For the week of July 4 - July 10, 2001

Brock muddies already cloudy Thomas affair

Commentary by ADAM TANOUS

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It is entirely possible that (David) Brock is lying now rather than then. He is writing a book, after all, and money is involved. Still, a journalist who admits he lied in print can hardly expect to take that currency to the bank.

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During the Thomas hearings in 1991, I remember having lunch with my uncle, a lawyer in Northern California, and arguing about the likely outcome of the Senate vote. I was certain that not only was Thomas lying, but that there was no possibility he would be confirmed. My uncle, who obviously had more insight into politics and in the ways witnesses can be impugned, was certain Thomas would join the bench.

I watched much of the hearings. What struck me was, of course, a sense that Thomas was lying. There were inconsistencies in his story, but that sense of deceit had more to do with the sound of his voice. Anyone can lie convincingly for short periods of time. But during extensive and focused questioning, deception becomes audible in the timber of a voice.

What was perhaps even more distressing was that Thomas didn’t come across as being all that bright. The senior President Bush’s claim that Thomas was the most qualified candidate out there seemed ludicrous. Nonetheless, it made a nice story—a white president at the top of the socio-economic ladder championing the cause of an African-American who began life at the bottom of it. That Thomas could ascend to one of the highest, most respected positions in the land was an American Dream in the making.

What was a more remarkable story was that Anita Hill would risk her stature as a law professor at the University of Oklahoma and step into the fray. But she did, and she got burned.

And perhaps the guy most responsible for impugning her character was conservative journalist David Brock. In his best-selling book, "The Real Anita Hill," Brock attacked Hill’s credibility. One of Brock’s turns of phrase often quoted was that Hill "was a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty."

In an article published last week in Talk magazine, Brock states that he lied in print to protect Thomas’s reputation. Brock states he did everything he could to "ruin Hill’s credibility," using "virtually every derogatory and often contradictory allegation I had collected on Hill into the vituperative mix. I demonized Democratic senators, their staffs, and Hill’s feminist supporters without ever interviewing any of them."

In the article, Brock also alleges that Justice Thomas, through a Washington lawyer, Mark Paoletta, provided him with damaging information about a woman who was to testify in support of Hill’s harassment charges. Last week, the New York Times contacted the woman, Kaye Savage. She confirmed that Brock had tried to intimidate her with embarrassing information having to do with her divorce, information she said only Hill and Thomas were privy to.

In a 1994 review of the book "Strange Justice" by two Wall Street Journal reporters, Brock wrote that there was no evidence Thomas had "ever rented one pornographic video, let alone was a habitual consumer of pornography."

In the Talk article, Brock writes, "When I wrote those words I knew they were false."

Brock happened to be in the center of the Clinton scandal as well. He wrote an article for The American Spectator in which he reported the accusations of Arkansas state troopers about Clinton’s private life. The piece was titled "Troopergate" and was prepared as part of The American Spectator’s "Arkansas Project," an effort funded by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife to look into Clinton’s personal life. It has been documented that Brock’s piece was paid for by the Arkansas Project budget, though the editors of Spectator deny this. The "Troopergate story was the breaking story of the Clinton saga.

Another figure in the Brock quagmire will be familiar to anyone who followed the recent election imbroglio—Ted Olson, the current Solicitor General and Bush’s legal counsel before the Supreme Court. Olson is a longtime friend of Independent Prosecutor Kenneth Starr and represented former judge David Hale during the Whitewater affair. Olson’s wife Barbara was a nightly fixture on the pundit television shows during the Starr investigation and the Florida election fight.

Brock told a Judiciary Committee staff member and the Washington Post that Ted Olson was a key player in the Arkansas Project.

In the Talk article, Brock writes, "I had stumbled onto something big, a symbiotic relationship that would help create a highly profitable right-wing Big Lie Machine that flourished in book publishing, on talk radio, and on the Internet throughout the 90s."

It is entirely possible that Brock is lying now rather than then. He is writing a book, after all, and money is involved. Still, a journalist who admits he lied in print can hardly expect to take that currency to the bank. It’s hard to imagine his career flourishing as a result of this confession.

Suffice to say that the web of deceit, power plays and pay-back is far more intricate than any of us outside the Washington Beltway could imagine. Given the complexity of all these relationships, it seems even harder to know who is lying and who is telling the truth. One thing seems clear: The people we elect to represent us in Washington play for keeps. And they’re good at it. Here it is 10 years later and it’s not entirely clear what the truth is about Clarence Thomas.

One would hope that an undisputed truth will surface sooner or later. Meanwhile, Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas carry on. Thomas continues to serve on the court, rarely asking questions during oral arguments and even more rarely writing opinions. He seems to be content following Justice Scalia’s lead. That the current President Bush has referred to Justice Thomas as a model judge is hard to fathom.

Maybe the President’s reasoning will become clear as he begins to fill more federal judgeships, an estimated 11% of all existing ones before his first term is up. Given the stalemate in the Congress and the split electorate, it may be that the ultimate battleground for power over the next four years will be in the judicial branch of government. No doubt it will be a dramatic debate, though unlikely a healthy one.

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