favorability ranking had soared (to 60 percent according to CNN/Time). It couldn’t have gone better for members of the incoming Bush administration had they choreographed it themselves. And, in fact, they had.

On April 27, the GAO’s Bernard Ungar finally informed Rep. Barr’s office that there wasn’t any damage to the White House, or, to be precise, there were “no records of damage.” It took three more weeks for Barr to finally respond, citing his dissatisfaction with the investigation but, ultimately, giving up. According to Ungar, an inspection of the White House by the General Services Administration, the federal government’s property managers, did find “that there were papers all over the place, and that it was really messy.” But there was scant proof of active mischief.

In an interview with Salon, Ungar stopped short of claiming that all the vandalism rumors had been proven false. “There was a sign or two here or there that had been altered,” he said, declining to detail the alterations, “but that type of thing was not extensive.” In any event, Ungar said, there was not enough information to justify a continued probe.

The GSA’s inspection covered only the “real property” in the White House — the walls, the carpet, heavy furniture and doors. Records of damage to other property, such as office equipment, computers and phones, were to be provided by Bush’s White House staff. But Ungar was told they did not have detailed records. “They do have reports of repair work being done,” Ungar said. “But those wouldn’t show the cause of the damage, whether it was intentional or accidental.”

So rumors of extensive damage inflicted on the White House by rowdy Clinton staffers in the end turn out to be just that — rumors.

The vandal scandal that wasn’t has left former Clinton aides angry and bitter. Says former Clinton press secretary Jake Siewert, “The media left a very damaging and false impression. I’d hope the reporters [would] go back and try to figure out what went wrong.” Siewert is less critical of the Bush administration’s role in the scandal, saying that “it’s hard to put any blame on the administration.” Siewert is even reluctant to blame his successor, Fleischer, “especially if the guidance he got on the story was wrong.”

But Post columnist Grove, whose item launched the entire saga, firmly lays the blame with the Bush press secretary. “The person who really needs to explain what he was doing was Ari, why he let the story percolate, and why he juiced it with his coy responses,” Grove said. “I think it’s a fair point to ask to what extent Mr. Fleischer’s credibility has been damaged by this.”

In his Tuesday briefing, following the release of the GAO review, Fleischer said he had in fact tried to dispute the vandal scandal allegations that first appeared in the Drudge Report. “I was trying to knock that down and draw everybody back and away from this story because it was not something the White House was pursuing,” Fleischer told reporters. “And I indicated that there was no investigation going on, because there wasn’t. I said, if anything, somebody is cataloging this. And the next day I further explained that meant that somebody was just keeping mental track of what was taking place.”

Fleischer refused to acknowledge how he stirred press interest in the vandal story, finally urging the press to drop the matter. “It was the White House’s goal then, and it remains the White House’s goal, not to live in the past,” he told reporters. “And those things that took place as this administration entered office were not things that this White House was ever focused on.”

Apparently, just like the White House, the media that reported on the vandal scandal so aggressively in January doesn’t want to “live in the past” either — and has largely ignored the GAO review that cleared the Clinton team. Last Friday, the Kansas City Star ran a story on the vandal scandal that wasn’t, and the story moved on the Knight-Ridder and Associated Press wires. Other than that, the country’s newsrooms have remained nearly silent. “The New York Times never gave the story much play, so they didn’t really have the same obligation to correct it,” says Siewert. “But the Washington Post — they didn’t even bother to have one of their own reporters do a follow-up on [the GAO report].”

The Post did run the AP wire item on the GAO review in Friday’s print edition, and also ran a two-paragraph mention the same day in the Internet-only “Political Insider” column written by Charles Babington. The Post’s failure to correct its vandalism coverage didn’t escape the attention of media critics, including its own Howard Kurtz. On Monday, Kurtz mentioned the dearth of his paper’s coverage in his online column.

But the Post wasn’t alone. With the exception of Fox News, none of the media outlets that hyped this nonstory have moved aggressively in the past week to rectify their errors. The conservative cable news channel mentioned the vandalism story in 13 separate programs or segments in the first week after it broke. To its credit, Fox acknowledged on Friday — the same day the GAO report became public — that there had been little evidence to support its vandalism claims. Later “Fox News Sunday” host Tony Snow went even further, apologizing to former Clinton staffers for his error. “OK, I’m sorry,” Snow said on the program. “The ex-president’s pals have a legitimate beef.”

In contrast, NBC News, which ran two reports about the vandalism scandal in January, has not yet covered the latest developments. The Los Angeles Times, which also ran two stories mentioning the scandal — one just a 118-word item about an offer by Clinton to investigate the charges — has yet to run anything about the new GAO conclusions. USA Today reported one story on Jan. 26 about White House vandalism, but has since not followed up.

The New York Daily News ran stories on Jan. 25 and 27 that repeated some of the more damaging vandalism rumors — including the tale of the “sobbing” telecommunications worker. Tom DeFrank, the Daily News Washington bureau chief who reported both stories, said he has made calls to his original sources and that the GSA statement had “raised his eyebrows.” But so far, DeFrank has written nothing, though the Daily News ran the Knight-Ridder wire story.

“Somehow,” complained Siewert, “there’s a reward system. Reporters get big play on a story. But when it’s reported that it’s not true, it gets buried somewhere.”

According to Podesta, news organizations that gleefully covered the trashing of the White House story “ought to be asking two questions. The first: What on earth possessed them? The other: Why is it being corrected by a Knight-Ridder wire story?”

At least one White House reporter is less inclined to blame the Bush administration than turn the criticism inward. “We’re often such willing co-conspirators,” the reporter said. “They don’t have to hatch anything.”

