Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [113]
Paul Minor: “Are you lying to me about the various topics that Clarence Thomas mentioned to you regarding specific sexual acts?”
Anita Hill: “No.”
Paul Minor: “Are you lying to me about Clarence Thomas making references to you about the size of his penis?”
Anita Hill: “No.”
Interspersed among these relevant questions were control questions. Over and again for thirty minutes we each took our turn, Minor, then me, then the machine—my credibility, perhaps even my sanity, were measured. “Let’s take a break,” he said halfway through, but shortly thereafter we began the routine again. At the end, he excused me while he read the graph to detect deception in my responses to the questions.
I rejoined Shirley, Tree, and Ray, who had been waiting in one of the offices on that floor and we vainly attempted conversation. After a while, Mr. Minor called Charles Ogletree in to discuss the examination results. He had found no indication of deception. When I saw the look of relief on Tree’s face as Minor reported the results, I got my first glimpse of the anxiety he’d gone through in asking me to undergo the polygraph examination. Despite any confidence he had in me, he, too, must have known that the examination could not remain secret. We were both overjoyed that it was over and pleased at the outcome. Minor and Ogletree planned a press conference to announce the results of the examination.
Within minutes of completing the polygraph examination, I was back in the car. For a brief period I enjoyed the free feeling one feels out of doors before we retraced our route and returned to my hotel room—the sanctuary that was quickly becoming a prison. I rushed straight to the television, concerned that I may have missed something of importance. Because the scheduling of testimony had been haphazard, I was uncertain what I had missed. Fortunately, the committee conducted little business in the morning, so that we returned in time to see the end of the testimony of the panel of my friends, the corroborating witnesses.
For about an hour they had been testifying that I had told them of Thomas’ behavior well before the confirmation process began. The hostility to them had soon become apparent. “I want to know,” demanded Senator Charles Grassley, Republican from Iowa, “do you want to see Judge Thomas on the Supreme Court? And I would start with you, Judge Hoerchner.”
“Senator, I am only here to tell the truth about what I was told back in the early 1980s. You have heard the truth today, and it is up to you to decide what to do with it,” the judge responded.
Senator Grassley continued his search for political animus. “Ellen Wells?”
“I echo what the judge says. I am here to give you this information that I know to be the truth, and for me to sit here and to say what my personal opinions may be about Judge Thomas’s qualifications for the Supreme Court, I think would not be appropriate, it would not answer to what I am here for,” Ellen Wells offered.
“Professor Paul?” the senator asked, moving on to the third panelist, law professor Joel Paul.
“Senator, as a legal scholar and an attorney, I have been asked the question many times prior to these allegations, whether or not Judge Thomas should be confirmed. I did not take a position then, I am not taking a position now. I am simply here to tell the truth about what I was told by Professor Hill four years ago, that she was sexually harassed by her supervisor at the EEOC,” Paul explained.
This response seemed to provoke the senator more than any. “I am kind of puzzled. If you have reason to believe that Judge Thomas is a sexual harasser or guilty of sexual harassment, why wouldn’t you sign a letter against the nomination?”
“First of all, Senator, I was asked to sign a letter prior to these allegations. Second of all, Senator, I believe that Professor Hill told me the truth in 1987, but I believe that you, Senator, and the other members of this committee sitting here trying to determine the facts should wait to hear all the evidence, before making a determination.