Speaking Truth to Power (17 page)

For me, the hour or so before a lecture is a time of reflection. I spend it organizing my thoughts and focusing on the main objectives of the day’s lesson. On the afternoon of September 12 Harriet Grant returned my call forty minutes before my class was to begin. I had been concentrating on how to communicate to first-year students the difference between
an offer to contract and an offer to negotiate a contract, but when I picked up the phone, I lost all focus.

Grant and I talked for about thirty minutes, as I recounted Thomas’ behavior and expressed the same concerns I had expressed to Brudney. I also tried to encourage Grant to investigate whether there were other women who had had similar experiences with Thomas, convinced that the committee would dismiss allegations by one person. In this and in a second conversation with Grant on the same day, I stressed that at all times I wanted to follow the proper and most effective procedure for getting the information before the committee. Her emphasis throughout the conversation was that I would not be advised of the committee’s procedure and that the handling of my complaint was the committee’s prerogative. However, she did explain that according to procedure, the next step would be to inform the nominee about the charges.

I knew that approaching Thomas without some preliminary investigation would be fatal to my claim. And I suggested to Grant that going to Thomas at this point in the process would not be helpful in determining the truth. I thought of the resources the White House had employed in pursuing the nomination thus far, and I knew they would not stop simply because I had raised a claim of impropriety. A feeling of betrayal started to set in as I sensed that this was simply a move to make me go away. The Senate staff had brought me into the process, but the committee was not going to take any responsibility to follow up on the investigation. As in my conversation with Ricki Seidman, I told Grant that a friend could corroborate my account, but again did not offer Susan Hoerchner’s name because I still hadn’t contacted her.

On Friday, September 13, and again on Sunday, September 15, Jim Brudney telephoned me at home. In a tone that seemed more embarrassed than disappointed, he informed me that the committee had decided not to investigate my charges, apparently because of my request for confidentiality. Somehow Grant had interpreted my desire to avoid a public hearing as a request for total anonymity. At no time had I made such a request. I assumed that everyone who knew about the charges knew my name. After all, Senate staffers had initiated the contact with
me. Brudney interpreted the inaction as a misunderstanding of my request for confidentiality. I interpreted the inaction as either disbelief in the charges or unwillingness to investigate them. I was convinced that the decision not to pursue the investigation reflected the committee’s indifference to the behavior I had described.

Nevertheless, on Monday, September 16, I contacted Susan Hoerchner about using her as a corroborating witness. Having been brought into the process, I was not willing to be dismissed so easily. Hoerchner reached Grant on Tuesday and expressed a desire for confidentiality as well. She was particularly vulnerable to publicity as an appointed judge in the California administrative law system. But as in her conversations with me, Grant failed to give Hoerchner a sense of how the committee would pursue an investigation of our statements, leaving Hoerchner with the same feeling of uncertainty I had.

On Thursday, September 19, I telephoned Harriet Grant to clear up her misunderstanding about my intentions: “I do not want the matter abandoned. What I want is for the committee to have the information.” All along I had assumed that my name would be used in their investigation. I pressed Grant for information about my options. I wanted to know how the committee intended to proceed. Who would make the inquiries? Whom would they contact? How would the information be processed, and who would get it? None of these questions had been answered. They remained unanswered. “I cannot give you information about how your statement will be handled,” Grant said. “That is up to the committee.”

I was somewhat incredulous. The committee expected me to make a statement and to involve another person but would not give me any idea how, when, or even if they would use the information provided. It occurred to me that I bore all the responsibility and risk, and the committee none. Had I been thinking clearly, I probably would have abandoned the matter at that point. Instead I became more determined. I suspected that I would have been treated differently had I had political contacts, money, title, or any other indicia of power.

On Friday, September 20, after consulting with her supervisor, Grant
informed me that if I proceeded, my charges would be given to the FBI to investigate. I said that I was willing to talk to the bureau but questioned Grant once again about what would happen under this proposed process. “The FBI will need to interview you and your corroborating witness. Then they will talk to Thomas and anyone he names.” Grant refused to say more. Instinctively, I was still skeptical about what might unfold, and I told Grant that I wanted to consider my options further before talking to the FBI. The entire matter confused me. I felt as though I had been drawn into a maze and left to find my way out alone.

In the meantime, I had contacted Susan Deller Ross, a professor at Georgetown Law Center and director of the school’s gender bias clinic. Jim Brudney had referred me to Ross as an expert in sex discrimination who was respected as such by members of the Senate. According to Brudney, Ross had testified before the Senate on a number of occasions and thus had some understanding of Senate procedure as well. In telephone conversations over the next few days, she listened to my story and explained to me the current status of sexual harassment law. She and Brudney were the first persons to whom I had given a detailed description of the events of 1981 and 1982. Even when I confided in friends years earlier, I had not given them the graphic details of Thomas’ lewd remarks. I was grateful for the contact with her. Unlike the committee staffers, she seemed to care about my welfare. Just when I was beginning to doubt that my experience mattered, she reassured me that in her professional opinion it did.

Between September 18 and September 20, Sue Ross and I struggled with how to proceed. Neither of us expressed any malice or desire for vindication over Clarence Thomas. Our focus was merely on the obstacles the Senate seemed to be raising to hinder me from coming forward.

On September 22 I called Ross to discuss Grant’s suggestion that the committee would bring in the FBI to handle the investigation. I did not know whether the FBI had any experience in investigating this type of charge. Sue Ross and I were both skeptical about how an agent might hear and present the information. Perceptions of the injury of sexually harassing behavior vary from individual to individual. Between males as a
group and females as a group, definitions of harassment vary widely. Whether an FBI agent could report the behavior as I had experienced it concerned Ross as much as it did me. She suggested that I prepare a written statement to be sent to the committee, relating the experience in my own words.

