Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 468 The Fall of Bob Packwood (Part 2) The Scandal Begins....(Special Series) Dole 9

Transcript

Episode 468 The Fall of Bob Packwood (Part 2) The Scandal Begins....(Special Series) Dole 9 · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

0:25
SPEAKER_20: Nothing is going to happen unless both parties are willing to face the so-called entitlements program.
0:33
SPEAKER_20: You can cut the military budget$100 billion, you can get rid of all the earmarks, you can get rid of the waste fraud and corruption, and it might reduce the budget by$100 billion and you have a trillion dollar deficit.
0:45
SPEAKER_20: So now you have a$900 billion deficit instead of a trillion dollar deficit.
0:51
SPEAKER_20: The estimating agency that the Congress believes is the Congressional Budget Office, because it's their own organization that created the Trevor Burrus.
1:00
SPEAKER_20: The Congressional Budget Office, uh it's almost two months ago now, made an estimate for this year.
1:07
SPEAKER_20: Taking just Social Security and then other government retirement, military retirement or federal employee civilian retirement, those two, plus Medicare and Medicaid.
1:18
SPEAKER_20: And then interest on the debt.
1:19
SPEAKER_20: Those five this year will be 49 percent of all the money the government spends.
1:26
SPEAKER_20: If there is no change in law, they estimate that in ten years it will be 69 percent of all the money the government spends.
1:35
SPEAKER_20: But ladies and gentlemen, that is not sustainable.
1:38
SPEAKER_20: It is not sustainable.
1:40
SPEAKER_20: If you add what we're gonna spend on the military consistent, even if you cut it, there's nothing left for environmental protection or dams or highways or anything else.
1:50
SPEAKER_20: And each party is afraid to address the entitlement program for fear that the other party will just kick the pajabbers out of them.
1:59
SPEAKER_20: They're the ones that wanted to ruin Social Security, they're the ones that are taking away your Medicare, they're the you can just you can see the ads.
2:06
SPEAKER_20: So neither party is willing to do it, and I think the only way it can be done has to be a I think a democratic president.
2:12
SPEAKER_20: I'll tell you why in a minute.
2:14
SPEAKER_20: The president says to no more than uh 10, 12 leaders in the Congress, Republican and Democrat, two or three academics from outside, maybe somebody from ARP and one other.
2:23
SPEAKER_20: We're going to Camp David this weekend.
2:25
SPEAKER_20: We're going to talk about entitlements.
2:27
SPEAKER_20: We may stay there all week.
2:29
SPEAKER_20: We're not coming back until we come out holding hands because we all know the problem.
2:33
SPEAKER_20: And the problem is that those entitlements, I don't want to use the word cut.
2:38
SPEAKER_20: I'm not using the word cut, but their growth is going to have to be restrained in both the health area and the retirement area.
2:46
SPEAKER_20: And the reason I think there has to be a Democratic president taking that lead, if a Republican president tries to do it, he'll be accused of trying to do in the middle class.
2:57
SPEAKER_20: But the bulk of these entitlements are middle class entitlements.
3:00
SPEAKER_20: They're not basically entitlements for the rich.
3:03
SPEAKER_20: So I think it has to be a democratic president that would have the credentials to be able to do that.
3:07
SPEAKER_20: It's sort of the reverse of Nixon going to China in the early 70s.
3:11
SPEAKER_20: I'm not sure a Democratic president could have gone to China in those days.
3:15
SPEAKER_20: We were still blaming the Democrats for losing China.
3:20
SPEAKER_20: So if President Obama could do it, I think I don't know if he would or will, but he could.
3:26
SPEAKER_20: But short of that, I don't see anything happening in Congress uh short of a a a miracle where the uh two leaders, uh four leaders, a House and the Senate, a House and Senate Republican-Democrat leaders get together and say, listen, okay, we we we all know the problem.
3:44
SPEAKER_20: Uh but the key is they must if they're gonna try that, they must have the president at least on board.
3:52
SPEAKER_20: If he says, well, go ahead and see what you can come up with, and I'll uh I'll I'll make a decision.
3:57
SPEAKER_20: That is not gonna work.
3:58
SPEAKER_20: Uh he has got to, at a minimum, be on board.
4:00
SPEAKER_20: I'd rather he take the lead.
4:02
SPEAKER_20: But you've got to have an ironclad commitment from the president ahead of time that he understands the problem.
4:07
SPEAKER_20: He does every president knows the problem and is willing to go along with the solution.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: Welcome everybody.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: This is Randall Wallace, and this is part two of The Fall of Bob Packwood.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: And this is where we're going to start really looking at the scandal that enveloped him uh in 1992, actually, is when it started, December of 1992.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh the Washington Post had decided not to uh to run with the story because it came to them right before Bob Packwood was about, he was up for re-election, and so he was in the middle of his re-election campaign, uh, and they decided to wait till after the election was over.
5:12
SPEAKER_01: Packwood won, as was clearly going to happen, and the story broke.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: And uh I thought, and I'm gonna jump around on the timeline just a little bit as far as stories go, uh, that we would let you hear the 60 minutes uh interview with the women.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh it was put together by uh reporter Morley Safer so that you get a feel for this is the real crux of the scandal.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: I I I I I've said this and I'll say it again.
5:46
SPEAKER_01: I I just never felt like the tampering with the diaries was um was justified given that uh that he did turn over the originals, the copy, and the and the um edited versions to them, so they had it all.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: So therefore he's not hiding anything from them.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And uh and so I buy I bought his story concerning uh the the that he had really was very careful about what his lawyers had out of fear that it would get leaked as this scandal, because this scandal went from not a big deal to rolling down the mountain.
6:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh also uh the jobs for Georgie stuff, which was his ex-wife, you know, I you know, he he's not the only one.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna hear some outrage from a lot of different uh figures, including um Evans and Novak, uh Robert Novak, um, about about some of these accusations that he's being that he was getting picked on.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Um you'll have to make up your mind that.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: But I do think that the the these stories of these women are very troubling.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: And about the only thing that I can say in his defense is is that uh they were very old accusations.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: None of this was stuff that had happened in anything close to the remote period of time or uh, you know, in current history at that period of time.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: This is 30 years old, but uh there had not been an accusation made within that 12 within 12 years.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: All of this was basically 25 years old at the time.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: So you're going back to the late 60s, early 70s.
7:21
SPEAKER_01: Um Packwood was elected in his early 30s.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Um he is an admitted alcoholic and um and was in an alcohol treatment program um and had been in it for some period of time.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: So this really kind of came after he had he had gotten uh a hold of his personal problems.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh that said, here we go.
7:43
SPEAKER_01: Let's let's just listen you listen to them because these are very troubling accusations um concerning the women, and I think that that is you know with uh prosecutors and and and reporters and media love to pile on.
7:59
SPEAKER_01: I think he ought to cut away, and and I'll just say this about the other accusations.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: They didn't hold water.
8:06
SPEAKER_01: The Justice Department never tried him, never put him up on any kind of criminal charges.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: So the the jobs for Georgia stuff and the tampering with evidence that you will hear the senators talk about as this unfolds, uh the Justice Department never, never, ever indicted him.
8:21
SPEAKER_01: He went on to become a multimillionaire um uh lobbyist.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: And so uh I think you need to stick with this with what did stick and what is true and is troubling, and that is the accusations from these women.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: So let's go to this report, and then we're gonna watch this scandal unfold.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Now, this report was put together after he resigned, so we're out of the timeline a little bit, but uh here is the story of the women who were willing to talk to Morty Safer.
