Speaking Truth to Power (33 page)

That speech helped me to realize that I had not failed and neither had my witnesses. Nevertheless, the speech, as heartfelt and well delivered as it was, would neither lift the Republicans from the mire in which they willingly wallowed nor rally the Democrats to the higher cause of redeeming the nomination process. The fact was that the public had heard the cries of racism, perjury, conspiracy, and untruthfulness. And however unfounded, those cries hit their mark. Even had all dirt been cleared from the hearing room at that moment, it could not have been swept
away from the public’s mind. Kennedy’s involvement in the recent rape trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, made him vulnerable, and the Republican senators could and would in the end dismiss his admonitions. With no Democrat on the hearing panel to take up the cause, Senator Kennedy’s speech was too little, too late.

T
o know that Wells, Hoerchner, Paul, and Carr were willing to stake their reputations to testify was one of the most moving events of the hearing. But even before I knew of the investigations that were being conducted into their lives, I had decided that I could not ask any more of my friends to face the treatment that the Republicans had dealt out. Though several people had volunteered to come forward and vouch for my character, I felt it would have been a senselessly brutal act to send them into the hearing. Tactically, some felt this was a mistake. But I do not believe that another panel would have convinced the committee, and by late Sunday afternoon, the time allowed for the hearing was drawing to an end.

The only witness whose testimony could have been crucial whom the committee hadn’t called was Angela Wright. Hearing from her would be far more significant than bringing on another panel of character witnesses for me. After all, this proceeding was about the question of Thomas’ behavior and character, not mine.

All weekend long we had waited to hear from Angela Wright, a woman at the EEOC whose experience with Thomas had been similar to mine. Even as late as Sunday afternoon, the committee’s chairman was uncertain about the remaining course of the proceeding. But what happened in fact differed from what Biden had previously outlined. Angela Wright never appeared. She had been subjected to attacks about her
credibility even though she had not been called. Judge Thomas himself had said that she was a “worthless” employee whom he had to fire. Various panel members described her as disgruntled and her testimony as unreliable. We heard a variety of stories about why she did not testify. The one offered the most was that Wright had gotten cold feet and was afraid of being exposed by the Republicans. Later we learned that the stories we heard had been untrue. It was Chairman Biden himself who withdrew Wright’s subpoena.

What appears to have happened was that the committee simply refused to call her. The chairman claimed that they had run out of time, even as panels of women testifying for Thomas continied to appear. Again the committee’s action raises the question of relevance. Like the testimony of John Doggett and many of the quotes from newspapers, the comments from women claiming that Thomas had behaved inoffensively toward them were simply irrelevant to the question of whether he had behaved offensively toward me. Since I had not claimed that Thomas treated all of the women on his staff in a sexual manner, in a legal proceeding on sexual harassment their testimony would not have been admitted. I can think of no legal proceeding or quasi-legal proceeding where persons who are not victims of an alleged offender are called to testify that they were nonvictims of the offense.

Angela Wright’s testimony, on the other hand, was relevant for several reasons. In the face of my testimony, Thomas had claimed that he never treated anyone on his staff in the manner described by me. Angela Wright’s testimony would be enough to rebut that claim, as would the testimony of Sukari Hardnett, a woman who served as Thomas’ special assistant in the mid-1980s and gave the committee a statement asserting that she, too, had witnessed similar behavior by Thomas. But Angela Wright’s testimony was relevant on its own without my testimony. According to Angela Wright, Thomas had commented often on the anatomy and appearance of women in the office, making many derogatory remarks about women’s figures. He had asked her the size of her breasts and commented that certain parts of her appearance “turned him on.” Wright would also testify that Thomas showed up, uninvited, at her
apartment one evening. And though according to Wright, Thomas’ suggestions had not “bothered” her, Wright’s corroborating witness, Rose Jourdain, would describe how Wright had come into her office crying in response to remarks by Thomas. Regardless of whether Wright was describing Thomas’ behavior as sexual harassment, it was relevant to the confirmation hearing because it reflected on the judgment and professional character of the nominee.

Similarly, Sukari Hardnett asserted that Thomas attempted to date her and that when she refused, his attitude toward her became less friendly. According to Hardnett, he then attempted to enlist her help in getting friends of hers to date him. In addition to rebutting Thomas’ claim that he treated female staff members as professionals and took no personal interest in them, Hardnett’s observations, like Wright’s, reflect on Thomas’ carriage and demeanor in the workplace.

Hardnett’s and Wright’s testimonies would have been relevant as support to my claim, in establishing a pattern of sexual advances and comments in the workplace and directed toward his assistants. In considering the conduct, much can be made of the similarities between Hardnett, Wright, and me. We were all roughly the same age at the time of the incidents—all younger than Thomas. We were all single women and thus could be easily viewed as vulnerable. We are all from southern or rural backgrounds with relatively few connections to power in Washington. And we are all black.

