Talking Back

by Andrea Mitchell

  To those of us on Capitol Hill who knew of the elderly senator’s own legendary sexual exploits, it was almost comical. (Telling details of the exchange were satirized brilliantly the next night on Saturday Night Live.) Leading the charge against Hill was Arlen Specter, the most experienced former prosecutor on the committee. Having infuriated Republican leaders a few years earlier when he helped defeat Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Judge Bork to the Supreme Court, Specter seemed to be going out of his way to be tough on Hill in order to reestablish his conservative credentials.

  For whatever reason, Specter went after Hill with a vengeance, at one point even accusing her of perjury. Why hadn’t she complained earlier? Why hadn’t she given all the details to the FBI? And why had she followed Thomas to another job at the EEOC, after allegedly being harassed by him in the Department of Education? To Specter, the last question was the most perplexing, and the most damning to Anita Hill.

  Still, even after Specter’s cross-examination, Hill’s account was devastating. It hung over the hearing room, a litany of smutty charges leveled and unanswered. Badly shaken by such shocking testimony, but affecting a steely calm, I went on the air to speculate on how Thomas would rebut her claims. After a dinner break, he arrived with his wife, Virginia, loyally at his side for an unprecedented weekend session, to face the scandalous charges involving a Coca-Cola can, pubic hair, and porno movies starring “Long Dong Silver.”

  For almost two hours Clarence Thomas faced down the all-white panel of senators. In a strategy that I learned was devised by the White House, he countered Hill’s charges of sexism by playing the race card. Putting them on the defensive, he was a portrait of African-American outrage, expressing a cold fury at the committee and its process as he tried to discredit his accuser. When Thomas bitterly denounced what he called “a high-tech lynching,” for all intents and purposes the political fight was won.

  Under the force of his counterattack, Judiciary Committee chairman Joe Biden withered, telling Thomas that because they checked out what they thought were credible allegations from a credible woman, “doesn’t mean we take the charges at face value.” Alan Simpson, a rangy, acerbic Republican from Wyoming, said that if it was a tie between the two, and the senators didn’t know whom to believe, Thomas didn’t have to prove his innocence or be condemned just because these charges had been made. “If there is any doubt,” said Simpson, “it goes to Clarence Thomas. It does not go to Professor Hill.”

  As I ran out to our live camera in the Rotunda to interview some of the Judiciary Committee members, it was clear to me that they didn’t know what had hit them. Pat Leahy acknowledged that after hearing conflicting stories from two such compelling witnesses, the senators felt confused. Critics later questioned whether Senator Kennedy, the committee’s highest-ranking Democrat outside of the chairman, was reluctant to go after Thomas on sexual harassment issues because of his own past reputation as a womanizer and, of course, because of Chappaquiddick. You could feel the momentum shifting back toward Thomas. Still, whatever happened in the Senate vote, I knew that this national debate over sexual harassment had changed workplaces around America forever.

  Just before midnight, as we concluded our marathon live broadcasts for the day, Tom Brokaw asked me, “Andrea, you have prevailed as a woman correspondent in what has been traditionally a mostly male field. You work on Capitol Hill in Congress, which has always been described as one of the most sexual arenas. Do you think it will change?”

  I answered, “I think it will change in a lot of workplaces. I’m not so sure it will ever change on Capitol Hill until more women are in powerful positions. Because this is the last plantation for men.”

  On Sunday morning the hearings recessed so that members could go to church. Several of them came to Meet the Press, Washington’s version of Sunday worship. The emotions of the confirmation battle immediately spilled over into our television studio on Nebraska Avenue. Senator Alan Simpson claimed to have previously undisclosed information regarding Professor Hill that had come to him unsolicited from people in Oklahoma, her home state.

  Regarding this highly nonspecific “information,” I asked, “You’ve raised this now at the hearings, and you’ve raised it just now on national television. Isn’t this McCarthyism of the worst order?”

  To which he replied, “Not in my mind. McCarthyism of the worst order is to have someone gather up everything on a man for 105 days that has nothing to do with his ability to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Your people have done a magnificent job of that, going into his garbage to see what the titles of his books are.”

  I shot back, “Not my people, Senator Simpson.”

  Simpson then retorted, “I had one of your craft use the F-word on me about three times the other night in an abject—”

  I jumped in. “We’re not monolithic, either—we only speak for ourselves as individuals.”

  Such was the level of acrimony that gripped the Capitol as the vote on the nomination approached. That day, Anita Hill volunteered to take a polygraph test and passed. It didn’t matter. The scientific models that drive most political decisions in Washington are polls. When the instant surveys came in, the public, including blacks and most women, had decided to believe Thomas over Hill, by a big margin. The senators had been waiting for guidance. Now they had their political cue. Faced with a no-win situation, the easiest way out was to follow public opinion, not try to lead it. Even though Hill’s backers had come up with a surprise witness also alleging sexual harassment by the nominee, the senators refused to hear any more testimony. The case was closed.