8:57
SPEAKER_21: It was in the face of the evidence of these women, among others, that Senator Bob Packwood resigned last Thursday.
9:05
SPEAKER_21: Had the Senate Ethics Committee held public hearings, this is what we would have heard.
9:10
SPEAKER_07: He pulled my head back by the hair, gives me the big awful kiss with the tongue, and at the same time, he's reaching up under my skirt and trying to pull off my underwear.
9:24
SPEAKER_06: He buzzed me on the intercom and told me to come into his office late afternoon, so I did.
9:29
SPEAKER_06: There was no one around, and as soon as I walked in the door, he pushed me up against the wall, pulled my head back.
9:49
SPEAKER_21: So I now announce that I will resign from the Senate.
9:54
SPEAKER_19: And I leave this institution not with malice, but with love.
10:02
SPEAKER_21: After a stunning six-to-nothing vote by the Senate Ethics Committee to have him expelled, Senator Packwood had little choice but to resign.
10:10
SPEAKER_21: The weight of evidence brought forth by these women, among others, was overwhelming.
10:15
SPEAKER_21: If you've been reading excerpts from his diaries in the Sunday papers, you found a catalog of abuse, of power, and of privilege.
10:23
SPEAKER_21: It was that which may have most offended his colleagues.
10:26
SPEAKER_21: But Senator Packwood's Odyssey, from one of the most powerful men in Washington to an outcast, began almost three years ago when a number of women described him as a sexual predator.
10:37
SPEAKER_21: The Senate Ethics Committee investigated and found substantial and credible evidence of his guilt.
10:44
SPEAKER_21: After an agonizing debate, the Senate decided there would be no public hearings.
10:50
SPEAKER_21: Who are these women and what would the Senate and the nation have learned had we heard their stories?
10:56
SPEAKER_21: Last week we flew 10 of them to New York.
10:59
SPEAKER_21: Their charges ranged from groping to sexual assault.
11:03
SPEAKER_21: Some had worked on his campaigns in his office or in the Senate office building.
11:09
SPEAKER_21: Others met him by chance at a fundraiser, a restaurant, a hotel lobby.
11:16
SPEAKER_21: Had they had a chance to testify publicly, here in part, is what we would have heard.
11:23
SPEAKER_07: He came up behind me while I was talking on the telephone and kissed me on the back of the neck.
11:28
SPEAKER_07: I was real shaken.
11:30
SPEAKER_21: Back in 1969, Julie Williamson worked in Bob Packwood's Portland office.
11:35
SPEAKER_21: She was 29.
11:37
SPEAKER_07: And as soon as I hung up, I turned to him and said, Don't you ever do that again?
11:41
SPEAKER_07: And then I walked away from him into the only other room, and something told me I was in trouble.
11:47
SPEAKER_07: So we had this very odd skirmish around the office where I was trying to get around him and get out of the office, and he was trying to grab me.
11:55
SPEAKER_07: And I kept thinking to myself, this can't be happening.
11:58
SPEAKER_07: It is too stupid.
11:59
SPEAKER_07: I mean, this is like out of a cartoon or something.
12:02
SPEAKER_07: That's the secretary running around and the boss chasing her.
12:04
SPEAKER_07: But he did catch me.
12:06
SPEAKER_07: He grabbed me.
12:08
SPEAKER_07: I was trying, I had my head down and I was trying to kick him to get away.
12:11
SPEAKER_07: So he stood on my feet, he pulled my head back by the hair, gives me the big awful kiss with the tongue.
12:21
SPEAKER_07: And at the same time, he's reaching up under my skirt and trying to pull off my underwear.
12:28
SPEAKER_07: So I kept struggling, and uh somehow I got away.
12:36
SPEAKER_07: Um when I got out there, I stood in the office for a minute thinking, what am I gonna do?
12:44
SPEAKER_07: I was trying to decide whether to leave without my parents or whether to try to find it.
12:48
SPEAKER_07: And he walked out behind me and stopped at the uh threshold of the Holland.
12:54
SPEAKER_07: If not today, someday.
12:59
SPEAKER_21: Was he drunk?
13:00
SPEAKER_07: No.
13:02
SPEAKER_21: This was stone cold sober to the other.
13:05
SPEAKER_07: I know he was sober.
13:06
SPEAKER_26: Yeah.
13:07
SPEAKER_26: Had my back to the doorway and it was dark behind me, of course, and um felt a hand going up my leg from ankle to crotch fast.
13:20
SPEAKER_26: Um fast I didn't have time to think about it.
13:25
SPEAKER_26: I just whirled around and uh I didn't hear anyone behind me.
13:29
SPEAKER_21: Back in the early 70s, Gail Bailer was a hostess greeting and seating people at a hotel restaurant in Portland.
13:36
SPEAKER_21: She was 29 years old.
13:39
SPEAKER_26: It was uh Bob Packwood, and he was kind of leaning against the doorway.
13:48
SPEAKER_26: He was very drunk.
13:51
SPEAKER_26: And he said, Do you know, don't you know who I am?
13:57
SPEAKER_26: And I said, I know who you are, I don't care who you are, don't touch me.
14:01
SPEAKER_21: That was the last time Dale Byler ever spoke to Bob Packwood.
14:05
SPEAKER_21: Senator Packwood has admitted he had a problem with alcohol and cannot remember much of what might have happened when he was drunk, but apologizes for any offense he might have caused.
14:18
SPEAKER_21: Was he drunk on any of these occasions when he kissed you in the elevator?
14:22
SPEAKER_25: He was never drunk on the elevator that I know of.
14:25
SPEAKER_21: Carrie Whitney was 27 years old in 1977.
14:29
SPEAKER_21: She was an elevator operator in the Senate, the private elevator for senators only.
14:35
SPEAKER_25: Senator Pack would would ride on my elevator, and it started out that we were just having friendly conversation and everything, and then um one day he got on and he just sort of tilted his head to the side and he said kiss.
14:51
SPEAKER_25: And then he just threw his arms around me and kissed me.
14:57
SPEAKER_25: And I just was stunned.
14:59
SPEAKER_25: And um and then he got off on the second floor, and whenever he was alone with me on the elevator, he would basically do the same thing.
15:09
SPEAKER_25: And I tried to figure out what was going on.
15:12
SPEAKER_25: I didn't know.
15:14
SPEAKER_25: Um I I thought, well, he must like me.
15:19
SPEAKER_25: What you know, what does he see in me?
15:22
SPEAKER_21: Did you resist him?
15:23
SPEAKER_25: Did you I just sort of backed away and mashed myself up against the wall.
15:28
SPEAKER_25: Really, what I did was um just okay, it's just two floors.
15:32
SPEAKER_21: You can just he'll be off in the Senator Peckwood also went to her house, attacked her there, she says, and she threw him out.
15:44
SPEAKER_21: All the women say the senator tried to use the aura of power and dignity surrounding the office as a means of seduction.
15:52
SPEAKER_03: And I can remember kind of backing around the table like this, and the space getting closer and closer, and finally he just grabbed me, started kissing me.
16:01
SPEAKER_21: That was 1977.
16:03
SPEAKER_21: Jean McMahon turned up for a job interview with the senator.
16:07
SPEAKER_21: She'd admired him for his support of women's issues.
16:11
SPEAKER_21: Gillian Butler was a college student in the early 1980s, working at the front desk of a hotel in Portland where Packwood often stayed.
