Speaking Truth to Power (31 page)

Whether fueled by the press coverage or inciting it, Senator Danforth and Senator Simpson next began enlisting students at the University of Oklahoma to carry out their campaign against me. Chris Wilson, a law student with whom I had never had interaction, stated that his goal in the days following the hearing was “to go about the business of making [Anita Hill’s] life a living hell.” During the hearing, he was busy as well.
He sought other law students who would participate in a letter-writing campaign aimed at painting me as a political partisan and radical feminist. His failure to find law students willing to engage in the task did not dissuade him. He went to an undergraduate fraternity, which sent pre-drafted letters to senators. They targeted the senior senator from Oklahoma, David Boren. Only one student who allowed his name to be used would assert anything about my politics. Yet neither he nor the student who was responsible for enlisting the fraternity participation in the campaign had ever been in one of my classes, and neither had I discussed politics with either of them. To the students involved, many of whom were eighteen or nineteen, the effort to discredit me must have seemed like sport. The letter-writing campaign might have seemed to them like a fraternity prank that they had all probably participated in at some point. It was, I am convinced, little more than a game to them—a game in which they had nothing to lose, but from which they could gain the political favor of a powerful Washington elite. The real pity is that these students were encouraged to participate in the sport by adult men who had been elected and sworn to protect the rights of the citizens of the country. It is a sad commentary and no coincidence that the students enlisted for this crusade, from both Oral Roberts and Oklahoma Universities, were all white males.

S
enator Simpson used the letters solicited from the fraternity members to stage his dramatic claim. “I have all kinds of incriminating stuff coming over the transom. I’ve got letters hanging out of my pocket,” he said, flapping his jacket. “I’ve got faxes, I’ve got statements from her former law professors, statements from people that know her, statements from Tulsa, Oklahoma, saying, ‘Watch out for this woman.’ But nobody’s got the guts to say that, because it gets tangled up in this sexual harassment crap. I believe that sexual harassment is a terrible thing … [but] I don’t need any test, don’t need anybody to give me the saliva test on whether one believes more or less about sexual harassment … So if
we had one hundred and four days to go into Ms. Hill and find out about her character, her background, her proclivities, and all the rest, I’d feel a lot better about this system.”

To say that Senator Simpson was doing his typical grandstanding with the solicited canned information is to miss the point. Simpson was restating claims he had raised about my character and raising new ones as well as denigrating the whole concept of sexual harassment. When asked by the press to support this allegation, Senator Simpson declined. But the purpose of his jacket-flapping display was not to prove any of the contents of the documents which he purported to have, so much as to put the idea in the mind of the public that it could not trust me to be truthful. Moreover, no one with an honest understanding of the seriousness of sexual harassing behavior could have called it “sexual harassment crap,” as Simpson did then, or distinguished its pain from that of “real harassment,” as he had done earlier. And in advising that the committee should have one hundred and four days to look into my background, as it had to review Thomas’, Simpson must have forgotten that I was not being considered for the Supreme Court. I was not being scrutinized for a position of public trust. I was simply giving evidence as a witness. No one else acting in that role had ever been scrutinized or had to be qualified in such a manner. In one statement, no part of which was made in my presence or objected to by the chairman of the committee, Senator Simpson questioned my background, character, and “proclivities.” Journalist William Safire later gave definition to the term “proclivities,” lest there be any doubt that Simpson was questioning my sexual orientation and following up on earlier efforts to get Oral Roberts law students to state that I was a lesbian.

On Sunday Senator Simpson suggested that there should be an investigation of me—to discover my “proclivities.” As if to follow that lead and notwithstanding the lack of relevance to the issue of harassment, Lynn Duke, one of the reporters at
The Washington Post
, telephoned Keith Henderson seeking verification that I was a lesbian who had had an affair with my roommate in Washington. Henderson took her to task for resorting to the same myths that the senators had to explain the claim.
The senators’ actions were explainable: their political agenda was more important than painting a clear picture of the nature of the problem. However, the
Post
, whose objective was to inform the public, in stooping to the same tactics, was irresponsible. Even if the claims about my sexual orientation had been true, in pursuing the information the newspaper seemed only interested in satisfying the public about intensely private matters, unrelated to the claim. The investigation resembled so closely voyeuristic tabloid journalism as to be indistinguishable. Unfortunately, Duke was not the only reporter to pursue this approach to the story.

