Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 3, 1994 TAG: 9411030119
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Boston Globe
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Two new books and a television investigation have resurrected the controversy over the character of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Three years after Thomas was confirmed by a Senate vote of 52 to 48, supporters and detractors are still debating whether the former head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he denied sexually harassing a former employee, lawyer Anita Hill.
``Strange Justice, the Selling of Clarence Thomas,'' a new book by Wall Street Journal reporters Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson and excerpted Wednesday in that newspaper, provides interviews with friends and acquaintances of Anita Hill's who attempt to corroborate her assertions of harassment and her depiction of Thomas as a man obsessed with pornography and crude sexual language.
Wednesday, ABC News' ``Turning Point'' aired interviews with two more women who claim Thomas sexually harassed them. They not did not testify before the Senate committee on his confirmation.
As ``Strange Justice'' and the ABC broadcast cast Thomas in a negative light, a new book by Thomas' mentor, Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo., portrays his former protege as anguished and bewildered by Hill's attack.
Supreme Court spokeswoman Toni House said Thomas would have no comments.
The contrasting views of Thomas - liar or victim - like the debates over Hill's character, have sparked bitter accusations between liberals and conservatives. Hours after ``Strange Justice'' was released Wednesday, a conservative media watchdog fired off a fax denouncing the Wall Street Journal and ABC for ``rank hypocrisy and bias.''
Mayer and Abramson, as well as the ``Turning Point'' show, interviewed Angela Wright and Sukari Hardnett, two former EEOC employees who said they had fended off Thomas' inappropriate advances.
Mayer's and Abramson's book revisits Hill's allegation that during a private meeting with her, Thomas once picked up a soda can and said, ``Who has put pubic hair on my Coke?'' The reporters interviewed three EEOC employees who recalled having heard rumors that Thomas made such a remark long before it was repeated on national television in the Senate hearing.
Mayer and Abramson, who spent more than two years on the book, wrote, ``Unless an eyewitness to these private events emerges, no one will ever know with absolute certainty whether Hill or Thomas - if either of them - was telling the whole truth.''
``Resurrection, The Confirmation of Clarence Thomas,'' paints a much more sympathetic portrait of the justice. According to Danforth, Thomas confessed that he had sometimes watched pornographic movies, but denied he had ever harassed Hill.
Danforth's account quotes Thomas as saying of Hill: ``I just always will be absolutely baffled at what made this thing happen and what made her do this. She was always a very nice person. We always had a fine time together. We were friends. I just cannot understand it.''
Danforth was not available for comment Wednesday, but an aide said he wrote the book to show that the Hill charges ``destroyed a human being.'' The aide disparaged ``Strange Justice'' as ``nothing new'' and ``repackaged garbage.''
Mayer and Abramson, in a joint telephone interview, said they had not written the book to further a liberal political agenda. ``We went into this project with open minds,'' Abramson said. ``We covered the hearings and found the testimony on both sides to be persuasive. ... We only hope that people will read our book and perhaps continue arguing with more facts.''
by CNB