16:20
SPEAKER_24: One day he was checking out and he leaned across the front desk and kissed me out of the blue on the lips.
16:26
SPEAKER_24: And I was really shocked and embarrassed, and I kind of backed away and tried to laugh it off.
16:32
SPEAKER_24: Then on another occasion, I went to get his bags out of the closet, and he followed me into the closet, and I turned around and he kissed me again.
16:41
SPEAKER_24: I worked there for four years, and I got to know a lot of the guests, and nobody else ever thought they could kiss me goodbye.
16:48
SPEAKER_27: So we were talking about international politics and the Vietnam War, and I had lived in Europe and all of these things, and I was really thrilled at the conversation we were having.
16:59
SPEAKER_21: In 1969, Sharon Grant was 28 years old.
17:03
SPEAKER_21: She too was being interviewed for a job at Packwood Senate office.
17:08
SPEAKER_27: And then all of a sudden, he just kind of like narrowed his eyes and looked at me.
17:13
SPEAKER_27: And he said, What are you doing tonight?
17:16
SPEAKER_27: Let's go have a drink and spend the evening together.
17:19
SPEAKER_27: And I just knew right then that I was in trouble.
17:24
SPEAKER_07: I had to pick him up at his athletic club in a car and drive him about a mile downtown to talk at a Girl Scout cookie drive.
17:32
SPEAKER_07: I had gone through all the stuff in my head.
17:34
SPEAKER_07: Well, maybe he's in love with me.
17:36
SPEAKER_07: Well, that wasn't very loving.
17:37
SPEAKER_07: You know, maybe his wife doesn't understand him, I don't care.
17:40
SPEAKER_07: You know, all that kind of stuff.
17:41
SPEAKER_07: And so when he got in the car, I said, What was supposed to happen the other day?
17:45
SPEAKER_07: And I was angry.
17:46
SPEAKER_07: And his response was, I suppose you're one of the ones who won a motel.
17:52
SPEAKER_07: We didn't speak again.
17:54
SPEAKER_21: I mean, those were his words.
17:55
SPEAKER_07: Those were his words.
17:56
SPEAKER_07: I don't think I'll ever forget.
17:57
SPEAKER_07: And that was it, and I quit.
17:59
SPEAKER_07: I felt like to stay would be both to contone the behavior and to give him permission to do it again.
18:08
SPEAKER_07: I believed him when he said, if not today, someday.
18:12
SPEAKER_21: Most of these incidents happened 10, even 20 years ago.
18:17
SPEAKER_21: There are those who say, well, there should be a statute of limitations on this kind of behavior.
18:22
SPEAKER_21: Well, what do you say?
18:24
SPEAKER_05: We have never accepted this kind of behavior.
18:28
SPEAKER_05: There has not been a forum to speak out about it.
18:32
SPEAKER_21: Gina Hunton was a 35-year-old volunteer during the senator's 1980 campaign, divorced with two children.
18:40
SPEAKER_21: As her very first meeting with Packwood ended, he offered to walk her to her car.
18:45
SPEAKER_05: And I thought, well, that's certainly an honor to have a U.S.
18:49
SPEAKER_05: senator of his stature walk me to my car.
18:53
SPEAKER_05: And as I was getting in, unlocking the door, he took a hold of my arm, pulled me up to him, put his arms around me, kissed me, and put his tongue in my mouth.
19:06
SPEAKER_21: Now, at this point, he'd known you for what?
19:09
SPEAKER_21: An hour?
19:10
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, probably an hour.
19:13
SPEAKER_05: I shared my story with two of his staff people.
19:16
SPEAKER_05: The first one said, You think that's bad, listen to this, and told me another story.
19:22
SPEAKER_06: I had the same experience as well.
19:24
SPEAKER_06: I was told that um I had a few options.
19:27
SPEAKER_06: One was either to put out or to get out.
19:30
SPEAKER_06: And basically those were the choices because that's the way he was.
19:34
SPEAKER_21: Put as as crudely as that?
19:36
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
19:37
SPEAKER_21: Back in 1975, Paige Wagers was 21.
19:41
SPEAKER_21: She was thrilled with her very first job, a mail clerk in Bob Packwood's Senate office.
19:47
SPEAKER_06: He buzzed me on the intercom and told me to come into his office late afternoon, so I did.
19:53
SPEAKER_06: There was no one around, and as soon as I walked in the door, he pushed me up against the wall, pulled my head back.
19:58
SPEAKER_06: He had his hand in my hair, holding my head back, and um put his tongue in my mouth.
20:04
SPEAKER_06: I had no idea anything like that would occur.
20:07
SPEAKER_06: He was on top of me trying to pull my clothes off, bondling me.
20:11
SPEAKER_06: Now that's not harassment, that's an assault.
20:13
SPEAKER_21: Paige quickly found another job on Capitol Hill.
20:17
SPEAKER_21: Over the next six years, she worked her way up to legislative assistant.
20:21
SPEAKER_21: In 1981, she ran into Packwood again, this time in one of the basement corridors of the Capitol building.
20:29
SPEAKER_06: And I was so naive, I was so proud of myself telling him about my new job, and it was the first job I had with any real responsibility.
20:36
SPEAKER_06: And he said he was so proud and he could help me, and he just needed to stop in his office for a second.
20:41
SPEAKER_06: Would I walk with him?
20:42
SPEAKER_06: And I'm thinking, okay, there's people in an office.
20:44
SPEAKER_06: So I'm just talking, talking, talking.
20:46
SPEAKER_06: He opens this door, I go in, I realize there's no one in there, and before I could even say anything, he was on top of me again.
20:53
SPEAKER_06: It was the exact same thing.
20:54
SPEAKER_06: And I felt totally humiliated and betrayed and stupid.
20:59
SPEAKER_26: Most of these women thought they were the only one.
21:02
unknown: Yeah.
21:03
SPEAKER_26: We're a group now, but we weren't a group then.
21:05
SPEAKER_26: We were all by ourselves, one at a time.
21:09
SPEAKER_26: Makes a difference.
21:10
SPEAKER_21: Rules of procedure.
21:11
SPEAKER_21: The Senate Ethics Committee by last Wednesday felt that the evidence against Senator Peckwood was overwhelming.
21:18
SPEAKER_21: They'd heard from scores of women, some of whom, like Lois Kincaid, did not even know him before they were grabbed.
21:26
SPEAKER_21: She'd attended a fundraiser.
21:28
SPEAKER_22: Without saying a word, he grabbed me.
21:31
SPEAKER_22: My first thought was he's having a heart attack.
21:36
SPEAKER_22: He's having a seizure.
21:37
SPEAKER_22: He's grabbed me to keep from hitting the floor.
21:40
SPEAKER_22: And so I whirled around expecting to see pain or or something, you know, some kind of distress on his face, and he was just leveling this very meaningful look at me.
21:51
SPEAKER_22: And I straightened my arms and he mumbled some kind of I'm sorry, or excuse me, and literally scurried out of the room.
22:02
SPEAKER_22: And those were the only words we ever exchanged.
22:06
SPEAKER_21: In 1971, Celia Lighthill was 31.
22:10
SPEAKER_21: She'd accompanied her husband, a cameraman, working for CBS News, covering a rafting trip down the Snake River.
22:18
SPEAKER_21: Senator Packwood was there with his wife.
22:22
SPEAKER_23: I went into the woods to gather firewood and I I was far enough away that I was not by the campsite.