  The committee voted first, at two o’clock in the morning, agreeing to send the nomination to the Senate floor for a final vote. Anita Hill retreated to Oklahoma, as Thomas’s supporters mobilized for a final onslaught. The eight-hour debate was as mean-spirited at the end as it had been at the beginning. One of the worst examples, during the final hours of debate, was an acrimonious exchange between Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter. Kennedy argued that there was no proof that Hill had perjured herself, as Specter had claimed, and said, “Shame on anyone who suggests that she has.”

  To which Specter replied, “We do not need characterizations like ‘shame’ in this chamber from the senator from Massachusetts,” in a broad reference to Chappaquiddick.

  The floor debate escalated quickly until the senators sounded like schoolchildren.

  “Let me finish.”

  “No, I will not.”

  “Yes, you will.”

  “Just let me make a point.”

  This was the world’s greatest deliberative body?

  We broadcast the roll call vote live, and as the ninety-eight men and only two women of the Senate cast their ayes and nays, it became obvious that Thomas would be confirmed. The final vote was fifty-two in favor, and forty-eight against, with only two Republicans, Bob Packwood and Jim Jeffords, voting against Thomas. Eleven Democrats voted yes to the appointment. At 11:35 that evening, we went back on the air, preempting The Tonight Show. The news division rarely, if ever, wins permission from network entertainment chiefs to preempt such a top-rated show. But this news story had the advantage of being more lurid than anything network programmers could have scripted.

  As we concluded our coverage, Tom Brokaw said, “There are more than a few bodies scattered across the landscape here, Andrea.”

  I replied, “This was a sorry spectacle, an ugly fight that raises serious questions about our system of divided government. Even when the vote was certain, they kept slugging it out.”

  The ordeal was finally over, as Brokaw put it, not with a bang, but with a sense of exhaustion.

  I don’t think I’ve ever received so much mail about any subject that I’ve covered. Although a majority had indicated support for Thomas in polls, women around this country, from all backgrounds and income groups, felt disenfranchised by the system, and suddenly gained a focal point for their anger. Looking at their television screens, they concluded that t
he men of America were making decisions about them and their lives and their futures—and women had no say.

  Some women wrote that watching the way Professor Hill was treated reminded them of the way rape victims are often interrogated about their sexual histories. To many women, the innuendo directed toward this woman was excruciating to watch. Similarly, Thomas and his supporters deeply felt the humiliation of a man nominated to the highest court in the land having to explain what videos he rented and whether he had ever made sexual overtures to his coworkers.

  The hearings demonstrated the degree to which the country was polarized, both racially and sexually, and how disconnected Washington was from the rest of the nation. From the perspective of many women and African-Americans, there was no question that the white men on the Judiciary Committee just didn’t get it. Even Kansas Republican senator Nancy Kassebaum, daughter of onetime vice presidential nominee Alf Landon, said as much during the final debate. Hardly a feminist, the experience had radicalized her.

  We were all affected. When it was over, I still didn’t know, with any degree of certainty, whom to believe, but people were passionate on one side or the other, and wanted conclusions. Advocates for Hill didn’t want to hear about all the legal ambiguity surrounding what constitutes sexual harassment. Thomas supporters argued that if you couldn’t easily define it, how could you legislate against it? Teachers around the country organized seminars analyzing “What Is Sexual Harassment?” Employers instituted programs to sensitize their workers, male and female.

  It struck home. Even behavior we had tolerated in the past seemed more offensive when reexamined in the light of the Thomas-Hill debate. For instance, while we worked together in NBC’s small White House cubicle during the Reagan years, some of my male colleagues often delighted in watching provocative programs they knew made me uncomfortable. It never occurred to me that I had grounds to object.

  The debate surrounding Clarence Thomas’s nomination expanded divisions over gender that until then had been fought primarily over abortion. Now the culture warriors were fighting over whether it was right to legislate against something as arguably subjective as sexual harassment. Can men’s behavior be regulated? Did women have the right to object to offensive language or behavior in the workplace? What were the obligations of employers in these matters? The nation was gripped by an emotional and extensive debate on sexual mores.

  In the Senate, men like Strom Thurmond still wielded considerable power. Who could forget how he had demeaned Anita Hill? Years before Thurmond was exposed as the father of an unacknowledged, interracial daughter, he was known as “the pincher” to women throughout the Senate. One of the first things young interns and new female correspondents were told was not to get on an elevator alone with Strom.

  At one point, I had an intern, a law student, who would take notes for me at stakeouts when I was tied up on another side of the Hill. Once, she came back beet red, flushed, obviously embarrassed. When I asked what was wrong, she replied that she had just had an uncomfortable encounter with Senator Bob Packwood, but didn’t know how to interpret it. All of us had to wear our ID passes around our necks. Packwood had come up very close to her, way too close, and had grabbed hold of her pass, which was hanging on her chest. Pretending to examine her picture, he said, “Oh, what is your name?”

  Only later, during the Thomas-Hill hearings, did I realize that I should have warned the young woman about sexual predators on the Hill, and in fact about the senator’s actions. But at the time, none of us focused on Packwood’s behavior. Later, he faced accusations from more than a dozen women, and left the Senate after the Ethics Committee recommended he be expelled. He was only unusual in that he was caught, and punished.

