NEWS ANALYSIS : Democrats Failed to Protect Hill From GOP : Hearings: Some leading members of party are outraged by behavior of colleagues on panel. Jesse Jackson says charge of racism paralyzed senators.

Senate Democrats, after persuading Anita Faye Hill to testify about charges of sexual harassment against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, offered the University of Oklahoma law professor little protection from a slashing campaign orchestrated by the White House to impugn her character and portray her as a perjurer after she testified Friday.

The Democrats’ performance indirectly contributed to the apparent success of the Republican effort to discredit Hill and left some leading members of their own party as outraged by their conduct as by the Republicans’ attack, which Hill on Monday called “particularly reprehensible” and said had “deeply hurt and offended” her.

Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, blamed senators of both parties for putting on a hearing “that reminded me of a trial where someone accuses someone else of a sexual offense and then an attempt is made to destroy the character of the victim.”

And former Democratic Party Chairman John C. White said that the conduct of the Judiciary Committee “was outrageous on both sides, the character assassination of a person coming forward to testify and the Democrats’ sitting there and letting that occur--I’m not sure which is the greatest outrage.”

The GOP blitz, hastily organized by White House aides after what they considered devastating testimony by Hill last Friday, was judged so successful at the White House that sources who earlier had feared disaster were confidently predicting Monday night that the Senate will confirm Thomas when it votes at 3 p.m. PDT today.

Normally, congressional hearings into highly controversial matters are closely balanced adversarial proceedings, with representatives of each side vigorously attacking unfriendly witnesses and defending those they consider friendly. The Democrats, who command a clear majority in the Senate and on each committee, were positioned to do that this time.

And the Republicans were so taken aback by Hill’s dramatic testimony against Thomas, and by the firestorm of sympathetic concern that her allegations had stirred among women, that they initially hesitated to attack the 35-year-old law professor.

White House strategists concluded, however, that the only hope of salvaging the nomination lay in mounting an all-out assault on her credibility.

The White House effort was directed by Ken Duberstein, a Washington lobbyist who was a presidential assistant for congressional relations in the Ronald Reagan Administration. Jim Lake, a GOP operative who discussed strategy with Duberstein, said that, after Hill’s testimony, “the crisis evolved fast” and the Republicans felt they had to move quickly to undermine her.

An Administration official confirmed that the hard-line tactics were adopted late Friday. “It was pretty dismal around here,” the official said. “She was quite credible. She put on a good show, and it was difficult to come to terms with.”

At that point, he said, it became “pretty obvious what had to be done. The only thing you can do when you’ve got unsubstantiated and unprovable claims is to cast doubt on the person making the claims.”

Among those who were hastily recruited to help was J. Michael Luttig, considered one of the brainiest Administration appointees in the Justice Department. It was only two months ago that the Senate confirmed Luttig’s nomination as a judge on the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Luttig, a former special assistant to former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, has not yet resigned his post as assistant attorney general in charge of legal counsel.

Although the official insisted that the White House strategy represented no “grand scheme,” some of President Bush’s closest political advisers and allies, including Duberstein and Sens. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), were the driving forces in the campaign.

And the Democrats’ reluctance to make an all-out defense of Hill or to attack Thomas, especially after he presented himself as a victim of character assassination and a “hi-tech lynching,” gave committee Republicans almost a free hand in carrying out the White House strategy.

Indeed, so quiescent were the Democrats that Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) joked at one point that he was one of the panel’s “potted plants,” a comment that brought laughter from the hearing room. The comment had a particularly ironic ring in the Senate Caucus Room because it was there, during his tenacious defense of Oliver L. North during the Iran-Contra hearings, that attorney Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. said he would not sit by like “a potted plant” while his client was being attacked.

“The Democrats were sitting there paralyzed as soon as he raised the issue of racism,” civil rights leader Jesse Jackson declared.

“President Bush dropped a hammer on this woman who was calm, composed, coherent and credible,” said Jackson, who plans to announce early next month whether he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination. “So where were the Democrats to defend her, those on the committee, and where was George Mitchell, the Senate Democratic leader?”