22:28
SPEAKER_23: I thought I was alone.
22:30
SPEAKER_23: And then suddenly the senator appeared.
22:32
SPEAKER_23: He seemed to literally jump out from behind a tree.
22:36
SPEAKER_23: Uh, grabbed me, kissed me on the lips.
22:39
SPEAKER_23: Um, it was clear that at that point that he had been drinking, and I pushed him away and got out of there as quickly as I could.
22:48
SPEAKER_21: A lot of people are gonna be watching this tonight, and gonna be saying, men, and maybe someone, what's the big deal?
22:57
SPEAKER_21: The guy made a pass at him, get on with your life.
22:59
SPEAKER_21: He didn't more than a half.
23:01
SPEAKER_21: It's a passion.
23:02
SPEAKER_21: People are gonna say this.
23:03
SPEAKER_07: A lot of people say, gee, things are changing so fast they're really confused about what's appropriate and what's not appropriate, or whether I should compliment a woman on a new dress or something.
23:13
SPEAKER_07: I don't think it's real confusing that restraining a person against her will, kissing her, sticking your tongue in her mouth is inappropriate.
23:22
SPEAKER_07: We can at least make that boundary.
23:25
SPEAKER_21: Has there been any lasting effect or damage from these incidents?
23:31
SPEAKER_06: I think so.
23:32
SPEAKER_06: You know, you can't ever say that one thing should be responsible for changing your life.
23:38
SPEAKER_06: But what Senator Pacqua did should never have happened.
23:41
SPEAKER_06: He shouldn't have been allowed to do that, and he shouldn't have done it.
23:44
SPEAKER_06: And I lost all confidence in myself to be able to work in a man's world.
23:50
SPEAKER_06: And so now where I am at 41 instead of 21, divorced, I'm a single mother, trying to get through graduate school.
23:59
SPEAKER_06: I look back and I go, what happened to my life?
24:03
SPEAKER_21: Bob Packwood may well have been asking that same question of himself as he made the long walk through the Capitol to the Senate floor last Thursday, shamed, disgraced, and disowned, and still apparently unrepentant.
24:20
SPEAKER_21: Surely some of you must feel some sense of personal, I don't know, vindication is the word, vengeance even.
24:28
SPEAKER_21: About getting even with this man who did that to you then.
24:33
SPEAKER_07: If I'd had an opportunity at that time to speak out and be heard, none of the rest of this might have happened.
24:40
SPEAKER_07: And he went on, he's gone on for 20 some years.
24:44
SPEAKER_07: Woman after woman after woman has been subjected to Bob Packwood's accosting them without permission against their will and had to struggle to get away.
24:55
SPEAKER_05: I think that the logical consequence of abuse of power is the loss of that power.
25:02
SPEAKER_05: Right.
25:03
SPEAKER_19: Good luck.
25:05
unknown: Godspeed.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: It really is pretty damning and pretty overwhelming.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: When you hear those stories, it just uh you know, I you know, uh morally safe for asking something along the lines of, you know, some the guy made a pass at you.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: And I I can't I just can't see how anybody can justify the the grabbing them by the hair and sticking your tongue down somebody's throat and stepping on their feet.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: It just it almost sounds so crazy you just don't b you just don't want to believe it.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Especially from someone who you know is so uh intelligent and um good at that job.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh, you know, I I I still to this day I like as I said when we introduced this this uh story and this storyline into our show, uh you know, I have really wrestled with uh my opinions of Bob Packwood.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: He was someone I admired uh prior to this scandal, and uh still look back on it and shake my head at at how anybody could do some of this stuff.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: It just uh uh even though I'm willing to go out on limb and defend him on the diary tampering and the and the uh the working to get his wife a job, uh I'd I'd you know to try to be fair.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: This stuff with these women is just really it's just troubling beyond words.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: Um Frances Graves was the or Florence Graves, excuse me, was the lady that broke this story.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: She appeared on Meet the Press.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: And uh this of course was also after the fact, after he's been forced out.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Um but it is an interesting um history of how the story got into the news.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh really good reporting on her part.
27:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh she got held up by the Washington Post, who decided not to pursue anything uh at the time until after his election was over.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: Um and so we're gonna let you hear her thoughts, and then we're gonna go to the press conference when it hits the fan, and you'll hear Bob uh Packwood trying to defend himself.
27:26
SPEAKER_12: In 1992, you break a huge story that basically results in the resignation of the Senate Finance Committee Chairman, uh Bob Packwood.
27:37
SPEAKER_02: I often say to people that I can see Washington much more clearly from Boston.
27:42
SPEAKER_02: And you know, this was a story that I saw that was could have been done by anyone in Washington if they decided they wanted to do it.
27:50
SPEAKER_02: Senator Packwood's abuse of women, who worked for him in particular, was the shared narrative was, the shared narrative was this is a perk of power.
28:00
SPEAKER_02: This is what powerful guys do.
28:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh they've been doing it for decades.
28:06
SPEAKER_02: So why are we calling, you know, why is this a story now?
28:09
SPEAKER_02: And in fact, I would, I believe that the Packwood story that that I did with Charlie Shepherd at the Post, you could not have gotten that story in the Washington Post in previous years, before the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas hearings.
28:28
SPEAKER_02: That was really, as you know, a watershed moment.
28:33
SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Watershed moment, uh, where she testified uh the Supreme Court nominee at the time, Clarence Thomas, that he had sexually harassed her while chairman of the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: And you remember, I'm sure, the country just went was frozen.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
28:53
SPEAKER_12: And that was in 1991, right?
28:54
SPEAKER_12: Yes.
28:55
SPEAKER_02: And so fall of 1992.
28:56
SPEAKER_12: So you do your story on Packwood that it first appears November 22nd, 1992.
29:02
SPEAKER_12: So it is on the heels of that watershed moment.
29:05
SPEAKER_12: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
29:06
SPEAKER_02: But you could never have got you could not have gotten the Packwood story in the Washington Post or any other major newspaper in 1990.
29:15
SPEAKER_02: Suddenly, mind shifted.
29:19
SPEAKER_02: Thinking shifted, just the way, you know, I mean, that's how how the world changes.
29:25
SPEAKER_02: Enough people decide, change their minds about what reality is, the same way they did about uh the civil rights movement, changed suddenly it was, you know, it was one way and then it was another way when enough people changed their minds.
29:41
SPEAKER_02: And that's another reason, just as an aside, that I that a power I see of journalism, which is to provide people information to be able to shift people's consciousness.
29:55
SPEAKER_02: Senator Packwood, the Thursday before the Tuesday election, and first confronted him with these allegations.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we had six names to confront him with, and I don't think he expected us to have names because as you may know, I think this is the first time in history more than one woman has been willing to go on the record with these kinds of allegations against a U.S.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: Senator.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: Most women won't talk, uh, understandably, for fear of being smeared.
30:21
SPEAKER_02: And he denied every allegation.
30:25
SPEAKER_02: He in the interview, he acted almost wounded.
30:29
SPEAKER_02: How could how could these women possibly be saying this kind of thing about me?
30:33
SPEAKER_02: He said, in fact, I'm just so hesitant of anything at all that that I just don't make approaches to to men or to women, and almost in that same kind of halting, wounded kind of tone.
30:44
SPEAKER_14: So you had to go back and recheck all your sources and it took you time.
30:49
SPEAKER_02: First of all, after we got through with the interview, uh he started faxing.
