During Clarence Thomas’ hearings, I wasn’t Long on Silver

A look back now might provide an interesting, even fun, reminder of how shoe-leather journalism worked before the Internet put a world of information at our fingertips.

When then-law school professor Anita Hill levelled sexual harassment allegations against Thomas just as Thomas seemed about to be assured of confirmation to the high court, I was a rather low-paid, 27-year-old managing editor of Gambit Weekly in New Orleans. But as a former low-level Reagan appointee, I had heard tremendously impressive things about Thomas, and was astonished at the allegations. I thought it unlikely Thomas would have been brazen enough, and stupid enough, to commit sexual harassment while running the very federal office tasked with policing sexual harassment.

The now-famous testimony of Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas occurred on a Friday (Oct. 11, 1991). As Friday mornings were when we at Gambit shipped off our papers for printing, for Monday distribution – note the timeline of delay, wholly unfamiliar to us in the Internet age – I was able to watch the hearings closely during the post-page-shipment time I usually devoted to mere administrative housekeeping. Like many others, I was riveted.

I quickly became convinced Thomas was telling the truth, for multiple reasons. Somewhere along the line, though, something started nagging at the back of my mind, saying a key part of Hill’s testimony was, logically, provably false. I could not, however, figure out what it was.

After watching more of the hearings the next day, a Saturday, I snuck off to play golf that afternoon. Still, the logical anomaly kept gnawing at me. I think my subconscious mind kept sifting through the (remembered) testimony as my conscious mind focused on where to aim my 3-iron and how my putts would break. Anyway, just as I began driving away from the course, round finished, late in the afternoon, it struck me: I became convinced Hill had fibbed about Thomas making reference to a porn star named Long Dong Silver.

Why? Because the timeline didn’t seem to fit. Republican senator Orrin Hatch had noted that a sexual harassment case from Kansas in 1988 had contained very similar references to Silver, and he hinted at suspicions that Hill stolen her claim directly from that case. Here’s what finally occurred to me: If that Kansas case had been in 1988, it probably originated no earlier than, say, 1985. And if Silver, whoever he was, were just making waves in 1985, he may not even have existed before Hill left Thomas’ employ in 1983.

If Silver didn’t exist in 1983, it would have been impossible for Thomas to mention him. The question was, when was Silver’s movie released? I had no idea, but I knew it would be a verifiable fact, one way or another.

But remember, this was pre-Internet. Even if I could figure out the time frame and prove that Hill was lying, what would I do with this fact? There was no “online” to post it to. My only media outlet was Gambit, which had just gone to the printer for the only issue that would be published before the next Tuesday’s scheduled vote.

Upon arriving home, I called my good friend Deroy Murdock, who was in New York starting his own career as a columnist. As a fellow Georgetown student, Deroy had interned with Hatch, who had been quoted in the Washington Post saying wonderful things about Deroy. I called him (this was when long-distance charges were a significant consideration) to ask whether he thought my logic made sense and was worth checking out. I also wanted to ask if he had any idea how to get something into print if we did manage to track the info down. Third, did he have any idea how to find when Silver had first appeared? Finally, if he had no media outlet in which we could publish the information, did he have any way of getting this information to his old boss, Hatch, so that it could at least go into the public record before the vote.?

If Silver didn’t exist in 1983, Hill had clearly perjured herself. Her testimony could be dismissed. “The whole nomination might hinge on this,” I said.

Unfortunately, Deroy had no way to get it into print even if we could ascertain the facts. And his only remaining good contact from Hatch’s office was Randy Rader, who had since become a federal judge. But Deroy said the logic made sense to him, too. He agreed to track down Rader at home, if he could find the number (he couldn’t just look it up online), and find out how to get the word to Hatch to investigate.

A few minutes later, Deroy called back. He had found Rader’s home number. Rader, as a judge, rightly said he couldn’t get involved at all. But he told Deroy that the aide sitting behind Hatch, conferring with him often during the hearings, was a guy named Miller Baker. If Deroy could find Baker, he would be the one to talk to.

Deroy and I both tried long-distance information for Baker in the greater D.C. area. But there were too many Bakers to count, none listed as “Miller,” and we struck out.

Still, I wouldn’t be deterred. Having previously worked as research director for U.S. Rep. Bob Livingston’s campaign for governor of Louisiana, I called his chief of staff, Allen Martin. Did my theory make sense? Yes, Allen said on reflection. Well, I asked, was there such a thing as a congressional staff directory where we could look up the number of Miller Baker?

“Miller Baker?” Allen said. “He’s from Louisiana! He’s a good friend of our office! No, there’s no such thing as a staff directory, but I bet I can find his home number for you.”

Some time later, Allen called back. “Here’s Miller’s number,” he said. “Good luck.”

