I am on this book tour and it's been very interesting.  I've been all over the place and I've meet people all over the country.  It's been a wonderful experience.  I've been amazed at how many people — Democrats, Independents and Republicans and even people from other countries have taken to this book. 

 

I had one lady say, “You know I was against Clarence Thomas, I really was very upset about it until I read your chapter about it in this book.”  Now there have been 7-800 page books written about the Thomas matter, on both sides of the issue, but she said to me “I know now and I'm completely changed, I recognize what a really great man he is.”  You see, there was a sexual harasser on the job, he was her supervisor, he just wasn't Clarence Thomas.  We knew that but it was very difficult to bring some of these matters up. 

 

I talk about some things in [the book] that you'll never read anywhere else because I was a principal player.  In fact, we had already held the hearing on Thomas.  We had already reported it to the committee.  It was ready to come up to the floor, and we knew these accusations had been made, but we also knew that the person making them was unwilling to come and openly testify.  Well, we're not going to use accusations against any judicial nominee when people aren't willing to testify, because those FBI reports contain everything from friends and neighbors and families to opponents and enemies and wackos.  The file on Thomas was thick [as it is on] every Supreme Court Justice.  But when they finally got her in the corner where she had to testify — and she made an excellent witness and as far as I know is a very good person — at that point there was nothing that could be done but hold the hearings. 

 

Well, naturally, when we had the meeting behind the scenes Bob Dole was there, Strom Thurmond, Alan Simpson, Jack Danforth, who was his mentor more than any of us, and myself.  And I might add, I had sat in every one of his confirmations prior to that time.  Bob Dole said, “What are we going to do?”

I said, “I'll tell you what you have to do.  If you have all 18 members of the committee,” and there may have been 20 at that time, “but if you have all members of the committee questioned, this is never going to end and it's going to be a fiasco.” 

 

“Well, what do you suggest Senator Hatch?”  I said, “Well, what you need to do is have just one questioner on our side and one on theirs,” and they all kind of leaned back and said, “That’s not a bad idea.  Who?”  And they were all looking at me as the questioner.  Well, it would have been easy for me to do it, I've been in many trials, some very, very tight, difficult situations, but I said the only person I wanted to do it was Arlen Specter. 

 

And Al Simpson said, “Orrin, you know Arlen?”  And I said, “Yes, I do know Arlen.  Number one, he's our most liberal Republican on the committee; number two he's an excellent lawyer; number three, he's the former prosecutor and he's not going to let anybody get away with anything; and number four, Arlen is the only one who is pro-choice on the committee, so anybody else would be automatically smeared by the media.”  And I gave a number of other reasons, some of which you'd love to hear but I'm not going to tell you.  Strom Thurmond than said, “Well, O.K. Orrin, but you have to handle Thomas” and they all agreed.  And that's how Thomas got through.  If we'd had everybody questioning it would have been the most bizarre thing you've ever seen.

 

Well, I knew Thomas very well.  Thomas is so straightforward and honest that if he had done that he would have said, “Well, yes I did,” It's just the way he is, I guarantee it.  And I also knew that Thomas would make a great witness.  And I'll tell you why, because he really is straightforward and very, very honest.  Well, Anita Hill testified and when I came out of the hearing room Nina Totenberg, one of the real core watchers from National Public Radio, came up to me and she said, “Well, Senator Hatch, it's all over isn't it?”  I said, “No, Nina, it’s not, you've only heard one side, I've tried a lot of cases and if you only listen to one side you'll think its over.  But you've got to listen to him.”

 

Well, I hadn't even had a chance to chat to Clarence Thomas about his testimony.  Danforth was guarding him and keeping him away from everybody so I ran down to Danforth's office, I ran right past all of his gatekeepers and I ran right into his private office and there was Clarence marching back and forth as mad as could be. 

 

This is the total discussion between Clarence Thomas and Orrin Hatch before he testified.  I said, “Clarence, be yourself.”  I said, “Tell the truth,” which I knew he would do, and I said “don't take any shit from anybody.”  I'm sorry, I normally don't swear, but I wanted to get that across.  Those three things but the two in particular — be yourself and don't take anything from anybody — were very important and I'll tell you why.  I presided over almost every one of his confirmation hearings and there were five confirmations where the Democrats threw everything at him they could and the only thing they ever held against Clarence Thomas was that he's a conservative African-American Republican.  Just the same things they're holding against Miguel Estrada.  He's a wonderful lawyer.  He's one of the great success stories in history of what America can do — what a person in America can do.  But he's a conservative, Hispanic Republican and they're holding that against him, they've held him up now for over 18 months.  He's one of the best lawyers in the country who's argued 15 cases before the United States Supreme Court, winning ten of them.  Very, very few lawyers have had that experience.

 

In any event, the reason I told Clarence these three things is because I wanted to get the best out of him I could.  I remember when he was up for the EEOC, I was Chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee at the time.  My ranking member was none other than Ted Kennedy, so I opened the meeting and I asked him the usual obligatory questions on his confirmation hearing and then I turned it over to Kennedy.  Well, Kennedy immediately lashes into him and starts really giving him a rough time, asking very tough questions, not letting him answer, cutting him off and finally, after letting him go on long enough I said, “Hey, let him answer the questions.”  So, I just kept doing it and I could see Clarence Thomas' blood pressure just going up because he isn't a person that won't speak up for himself.  Finally, after ten or twelve minutes of this Thomas said, “Senator Kennedy,” and Kennedy leaned back in his chair.  Thomas said, “Senator, I was born in poverty.  We didn't even have shoes.  I was raised by my grandparents who taught me values.  We lived in a two-room home.  In the living room there were only three pictures on the wall – Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Jr. and John F. Kennedy.”  And then he said, “And Senator, if President Kennedy is watching these proceeding from up there in heaven, he can't be very well pleased.”  I turned to Kennedy and said, “Have any more questions?” and he said, “No.”