30:54
SPEAKER_02: He started contacting employees and former employees who might have known anything about some of these women and asked them to write discrediting letters that he began to fax to post editor Lynn Downing.
31:05
SPEAKER_14: So that slowed down the process.
31:07
SPEAKER_14: What is the most important lesson our viewers can learn from this whole saga of Bob Packwood?
31:14
SPEAKER_02: I think one of the most important lessons, and it if you look at the entire saga, is looking at the corruption across several fronts.
31:22
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just corruption with women, it was corruption with altering his diaries, it was corruption with uh making job off, trying to get lobbyists to make job offers to his wife.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: Um the diaries are really chilling on this subject, on on the the whole corruption of power, really.
31:42
SPEAKER_14: Um how many women do you believe that sex Senator Packwood sexually harassed?
31:49
SPEAKER_02: Um that's I don't want to use the legal term sexual harass, okay?
31:53
SPEAKER_02: We talked about sexual misconduct in our articles.
31:56
SPEAKER_02: Um I know of more than 40 women who who have told stories of improper advances by Senator Packwood.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: Do I think they're more than 40?
32:04
SPEAKER_02: You bet.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: Uh there were a number of people that we have been told about that we called, and frankly, some of them hung up the phone on us.
32:11
SPEAKER_14: How prevalent is sexual harassment or sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill?
32:15
SPEAKER_02: Well, after the uh stories, the first story that Charlie and I did, the Washington Post did a survey to try to determine that very thing.
32:23
SPEAKER_02: And they found when in a survey of women working on Capitol Hill that one in three women said that she had been harassed by either a uh a co-worker or someone in power.
32:33
SPEAKER_02: One in nine said she'd been harassed by a member of Congress.
32:37
SPEAKER_14: Lisa Myers, what's the following on Capitol Hill?
32:39
SPEAKER_08: Well, I think the most interesting thing that's happened, uh, at least one of the most interesting things to me was the way uh what it told about the women in the Senate.
32:47
SPEAKER_08: Nancy Cassabaum, always independent, was the first to call for Packwood's resignation, the first Republican.
32:53
SPEAKER_08: Uh Barbara McCulski McCulski played a skillful inside role within the ethics committee, pushing hard but not so hard that she lost her effectiveness.
33:02
SPEAKER_08: Barbara Boxer tried to score political points and put Senator Packwoods ahead in her trophy case.
33:07
SPEAKER_08: And in the end, when it was all over, Diane Feinstein showed great grace and tried to heal.
33:12
SPEAKER_08: She stood on up on the Senate floor and she said, You know, my father always said to me, Diane, do not let a man be known for the last thing he did, let him be known for the best thing he did.
33:23
SPEAKER_08: It was a healing moment.
33:24
SPEAKER_14: That has to be the last word.
33:25
SPEAKER_14: Lisa Myers, we thank you.
33:26
SPEAKER_14: Florence George Graves, thank you for your work and contributions to journalism and coming here with us three afternoon.
33:37
SPEAKER_20: And seeing both their frustration and the waste of their talents, I moved these women into positions of authority and responsibility.
33:45
SPEAKER_20: And from that time forward, all of my political activities have been, for lack of a better term, gender neutral.
33:55
SPEAKER_20: Those who could perform best, regardless of gender, were given the greatest responsibilities.
34:00
SPEAKER_20: I have had talented men and women as my chiefs of staff.
34:06
SPEAKER_20: For the past 15 years, it has been women that have held that position.
34:11
SPEAKER_20: And great women and great men have passed through my organization.
34:15
SPEAKER_20: I think of Carol Crawford, one of my first hires in 1969 as a legislative assistant, subsequently the Assistant Attorney General of the United States, and now a commissioner of the International Trade Commission.
34:26
SPEAKER_20: Bill Diefendurfer, my chief of staff on both the Commerce and Finance Committee, subsequently Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
34:34
SPEAKER_20: Karen Phillips, who served on the staffs of both the Commerce and Finance Committee, now a commissioner on the Interstate Commerce Commission.
34:41
SPEAKER_20: Alan Holmer, my second administrative assistant, subsequently Deputy United States Trade Representative.
34:49
SPEAKER_20: During all of these years in the Senate, we functioned as a team.
34:54
SPEAKER_20: We were men and women bound together by a common and demanding cause and a serious purpose.
35:02
SPEAKER_20: The work was hard, but if the term fraternal can be used in a gender-neutral sense, we were a political fraternity.
35:14
SPEAKER_20: We argued together, sometimes vehemently, over policy.
35:18
SPEAKER_20: We ate and drank together.
35:20
SPEAKER_20: We joked and laughed together.
35:21
SPEAKER_20: We sang together.
35:24
SPEAKER_20: But through it all, ran equality and merit and performance, regardless of gender.
35:34
SPEAKER_20: In light of my commitment to women's issues and my deep belief that the workplace must be gender neutral, the current charges about my behavior trouble me in a profound way.
35:47
SPEAKER_20: I recognize now that my personal conduct has been at variance with these beliefs.
35:53
SPEAKER_20: Not because my convictions are not genuine, but because my conduct was not faithful to those convictions.
36:03
SPEAKER_20: Although most of these incidents are a decade or two decades old, and no one's job or pay or status in the office was threatened, my conduct was still wrong.
36:17
SPEAKER_20: I just didn't get it.
36:20
SPEAKER_20: I do now.
36:24
SPEAKER_20: I said I'm here to take full responsibility for my conduct, and I do so.
36:30
SPEAKER_20: The issue here is my conduct and my conduct alone.
36:37
SPEAKER_20: I will not debate the recent accounts of my actions toward my staff and those who worked with my office.
36:43
SPEAKER_20: The important point is that my actions were unwelcome and insensitive.
36:48
SPEAKER_20: These women were offended, appropriately so, and I'm truly sorry.
36:55
SPEAKER_20: So once again, let me repeat my apologies to the women who were hurt by my conduct.
37:00
SPEAKER_20: It was not done with malice or evil intent.
37:06
SPEAKER_20: Now let me make these assurances.
37:11
SPEAKER_20: I pledge to restructure drastically and totally my attitude and professional relationships.
37:16
SPEAKER_20: And if that requires professional counseling, I will seek it.
37:20
SPEAKER_20: I guarantee that nothing like this will ever happen again.
37:25
SPEAKER_20: I am prepared to cooperate fully with the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate and resolve this matter.
37:31
SPEAKER_20: I have been a strong force in the Senate for 24 years for Oregon and for our nation.
37:37
SPEAKER_20: Even my most severe critics will admit that.
37:40
SPEAKER_20: Whether it was saving Hell's Canyon or French Pete, or whether it was those lonely and solitary hours in the late 70s and early 80s defending Roe v.
37:49
SPEAKER_20: Wade and trying to prevent its reversal or its dismemberment, I led the fight.
37:55
SPEAKER_20: I plan to remain in the Senate and continue my work on behalf of the people of Oregon, and to that end, I would like to address these comments to all Oregonians.
38:07
SPEAKER_20: This is a critical and defining time in my life.
38:13
SPEAKER_20: I go forward without illusions, but with a new sense of purpose and determination.
38:20
SPEAKER_20: The bond of trust between us is stretched thin right now, but I am committed to repairing that bond.
38:30
SPEAKER_20: I ask for the chance to earn back your respect.
38:33
SPEAKER_20: I pledge to be worthy of your trust.
38:36
SPEAKER_20: Senator, Senator, just when bowl my noses are.
38:48
SPEAKER_20: Yes, our our office is planning to do so.