By now, I had bothered a fellow columnist, a sitting federal judge, and a congressional chief of staff, all over a theory that I still had no way to verify. I had one night to do it before an extremely rare Sunday committee session.

I reached Baker, and told him my theory, but he had no idea how, on a Saturday night, he could find out when Silver had first appeared. And no, the committee had no access to FBI agents (my brain was a little fried by then!) or others who could provide authoritative research on the provenance of porn characters. Still, he said, if I could figure it out definitively, I should please call him back so he could tell Hatch.

So, back to Deroy. We now had a line to Hatch, but still no idea about the timing of Silver’s movie.

“How about this?” I suggested. “You’re in New York; I’m in New Orleans; both places are well known for having porn movie houses. Why don’t I go to the French Quarter, try to find a manager at an X-rated movie theatre, and see if he knows when Silver’s movie had appeared, while you try the same in the seedy areas of New York?”

Deroy thought I was crazy. Wild good chase! But he was willing to try. By this time it was well into the evening, and I still hadn’t even cleaned up or eaten after golf. I said give me a half hour and I’d be on my way to the Quarter, and Deroy said give him some time and he’d try in New York.

Two minutes later, Deroy called back. We were silly, he said. Why physically go to movie places. Just use the Yellow Pages!

“Huh?” I asked. “What do we look under – Triple-X, or porn, or what? The Yellow Pages isn’t going to list something under ‘porn’.”

“I dunno, how about “adult films?” Deroy asked, thumbing through his phone book. Yeah, there are a lot of entries for that in the New York Yellow Pages.

So there we both were, wasting a Saturday night tracking down judges and committee aides and now using the Yellow Pages for porn stores. The New Orleans Yellow Pages turned out not to be much help. But about 20 minutes later, Deroy called back. “Paydirt!” he said. “I found the desk clerk at an adult-film rental place. He was very short-tempered, but said he remembered the movie well, actually called ‘Long Dong Silver,’ and he was sure it came out in 1985. Absolutely, 100% sure.”

Of course, 1985 was two years after Hill had left Thomas. But the manager said he couldn’t be bothered to look in his shelves or his old movie listings to prove it. He said he had a line of people all the way out the door and had already been on the phone too [bleeping] long.

I asked Deroy for the phone number and called the store manager back, long distance, to plead for more help from him. If he could give us something more substantive than his memory, we could determine the fate of this nomination that was engrossing the whole country.

The store manager told me to bleep off, and hung up on me.

Well, I had no interest in hurting this Anita Hill woman. But if her stories about Thomas weren’t true, then he was on the verge of suffering the worst, most publicly shaming, most undeserved defeat in the history of Supreme Court nominations. So I called back Miller Baker. I told him what we had found. “We still can’t prove anything, but this porn guy in New York tells Deroy there is no way that movie came out while Hill worked for Thomas,” I said. “With that to go on, if you can confirm this before the hearings end tomorrow, you’re set.”

By this time it was well after 9 p.m. Central time, well after 10 in the East – but Baker seemed intrigued. He didn’t know exactly where to go from there, but he said the logic was impeccable and important, and that he would take it from there.

I went to bed thinking that I, from long distance in New Orleans, had come up with the evidence that would definitively put Judge Thomas on the Supreme Court. Hyped up on adrenaline, I barely slept. The next morning, Hatch was on one of the Sunday morning news shows – I think it was “Face the Nation” – and my satisfaction grew. At one point, Hatch said his staff was checking out new information on “this X-rated character, this Mr. Silver” (or words something like that) that “we think will prove once and for all that these character assaults on Judge Thomas are absolutely false.”

I called Deroy. “We got the word through to Hatch!” I said. “He just made reference to our theory on ‘Face the Nation’! We’ve done it!”

“Well, maybe not,” Deroy said.

Ten minutes before, Deroy said, he had seen a story in the New York Post. Its reporters had had the same idea we did. Like us, they had discovered that the movie called Long Dong Silver did indeed come out only in 1985, two years after Hill stopped working for Thomas. But – there’s always a “but” – they had then interviewed an editor of Screw magazine, who said the character by that name had appeared in much smaller roles in a few earlier movies dating back perhaps as early as 1979. While it was unlikely Thomas would have seen those or referred to them, it was at least possible, the editor said.

So that was it. My long-distance investigative reporting had come to naught. I went from elation to deflation in two minutes.

In the end, a majority of Americans in the immediate-reaction polls believed Thomas (correctly, I still think), and the Senate confirmed him in a 52-48 nail-biting vote. Thomas has become the most faithful originalist/textualist on the Supreme Court, and he is by almost all accounts, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the most gracious, thoughtful, kindly people imaginable. He is no more likely to mention someone like Mr. Silver, especially in the company of women, than he is to become a Communist.

As for me, my long-distance phone bill that month was outrageously hefty. The lone, long-range search for facts, though, seemed at the time to justify it. Hi-yo Silver, away!