Over the weekend I decided to move forward—to agree to the FBI interview, but on the condition that my own statement accompany the report that would be given the committee. When I spoke to Grant and informed her of my decision, she assured me that my statement would appear along with any FBI report.

On the morning of Monday, September 23, I rose early. I had tossed and turned in my bed all night, checking the clock periodically. At 5:00 I could stand it no longer. Getting out of bed was a relief; my sleep had been so fitful that I felt as though I hadn’t had any at all. The details of the events that I was soon to recount in my statement to the Judiciary Committee were turning over and over in my head. When I finally sat down to write, I spent four hours composing and typing a four-page statement.

At first my account was clear. I was calm. However, as I recalled and articulated my experiences, I became more and more tense and upset. The nine years that had passed began to fade, and I was reliving some of the behavior as if it had just happened. My writing became less and less cogent. The end document contained several typographical and grammatical errors. But I was so happy just to get through it that when I finished it, I did not reread it. Nor did I ask anyone else to read it for errors. I was too embarrassed by its content. If I had not sent it in to the Senate as it was, I might never have sent it at all.

The house had been quiet all morning. I wrote my statement without any interruption or distraction. But as I was leaving, the telephone rang. A stranger on the other end of the line introduced herself and said that she worked in the building where my doctor’s office is located. “You hit my car in the parking lot of the medical building,” she said, and mentioned the date of one of my visits to the doctor.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, genuinely puzzled.

“I had a friend with the police department trace your tag number,” she said.

Though no visible damage had been done to her car, she claimed that the collision had caused a misalignment of her wheels. I did not recall any such collision and was sure none had taken place. Nevertheless, I gave her the name of my insurance agent and asked her to contact him. “I am too distracted and too busy to take care of this myself.”

She insisted that she wanted to handle the matter without going to my insurance company. “I would be willing to settle with you for a new set of tires,” she declared.

“Look, I don’t have time to discuss this now. I’d rather you talk with my insurance agent and let him take care of it,” I snapped back. The conversation ended.

I drove the mile or so from my home to the university, printed out the statement, and had it notarized by Sheryl Waters, a notary public in the law school office. I called Harriet Grant to inform her that I was ready to send her my statement. She told me she would wait by the fax machine so that only she would receive it. I went to the law school fax machine in the library on the first floor of the building and telefaxed the statement to the number Grant gave me.

Finally, I had disclosed what had happened. After years of not mentioning it, or mentioning it only in the most general terms and even trying to forget the matter, I had recounted, in detail, the experiences to which I had been subjected nine years prior. But though I understood it was all far from over, I had no idea of just how tumultuous the next few weeks would be.

M
onday, September 23, 1991, was like no other day in my life. As hard as I try, I cannot liken it to any occasion or event I have experienced before or since. Harriet Grant had advised me to send in my statement quickly. The hours I spent composing and writing it seemed to fly by. She’d also told me that the FBI would be contacting me to set up an interview. And the hours between her call and the FBI contact and then the visit by the agents were interminable. Half the day my heart raced; the other half I sat watching the clock, waiting for something to happen.

FBI Agents John B. Luton and Jolene Smith Jameson arrived at my home at 6:30 in the evening. Naively, I had not asked anyone to be there with me, and later I regretted it. I apologized for the disarray in my living room as I showed them in. The work that had begun in the summer was still progressing, although I was now able to use my living room furniture, albeit crammed into a small space in the front of the room. I did not take notes, and neither they nor I recorded the conversation.

Under what was described to me as standard procedure, Agent Luton asked most of the questions, and Agent Jameson took notes. Luton explained that the notes would be used to file their final report. Neither of them said anything about their experience in investigating this type of complaint. I offered the agents a copy of my statement to accompany their report, but they informed me that they already had a copy. I told
them about Thomas’ descriptions of pornography, the pressure for dates, the discussions of his sexual activities.

After I answered specific questions about Thomas’ behavior, Agent Luton asked if there were other details that I would feel comfortable relating to them. I declined to add anything further. He suggested that I might feel more comfortable giving details to Agent Jameson alone. I again declined to add to the information I had provided. I thought that what I had said was more than enough to convey the nature of what had happened. I still did not trust their role in the process. Moreover, their inquiry was not a demanding or probing one. It was professional but relaxed.

I did add the comment Thomas made on the evening of my “exit interview” over dinner: that if anyone ever learned about his behavior toward me, it would ruin his career. I had mentioned the comment in my statement and when I spoke with Brudney, but it had not come up during the FBI questioning. I remember precisely what I said to the agents because I could not forget Thomas’ own words. Nor could I forget that the tone of his words had been neither apologetic nor remorseful. The only regret he expressed was that his behavior might appear improper to others. Thomas made it clear that he expected me to keep my mouth shut. Agent Luton would remember the comment differently—he claimed I said Thomas had threatened to ruin
my
career—and it would be reported differently. In statements circulated to the press by Republican senators, the FBI would allege a “discrepancy” between my testimony about Thomas’ remarks at the hearing and what I told their agents.

Before they left, Agent Luton asked me a question he felt compelled to justify. He asked if there was anything in the way I dressed or carried myself that might have led Thomas to believe it was appropriate to talk to me about pronography or to make otherwise suggestive remarks. Agent Luton said that by asking the question he was in no way suggesting an answer. In fact, he said that while he was certain that I had not dressed or acted inappropriately, he felt obliged to ask. It was difficult to know whether the agent was catering to the myths about sexual harassment or
simply anticipating the defense against my claims. I answered that I had dressed then, as I did at the present time, rather conservatively, and certainly in a way appropriate to an office setting.