In the end, the Senate seemed hostile to hearing from any of us. Neither Wright nor Hardnett was called, and I was allowed to testify only after public pressure mandated it. Later I learned that a fourth woman, Kaye Savage, had also tried to contact the Senate, to testify to Judge Thomas’ fascination with pornography. At the time I lived in Washington, Kaye, who worked in the Reagan White House as a political appointee, was a mutual friend of mine and Thomas’. The committee dismissed her without even taking her statement. And in addition to rejecting the information offered by these witnesses, the committee refused to hear from experts in the field of sexual harassment. Dr. Louise Fitzgerald, a noted psychologist and academician who has worked for
years studying sexual harassment, was ready and available to provide the committee, formally or informally, with information about sexual harassment. Dr. Fitzgerald did provide the committee with a fact sheet on the issue. But the committee would later cite lack of time as a basis for not calling her.

B
y late afternoon the morning clouds had turned to drizzle. After hearing from the panel of corroborating witnesses, the committee took a brief recess. Back at the hotel, having returned from church, my family waited, unaware of my activity that morning. Emma Jordan hurriedly gathered them for an announcement about the polygraph examination and the press conference, while outside the Senate building, Paul Minor and Charles Ogletree held a press conference to announce the results of the polygraph examination. After explaining his credentials and administration of the test, Minor announced that “there was no indication of deception to any relevant questions.” Scientific evidence now refuted the conjecture of the Republican senators that I was lying. There was elation and even weeping among some individuals of the crowd. Just as intense was the reaction from the Republicans. Senator Hatch assailed Ogletree and the examination as “exactly what a two-bit lawyer would do.” Senator Danforth’s response was more calculated. He shifted from accusing me of lying to a theory that he and a Connecticut psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, had been exploring since the prior evening.

Two days before, Senator Specter had offered John Doggett’s assessment of my psychological state to explain that I simply imagined Thomas’ interest in me. When their reference to Doggett’s pseudo-psychology failed, the Republicans attempted to use real psychiatry to condemn my claim. True to form, rather than rely on real evidence of disorder, the Republicans built a case on off-the-record comments and sheer conjecture. In addition to Satinover, Senator Danforth consulted a psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, and learned of a condition called De Clarembaults’s syndrome, commonly called erotomania. The syndrome, characterized by obsessive romantic interest in a person, is named after a
French psychiatrist, Dr. Gaeton de Clarembaults, who identified the disorder in a patient in 1921. A person suffering from the disorder imagines a romantic relationship with a targeted individual though no romantic interaction has taken place. A sufferer will obsess over the target, sending cards or letters that express romantic interest, and may even attempt to confront the target directly. One extreme example of the syndrome involved John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Reagan to gain the attention of the target of his romantic interest, actress Jodie Foster. Incidentally, Dr. Dietz testified about the syndrome at the Hinckley hearing.

In offering this syndrome as an explanation for my testimony against Judge Thomas, Senator Danforth neglected three crucial factors. First, the situation to which I testified at the hearing did not fit the scenario of someone suffering from De Clarembaults’s syndrome. I never had a romantic interest in or involvement with Thomas, nor did I believe that Thomas had a romantic interest in me. To the contrary, at all times, I knew that his actions were motivated by control and intimidation. He was attempting to flex his political muscle as well, believing that, as a presidential appointee, he was entitled to certain liberties with people less powerful. Though I testified to what I thought were his motives at the time of the hearing, the senators were guided by the belief that a claim of sexual harassment is genuine interest somehow perverted. Certainly, if I had harbored an obsessive romantic interest in Clarence Thomas, someone in the workplace would have known about it and would have testified to that during the hearing. But only two people claimed that I felt a romantic attachment to Clarence Thomas, Phyllis Myers Berry and Virginia Thomas. In her testimony, Ms. Berry admitted that she had no facts on which to base her theory. Virginia Thomas and I have never met. And one can imagine that she is guided by her own romantic interest in her husband when she assumes that other women find him attractive as well.

In addition to ignoring the fact that the behavior I engaged in did not begin to approximate the symptoms, Danforth ignored the relative obscurity of the disease and that sufferers of the disorder are far more likely
to be male than female. The likelihood that I would suffer this dysfunction is extremely rare. When compared to the likelihood that I, as one American woman in three, would experience sexual harassment, Danforth’s reliance on this explanation for my testimony seems not only result-oriented but sinister. An impartial fact finder would have regarded the disorder only as a last resort, given the lack of factual support, and would have at least entertained the notion that my testimony was true before pursuing the idea that I suffered so rare a psychological disorder. Senator Danforth was being nothing less than illogical in believing the least likely explanation rather than a more likely one, and his actions represent irresponsible and dangerous misuse of psychiatry—a misuse calculated to appeal to stereotypes rather than to clear reasoning or science.

Years after the hearing I would telephone Dr. Dietz. Relying on his sense of professional integrity and willingness after the fact to put politics aside, I questioned him about his role in the hearing. He seemed willing to talk to me, giving me the best time to contact him and returning a telephone call twice until we finally connected. He reported to me that he first got involved through a telephone call from a political lobbyist for conservative causes who had liked an antipornography position he had taken prior to 1991. Senator Danforth ultimately flew him to Washington to consult with the Republicans.

During our conversation Dr. Dietz defended his role in supplying the information about De Clarembaults’s syndrome while arguing that he “wanted to keep psychiatry out of it.”