38:50
SPEAKER_20: Uh I support it.
38:51
SPEAKER_20: Whether the other offices are going to do so or not, we're going to.
38:54
SPEAKER_10: Senator, in spite of your statement today, there are some things with initial denial and delegation.
38:59
SPEAKER_10: A manager cover up which allowed you to get this at the election.
39:05
SPEAKER_10: What you would all consider stepping down and standing for expectations.
39:09
SPEAKER_20: Uh, let me give you the circumstances when we first learned of the specifics of the charges.
39:14
SPEAKER_20: It was a Thursday afternoon, uh, the Thursday before the election, uh, late in the afternoon, 4.30, as I recall.
39:22
SPEAKER_20: And for the first time, I met with the Washington Post reporters who had been doing the investigation on the story.
39:28
SPEAKER_20: Uh they came at a time when I had a debate the next day, uh, in Bend, 130 miles away.
39:34
SPEAKER_20: I was not prepared for it, and for the first time, they mentioned charges I'd never heard.
39:39
SPEAKER_20: They mentioned names I had never heard and said, You've got a day to respond.
39:47
SPEAKER_20: And I thought to myself, I could not have done those things.
39:50
SPEAKER_20: I did not do those things.
39:52
SPEAKER_20: I denied it to myself because I didn't believe it.
39:55
SPEAKER_20: And I denied it to my friends because I didn't believe it, and I denied it to the post.
39:59
SPEAKER_20: And that was the circumstance of the first time that I had ever heard those charges.
40:04
SPEAKER_10: What about stepping down, Senator?
40:06
SPEAKER_20: No, I have no uh very clear.
40:09
SPEAKER_20: No, no, wait, yeah.
40:11
SPEAKER_20: Uh no, I have no intention of resigning at all.
40:15
SPEAKER_17: Senator, you made uh you've got provocatory information on some of the women's maintenance allegations.
40:20
SPEAKER_17: Is that your idea, and if not, whose was it?
40:22
SPEAKER_17: And how many installed for the next first time?
40:24
SPEAKER_20: I'm not uh going to get into the characterization of any of the women involved in these allegations to even respond to the question would start to characterize it, and I'm not gonna do that.
40:31
SPEAKER_18: Senator Senator Plenty?
40:34
SPEAKER_20: I can't hear you.
40:35
SPEAKER_20: Did you trip to the Hazelbund Plenty confirm your suspicions that alcohol has something to do with the already?
40:39
SPEAKER_20: Yeah, you may have noticed in my statement I did not use alcohol as a defense.
40:42
SPEAKER_20: I don't think that's an exoneration for your conduct.
40:45
SPEAKER_20: My conduct here is the issue.
40:46
SPEAKER_20: Alcohol is not a defense.
40:48
SPEAKER_20: Uh I will take continuing counseling on that problem, but I'm not going to use it as a defense at all in these actions.
40:54
SPEAKER_15: Senator, without characterizing the woman who made the charges, Senator, could you tell us whether or not you or your staff tried to investigate the veracity of their charges?
41:03
unknown: Senator, you have said you're taking responsibility.
41:06
SPEAKER_20: Excuse me, I can't hear you.
41:07
SPEAKER_04: You said that you're taking responsibility for your conduct, but part of your conduct was the affidavit that you submitted to the post asking for questions about the character of the women's validation.
41:19
SPEAKER_04: Now, I'm not asking you to discuss any of these affidavits.
41:24
SPEAKER_04: Nonetheless, we submitted 17 affidavits of the number of defensives that was worse than the original conduct, but they were clear why.
41:33
SPEAKER_20: I'll say again, I am not going to discuss the issue at all as to how the I might characterize their conduct.
41:40
SPEAKER_20: I'm not going to get into it, and I'm not going to I'm not going to uh respond at all to the issue that you're raising.
41:46
SPEAKER_10: But you're not really taking responsibility for your conduct, but you're back.
41:50
SPEAKER_20: The issue of my conduct in these allegations and charges, uh, where I and I've said my conduct, and you can use whatever word you want, boorish or stupid or inappropriate or wrong, which I think is the best word, is what is at issue here, and I'm simply not going to discuss the issue of any characterization of the women involved.
42:09
SPEAKER_20: Yes, ma'am.
42:11
SPEAKER_04: You said we just didn't get it.
42:12
SPEAKER_04: I think a lot of women would find that hard to understand that the other agents are kept telling you that they didn't want to be able to do that.
42:23
SPEAKER_20: All I can say, when you look at my entire record uh in the history of, if you want to call them women's issues, I'm inclined to think they're American issues, but call them women issues, uh, my views have not changed on any of those issues.
42:36
SPEAKER_20: Uh I still support uh family leave and and the Freedom of Choice Act and the Equal Rights Amendment, if it ever comes around again.
42:42
SPEAKER_20: It is frankly as if I had a blind spot and my conduct was simply at variance with all of the rest of my beliefs.
42:49
SPEAKER_10: Senator, do you do you deny that uh this week a week ago members of your staff were still soliciting possibly derivatory comments from people who don't know some of the public?
42:59
SPEAKER_20: Well, uh if we want to spend the rest of the of the press conference on this subject, I guess we can.
43:03
SPEAKER_20: Uh I'm not uh I'm not going to respond to any questions about any efforts to characterize these women, even respond to the questions tries to characterize them.
43:20
SPEAKER_17: I'll realize that.
43:21
SPEAKER_17: Uh what makes you think you are instinct on any other issues that kind of and that's been preserved.
43:27
SPEAKER_20: Wait, wait, I don't quite follow your question.
43:29
SPEAKER_17: What you said earlier, that you just didn't get it on on women's issues on questions of sexual harassment, you didn't get it there, it's a possibility there that you didn't get it on any other issue that kind of supports you that could vote on or what they would think that uh uh you're now getting it across the board and should be able to take a determined effect.
43:48
SPEAKER_20: I think what I said uh when it uh when it came to women's issues, as you categorize it, uh that my position has been very, very consistent for a long period of time.
43:58
SPEAKER_20: Uh I introduced the first Freedom of Choice Act in 1970, and the one that we're now considering uh is practically a direct lineal descendant of it.
44:06
SPEAKER_20: In all of these years, uh, when I was in the legislature, when I was running campaign organizations, and here, I was in sync with the women's issues.
44:14
SPEAKER_20: It was my conduct that was not in sync with my beliefs in this particular area.
44:19
SPEAKER_20: Not that I wasn't in sync with all the other things they understand, all the other all the other beliefs that are so.
44:25
SPEAKER_20: Critical to my to my to my core beliefs.
44:28
SPEAKER_20: My conduct was simply not in sync with that with those beliefs.
44:32
SPEAKER_16: Senator Packworth, Senator Packwide.
44:34
SPEAKER_16: Acknowledging all the specific allegations of true.
44:38
SPEAKER_20: I'm not going to get into the specifics of each and every charge.
44:41
SPEAKER_20: I'm simply going to say my conduct was wrong, or pick whatever word you want.
44:50
SPEAKER_20: Would it be accurate to call that?
44:52
SPEAKER_20: Pardon me?
44:53
SPEAKER_10: Would it be accurate to say you set four and wrong?
44:57
unknown: But did your actions constitute the wrong way?
45:11
SPEAKER_20: Whether in or out of office, it is wrong.
45:13
SPEAKER_20: My conduct was wrong.
45:14
SPEAKER_20: And I I apologize for that.
