Speaking Truth to Power (37 page)

“Mary Brown” was the name that appeared on my chart. It was the unimaginative choice I had chosen to register under in an effort to avoid pity for me, intrusion, or speculation about my condition. So, on the morning of December 20, when the press descended on the hospital, after some initial concern, I was certain that it was not for me. It turned out that Governor David Walters’ son, Shawn, had been brought to the hospital after an attempted suicide. From my window I could see the entrance to the hospital, where the press milled about relentlessly. My nurses complained that they couldn’t even enter the building without encountering cameras and reporters. From my vantage point, watching the mayhem, I could empathize, in a small way, with the intrusion the Walters family must be experiencing as Shawn Walters clung to his life before dying a few days later. The press was there throughout. Shawn’s tragic death was the culmination of all the pressures placed on the
twenty-one-year-old, not the least of which was the continual press attention to his personal difficulties. The value of privacy is grossly underestimated until it’s been stolen from you.

I went home on Saturday, December 21—at the height of the holiday season. The reds and greens of the holiday meant little to me, the gray, damp December weather itself a better match for my disposition. On Christmas Day my mother, Ray, and I said grace over a quiet Christmas dinner. Though I admittedly had much to be thankful for, I felt little cheer and a small portion of the gratitude I had felt at Thanksgiving. For the first time in memory, my mother and father were apart at Christmas. JoAnn had picked my father up at the farm, and he had had Christmas dinner with her family in Tulsa. The week following Christmas passed and my mood changed only a little, though I attempted to be cheerful and gracious for my mother’s benefit and those who came to visit me.

Because my mother does not drive and the doctor had advised me not to, we were housebound, a condition which I do not tolerate gladly. The expenses for my family’s trip to Washington were mounting and with the recuperation came the time to consider the experience of the hearing. Back to me came the feeling that I had had as a child—the year of my father’s injury and my aunt’s death, the year we waited to learn whether my brother John would be sent to fight in Southeast Asia.

I was hurting, both emotionally and physically, and I was angry. “Why did they do this to me?” I asked myself. I was sure that nobody had an answer, least of all my friends and family. I prayed, mostly out of hope, but partly out of spite, that I would survive. Mostly, I wanted my life back for my sake, but, in addition, I was determined that my detractors would not have the satisfaction of stealing it.

On New Year’s Day Mama found a long-forgotten bag of black-eyed peas in the cupboard, and the two of us brought in the year in a traditional way. “Do you think they’re still good?” I questioned skeptically, recalling that Eric had sold them to me many years ago as part of a church fund-raising project. “We’ll soon find out,” was my mother’s response. In Owasso, JoAnn prepared the “good luck” peas for my father when he arrived on the farm with his delivery. Her husband, Jerry, made
the corn bread to go with them. Again my parents were apart, but in spirit the family was together.

Gradually, my family, friends, and the hundreds of holiday cards and greetings I got from people around the country lifted me from the dark gray corner of my mind. Someone sent me a tape of Truman Capote reading “A Christmas Memory,” in which a young boy and his cousin make fruitcakes for everyone they know, as well as Eleanor Roosevelt. It amused and touched me. Then someone else sent me fruitcakes as a gift, and despite my apprehension in face of the death threats, I ate some. Soon the stiffness and soreness lifted and my mobility returned.

An ever-attentive nurse, my mother did not share my belief in the possibility of an expedited recovery. Dr. Gibbs had said that I could return to work six weeks after the surgery. Until then, she instructed me to be mobile but cautious. While Mama erred on the side of caution, I erred on the side of mobility. At my urging, a few days after New Year’s, my mother and I took a walk in the neighborhood. I overdid it, all the time hoping to hide my grimaces. I was successful in the deception, and the walk convinced her that I was well enough to be left alone. She returned home, and within three days I boarded an airplane for San Antonio, Texas, for the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools.

