Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [116]
That speech helped me to realize that I had not failed and neither had my witnesses. Nevertheless, the speech, as heartfelt and well delivered as it was, would neither lift the Republicans from the mire in which they willingly wallowed nor rally the Democrats to the higher cause of redeeming the nomination process. The fact was that the public had heard the cries of racism, perjury, conspiracy, and untruthfulness. And however unfounded, those cries hit their mark. Even had all dirt been cleared from the hearing room at that moment, it could not have been swept away from the public’s mind. Kennedy’s involvement in the recent rape trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, made him vulnerable, and the Republican senators could and would in the end dismiss his admonitions. With no Democrat on the hearing panel to take up the cause, Senator Kennedy’s speech was too little, too late.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
To know that Wells, Hoerchner, Paul, and Carr were willing to stake their reputations to testify was one of the most moving events of the hearing. But even before I knew of the investigations that were being conducted into their lives, I had decided that I could not ask any more of my friends to face the treatment that the Republicans had dealt out. Though several people had volunteered to come forward and vouch for my character, I felt it would have been a senselessly brutal act to send them into the hearing. Tactically, some felt this was a mistake. But I do not believe that another panel would have convinced the committee, and by late Sunday afternoon, the time allowed for the hearing was drawing to an end.
The only witness whose testimony could have been crucial whom the committee hadn’t called was Angela Wright. Hearing from her would be far more significant than bringing on another panel of character witnesses for me. After all, this proceeding was about the question of Thomas’ behavior and character, not mine.
All weekend long we had waited to hear from Angela Wright, a woman at the EEOC whose experience with Thomas had been similar to mine. Even as late as Sunday afternoon, the committee’s chairman was uncertain about the remaining course of the proceeding. But what happened in fact differed from what Biden had previously outlined. Angela Wright never appeared. She had been subjected to attacks about her credibility even though she had not been called. Judge Thomas himself had said that she was a “worthless” employee whom he had to fire. Various panel members described her as disgruntled and her testimony as unreliable. We heard a variety of stories about why she did not testify. The one offered the most was that Wright had gotten cold feet and was afraid of being exposed by the Republicans. Later we learned that the stories we heard had been untrue. It was Chairman Biden himself who withdrew Wright’s subpoena.
What appears to have happened was that the committee simply refused to call her. The chairman claimed that they had run out of time, even as panels of women testifying for Thomas continied to appear. Again the committee’s action raises the question of relevance. Like the testimony of John Doggett and many of the quotes from newspapers, the comments from women claiming that Thomas had behaved inoffensively toward them were simply irrelevant to the question of whether he had behaved offensively toward me. Since I had not claimed that Thomas treated all of the women on his staff in a sexual manner, in a legal proceeding on sexual harassment their testimony would not have been admitted. I can think of no legal proceeding or quasi-legal proceeding where persons who are not victims of an alleged offender are called to testify that they were nonvictims of the offense.
Angela Wright’s testimony, on the other hand, was relevant for several reasons. In the face of my testimony, Thomas had claimed that he