2nd Woman Expected to Testify Against Thomas : Judiciary: Ex-EEOC aide is believed to have told investigators court nominee had made sexual comments.

In a highly charged confrontation to be played out today before a national television audience, a second woman who worked with Clarence Thomas is expected to join law professor Anita Faye Hill in telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Supreme Court nominee made sexual comments to her while they worked together at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The witness, Angela Wright, is believed to have told Senate investigators that she never considered Thomas’ behavior to be sexual harassment. But she was quoted Thursday night as saying that she is coming forward because her knowledge of “circumstances where Clarence Thomas was out of line and said things that were inappropriate” lends credibility to Hill’s allegations.

A knowledgeable source said Wright told the investigators that in 1984 and 1985, while she was serving as director of public affairs at the EEOC and he was head of the agency, Thomas pressured her for dates, asked her what her breast size was and showed up uninvited at her apartment.

With Thomas’ confirmation--considered certain only days ago--now hanging in the balance, the emergence of a new witness capped a day of frantic maneuvering Thursday for advantage by his supporters and opponents as they prepared for what both see as a decisive and politically dangerous face-off between the nominee and his accusers.

Republicans and Democrats, meeting in separate Senate caucus rooms just down a marbled hall from the chamber where crews were setting up equipment for live television coverage of today’s hearing, haggled until nearly midnight over the rules that will govern the proceedings.

The White House, which sought to keep a low profile throughout the day, said it had been told Thursday night that a new witness will testify against Thomas but said that “Judge Thomas will deal with the allegations in the course of the hearings.”

The embattled Supreme Court nominee will be the lead witness this morning, followed immediately by Hill, according to a Democratic aide to the committee.

Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) said that Thomas asked to speak first because Hill had “gone first since Monday and he’s never said a word.”

Hill, the former EEOC aide whose accusations stopped a Thomas confirmation vote earlier this week, is expected to detail her charges that Thomas harassed her with explicit descriptions of sexual activity.

Wright, who is 37 years old and is now an editor at the Charlotte Observer in Charlotte, N.C., is expected to tell the committee that Thomas also made sexual approaches to her. But she was quoted in today’s editions of the Observer as saying that she regarded the behavior as no more than “annoying and obnoxious”--”not something that intimidated or frightened me.”

And Republican supporters of Thomas immediately attacked Wright’s credibility. Simpson, a key Thomas supporter, said Thursday evening that Thomas had fired Wright from the EEOC for “some very uncomplimentary statements about certain groups in society.”

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) dismissed the efforts by Democrats to call Wright to testify against Thomas as “just another act to smear him that’s been dragged up by people who now have to get him.”

The White House declined to discuss details of the case but noted pointedly that the committee had not asked the FBI to question the new witness, as would be “the normal practice” in such proceedings. Committee sources said that committee aides questioned Wright by telephone but under oath.

While Wright’s testimony could add credibility to Hill’s claims about sexual harassment, it could backfire if she proves a less credible witness than Hill and thus provides a new and more vulnerable target for Thomas’ supporters, who are expected to contend that the allegations are not believable.

A source said that Wright and Thomas had personal ties before she joined the EEOC and that there are conflicting accounts over which of them sought to end the relationship. The surfacing of the allegations marked another dramatic turn in a confirmation process that has become highly partisan since it was stalled earlier this week by the disclosure of Hill’s accusations. Neil Mara, government editor of the Observer, said that Wright was first approached by lawyers for the committee on Wednesday and gave a sworn telephone deposition to them Thursday. Wright said in an interview with the Observer that her motivation in coming forward was not to keep Thomas off the court.

“I’m saying I think this woman is credible and this is why I think she’s credible,” she was quoted as saying.

In response to the new charges, Hatch, another of Thomas’ chief defenders on the panel, denounced what he called “sleazy activities” by the nominee’s opponents and charged that Democrats are “scared to death . . . to do anything that smacks of modest credibility in this matter.”

The last-minute bickering between Republicans and Democrats left unresolved whether the committee should hear from witnesses in addition to Thomas, Hill and Wright.