The trip did wonders for my spirits but, in fact, set back my recovery. Still, all things considered, it was a worthwhile junket. The collegiality which I always experienced at this meeting had special meaning coming within months of the hearing. The minority law teachers’ section, of which I was a member, and also the women’s section, of which I was not a member, honored me with two presentations. The warmth and the camaraderie expressed at those functions belied the stereotypical image of law professors. The issue and the event touched the human side of all of us, and these individuals seemed happy to have that side exposed.

Best of all, much of the legal team was reunited. Emma Coleman Jordan had organized a reception for the team, which grew to include a hundred or so of the law professors present at the meeting. Professor Jordan, there with her husband, Don, and two children, Kristen and
Allison, was about to take over the position of president of the association. This responsibility followed a year as president-elect which included her participation in the hearing. In addition to her official responsibilities, she pulled together a gathering of friends and supporters with seeming ease, just as she had pulled together the legal team.

The outgoing president, Guido Calabresi, then the dean of the Yale Law School, was present at the reception as well. Dean Calabresi had testified in support of Thomas’ nomination in the first round of the hearing at the urging of Senator Danforth, another Yale Law School graduate. In short, Calabresi sought to convince the Judiciary Committee that Thomas had the capacity to grow into the role of associate justice. His was certainly no ringing endorsement of the nomination, but coming from a dean of a prestigious law school it was important.

I had known Dean Calabresi since he taught me torts in my first year of law school. As a professor he was a favorite among first-year law students, perhaps because he was more spontaneous in the classroom than his colleagues. Yale being the kind of school that it is and my being in the same profession as Calabresi meant that we saw each other from time to time professionally. I was fond of him, and when we saw each other, he seemed to be sincerely interested in my welfare. In the nearly twelve years since I graduated from law school, I had not returned, however, to New Haven. What, exactly, he thought of the Thomas nomination at the time of his testimony or even on that evening, I do not know. (Rumor has it that he called Danforth during the hearing and tried to dissuade him from smearing me.) That evening he seemed genuinely disturbed by the debacle which had unfolded in October 1991. And he delivered an invitation, partly at the encouragement of the students, for me to speak at Yale.

Like Professor Jordan, many of the members of my legal team were law professors. Professors Susan Deller Ross, Kim Taylor, Charles Ogletree, Shirley Wiegand, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Tania Banks had all been present in Washington and were now reunited in San Antonio. The occasion took on a lighthearted tone, though I suspect that what we were all feeling as much as anything was relief that the grueling process
was over. I was also proud and grateful that they had helped me through it.

C
lasses began on January 13, 1992, and back in the classroom and into a routine, my emotional and physical recovery inched forward. As the spring of 1992 approached, I realized that I was destined to relive the uncertainty and turmoil of the summer and fall of 1991 all over again. After some consideration, I decided to decline all of the invitations to appear on talk shows. The usual format they followed did not lend itself to helpful discussion about the issue. My presence would have only made matters more volatile. Moreover, I was sure that the focus would be the politics of the nomination or the personalities of Judge Thomas and me. I wanted to talk about harassment. Of all the hosts, Phil Donahue and his producer seemed the most sensitive and open to a change in format. Whether out of self-consciousness or mistrust, I declined their invitation as well. Directly following the hearing, neither I nor the public was ready to discuss the issue rationally. Still, if only partly to refute the idea that I had become a recluse, in January I granted an interview to Ed Bradley of
60 Minutes
. I had long admired his work, and he struck me as a sincere individual, less affected and more animated than most of his professional counterparts.

I did not relish being in front of the television camera and felt too self-conscious to enjoy the experience. Yet I was beginning to appreciate the value of a visual image. I had learned a lesson from the print media. No matter how provocative or inflammatory the question asked, what appeared in print was only the exasperated response, with the hostile question omitted or toned down to a gentler version. For example, before the hearing a reporter called me and told me that the Republicans were trying to say that I was pursuing Thomas by frequently talking to him and persistently telephoning him. “That’s garbage,” I responded. That statement was later characterized as a denial that I had called Thomas’ office. It was pitted against the telephone log which showed that I had called the office eleven times in ten years. Of course, the logs
did not show that I had actually talked to Thomas that number of times and revealed nothing about the business nature of the calls, and neither did the news stories. Yet my statement about the inferences being drawn from the logs was used to show my untruthfulness. So despite my discomfort with the television camera, I concluded that the format of even a taped and edited interview reduced the opportunity for a manipulation of the question and response.