45:16
SPEAKER_20: My conduct was simply wrong.
45:18
SPEAKER_11: Senator Senator, sorry to follow up on that.
45:20
SPEAKER_11: Your fellow senators are going to judge you now.
45:23
SPEAKER_11: What do you think the appropriate punishment is?
45:25
SPEAKER_20: I think uh I think that's best left in their hands.
45:27
SPEAKER_20: I do not intend to resign.
45:29
SPEAKER_20: I think I can still carry out fully my duties for the state of Oregon, and I plan to do so.
45:33
SPEAKER_10: Senator, how can you how can you uh assure me that conduct is never happened again based on your uh past conduct?
45:41
SPEAKER_10: What will determine whether you will seek counsel?
45:44
SPEAKER_10: Finally, why did you not speak publicly here at the statements about this for 18 days?
45:50
SPEAKER_20: Uh well, I take let me take it in reverse.
45:52
SPEAKER_20: Uh needless to say, the last 18 days have not been a vacation.
45:56
SPEAKER_20: Uh uh if anybody wants to walk in my shoes for the last 18 days, I'll be happy to change the shoes no matter what their size.
46:03
SPEAKER_20: I needed time to reflect about my own conduct.
46:06
SPEAKER_20: Uh I needed to talk with a lot of old friends in Oregon that have been with me for 10, 20, 30, or in some cases 40 years.
46:13
SPEAKER_20: And I simply wanted to get my mind straight and my thoughts straight before I was prepared to speak.
46:22
SPEAKER_20: What will be the common whether you will be well we've already indicated we're as far as the office is concerned, we're gonna go through it.
46:31
SPEAKER_20: Uh whether other officers are gonna go through it or not, I am prepared to seek whatever professional counseling may be necessary.
46:36
SPEAKER_10: Is that counseling what type of counseling?
46:39
SPEAKER_20: Well, I don't uh I'm obviously I'm not an expert in this area.
46:42
SPEAKER_20: I don't know what type of counseling that is.
46:44
SPEAKER_20: I'm gonna find out, but I don't know what kind it is.
46:46
SPEAKER_09: Senator, aren't you asking people to trust you awfully quickly and awfully much in the short run over a long period of grievances, frankly?
46:55
SPEAKER_20: I would like people to judge me on my whole record as to what I have done in this area.
47:01
SPEAKER_20: And if somebody's going to say we were with you, we were with you, we're with you, but on this one you erred, and therefore everything that you've stood for and everything that you've done is to be forgotten and erased, and that doesn't count.
47:14
SPEAKER_20: I would like to be judged on the basis that he stood with us and fought for us, and in this area made a mistake, and I admit the mistake, and I apologize for the mistake.
47:24
SPEAKER_16: Senator, you say that you acted improperly, but you were wrong.
47:27
SPEAKER_16: Yet you won't characterize any of the individual cases.
47:30
SPEAKER_16: Are you saying you acted improperly in every one of these cases which allegations are against you, or just in some of them?
47:35
SPEAKER_20: Well, what I what I'm saying again, I am not here going to get into each and every specific allegation, nor do I know what allegations may fall from the sky subsequently to the Washington Post story.
47:44
SPEAKER_16: It looks like there are some in which you've been unfairly characterized.
47:47
SPEAKER_20: Oh, I'm I'm not going to again get into the specifics of the allegations.
47:52
SPEAKER_20: When the Washington Post initially interviewed me on it, there were some that I could not remember, there were people that I could not remember, and I'm simply not going to get into the specifics of the allegations here.
48:03
SPEAKER_20: Pardon me?
48:08
SPEAKER_20: Yes, I'm well realize that the last 18 days I have spent uh for all practical purposes reflecting, thinking internally.
48:20
SPEAKER_20: I am prepared to prepared to take whatever actions are necessary.
48:24
SPEAKER_20: Whatever those are.
48:26
SPEAKER_20: But I'm not uh I'm not an expert in this field, and I don't know exactly what is necessary, but I I will find out.
48:33
SPEAKER_20: Pardon me?
48:36
SPEAKER_20: Well, I just listen I just got back to the office today.
48:39
SPEAKER_20: Uh the first time I've been in the office in in whatever how many days it's been.
48:44
SPEAKER_20: The office is going to be going through this, I will be going through this, and perhaps the people that I we go through it with in the office will have some leads for me.
48:51
SPEAKER_20: All I'm saying is I'm going to pursue it.
48:52
SPEAKER_20: I just don't I don't know at the moment who I call, but I'm going to pursue it.
49:00
SPEAKER_17: Uh, responding to the latest allegation you said this whole thing has become ludicrous.
49:06
SPEAKER_17: What has become ludicrous?
49:08
SPEAKER_20: Oh, was it no no, was this the last allegation about the 13-year-old?
49:11
SPEAKER_20: That was ludicrous.
49:12
SPEAKER_20: Um that this is where I this is, yes, and that one, that one I do deny.
49:16
SPEAKER_20: This is where I say I can never if something falls from the sky, when I've said my conduct was wrong, I meant my conduct was wrong as to the charges that I knew about from the Washington Post story.
49:26
SPEAKER_20: But if somebody says something absolutely uh thunderbolt that I've never heard of, and it's never come up before, and that I think is false, is false.
49:34
SPEAKER_20: And and that one I deny.
49:37
SPEAKER_20: No, let me let me let me let me take Helen.
49:41
unknown: Are there other people?
49:42
SPEAKER_23: Well, why do you think you're not like an alcoholic?
49:51
SPEAKER_20: Pardon me?
49:55
SPEAKER_20: I just Helen, I just didn't get it.
49:58
SPEAKER_20: Here I sit with an organization of men and women uh and advancement and promotion and pay based upon as gender neutral a basis as you can have.
50:07
SPEAKER_20: I've never looked at the at the organizations of the rest of the Senate offices, but I would be willing, I think, to put mine up against any office in terms of the advancement of women and the number of women in highly paid positions.
50:18
SPEAKER_20: I haven't looked at it again, but I'm I might be willing to bet that if we had to have some kind of an affirmative action basis, we would have to lower the salaries of women and raise the salaries of men.
50:27
unknown: Is it true?
50:28
SPEAKER_10: You're taking responsibility.
50:32
SPEAKER_20: Okay against the women's.
50:33
SPEAKER_20: I can't I can't hear you.
50:34
SPEAKER_04: Is it true that friends and associates over the years have warned you about what the possible recognition of?
50:42
unknown: And if so, why were there warnings in the world?
50:45
SPEAKER_20: Uh well, no, the answer is no.
50:47
SPEAKER_20: I didn't have any any warnings from friends, and and uh uh I wish I had, but I didn't, and so the answer is no.
51:05
SPEAKER_08: Uh or uh a pick.
51:07
SPEAKER_08: We're talking about physically restraining women to try to kiss them, chasing them around the office, uh trying to remove their clothing.
51:14
SPEAKER_08: I mean, these these are that's what those are the specifics of the allegations.
51:18
SPEAKER_20: Well, and I and I've indicated uh that was wrong.
51:20
SPEAKER_20: I'm not gonna get into the specifics of each allegation here, but my conduct was wrong.
51:25
SPEAKER_20: But how could you not know it was wrong at the time?
51:28
SPEAKER_20: Well, all I'm saying it was wrong.
51:31
SPEAKER_20: And it was at variance with very long-standing views that I had had about women in the workplace and long-standing views that I had acted on long before other people had acted on.