Democrats have proposed that American University law professor Joel Paul and Susan J. Hoerchner, a Yale Law School classmate of Hill’s, be allowed to testify that Hill told them of being sexually harassed at the EEOC years ago.

Republicans contend that the request violates an agreement to exclude character witnesses.

With the hearings now expected to continue through the weekend and to include prolonged questioning from teams of three senators designated by each party, Simpson declared that the hearings could turn into “a Roman circus.”

He disclosed that senators now were negotiating to allow all 14 members of the panel to ask at least some questions.

On the issue of Wright’s credibility, Ricky Silberman, then and now vice chairman of the EEOC and a strong Thomas supporter, said Thursday night that she had complained repeatedly to Thomas in early 1985 that Wright was incompetent.

“I may well be the reason that Clarence fired her,” said Silberman, who joined the commission as a Ronald Reagan appointee in December, 1984. “I considered her to be an incompetent (person) in press relations and I kept complaining to Clarence.”

According to EEOC officials, Wright came to the commission as a “Schedule C” political appointee. One official thought that she may have been recommended for the job of press relations by the Republican National Committee. She was not protected by civil service.

Silberman said that, after a March, 1985, press conference went awry, she blamed Wright and went into Thomas’ office and said: “Clarence, when are you going to get yourself a press person?”

“All right, this is it. I’ll fire her,” Thomas said, according to Silberman’s recollection. Silberman said that her distinct impression was that Thomas did not like Wright. But she said he was reluctant to fire her out of kindness.

Before becoming an assistant metropolitan editor at the Observer, Wright worked as managing editor of the Winston-Salem Chronicle, a black-owned newspaper in Winston-Salem, N.C. Republican congressional sources said that she had previously been dismissed from the staff of Rep. Charlie Rose (D-N. C.) and forced to resign from a State Department job where she was director of a news and media office for the Agency for International Development.

But her current boss at the Observer defended her.

“In nearly two years at the Observer, Angela has been a strong editor and shown solid judgment under pressure,” said Jane Shoemaker, managing editor of the paper. “She’s independent, she tells people what she thinks. We support her.”

The last-minute disclosure of new testimony against Thomas comes only three days after the Senate was set to narrowly confirm the 43-year black conservative to a lifetime seat on the nation’s highest court.

Hill’s accusations that Thomas repeatedly made sexually explicit comments to her transformed the confirmation fight into a test of character for an embarrassed Senate and drew men and women nationwide into a debate over sexual harassment.

On Capitol Hill, Thomas’ backers said that the key audience for the hearing will be nine Democrats. With 41 secure Republicans, Thomas needs to convince only a handful of Democrats that the charges are false. If so, he could still win confirmation next week by a narrow margin.

But the ultimate jury will be the American public. The major television networks said that they will broadcast live coverage of the hearings. When Thomas “looks the American people in the eye” to deny the charges, as Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.) promised he will do, millions of viewers will be watching and gauging his truthfulness.

Several news organizations plan to survey the public’s response to the testimony and the national verdict will be known by Tuesday, when the Senate is scheduled to vote.

On the eve of the special hearings, no one was predicting the outcome, except to suggest that both Thomas and Hill will be scarred by the confrontation.

“In the end, it will still be one person’s word against another,” said Hatch, a staunch supporter of Thomas. “But neither of them is going to walk out of here a whole person. They’re both going to be badly damaged.”

In mid-September, Thomas spent five days on the witness chair in the ornate Senate Caucus Room, the scene of past dramas, such as the Watergate hearings in 1974 and Lt. Col. Oliver L. North’s testimony in the Iran-Contra affair in 1987.

Grilled on his legal views, Thomas stumbled often and, indeed, denied having views on themost pressing issues of the day, such as the right to abortion. But Thomas won plaudits even from his critics for his personal triumph over poverty and racism and for his strength of character.

But now, Thomas faces an even tougher test, since his character and credibility are now at issue. If Hill’s accusations stand up to scrutiny before the committee, it will mean that Thomas, while serving as the nation’s top enforcer of laws against sex discrimination and harassment, engaged in sexist behavior that may have violated those laws.