By Saturday afternoon, after the “high-tech lynching” claim, it appeared as though none of the members of the committee were my allies. And with the media blitz organized and executed by the Republicans, even time was against me. In pensive moments I listened to what was going on before me and wondered how it might have turned out differently. How might I have avoided being sucked into the nastiness that I was witnessing? Had I refused to participate when called or lied when questioned, might the whole matter have ended in September? At one point I closed myself into the bedroom of the hotel suite and started to cry. Almost instantly, however, I reminded myself that it would do no good for me to fall apart at this point. I pulled myself together and returned to the living room area where Shirley Wiegand was preparing for the following week’s classes. When called, I did what most citizens confronted with such a situation would do. Having made the decision to disclose what I knew, I had to complete it no matter how badly the process was failing. I just prayed to live through the next few days.

T
hough the team had been apprehensively hopeful, after my testimony on Friday, less than twenty-four hours later we felt we had been crushed. Thomas had concluded his second day of testimony. The Republicans had stepped up their crusade to shatter any chance that the substance of my complaint be heard by bombarding the media and committee with false information and taking control of the process. We were clearly outnumbered, outfinanced, and, in terms of media and political
sophistication, outfinessed. On Saturday, October 12, my time for reflection was scarce, and it was certain that no official was going to rein in a process that had become devoid of balance and even lacking in civility or decency. With little time to second-guess or ponder the past decisions, I had to act to protect myself from the attack being waged.

Despite my own isolation, the lawyers and other volunteers were working to establish some way of responding to the attack. Clearly, to go on simply denying the negative assertions of the senators was to give them a credibility they did not deserve and to allow their allegations to set the terms of the discussion. As much as my attorneys, Emma Coleman Jordan, Sue Ross, and Charles Ogletree, had tried to protect my testimony in case I was called again, and as eloquently as they had spoken on my behalf, I could no longer remain outside of the fray of the events. We needed some positive act in order to reverse the downward turn of the process, and the circumstances demanded that I be the one to take it. With some hesitance in his voice, Ogletree reminded me that I had told the committee that I would be willing to take a polygraph examination. “Would you still be willing to do so?” he questioned. At that moment I was thinking like a client and not like a lawyer. Had I been a lawyer advising a client in a legal proceeding, I would have discouraged her from doing so, because of the risk of manipulation of the results. “Sure,” the client in me who wanted some exoneration responded readily.

Charles Ogletree arranged for the examination. He was thinking like the seasoned criminal lawyer he is, and thus was the one who had qualms about the decision to go forward with the polygraph examination. And as he would report to me afterward, he hardly slept on the Saturday night before the examination.

O
n Sunday morning I dressed to go to an undisclosed location; to take an unfamiliar examination; to be administered by someone whom I did not know. I had taken many exams in my life—to enter college, law school, professional life. I had always prepared for the examination for weeks before taking them, but over the past few days I began to believe that life turns on the unanticipated—those things that we do not even contemplate and therefore cannot plan. That the credibility, reputation, and future that I had so thoughtfully planned for might turn on an examination which I had only the night before decided to take seemed ironic but fitting in light of the occurrences of the previous days.

I received three telephone calls before I left the hotel to take the examination. One was from Sonia Jarvis, who called to give me a scripture for my reading Sunday morning. The Reverend Beecher Hicks called to share a scripture with me as well and to pray with me. He and Reverend Harris, who had come by the caucus room to minister to my family, had graciously arranged to have cars to take my family to his church, the Metropolitan Baptist Church, a predominantly African American church in Washington, D.C. I was later relieved that my family not only enjoyed the sermon but was warmly received by the congregation.