 

But I was trying to get Thomas in that mode because I knew if he was there he wasn't going to take any crap from anybody on the Committee.  When he came up in response to my questions and said, “This is nothing but a high-tech lynching,” I about fell off my chair because that's exactly what it was. 

 

Thomas is turning out to be one of the best Justices on the Court.  He's writing some of the best opinions of the Court.  He's somebody you can really trust.  One of my friends is Patricia Cornwell, the great novelist.  Patricia is a tough gal and a wonderful person, but she's very tough and she's a Democrat, but a very close friend of mine, and she said, “Orrin, I love you but don't ever try to convince me about that Clarence Thomas.”  I said, “I'll tell you something Patricia.  If you were to meet with him within ten minutes you're going to turn to me and you are going to say, 'He couldn’t have done that.'”

 

“No, I certainly will not.”  And so I said, “Let me know next time you come into town and I'll call Justice Thomas and see if he'll come over.”   And so she called me and she said, “I'm coming into town.”  I said, “OK, I'm going to call Justice Thomas to see if he'll come.”  I call him and I explained this to him and he said he would be glad to come.  So he came over.  Patricia got there first and we're standing in my office, the door opens and in comes Thomas and bam!  They got into the biggest argument, the biggest discussion — and she's no shrinking violet — she started to go after him and he answered her and it was like a tennis match.  I was going back and forth and I wasn't participating at all and finally after about ten minutes she said, “Damn you, Senator Hatch.  I know he couldn't have done it.”  You couldn't be around Clarence Thomas for ten minutes without knowing that. 

 

Remember when all those feminist members of Congress marched across the plaza against Judge Clarence Thomas to complain about him?  Well, think about it.  How many did that when we had President Clinton? If you took everything that Anita Hill said about Clarence Thomas and you put the absolute worst spin on it, the most you could say — assuming it was true, which it was not — the most you could say is he talked dirty to her.  Now, compare that with President Clinton.  Where were those feminist marchers for women's rights when they knew what was going on in the White House?  That's what we go through back in Washington all the time. 

 

After Clarence testified I walked out and there was Nina Tottenberg again and she said to me these words, “Senator, you just saved his ass.”  And I said, “No, Nina.  He just saved his ass.”  And then she said, “Well, I don't know what to believe now.  I believe them both.”  And I said, “No, Nina.  One of them is not telling the truth.”   

 

One chapter in [the book] that I feel very deeply about is on stem cell research — embryonic stem cell research.   That was not an easy decision for me.  I actually read everything I could get my hands on, I talked with my staff, I talked to ethicists on both sides of the issue, I talked to scientists on both sides of the issue, although the vast majority of scientists are for continuation of embryonic stem cell research.  I've talked to top Nobel Laureates.  I've prayed about it sincerely, every day.  I think you're going to see one of the most succinct understandable explanations of why Orrin Hatch, a pro-life Senator, believes that embryonic stem cell research, which, according to all these scientists, holds the greatest promise for medial breakthroughs in the history of the world.  That's why Orrin Hatch came out in favor of embryonic stem cell research.  Had I not done that, I don't think the president would have made the decision to allow the existing 60 stem cell lines to be used and there are only eight or twelve that are effective and then they're white American lines, for the most part.  There needs to be more done. 

 

I believe it's the most pro-life position to be able to help the living, especially from fertilized eggs and in vitro fertilization clinics that are going to be discarded and would die anyway.  Why wouldn't we keep those totipotent cells?  What happens is, you grow that fertilized egg for four to six days and it becomes a blastocyst inside of which are 100-200 pluripotent stem cells.  You take those stem cells and, yes, the blastocyst died, but those stem cells are living human cells and they can be differentiated.  They could be differentiated to upwards of 220 different forms of human tissue that might help us to understand the origins and derivations of disease and might provide treatments and cures for heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson’s, ALS, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and might be able to help bring healing to mankind.  If we start today, it will take at least 20 years to go through everything that has to be done to reach these treatments and cures. 

 

Now, why shouldn't a family like Cody Anderson's family have something better?  Cody Anderson's grandfather had sugar diabetes so badly that he lost his left leg, his toes. He lost his eyesight, had to have one eye removed, he became totally crippled, and 28 operations before he died at the age of 48.  You can imagine the horror of the Anderson’s who [found] their beautiful three-year old, perfectly formed, little boy had the same disease.  Now the hope for them is that we might be able to break through in this kind of medical research.  Whether you agree with me or not on that issue, you ought to read that chapter because that chapter contains an awful lot of knowledge and it's a short chapter, it's an easy read.

 

That's just one of many, many chapters that I think you would enjoy.  There are so many things that I'd like to discuss with you about the book and about my experiences but I'd rather have the time given to you for questions and we can cover anything you want to.