Presswatch/Anonymous Chickens

...Phelps identifies the professor, Anita Hill, about to become Oklahoma's most famous academic, and elucidates her charge as he understands it, which is that "Thomas repeatedly discussed sexual matters with her in a suggestive way...

...Phelps doesn't bother to include comments from a senator who supports Thomas...

...PRESSWATCH ANONYMOUS CHICKENS During the amazing week of the "special hearing on a charge of sexual harassment" against Clarence Thomas, the press, for the most part, proved uninterested in writing about the leak that led to that hearing, except dismissively, even condescendingly...

...That "little could be done" was of course untrue, and indeed much already had been done to produce the very story Phelps was writing...

...Nor does he note that what someone like Hill says to the FBI is raw, unprocessed data—the bureau renders no conclusions about such a charge...

...Thus, four days after it occurred, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote that the interest of some senators in "pinning down the source of the leak" was an "obsession that may have mystified the public a bit...

...More accurately, any anonymous Senate member or staffer can ruin a career (or two...

...The White House has no comment, but Phelps does manage to find someone who also worked with Thomas at the EEOC to speak in his defense...

...He was furious over the leak...

...Totenberg was able to do so because, unlike Phelps, she had been leaked acopy of Hill's confidential FBI statement...

...Ryan was confirmed, and Sen...

...The news accounts based on it—supplied to the nation first by Newsday and then by National Public Radio on Sunday, October 6—deserve close analysis for what they say about the state of the Senate today as well as the nature of the Beltway press...

...And the public has a right to know who they are...

...Simon calls for postponement of the Senates scheduled vote on Tuesday, pronounces the charge "serious enough" that the Judiciary Committee on which he sits "ought to look at it," and says he and most other members of the committee were unaware of the Hill accusations when they voted on the nomination...

...So, it is clear, had certain Metzenbaum and Kennedy staffers...

...The contents of the statement may have been passed to the reporters through the special interest groups—People for the American Way and the like...

...Think of the story there for the reporter brave enough to work it...

...Joseph Biden, the committee chairman, is an unlikely suspect...

...I never came to the press," she said at her first press conference...

...This is a war between liberals who are constrained by at least some elementary notions of fairness and those who will stop at nothing to defeat a conservative nominee...

...The Thomas Charge," as Newsday headlined the piece, is a classic in the genre of article that does not simply report news but becomes news...

...Phelps then tells readers that this comes from "a source who Terry Eastland is a resident fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center...

...Here's the lead: An Oklahoma law professor has recently told the FBI that she was sexually harassed by Thomas while she worked for him at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission...

...nor does he indicate how he helped her become a confirming source...

...like most others in the mainstream press, she seemed obsessed with turning the charge against Thomas into a national referendum on sexual harassment...

...Nonetheless, this leak—but for which Thomas would have been confirmed at least a week earlier—was an absolutely critical part of the confirmation story...

...This source, Phelps writes, "said that because of [the statement's] confidentiality little could be done with the information because she has not come forward publicly...

...The essence of Hill's accusation, made (as Phelps must surely have known) in confidence that it would not be publicized, could be leaked without her permission to reporters, who then would seek confirmation from Hill, who would then feel backed into a corner where she just might decide to confirm its existence, even talk about it...

...Simon is a suspect...

...Done with Hill (who will say no more), he returns (in graph four) to his anonymous source: "He made suggestions to her about what kind of sex she engaged in, asking her in great detail about different forms of sex," the source says, adding that while Thomas implicitly pressured Hill to have sex with him, he never told her explicitly that she would lose her job if she did not...

...Some members of the press know who they are and how they worked against Thomas...

...my own reporting persuades me that Biden sought to honor Hill's request for confidentiality...

...I would say it adds to the credibility concern," Simon tells the reporter, but like Hill, the senator declines, as Phelps puts it, to go into detail...

...If it means violating the promise of confidentiality to Anita Hill and that of a fair process to THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1991 31 Clarence Thomas, if it means violating the Senate and its rules and corrupting judicial confirmation, they will do it—and one of them did...

...Paul Si- r- mon, in Nebraska at a college reunion...

...The balance of power in the committee now lies with some anonymous chickens...

...Totenberg is a veritable bulletin board —a radio hot line—for those with information and accusationsthat might tube a Supreme Court nomination...

...The most likely candidates: Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee, who had access to the statement, and their aides, some of whom had read it...

...Liane Hansen, host of "Weekend Edition," noted when Totenberg finished her piece that while she had "asked a lot of questions . . . your report raises a lot more...

...Instead he finishes his piece by reporting the thoughts of a senatorwhom he identifies as "an opponent of Thomas who read the report and an accompanying statement by Hill...

