Remember what the accusations against Sen. Bob Packwood were supposed to be about?
Thirty-one months ago, headlines charged that 29 women over a course of 26 years accused him of unwanted advances. One network described the Packwood affair as "the biggest sex scandal since the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings." Last month, in a lip-smacking report graphically recording accusations decades old, the Senate Ethics Committee claimed to find "substantial credible evidence" that Packwood had engaged in a "pattern of sexual misconduct."Even longtime friends like me presumed him guilty of recent boorishness. And the Senate Savanarola, Democrat Richard Bryan of Nevada, furious at Packwood's resistance to handing over his 8,000-page private diary, publicly accused him of "possible criminal conduct" in seeking lobbyists' help in getting his then-wife a job - a scurrilous charge.
To make up for the public revulsion at its forgiveness of the Keating Five, the committee was determined to curry feminist favor by ruining the moderate Republican Packwood. Three hundred women who had worked for him in the past quarter century were tracked down and asked to contribute recollections of long-ago trespasses.
This week, however, as Packwood was at last permitted to come before the committee to defend himself, something strange happened. "Senate sources" leaked to the AP that senators were less concerned about the sexual misconduct and "possible criminal" acts than they were about possible tampering with the diary.
And why do you suppose the focus has suddenly shifted? Because in the past 10 years there has been exactly one accusation of misconduct. That's it: one.
One woman claims that in 1990, Packwood "kissed her on the lips" in his office. Other women staffers say he was not the initiator of this career-threatening act, if it happened. Even assuming that some of the generation-old memories of political opponents are not warped by time and partisanship - does one unsubstantiated accusation during the past 10 years constitute a "pattern" of sexual misconduct?
Of course not. The original "pattern" indictment has quietly collapsed.
And what about Bryan's "criminality" smear?
The supposed crime was that Packwood sought a job for his divorcing spouse only to save on alimony. But Georgie Packwood is a competent working woman, no bimbo. Was the FBI going to look into every recommendation made by every Senator for a relative's employment over the past 10 years - presumably driven by the same venal motive?
This week the Justice Department dropped its investigations; Packwood is exonerated. Bryan's insinuation was as ludicrous as it was libelous.
With no "pattern of sexual misconduct" and no "possible criminal conduct," the committee is now desperately groping for something on which to nail Packwood. Its outside catspaw, attorney Robert Bennett, now claims "the obstruction allegation is the most serious because that goes to the institutional integrity of the Senate and the Ethics Committee."
Such a bait-and-switch of accusations is pure McCarthyism. By setting the precedent of allowing government investigators to rummage through personal diaries looking for any wrongdoing - this committee has eroded the principle prohibiting self-incrimination.
Bob Packwood deserves an apology from this committee for a two-year ordeal. And Richard Bryan deserves a reprimand from the Senate for the reckless slander.