After Thomas’ “high-tech lynching” comment and the charges of
conspiracy, I worried that the manipulation of racial sentiments in the black community might be turned against my family. They were easily identifiable after their appearance on television on Friday and owing to a strong family resemblance. On Saturday, as they shopped in Georgetown, strangers asked their identity. The press had been following them, and my brother Ray says that he saw the same Secret Service man throughout the weekend at various spots throughout the city. But after their visit to the Metropolitan, where they were welcomed, my immediate concerns about their well-being were relieved.

The third call came from a group of friends, Ronald Allen and Gary Phillips, two law school classmates, and Keith Henderson. Ronald Allen had been involved in the hearings as a legal adviser to Judge Hoerchner. The three were down the hallway in the hotel where I was staying and wanted a chance to visit with me. They were visibly distressed, looking as though they hadn’t slept much the night before. They had been behind the scenes in the caucus room and knew that the proceedings had taken a pro-Thomas direction. Moreover, they felt that the core legal team had not chosen a successful strategy. I had been close with Gary and Keith when I lived in Washington and had shared some of the information just prior to the press story. The experience they were now having, both up front and behind the scenes, deeply pained them. They suggested that I take a more proactive posture, bypassing the committee, if necessary, in order to be heard by the public. Realizing that they were in agony on my behalf, it was difficult to dismiss them. In retrospect, given the extent to which things had collapsed, they were right to question the “strategy” of our team. Though they deserved some assurance, I could not give them any. The media attention and the Republicans’ campaign were such that the fewer people aware of the polygraph examination, the better.

Gary and Keith, particularly as Washington residents with contacts with the federal government, recognized the antics of the Republicans as politics in the purest and ugliest form and believed that the only way to combat them was to counter their political maneuvering. Aware that the Republicans were attempting to gather negative and harmful information about my witnesses and other supporters, they were fearful, with good
reason, that any show of support for me could result in professional retaliation. I knew that no ordinary citizen could match the resources of the senators. Moreover, I viewed the experience as a choice about how I was going to live my entire life, not just these few days in Washington. When the episode was over, Senators Simpson, Hatch, Specter, and Danforth, I had no doubt, would continue to act in the same fashion; this was the way of life they had chosen—and it was politics as usual for them. But it was not what I had chosen. I had left it eight years prior and wanted no part of it, particularly now. Moreover, no matter how smart, resourceful, and committed our team was, we were not equipped to play their game.

I reminded Ronald, Gary, and Keith that I had started out saying that I did not want the matter to be tried in the press and that I intended to maintain that posture throughout the proceeding, no matter how tough it became. Though they were not satisfied with my responses, they did not push. Keith, perhaps better than the other two, knew firsthand that once I had made up my mind on a matter of principle, I would not budge. More important, I am certain that they did not want to cause me any discomfort. Disappointed, they left the room just minutes before I left, to take the examination, accompanied by Shirley Wiegand, Charles Ogletree, and Ray McFarland.

D
espite the task that I was about to undertake, I was grateful to be out of the hotel room. The day was a typically overcast cloudy autumn day, but being outside offered me a glimpse of life that I missed in the grim reality of watching the hearing from my hotel room. Ray McFarland delivered us to the appointed place, the law office of Arnold and Porter in northwest Washington, D.C. One of the partners there, Charles Ruff, a well-known Washington, D.C., attorney and former president of the Washington, D.C., Bar Association, arranged the polygraph examination. Because it was Sunday morning, Ruff met us in the lobby to give us access to the conference room and office in the secured building. The stillness of the building with its huge empty corridors gave
the process an even greater sense of mystery. Ruff spoke only briefly with Ogletree, Wiegand, and me, before he took me to a small conference room where the polygraph equipment was set up. We were all anxious to get the examination under way. It did not seem the time for small talk.