The interview itself was less than satisfactory from my perspective and likely from that of the
60 Minutes
crew as well. Ed Bradley was relaxed and comfortable. His producers were courteous and professional. But it was only January, and I was still badly wounded and mistrustful of the press. I could not bring myself to discuss the pain from the hearing that had not ended in October but continued with attacks from local Republicans. The Senate investigation of the leak was still pending and I did not want to jeopardize it or myself. The positive impact of the letters and support I received and the sense of urgency that the stories of harassment generated in me were my only focus. I could not help feeling that, if people glimpsed the urgency that I felt from reading these letters, they, too, would see the need for remedy in these matters. In January 1992 I tried to show the public this in the interview, but was either unable to convey the message effectively or was addressing a television audience that was not ready for it.

Though the hearing was over, my contact with the Senate was not. On October 24, 1991, the Senate had passed Resolution 202, which called for the appointment of a “special independent counsel to investigate … recent unauthorized disclosures of nonpublic confidential information from Senate documents in connection with the … nomination of Clarence Thomas.” Less than two weeks after the vote to confirm Clarence Thomas, the Senate had taken swift and clear action to investigate “the leak” of my statement to the Senate. The pity was that they had not acted promptly in investigating my statement. When the investigation was announced, I got the clear impression that the establishment of the special counsel was as much to investigate me as it was to
investigate the leak. Peter Fleming’s appointment and the institution of the investigation only confirmed my feelings.

Through a contact from David Swank, Andrew Coats, an Oklahoma City attorney, volunteered to represent me in the investigation. Coats’ dual experience in criminal law and politics made him ideal for the job. From October, when the investigation was announced, until Fleming’s final report was issued in May, I felt as though I were under the continual scrutiny of the Senate. Resolution 202 called for the use of the FBI in Fleming’s investigation. The unprecedented way in which the White House used the agency during the hearing persuaded me that the Senate might misuse it again.

I met with Peter Fleming and his assistants twice in the winter and spring of 1992, first on February 11 and later on April 23. Held in Mr. Coats’ office, each meeting lasted approximately five hours. Fleming questioned me about where I had been and to whom I had spoken from July through October 6. He was particularly interested in telephone conversations. He asked me for the “records of all transmissions” of telecopy machines in the “University of Oklahoma Law School, or in the University Provost’s office”; “records of the Federal Express overnight service utilized by the University of Oklahoma Law School to the remainder of the country for the entire month of September and the first week of October”; and my home and office telephone records, as well as the “telephone records for every telephone at the University of Oklahoma Law School” for that time period.

I submitted all of my personal records to him, and Dean Swank and Provost Richard Gibson submitted their department’s records. He asked for specifics about calls to my parents and my sisters and colleagues with whom I had been in contact. I answered his questions thoroughly. Fleming questioned me about my statement, how it had been notarized, to whom I had given it. I answered and submitted the logs of the person who notarized my statement. Fleming questioned me about anyone whom I might have talked to about the statement and about people I never even knew—individuals associated with interest groups in Washington.
He interviewed my friends, colleagues, and members of the legal team—“every person [I] called during this period who would have been in a position to speak with the press.”

I had nothing to conceal and wanted to know the source of the leak. But I was certain that I was being forced to revisit this painful episode to satisfy the Republicans in the Senate who were offended on behalf of President Bush and Judge Thomas. They were still bent on some retribution for their embarrassment in having the claims reach the public. As I relived the experience, I was keenly aware of the fact that the special investigator neither questioned Judge Thomas nor requested his or Senator Danforth’s records. No one seemed concerned with my hurt or embarrassment.