Among other developments Thursday:

--The 14-member Judiciary Committee chose six members to do the questioning of Hill and then Thomas. They were Democrats Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, Howell Heflin of Alabama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Republicans Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Hatch.

As former prosecutors, Leahy and Specter are seen by their colleagues as the most adept interrogators on the committee. “One of them sees this entirely different from the other, and they both can’t be right,” Leahy said.

--Several women who worked closely with Thomas in the past came forward to say they had never seen any hint that he would harass or mistreat a woman. “It is inconceivable to me . . . that he could have engaged in the conduct that’s alleged,” said Pamela Talkin, who served as Thomas’ chief of staff for three years.

“I saw his outrage if he had even a whiff of impropriety on the part of any of the men in our agency, and I know the action he took. And, frankly, I know stronger actions he would have taken, if castration were legal,” Talkin said.

--The White House continued to walk a fine line, giving Thomas strong public support while stopping short of criticizing Hill or her charges of sexual harassment. “I support him 100%,” President Bush said again. “I am absolutely convinced he will be confirmed.” But Bush’s aides said they could not support Thomas by attacking Hill.

“If you even in a general way appear to denigrate this woman,” one official said, “then you may be seen to be hostile to women’s rights and their personal feelings about this issue.”

--Republican political advisers said they fear that Thomas’ cause may be all but lost. “It is sad, sad, sad, but I think he’s gone,” one Republican consultant said. “The minute you have to make the case you are honest, people have to wonder,” Republican adviser Eddie Mahe said. “It’s like Sen. William Scott’s press conference a few years ago to deny that he was the dumbest man in the Senate.”

--To win his confirmation, White House aides said that Thomas has to deflect the female anger over sexual harassment by making clear that he finds such behavior repugnant. “This guy is being made to pay for 2,000 years of male piggery,” one Republican insider said. “If the Thomas vote becomes a referendum on whether senators take sexual harassment seriously,” another well-placed Republican said, “then he’s in big trouble.”

A University of Oklahoma law professor, Hill arrived in Washington Wednesday night and huddled Thursday with a quickly formed legal team. Georgetown University law professor Susan Deller Ross, a national expert on sex discrimination, along with Phoenix lawyers John Frank and Janet Napolitano were said to be working with Hill.

Hoerchner, who attended the Yale Law School with Hill, would be expected to testify that Hill once confided that she had been sexually harassed while working at the EEOC, sources said. Paul could testify that Hill told him in 1987 that she had been harassed while at the EEOC.

Their testimony could bolster her presentations by showing that her complaints against Thomas were not recently conceived, but rather that she had been troubled for years by his behavior. Hill’s 79-year old parents, along with her brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, are expected to be in the hearing room to offer her support.

The Republicans, led by Specter, are expected to press Hill on three points: Why did she wait 10 years to report the incidents of sexual harassment? If she were harassed by Thomas while working at the Department of Education, why did she follow him to the EEOC? And why did she maintain “a cordial relationship” with him by calling him on the phone in recent years?

Thomas’ supporters admit that they face a dilemma. If Hill’s story is not shaken, Thomas will have a nearly impossible task of “proving a negative,” as one said.

On the other hand, the senators cannot sharply interrogate Hill without renewing charges that they are insensitive to sexual harassment.

“You can’t deal with charges of sexual harassment by harassing her as a witness,” said Democratic political consultant Robert Shrum.

Through much of the day, committee Democrats and staff aides huddled in meetings, refusing to discuss their plans or even to report who would be called as witnesses.

At the White House, Bush was said to be angry that the Senate Democrats probably leaked the last-minute disclosures that could scuttle the Thomas nomination. By a coincidence of scheduling, Bush addressed the Religious Alliance Against Pornography for the finale of a two-day Washington conference.

“This horror must stop,” Bush said of pornography. “It abuses, it degrades and insults both women and men.”

No mention was made of the fact that Thomas stands accused of having described in detail pornographic movies he had watched.

Contributing to this story were staff writers Douglas Jehl, Tom Rosenstiel, Paul Houston and Edwin Chen, Douglas Frantz.