Hill Will Face ‘Very Forceful,’ Tough Queries

When Anita Faye Hill is grilled by Republican senators this week on her sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, she will be asked “whether she finds a dirty joke sexual harassment or merely off-color.”

She also will be asked how much wine she drank at a dinner where Thomas, who was then her boss, allegedly made offensive sexual remarks, an aide to Senate GOP Whip Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming said Wednesday.

“She can expect very forceful and direct questions,” Simpson’s press secretary, Stan Cannon, told reporters in laying out the hardball strategy at least some Republicans plan to counter Hill’s allegations at Senate Judiciary Committee hearings.

“She will see very prosecutorial questioning on inconsistencies, although she will be treated with the utmost respect she deserves,” he said.

The aide’s comments came after Simpson told the Senate on Tuesday night, when it delayed a confirmation vote on Thomas for one week, that Hill “will be injured and destroyed and belittled and hounded and harassed” at the hearings.

He said later that the remark was meant not as a threat but as an observation on “plain old Washington-variety harassment.”

A top aide to the Senate Republican leadership confirmed that Hill will face tough questioning. “That’s the whole ballgame. Whether she likes it or not, she’s going to make or break Clarence Thomas. Nobody going to the Hill under those circumstances should expect to get off easy. The questioning will be wide open. This will be like a courtroom proceeding. The stakes are very high, and the questions will be very hard.”

Thomas’ Democratic opponents on the committee also are expected to ask tough questions, boring in on the nominee’s flat denials of harassment in what could become a rough-and-tumble affair.

However, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a former prosecutor, cautioned both sides: “Anybody who thinks they are Perry Mason with the greatest hardball question in the world better watch out for answers that floor them, because demeanor is something that’s going to be important here.”

Cannon said that Thomas’ supporters fear that Hill, an articulate University of Oklahoma law professor, “will come off looking like another Ollie North.” He was referring to Iran-Contra figure Oliver L. North, who emerged almost a folk hero during televised hearings in 1987.

But, he added quickly, they have confidence that Thomas, an equally articulate federal judge and former top official at two government agencies, “will be more of an Ollie North than she’ll ever be.”

The Republicans’ main objective is to keep the hearings narrowly focused on Hill’s charges, to prevent the proceedings from further delaying a confirmation vote and to “keep nuts from coming out of the woodwork, giving testimony that creates the wrong impression,” Cannon said.

The Republicans’ biggest concern is that Democratic opponents will come up with another woman or two who makes allegations similar to Hill’s.

“If that doesn’t happen, it’s in the bag” the aide said. “But if it does, we’ll never see (Thomas’ Democratic supporters) again. They can send us a postcard.”

Cannon said that Republicans figure they have temporarily lost nine of the 14 Democratic senators who had announced last week that they intended to join 41 Republicans in voting for Thomas.

Leahy, like Simpson a member of the Judiciary Committee, said in an interview that he knows of no new witnesses ready to bring fresh charges against Thomas. He also said Democrats and Republicans had agreed to exchange witness lists so that there would be no surprises.

Democrats said little about their strategy for the hearings, which are expected to begin Friday and continue Saturday and Monday. An aide to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said that, besides Thomas and Hill and any corroborating witnesses, “there will be some character witnesses. But we want to try to keep out the nuns and law professors” who have no direct knowledge of the allegations.

Cannon said that among those Republicans who want to testify are people “who worked for Thomas over a period of time so that we can prove a pattern of fairness.”

He said Republicans would zero in on “huge inconsistencies” by Hill, who, according to Simpson, had dinner with Thomas on the evening of her last day of work at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he headed. Although Simpson did not identify the source for that information, he apparently read it in an FBI report that was available to all senators.

“Were (offensive) things said over salad or dessert? Was there any drinking? Does she recall details of other dinners with other people 10 years ago?” Cannon asked.