Salon: How we know Clarence Thomas did it, and why it's important that we acknowledge it

Amerigo Vespucci

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Wed Oct-27-10 06:28 AM
Original message

Salon: How we know Clarence Thomas did it, and why it's important that we acknowledge it

How we know Clarence Thomas did it, and why it's important that we acknowledge it

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2010/10/27/anita_hill_clarence_thomas/index.html

By Steve Kornacki

Wednesday, Oct 27, 2010 07:01 ET

Even before last week's unexpected revelations, the evidence of Thomas' guilt was considerable. Here's what we already knew, before last week's events:

* As Thomas' confirmation was nearing a final vote in October '91, an affidavit from Hill was leaked to National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg (the source was never identified); in the document, which Hill, then a University of Oklahoma law professor, had prepared for the Senate Judiciary Committee several weeks earlier, she alleged that Thomas had repeatedly asked her out on dates and made lewd and graphic sexual comments to her when she had worked for him in the early 1980s. She made clear that the harassment had not been physical and that Thomas had never threatened her job, but said that she nonetheless felt uncomfortable and intimidated. "I felt as though I did not have a choice, that the pressure was such that I was going to have to submit to that pressure in order to continue getting good assignments," Hill told Totenberg. She added that she had followed Thomas from job to job -- first at the civil rights division of the Department of Education and then at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- because the harassment had briefly stopped. She was 25 years old when she first went to work for Thomas in 1981.

* Three Hill friends -- Susan Hoerchner, Ellen Wells and John Carr -- testified under oath that she had told them about Thomas' conduct as it happened between 1981 and 1983. "Anita said that Clarence Thomas had repeatedly asked her out ... that he wouldn't seem to take 'no' for an answer,'' Hoerchner told senators. "The thing Anita told me that struck me particularly and that I remember almost verbatim was that Mr. Thomas had said to her, 'You know, if you had witnesses, you'd have a perfect case against me.'"

* Upon learning of Hill's claims, another former Thomas employee, Angela Wright, who had worked under him as director of public affairs at the EEOC, wrote a column -- not meant for publication and intended only to show potential employers at a North Carolina newspaper that she could turn around a fast and topical piece -- outlining the inappropriate behavior he'd exhibited toward her. Somehow, Judiciary Committee investigators learned of the column, contacted Wright, and convinced her to sit for a phone interview, during which she detailed a pattern of harassing behavior, including an instance in which Thomas asked her what her bra size was. She was subpoenaed by the committee and flew to Washington to testify in the nationally televised hearing; the basics of her claims were reported by media outlets at the time. Her testimony would have bolstered Hill's case -- a second female Thomas underling, one who had never met or worked with Hill, accusing him of the same conduct. But the committee never called Wright, and instead simply entered the transcript of her interview into its record on the eve of the final vote. The details of her interview were buried in press reports.