Committee Showdown Adds to Thomas’ Pain : Accusations: Day begins with ‘moving’ denial. But nominee’s trying times continue as Hill testifies.

If the days were growing darker for Clarence Thomas, barbed with hurt and pain and agony as he told the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday, this must have been the darkest day of all--with millions of Americans hearing him accused of shaming the ears of a young woman with lewd and despicable talk.

For a short while, the day had looked brighter.

Thomas, President Bush’s nominee for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court, had delivered an impassioned speech to the committee denying all accusations of sexual harassment. Even Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who opposes the nomination, pronounced Thomas’ defense as “moving.”

“From the very beginning,” the nominee told the committee, “charges were leveled against me from the shadows, charges of drug abuse, anti-Semitism, wife beating, drug use by family members, that I was a quota appointment, confirmation conversion, and much, much more. And now, this.

”. . . I have endured this ordeal for 103 days. Reporters sneaking into my garage to examine books I read. Reporters and interest groups swarming over divorce papers looking for dirt. Unnamed people starting preposterous and damaging rumors. Calls all over the country specifically requesting dirt.

“This is not American,” he went on. “This is Kafkaesque. It has got to stop. It must stop for the benefit of future nominees and our country. Enough is enough.”

After Thomas left the Senate Caucus Room with his wife and his mentor, Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), to rest in the senator’s office, Prof. Anita Faye Hill took the nominee’s place at the green-covered witness table.

Never before, in her written statements to the committee, in her oral report to the FBI, in her news conferences, had Hill been as explicit as she was in her testimony. She said that Thomas, while her boss at two government agencies, had plied her with tales of pornographic films about a large-breasted woman engaged in animal and group sex and a male character of extraordinary physical attribute known as “Long Dong Silver.” Thomas, she said, had boasted of the size of his penis and his prowess in sexual activity.

These graphic accusations, disgusting and humiliating if true, even more terrible if invented, could drive nothing but pain into Thomas.

During his first testimony to the committee a month ago, Thomas, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, had been accused of evasiveness. It was widely assumed that White House handlers had coached him to say as little as possible in the hearings.

This time, Thomas insisted, there were “no handlers, no advisers.” No one except his wife, Virginia Lamp, an assistant secretary of labor, and Danforth had read Thomas’ opening statement before the start of the hearings at 10 a.m. Thomas, in fact, had telephoned Danforth at 6:30 a.m. to read him the statement.

When Thomas walked through the lobby to the Senate Caucus Room, some of his supporters had cheered and applauded. But the judge’s mood was not buoyant. His demeanor was far different from what it had been a month ago. Gone were his broad smile and good-humored manner.

When Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) opened the hearings, Thomas, clasping his hands near his chin, listened stolidly and almost impassively, only the tapping of his foot and the darting of his eyes betraying nervousness.

Thomas began his statement almost hesitantly, but his voice grew stronger as he denied the charges and angrily denounced the ordeal of his confirmation hearings. Describing days that “have grown darker,” he told the senators, “I have never in all my life felt such hurt, such pain, such agony.”

As passion tinged his voice, it sounded for a few brief moments as if he intended to throw the nomination back into the face of his tormentors or, at least, to refuse to reply to any more questions.

“I’m not going to allow myself to be further humiliated in order to be confirmed,” he said. “I am here specifically to respond to allegations of sex harassment in the work place. I am not here to be further humiliated by this committee or anyone else or to put my life on display for prurient interests or other reasons.

”. . . No job is worth what I have been through--no job. No horror in my life has been so debilitating. Confirm me if you want. Don’t confirm me if you are so led but let this process end. Let me and my family regain our lives.”

When the committee decided to hear the detailed accusations of Hill before questioning Thomas, the nominee and his wife left with Danforth before the accuser entered the Senate Caucus Room.

As he left the hearing room, some of his supporters surrounded him, reaching to hug and kiss him.

During the day, Thomas reportedly received a message from President Bush that told him to “hang in there.” When Thomas returned to the Senate Caucus Room for the rare evening hearing, he was in an angry mood, denouncing the proceedings as “a travesty . . . a circus . . . a national disgrace . . . a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks.”

He told the committee that he had not watched Hill’s testimony on television because “I’ve heard enough lies” but had received summaries of what she said.