Enter Anita Hill, whose sexual harassment story had been circulating, as Michelman averred in her fund-raising phone call, since July. It was a private matter, impossible to disprove -- a charge tailor-made for the fix that the Thomas foes found themselves in. For despite the anti-Thomas camp's desperation, the Hill affair could never have happened without the complicity of the Senate and press, both of which unquestioningly accepted Hill's "credibility" without investigating.
Michelman, of course, wasn't the only one who knew about Anita Hill's story as early as July; so did some members of the press with good connections with Senate staffers. Timothy Phelps, the Newsday reporter who broke the Hill story, stated on "Nightline," in a town meeting following Thomas's confirmation, that he had heard the story in July but that it wasn't solid enough to report. National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg, the other reporter who simultaneously broke the story, said in a January Vanity Fair interview that she had known about it in July as well.
But how and why did the story surface for the first time in July? The only person so far to emerge who had made a connection between Hill and Thomas and sexual harassment at the moment of his nomination on July 1 is Susan Hoerchner, a friend of Hill's who later testified publicly on her behalf. (Neither Hill nor Hoerchner responded to calls requesting interviews.) In a previously undisclosed deposition given to Senate Judiciary Committee staffers on October 10, Hoerchner was asked:
Q. What were your views when Judge Thomas was nominated for the Court. What were your personal views about that?
A. Shock.
Q. Why was that?
A. I just remember waiting for them to explain his background and then yelling to my husband, "He's the one."
It seems likely from the record that Hoerchner was mistaken in her recollection of the events of 1981, and as a result she set the entire train of events in motion, with Anita Hill going along for the ride. In her staff deposition and on another occasion, Hoerchner told interviewers that the call in which Hill said she was being sexually harassed occurred before September 1981, i.e., before Hill had gone to work for Thomas.
In her testimony to the Judiciary Committee, Anita Hill stated: "I began working with Clarence Thomas in the early fall of 1981. . . . Early on, our working relationship was positive. . . . After approximately three months of working together, he asked me to go out with him socially." She told him no, and the first alleged incident of harassment occurred in "the following few weeks" -- i.e., in late December 1981 or January 1982.
Now, consider Hoerchner's deposition:
Q. And, in an attempt to try to pin down the date a little bit more specifically as to your first phone conversation about the sexual harassment issue in 1981, the year you mentioned, you said the first time you moved out of Washington was September of 1981; is that correct?
A. Right.
Q. Okay. Were you living in Washington at the time you two had this phone conversation?
A. Yes.
Q. When she told you?
A. Yes.
Q. So it was prior to September of 1981?
A. Oh, I see what you're saying.
Moments later, Hoerchner's attorney Janet Napolitano, a feminist activist who was also advising Anita Hill, asked for a recess. Remember, Hoerchner had told interviewers several times that the call occurred before September 1981. After conferring with Napolitano, Hoerchner, back on the record again, was asked by a Democratic staff counsel:
Q. When you had the initial phone conversation with Anita Hill and she spoke for the first time about sexual harassment, do you recall where you were living -- what city?
A. I don't know for sure.
According to a GOP Senate staffer, such pre-interviewing of public witnesses is somewhat unusual for the committee; it is useful primarily as a damage control device. In her statement to the Senate three days later, Hoerchner made a point of disclaiming any knowledge of the date of the conversation. "I remember, in particular, one telephone conversation I had with Anita. I should say, before telling you about this conversation, that I cannot pin down its date with certainty."
But immediately beforehand, Hoerchner implied that the critical telephone conversation took place when she was speaking with Hill on a regular basis, beginning in 1980, when they both moved to Washington from Yale, and ending in September 1981, when Hoerchner went on assignment to California. "We were both busy with our new jobs, so we did not get together with great frequency. What we did do, however, was keep in touch by telephone. Those conversations would often last as much as an hour. I remember, in particular, one telephone conversation I had with Anita . . ."
When Biden asked her, "How did you know that the problem continued after first being made aware of it in the conversation that you related to us, here today?" Hoerchner responded: "In telephone conversations I asked and she led me to understand that it was happening, and often would say, she didn't want to talk about it at that time." Yet Hoerchner had described her contacts with Hill after leaving Washington in September 1981 as "sporadic" and provided only one example in her deposition, of meeting Hill at a professional seminar in 1984.
If the regular telephone calls stopped when Hoerchner moved to California, Hill could not have been referring to Thomas in those calls: she wasn't working for him yet. |