The Republicans’ battering of Hill’s credibility in the hearings Saturday and Sunday apparently was a factor in the decision by another committee witness, Angela Wright, a Charlotte, N.C., newspaper editor, to refuse to testify publicly about her own allegations that Thomas made unwanted sexual advances.

Wright had been prepared to appear, sources said, until Sen. Hatch warned that Wright would be in “trouble” if she appeared before the committee and Sen. Simpson declared caustically that she was getting “cold feet.”

Both Hill and Wright contended that Thomas had made unwanted sexual advances when they were working for him during his tenure as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Hill testified in detail that Thomas engaged in lewd sexual talk and overtures. Wright’s less explicitly descriptive allegations were made in a sworn statement to committee investigators that was made part of the record of the hearings.

Former Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr. of California, who plans to announce his presidential candidacy in Philadelphia Monday, accused the White House of “orchestrating a political circus” and said, “I’m sorry to say the Democrats are going along with it and with a lot of George Bush’s things.” Brown said that the committee’s performance “is another reason we’re going to have term limitation.”

One of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Howell Heflin of Alabama, said he felt that the American public should judge the Republicans’ attack on Hill and that, as a committee member, he had “tried to be fair to both Judge Thomas and Anita Hill.”

Heflin, one of the Democrats who voted against recommending confirmation of Thomas in the committee’s 7-7 tie vote on the issue, said that “a lot of people think Judge Thomas ought to be given the benefit of the doubt, but there are so many doubts about him that we ought not to gamble by putting him on the Supreme Court.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitchell said he would not “second-guess” the way the Democrats operated.

“I think the Democrats felt the way they handled it was appropriate under the circumstances,” he said. “I’m not a committee member and I don’t tell the committee members how to conduct their hearings. I believe it’s a matter of conscience for each Democrat to do what he thinks is right.”

An Administration official insisted that reports outlining the extensive behind-the-scenes role played by White House officials were “false,” saying: “The President didn’t personally approve any strategy against Anita Hill.

“Our strategy all along has been to show public support for Judge Thomas,” the official said, insisting on anonymity even in denying the reports. “Attacking Anita Hill has not been our strategy.”

Although direct attacks have not been part of public White House statements, Administration officials for more than a week played a private role in raising doubts about Hill’s story. The White House, for example, has provided reporters with the names and phone numbers of individuals who worked with Thomas and Hill at the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission and whose accounts support that of Thomas.

And the Administration official refused to answer directly when asked whether White House officials had played any role in gathering the evidence used against Hill by Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “They didn’t play any role in attacking Ms. Hill,” the official said.

As the vote by the full Senate approaches, Administration officials are arguing that the tradition of fairness in American law requires that Thomas be given the benefit of doubt and thus should be confirmed because the charges against him are unsubstantiated.

At the same time, they emphasized that polling data suggests that a majority--or at least a substantial plurality--of the public supports the Thomas nomination.

Despite the behind-the-scene efforts to cast doubt on Hill’s credibility, the White House has sought to avoid direct comment on what her motivation might be. While Bush’s aides were working to gather material to be used against Hill, the President spoke only of his faith in Thomas as he spent the weekend monitoring the hearings from his retreat at Camp David, Md.

However, in their private remarks, officials on Monday moved abruptly away from previous suggestions that Hill might have concocted the allegations as part of a political scheme aimed at forcing Thomas to withdraw his nomination.

In the significant shift, which one source conceded was a response to Hill’s success in passing a polygraph examination and to the testimony by her friends corroborating that she had told them years ago about being harassed, the officials emphasized instead the theory that the law professor was suffering from a psychological delusion.

One White House official, referring to the panel of four of Hill’s friends who testified in her behalf, said that “the only thing that the pro-Anita panel proved was that she’s been deluded for some time.”

Another source said that the office of C. Boyden Gray, a Thomas friend who serves as the White House legal counsel, consulted several psychologists in working up talking points to be used in the campaign to discredit Hill.

Separately, the vice chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Rosalie G. Silberman, confirmed that she was part of a group that helped to organize witnesses to testify on behalf of Thomas at the Senate hearings.

But Silberman denied being part of any White House strategy and said the EEOC group was formed independently after the allegations against Thomas surfaced. She said she had labored extensively on the Thomas defense.