BARBARA OLSON came to prominence as an investigator for the United States Congress during the Clinton scandals of the 1990s and as the author of Hell to Pay (1999), an excoriating, no-holds-barred biography of Hillary Clinton. A clever, tough, brave lawyer, Barbara Olson was a frequent and outspoken pundit on such American television talk shows as Larry King Live and Crossfire at the time of the scandals surrounding Monica Lewinsky and, more recently, Chandra Levy. Married to the US Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a close aide and friend of President George W Bush, she was a prominent member of Washington's conservative elite; this group, which also included the Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas and the independent counsel Kenneth Starr, prompted Hillary Clinton to complain of a "vast right-wing conspiracy". Barbara Olson was born Barbara Bracher at Houston, Texas, on December 27 1955. After graduating with a BA from Houston's University of St Thomas in 1978, she became a professional ballet dancer, performing in Houston, New York and San Francisco. She then went to Los Angeles to become a producer and save enough money to finance her law degree, which she received in 1989 from the Benjamin Cardozo Law School at Yeshiva University in New York. She spent three years working for the law firm of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, before serving as an assistant US attorney for the District of Columbia from 1992 until 1995, prosecuting drug cases. From 1995 to 1996 ...