But Leahy didn’t try to block the vote, and the resulting tie would’ve killed Olson’s bid in a normal year. But with the power-sharing agreement that party leaders worked out in the evenly split Senate, Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., can break committee deadlocks, and Hatch assured everyone that Lott would cooperate. That means — unless the Democrats pursue the unlikely, but dramatic task of a filibuster — the nomination will most assuredly go to the floor for a full vote.

But even among Democratic Senate staffers, the next step seemed uncertain. One, who works for a senator on the committee, believed that a vote could be split and that Democrats could decide to filibuster, if they reach the number required necessary — 41 members. But another staffer with a high-ranking Democratic senator said that if it’s clear that the Democrats reach that magic number, party leaders might agree to subject the nomination to a public hearing.

If that happens, it will follow Leahy and the other committee Democrats’ failed attempt to launch a bipartisan probe of Olson, whose inconsistent answers in written and oral testimony about the role he played in the Arkansas Project before and after he joined the board of the American Spectator have prompted much criticism. His story was thrown into even greater confusion with the recent accounts of former star Spectator reporter David Brock, who has alleged a far greater, and earlier, role by Olson in the project than the nominee has admitted to.

Democrats have also criticized Olson’s representation of discredited Whitewater witness David Hale, who was suspected of taking a payoff from the Arkansas Project in exchange for anti-Clinton testimony.

After at first publicly considering supporting an investigation of Olson’s role in the project last week, Hatch has been adamant that there was no basis for a probe, and repeated on Thursday that he would not call for one. Olson’s responses, Hatch insisted, “show no inconsistencies or evidence that Mr. Olson misled or was less than truthful to the committee in any way.” He further claimed that all the key players in the Arkansas Project had affirmed Olson’s account in letters that they had sent to the committee over the past week.

Then Hatch took on Brock. Though he was careful not to call Brock a liar, and went so far as to describe his personal relationship with the writer as “friendly and decent,” Hatch portrayed him as a shaky source, claiming that he had “backpedaled” from his remarks to the Post in a subsequent interview with the New York Times.

But Brock has done everything but back off his assertions, reiterating his challenges to Olson’s veracity in a Wednesday interview with Salon. He also blasted Hatch for relying on the word of R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., editor in chief of the Spectator, who insisted that Brock himself wasn’t part of the Arkansas Project. “Tyrrell’s assertion is false,” Brock said in a May 16 letter to Hatch, declaring that expenses for anti-Clinton stories he worked on during 1994 and 1995 were paid out of Arkansas Project funds.

But none of this shook Hatch’s determination. As he had in the May 15 memo, Hatch repeated a line from a summary of the Shaheen Report, an investigation into the Hale matter and alleged Arkansas Project payoffs that has yet to be released to the public. Reading from a summary from a pair of federal judges who reviewed the full report, Hatch said, “Many of the allegations, suggestions and insinuations regarding the tendering and receipt of things of value were shown to be unsubstantiated or, in some cases, untrue.” That was close enough to a complete affirmation of Olson’s virtue to satisfy Hatch.

The chairman also ran through a list of Democrats and reputed liberals who had said something nice about Olson, including Clinton attorney Robert Bennett and Gore recount lawyer Laurence Tribe. But maybe Hatch should have left former White House counsel Beth Nolan off that list; the kind words she had for Olson came from a letter, sent to independent counsel Alexia Morrison in 1987, when Morrison was investigating concerns that Olson had been dishonest during congressional testimony about some of his work as a Reagan administration lawyer. In that matter, Morrison concluded that Olson’s testimony was “less than forthcoming” but “literally true.”

Leahy, however, remained unsatisfied with the bipartisan testimonials, and bridled at Hatch’s characterization of the possible Olson investigation as “a fishing expedition.” While he praised Olson’s skills as a lawyer, Leahy said that Olson’s “word games” in his testimony about the Arkansas Project were too much to swallow. “I have become increasingly concerned that he has not shown the willingness or the ability to be sufficiently candid … with the Senate,” Leahy said. “I would have difficulty having confidence in his abilities to carry out the responsibilities of solicitor general.”

Noting that Olson has changed his testimony about when he first learned of the Arkansas Project, how he came to represent Hale, and how much he had been paid by the Spectator for certain anti-Clinton stories he authored, Leahy asked, “Is it selective memory, or something he doesn’t want us to know?” As for all the letters confirming Olson’s testimony, Leahy observed that they were written by Olson allies who weren’t under oath and could not be cross-examined.

Though Leahy’s words about Olson remained fully loaded, he adopted a tone of resignation during the hour-long proceedings. Leahy was eager, he said, “to lower the level of vitriol” that had characterized the most recent phases of the Olson battle. He certainly lowered the volume, hastily mumbling his way through his statement in such a low voice that Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., asked Leahy to speak up.

Hatch, however, wanted everyone to shut up and vote. He cut off fellow Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who wanted to counter Democratic charges about Olson’s veracity, and Hatch looked ready to murder Specter when the Pennsylvania senator flirted with backing another delay.

“I’m prepared to support an investigation if there’s something to investigate,” Specter said. “I don’t want this matter to proceed to a hasty vote, Mr. Chairman, and leave the impression that something’s wrong here, that something’s being covered up.”

As for the legal proof that Specter had asked for, Leahy contended that Democrats couldn’t prove something had been covered up, without the investigation. He added that, had it not been for Hatch’s intransigence on the investigation issue, Olson might have gotten some Democratic support in the committee. That was an opinion echoed by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., during the hearing, and by Will Keyser, spokesman for Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., after the vote. Kennedy had expressed tentative support for Olson during his April 5 confirmation hearing, but joined the nays on Thursday. “It’s about this process,” Keyser said of Kennedy’s change of heart.