  Barely a month after the Thomas-Hill battle, another civil rights battle erupted, but this time John Danforth, the White House point man for the Thomas confirmation, led the opposition. Danforth strongly objected to a White House proposal that would have limited affirmative action programs for women and minorities. Most of the president’s cabinet, including the secretaries of labor, health and human services, and transportation, agreed with Danforth. In the end, the president was forced to retreat. But coming so soon after the Thomas fight, the attempt to circumvent the civil rights law fueled suspicion that the White House was pursuing a deliberate strategy of currying favor with the right wing.

  There had been a long history of racial polarization on the Hill. A year earlier, I had covered a Senate race that raised questions about the racial strategy of at least one Republican. North Carolina’s Jesse Helms, arguably the most conservative man in the Senate, was facing an African-American challenger, Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt. Trying to follow Helms on the campaign trail became an exercise almost as comical as a Michael Moore chase film. You could call it “Jesse and Me.” Helms was not to be found. The senator didn’t have a schedule and he didn’t think he had to. The last thing he wanted was for anyone to cover his speeches. Instead, his campaign consisted of running television ads with a significant, far from subliminal, appeal to white racism.

  One TV ad, known as the White Hands ad, featured the hands of a white man crumbling a rejection letter from a potential employer, as the voiceover intoned, “You needed that job, and you were the best qualified—but they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota—is that really fair?”

  Many of his supporters didn’t bother to hide their sympathies. In Smithfield, North Carolina, a town of eight thousand, many of the residents wanted to turn back the clock. One man told me, “I hope I never vote for a black man. They’re taking over now. We’ll all be ruled by them in a few more years because their population is growing faster than the white.” And he didn’t hesitate to say it on camera.

  In the course of the campaign Helms also stirred local prejudices by telling supporters, “Mr. Gantt’s got all of my enemies as his supporters, the lesbians, the homosexuals.” Jesse Helms did almost no campaigning, but easily won 53 percent of the vote, to Harvey Gantt’s 47 percent.

  In person, Helms was unfailingly courtly and old-fashioned, even though he treated me like a nuisance to be avoided. That became a problem in 1995 when he became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and I needed access to him and his staff. I wasn’t the only person he intimidated. As chairman, he controlled the State Department’s budget and could decide the fate of policies ranging from superpower weapons treaties to contraceptive programs in developing nations. Helms so enjoyed his reputation as an obstructionist that he collected political cartoons caricaturing him as “Senator No.” And he was so open about his opinions, that the new Foreign Relations chairman said half jokingly that if Bill Clinton—the sitting president of the United States—tried to cross the border into North Carolina, he’d need a bodyguard for protection.

  As a result of Helms’s power, people as important as Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, and Kofi Annan bowed to his authority. Albright went so far as to join Helms at a softball game between their staffs, and gave him a T-shirt that proclaimed, SOMEONE IN THE STATE DEPARTMENT LOVES ME. She also made a pilgrimage to his hometown in North Carolina to appear with him. And, in one of those peculiar Washington courtships, when Albright threw herself a sixtieth birthday party, Jesse Helms had the first dance.

  I followed Helms home once more in 1996, to report on the senator’s opposition to Clinton’s efforts to expand diplomatic relations with Vietnam. Clinton, who was still trying to live down his antiwar past, had won the support of two heroes of that war, John McCain and John Kerry. Despite their many political differences on other issues, they came together behind Clinton because of a shared conviction that it was time to heal the wounds of Vietnam.

  As head of the Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms had a virtual veto over Vietnam policy. Yet, at the same time, he was trying to help his state’s tobacco industry by selling cigarettes to the Vietnamese. I wanted to explore that paradox. Helms had invited ambassadors from every Asian country, includi
ng Vietnam, to his hometown to tour an R.J. Reynolds tobacco plant. Cigarette manufacturers were losing their American markets because of government health regulations. The companies—all headquartered in North Carolina—wanted to make up their lost domestic profits by selling more tobacco to Asia, where people were heavily addicted to tobacco. Critics said it amounted to exporting cancer to Southeast Asia.

  I started shooting the story in Wingate, North Carolina, a picturesque town where Helms had located his foundation in a charming Victorian house. Much to my surprise, the senator showed up to escort me on a personal tour. As he showed me his mother’s pictures and other family memorabilia, I was caught in one of those classic instances—as with Frank Rizzo or Don Regan—where a powerful adversary was suddenly displaying a softer side of his personality.

  I felt somewhat conflicted, because I was warming up to him personally and didn’t want to be inauthentic. It got even more difficult when he sought my advice on architectural drawings for the expansion of his foundation and museum. It reminded me of Frank Rizzo’s asking me to choose the colors to redecorate City Hall in 1972.

  Helms may have been offering genuine hospitality; perhaps, he was trying to co-opt me. But the senator was so obviously proud of his construction project that I could appreciate the moment—while still being a bit nervous about it. All I knew was that if I’d been a male correspondent, the conversation probably would not have taken place.