...Phelps does not tell readers the story behind his story, which, of course, a reporter cannot do if he wishes to maintain theanonymous source from whom he derives his journalistic authority...

...Nina Totenberg reported more details of Hill's accusation and actually got Hill to talk about Thomas—on the air...

...Such, as we know, was the lethal power of this leak...

...The press came to me...

...The chief suspects among the staffers include: Ricki Seidman, a Kennedy aide, who first contacted Hill in early September and who worked until early summer as a lawyer for People for the American Way...

...Totenberg did observe on the air that "anybody can make this kind of an allegation and ruin a career, even if it's not true...

...The Newsday piece, written by Timothy M. Phelps, came first, actually hitting the wires at nine o'clock the night before...

...Nor did Totenberg say why she was given the affidavit, although anyone who has followed her career knows that she specializes in scoops of this sort (she and the Post's Kamen broke the story on Douglas Ginsburg's pot smoking, which led to his withdrawal as a nominee for the Supreme Court...

...The press has, of course, an occupational disability when it comes to itself don't really want to talk about leaks," a reporter for the Washington Post told me...

...What argues against Simon is that a reporter usually shields his anonymous source throughout a story...

...John Danforth vainly called for a leak inquiry...

...How Dowd could claim to know what "mystified" the public a lot or a bit is not so mystifying...

...For another, I am told that staffers for these two senators dismiss Biden and his subordinates as softies on Republican Supreme Court nominations...

...Biden failed to force the issue when he refused to subpoena them during the special hearing...

...But the evidence points to their offices, to their senior staffers if not them...

...has seen [Hill's] statement to the FBI...

...Queried by Hansen, Totenberg said that Hill had not come to NPR with the story, that Totenberg had heard about it from "a number of sources," and that Hill refused to talk "at all" until "I had obtained a copy of her affidavit...

...The only thing he would tell me is that he had been working on "this story" for "a long time...

...As discussed here last year ("The Leak That Fizzled," TAS, June 1990), in an eerily similar instance at least two senators leaked to NBC's Andrea Mitchell information in an FBI report concerning cocaine use by Timothy Ryan, who was awaiting a full Senate vote on his nomination to head the Office of Thrift Supervision...

...Someone had copied the statement and given it to Totenberg, who of course did not say who...

...Thomas's most vocal opponents on the committee, Edward Kennedy and Howard Metzenbaum, are, of course, the prime suspects...

...Maybe its chairman should have got Hill to come to Washington to testify in closed session, although it is doubtful the Kennedy-Metzenbaum zealots would have restrained themselves and not leaked...

...It would also have required Phelps to advise his readers why he, as opposed to some other reporter, was made privy to the leak...

...Doing so would have required discussion of certain relevant facts, such as that a member can be expelled under Senate rules for leaking confidential information and perhaps prosecuted under federal criminal law...

...But for Presswatch, I am bound to say, there would be no leaked-story watch...

...Who leaked...

...For one thing, Kennedy and Metz- enbaum aides initiated the contact with Hill in early September, and flew to Oklahoma to encourage her to "come forward" to the Judiciary Committee...

...During the special hearing both Metzenbaum and Kennedy denied that they or their staffs leaked...

...Phelps does not tell readers what he surely must have known and which became clear later, namely that Hill was reluctant to go public...

...To cover the base, I asked Phelps, who of course declined to say...

...Whoever leaked did not have Thomas's interests in mind—or Hill's...

...In this way, Hill was forced to "come forward publicly...

...While their bosses say their offices did not leak, these staffers have yet to speak on the matter...

...and Jim Brudney, a Metzenbaum aide (and classmate of Hill's at the Yale Law School) who also talked with Hill...

...Senators, it should be noted, have been known to leak confidential information in violation of Senate rules, and with impunity...

...It's difficult to discuss because I'm not able to discuss the FBI report," Phelps quotes Simon as saying, without letting readers know that the senator is a major Thomas opponent, having voted against the nominee in committee...

...It conclusively demonstrated that the Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee is not a trustworthy body...

...I should say "Thomas enemies," because the leak strikes me as a "composite...

...P helps then locates Sen...

...Phelps seeks an answer from Thomas, who "could not be reached for comment...

...For some time now the Democratic side of the Judiciary Committee has been at war with itself, a fact the Washington Post's Al Kamen suggested in a piece on the breakdown of the confirmation process...

...In graph three Phelps has Hill on the record, confirming "that she had told agents she was harassed by Thomas...

...Only a Thomas enemy who "has seen [Hill's] statement to the FBI" could have leaked...

...In fact, I have tried to avoid raising this as a press issue...

...After all, he wasby Terry Eastland within easy reach, in Nebraska, and most willing to talk...

...The NPR piece differed in an im- portant respect from the Newsday story...