Bush Avows His Support for Thomas : Judiciary: But the President says he will not get directly involved in the dispute involving sexual harassment charges that have put the Supreme Court nomination in peril.

By DOUGLAS JEHL and EDWIN CHEN

Oct. 10, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

WASHINGTON — President Bush invited Judge Clarence Thomas to the White House on Wednesday to reassert his “total confidence” in the embattled Supreme Court nominee, despite explosive allegations of sexual harassment that have placed the nomination in jeopardy.

But Bush said that he would not become directly involved in the contentious dispute between Thomas and Anita Faye Hill, the University of Oklahoma law professor who has accused him, saying that the Senate alone must sort such matters out.

“Any question you ask, my answer will be, ‘I support Judge Thomas,’ ” Bush told reporters, clearly discouraging further inquiries. He said that it would be “counterproductive” for him or his advisers to comment on the charges more directly.

Bush said after posing for pictures with Thomas and walking around the White House grounds with him that, as President, he is “staying right in there” with his nominee.

But his signal that the White House would play only a limited role during the coming hearings appeared to reflect wariness at becoming involved in what may prove to be an unwinnable fight about the conflicting accounts of the judge and the law professor.

Possibly sensing a growing anger among women voters, Bush and his aides appeared particularly uneasy about seeming to challenge Hill, whose self-assurance during her televised press conference Monday appears to have lent credibility to her claims.

“We just don’t want to get involved in that debate,” a senior White House official said Wednesday. Added another: “There are only two people in the world who know the answers to those questions.”

Meanwhile, with the Senate Judiciary Committee poised to convene in an extraordinary session pitting the accused against his accuser, there were indications from Capitol Hill that the hearings may carry some ugly overtones.

An aide to a GOP senator on the panel said that Hill will face rape-trial-style questioning from Republicans--involving efforts to impugn her own moral standing--in connection with her allegations that Thomas described to her scenes from pornographic films.

Sen. John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), Thomas’ chief patron in the confirmation process, said separately that the nominee intends to “look the American people in the eye” to deny the allegations against him.

And a White House official said that Thomas’ principal task in the hearings will be to “tell the truth--which I suspect he’s been doing all along.”

A Democratic member of the Judiciary Committee said in an interview that he knows of no new allegations of sexual harassment that will come out at the hearing, making it increasingly likely that the high drama merely will pit Hill’s sworn account against Thomas’.

Thomas had seemed on the brink of Senate confirmation Tuesday when a growing public backlash over the handling of Hill’s charges forced leaders to agree to postpone a final vote for a week to permit the committee to examine the new allegations.

Hill said in a statement to the Judiciary Committee made public over the weekend that Thomas, while her supervisor at the Department of Education and later at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, had repeatedly described scenes from pornographic films.

Hill, now 35, and a tenured professor at the University of Oklahoma Law School, has said that Thomas also suggested specific sexual acts in which she might participate with him. However, she has said that he did not touch her.

Thomas has denied the allegations in a sworn affidavit but he declined to elaborate on Wednesday as he arrived at the White House with his wife, Virginia, making his first public appearance since the charges against him were raised publicly.

Asked how he intended to refute Hill’s testimony, he answered crisply: “Just testify, thanks.”

His supporters, however, have questioned why Hill did not complain at the time about the alleged harassment, the first instance of which she said took place 10 years ago. They also have pointed to the seemingly cordial relations Thomas has maintained with Hill since then.

But Bush avoided all such details Wednesday, apparently preparing to embark on a strategy that aides said would involve repeated endorsements of Thomas in a bid to put the stature of the White House behind him.

When reporters asked the President whether he had seen the televised press conference in which Hill had outlined her allegations, he said only: “I think it would be counterproductive for me or for the White House generally to get involved in this process.”

Still, White House strategists indicated that they are continuing their behind-the-scenes work in hopes of orchestrating what is likely to be Thomas’ make-or-break return to the Senate hearing room later this week.

An official involved said that the White House had given the Judiciary Committee the names of former colleagues of both Thomas and Hill who would agree to testify that they had seen no signs of the alleged sexual harassment.

He said that the task of helping Thomas prepare for that testimony would in some ways be easier than that involved in readying answers to complicated legal questions. But, the source added: “He’s got to come across as himself.”

Members of the Judiciary Committee worked behind closed doors Wednesday to consider how far the panel will reach in seeking new information about Thomas and his character during what are expected to be three days of hearings.

The panel had been unable to agree before the allegations surfaced whether to endorse Thomas’ nomination, splitting its vote, 7 to 7, largely along partisan lines. Democrats remained closemouthed Wednesday about their likely strategy when Thomas again takes the stand.

But a possible new witness who could lend support for some of Hill’s claims disclosed that he had been approached by staff members on behalf of the committee in a possible precursor of an appearance before the panel.

Joel Paul, a law professor at American University here, said in an interview that Hill mentioned to him more than four years ago that she had been a victim of sexual harassment in the early 1980s while working for Thomas at the EEOC.

Paul said that Hill made that statement during the summer of 1987, while they were engaged in exploratory conversations about a visiting professorship for Hill at the university.

“I asked her why she left EEOC (in 1983),” Paul recalled. “The only thing she told me was she was subjected to sexual harassment by her supervisor. I don’t recall if she mentioned a name.

“It was such an extraordinary thing to say, I was shocked,” Paul recalled. “She was very emotional and it was obviously difficult for her to talk about. So I didn’t bring it up again.

“The main point,” he said, “is that I can attest that this is not a story that she cooked up on the eve of Clarence Thomas’ confirmation.”

Paul is the second person to rebut an insinuation by Thomas supporters that Hill may have concocted the charges in a last-ditch attempt to torpedo his confirmation.

The first, who has not yet been identified publicly, is a state judge and a former Yale Law School classmate of Hill’s, who reportedly has told the FBI that Hill had confided in her while the alleged sexual harassment was taking place.

This person since has repeated the story to National Public Radio, and added in a Washington Post interview published on Wednesday: “She (Hill) just said that he (Thomas) was always after her to go out and was always presenting himself as the ideal man for her and so forth and she didn’t get any more explicit than that.”

Among the many points of contention is whether Thomas ever asked Hill for a date. Thomas has told at least two Republican senators that he did not but National Public Radio has reported that Hill told the FBI that Thomas began asking her for dates shortly after she went to work for him at the Education Department in 1981.

“I looked him straight in the eye and he looked at me straight in the eye,” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said on Tuesday. “And he forcefully denied having dated or asked her out.”

Sen. Danforth also said Tuesday that Thomas made the same denial to him.

Danforth was not optimistic that the additional inquiry will clear up such issues.

“When this is all over, the clouds are still going to be there,” he predicted Wednesday on the “Good Morning America” TV program. “My view is that it’s very unlikely that over the next week anything good is going to come of this.” The indication from Bush that the White House plans to limit its public comment on the Thomas nomination appeared to contradict an earlier pledge from Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater that the White House would provide “every bit of support we can muster.”

But Fitzwater said later that his comments were intended to address White House backing for Thomas and his family during what he had called a period of “agony and anguish” and noted that he, too, had declined to characterize the charges against the nominee.

Asked during that briefing why the White House chose to believe the account of Thomas rather than that of Hill, Fitzwater replied that Thomas was “an honorable and dignified man.”

But in an indication of White House caution about giving offense to supporters of Hill, he quickly added that he did not mean to imply that the White House regarded her as less than honorable. “We don’t draw any conclusions,” he insisted.

Staff writer Paul Houston contributed to this story.