In Reversal, Packwood Seeks Open Hearings

Embattled Sen. Bob Packwood, under investigation for more than two years over alleged sexual misconduct, announced Friday that he wants public hearings on the complaints against him and a “public cross-examination” of his female accusers.

The surprise reversal by the Oregon Republican turns up the spotlight on a festering controversy that many senators had hoped would go away. It also creates the possibility of another embarrassing spectacle for the Senate akin to the 1991 hearings into claims of sexual harassment law professor Anita Faye Hill had leveled against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Earlier this month, Senate Democrats, led by California Sen. Barbara Boxer, demanded public hearings on the charges against Packwood. On a largely party-line vote, the Senate rejected her request, 52 to 48.

Packwood’s switch means that hearings are now almost certain.

“I think this was his only choice. Public opinion was running against him,” Boxer said in a phone interview. Public hearings, she added, “are almost a sure thing now.”

Ethics Committee Chairman Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in a statement that Packwood’s request would be considered when Congress reconvenes after Labor Day.

The National Organization for Women called Packwood’s announcement “a political act of desperation by a desperate man.”

Packwood said he changed his mind about the need for public hearings because Boxer and the Democrats, invoking gender politics, were accusing the male-dominated Senate and its Republican majority of covering up the charges filed by women.

Altogether, 19 women have complained that Packwood had made crude advances to them since 1969. Many said that they were surprised when the senator grabbed them and kissed them.

“It was a dangerous day when Sen. Boxer politicized the ethics process,” Packwood said in a statement.

Senate Republican aides said that Boxer’s strong attack has stiffened the backs of key Republicans. Sen. McConnell, for example, recently suggested that perhaps the panel should conduct hearings on the 1969 incident in which a young woman drowned when Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) drove his car off a bridge at Chappaquiddick Island.

Packwood’s announcement ends a week in which he and a new team of lawyers waged an aggressive campaign to raise doubts about some of his accusers and to portray his past conduct as merely occasional clumsy gropings by a normally reserved man.

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Packwood and his supporters complained about what they said is one-sided press coverage that repeats the allegations without investigating discrepancies in the women’s accounts.

On Wednesday, Charles and Jeanette Slepian, a husband-and-wife team of Portland, Ore., lawyers, filed four depositions with the Ethics Committee undercutting a complaint filed by Gena Hutton, a former campaign volunteer from Eugene, Ore.

Hutton has alleged that in 1980, Packwood grabbed her in a parking lot after a meeting, forcibly kissed her, and suggested that they go to a motel. Shaken by the incident, she said that she had nothing more to do with the senator. Recently, she spoke at a Portland press conference, urging the Senate to take strong action against Packwood.

But in one deposition, John R. Morrison, a real estate developer now living in Gig Harbor, Wash., said that he worked with Hutton as a volunteer during the same 1980 campaign and observed her locking arms with Packwood at private dinners.

“She was the one that was the sexual aggressor in my opinion,” said Morrison, a graduate of the UCLA School of Business. “I am nearly 50 years old and I regard Ms. Hutton’s behavior toward Sen. Packwood on these occasions when I saw them together as being the most overt, sexually aggressive series of activities I have ever seen by a woman toward a man. . . . I think it’s unfortunate that 15 years after a woman comes on strongly to a prominent fellow like Bob Packwood, they can try to reconstruct history and seek attention by attacking the guy for in some way responding to them in a sexual way.”

In three other depositions, former campaign volunteers stated that Hutton was an active participant in later Packwood campaigns through 1986.

“We will be filing other depositions like these,” Charles Slepian said in an interview. “You will be amazed at how many people are coming forward and saying: ‘Look, I know the senator and the individual who made the allegation and it didn’t happen like that.’ We will raise questions about motivation and credibility.”

Slepian said that he and his wife have known Packwood since 1969 and volunteered their time because they believe the senator is being treated unfairly.

“My wife has known him since she was 14. She has worked for him and we are tired of hearing only one side of this story,” he said.

In a television interview to be broadcast today, Packwood states that some of his accusers are “out-and-out lying.”

Recently, a 29-year-old woman filed a complaint accusing Packwood of coming to her house when she was a 17-year-old intern and making advances. She had asked him for a written job recommendation, and was surprised when the senator delivered it in person, she said.

“The [then] 17-year-old is not telling the truth. It did not happen,” Packwood said on CNN’s “Evans & Novak” program, which was taped Friday. “I have apologized” to some women, he added, “but there are some that are out-and-out lying, just flat-out lying.”

Hearings will require these women, some of whom have kept their names confidential, to tell their stories in public and to be questioned by his lawyers, Packwood said. “You don’t come forth with a paper bag over your head,” he said.

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Packwood’s attack on his accusers is at least his third strategy for countering the complaints, which became public in December, 1992. At first, he apologized for “terribly offensive” conduct toward women. Later, he blamed “binge drinking” and said that he had “no memory” of several of his accusers.

Slepian said it is unfair to treat the women’s complaints as though they involved rape or illegal workplace harassment. Most of the incidents did not involve paid employees and therefore are not illegal job harassment, he said.

“When they said ‘No,’ it stopped right there. There was no retaliation, no repeat,” Slepian said. “The committee sent out 600 registered letters to former employees and they got two complaints,” Slepian said.

Any sanctions imposed by the committee would be more political than legal. The Senate has not expelled one of its members since the Civil War. Seven have been officially censured and that stain usually has ended a senator’s career.

Separately, the Senate Republican Caucus could vote to remove Packwood as chairman of the powerful Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over taxes, welfare reform and health care.

Boxer said that public hearings on Packwood could turn into another spectacle like the Hill-Thomas confrontation during Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation process, but she added that that is a price to be paid for getting at the truth.