51:47
SPEAKER_20: Pardon me, okay.
51:48
unknown: A year ago the study was involved in a major debate about sexual harassment with Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill hearings.
51:54
SPEAKER_20: Did you take that opportunity to evaluate your own conduct?
51:57
SPEAKER_20: Were there discussions in your office about sexual harassment?
52:00
SPEAKER_20: There was not.
52:01
SPEAKER_20: I had made my decision on Clarence Thomas uh to vote against him before the Anita Hill hearings came up, and I'd made them on another basis uh and uh there was not.
52:11
SPEAKER_20: That may have been a mistake, but but there was not.
52:13
SPEAKER_20: Did you take the opportunity to evaluate your own conduct over your career?
52:17
SPEAKER_20: No, I did not.
52:18
SPEAKER_20: Senator, were you and let me let me let me let me take some of who haven't got a chance to ask you?
52:23
SPEAKER_17: I'm taking responsibility for your own actions.
52:25
SPEAKER_17: Whose idea was it to call around as you proposed the whose idea was to call around after you haven't the information about the women?
52:35
SPEAKER_17: From where were the calls made?
52:37
SPEAKER_17: And did anyone else beside you?
52:39
SPEAKER_20: Well, again, on any question, and if we want to spend the rest of the press conference on this, I guess we can, relating to the characterization of the women, or any no, no, no, or any or any or or any or anything or anything or anything involving it.
52:55
SPEAKER_20: Uh I am simply not going to get in to that subject.
52:58
SPEAKER_17: Why not?
52:58
SPEAKER_17: Why not?
52:59
SPEAKER_17: Why not?
52:59
SPEAKER_20: Because I'm you know, I'll say for the how much time do we have left?
53:05
SPEAKER_20: Ten minutes.
53:05
SPEAKER_20: I I am not going to get in to the subject of the characterization of the woman or any attempts to characterize the women.
53:11
SPEAKER_15: Senator, will your office cooperate with the ethics committee if they ask you these questions?
53:14
SPEAKER_15: Will the people of Oregon get any answer on this particular question?
53:17
SPEAKER_20: We will uh we we've indicated we will cooperate fully with the ethics committee as to whatever they ask, whether if it's testimony, fine.
53:25
SPEAKER_20: Uh whatever it is they want, we will specifically about you or your office conducting investigations of the women who brought these charges.
53:31
SPEAKER_15: You will fully comply with their questions and give them a complete answer as to what your office did, what you did, and where the call came from.
53:37
SPEAKER_20: I'm going to fully cooperate with the ethics committee, period.
53:40
SPEAKER_16: Senator, you say it to the ethics committee, but you won't say it to your office.
53:43
SPEAKER_20: No, what I'm saying?
53:45
unknown: No.
53:45
SPEAKER_20: What I'm saying is I will fully cooperate with the ethics committee in whatever they ask.
53:49
SPEAKER_16: Senator, you say that you acted improperly in this case.
53:52
SPEAKER_16: You admit that fully.
54:15
SPEAKER_20: Well, all I'm saying is I'm asking I'm asking to be weighed on my entire record.
54:21
SPEAKER_20: And in this area, my conduct was at variance with my entire record, and it's not because I didn't believe in the things I was advocating.
54:28
SPEAKER_20: My conduct was at variance, and I was wrong, and I admit I was wrong.
54:32
SPEAKER_16: And you think the voters will say, I take your I'm sorry, I was wrong, and they'll accept that as enough?
54:37
SPEAKER_20: I don't know if they will.
54:39
SPEAKER_20: Uh uh, I speak it from the heart, I was wrong.
54:41
SPEAKER_20: I mean, I suppose I suppose I could come here and attempt to argue this.
54:45
SPEAKER_20: I haven't.
54:45
SPEAKER_20: I don't know how it'll be accepted.
54:50
SPEAKER_13: Follow up.
54:50
SPEAKER_13: If I could follow up, the voters in Oregon aren't gonna have a chance.
54:54
SPEAKER_13: You were just re-elected for six years.
54:56
SPEAKER_13: They aren't gonna have to judge about it.
54:58
SPEAKER_13: Why unstep down?
55:00
SPEAKER_13: Why not stand for a special election and let them determine whether they want to return you?
55:04
SPEAKER_20: Because, Tim, I ran on some very specific things I wanted to get done, and they were major issues in the campaign.
55:10
SPEAKER_20: I wanted to get done some kind of final timber supply issue where we can get a balance between the environment and timber and some kind of certainty and get that issue behind us.
55:19
SPEAKER_20: I want to get the Oregon Medicaid waiver.
55:21
SPEAKER_20: Twenty years ago, I introduced a health plan that is not very dissimilar from Governor Clinton's health plan.
55:26
SPEAKER_20: I want to get the Freedom of Choice Act passed.
55:27
SPEAKER_20: I want to get the North American Free Trade Agreement passed, and I intend to stay here and do that, and I am not going to resign under any circumstances.
55:36
SPEAKER_10: We're not going to start Oregon, but to achieve those accomplishments, how do you expect to work with some of the women who are elected to the House and Senate with whom you'll have to work, who have seen your record and seen this uh news conference and heard about the allegations?
55:50
SPEAKER_20: Why should they work with you afterwards?
55:53
SPEAKER_20: Well, I would hope that they would be willing to work with somebody who continues to support the same positions that I have supported and the same allies that I've had on these same issues for five, ten, fifteen, twenty years.
56:04
SPEAKER_20: We've been in this in a common endeavor for a long, long period of time.
56:08
SPEAKER_20: Um, I would hope they would be willing to say, we would like to have his help, we would like to have his vote, we would like to work with him.
56:18
SPEAKER_20: Pardon me?
56:22
SPEAKER_20: No, I I don't think so.
56:23
SPEAKER_20: I have discovered this.
56:24
SPEAKER_20: If you come back and uh admit you were wrong and I was wrong, and you get back to your job and you know the issues of timber supply or health care, the North American Free Trade Agreement or the Freedom of Choice Act well, when you're on the floor debating or when you're in committee and you know what you're doing and you know what you're talking about, that you will be influential.
56:46
SPEAKER_10: Alan, you you you've got you've got to get a channel vote on the colour.
56:49
SPEAKER_10: No, I'm gonna I'm gonna take a step down if voters from Oregon call for you too.
56:53
SPEAKER_20: I I'm not going to resign under any circumstances.
56:56
SPEAKER_20: Senator Pardon me?
56:59
unknown: You talk about your old school localization in your statement.
57:02
unknown: And I'm wondering what that's all about.
57:04
SPEAKER_10: I mean, how can the people have to want a higher consciousness on women's and then this other subconscious influence that caused the case of the city of the case?
57:13
SPEAKER_20: No, no, I didn't mean it, uh I didn't mean that in that sense.
57:16
SPEAKER_20: Uh anybody of my age came up, said even even in public schools, the grade school had a boys' gym and a girls' gym.
57:22
SPEAKER_20: It was just it was separate activities.
57:24
SPEAKER_20: And in all my growing up life, uh I never really questioned it.
57:27
SPEAKER_20: And it was only when I came to a position of running an organization where I was supposed to produce Republican victories, and I had this talented pool of women.
57:37
SPEAKER_20: In in those days, uh these were often women who were married to m to men of means, and in those days, they didn't work in the marketplace.
57:46
SPEAKER_20: They did volunteer work, and in in this case, they did volunteer politic work.
57:49
SPEAKER_20: These were five beta kappas, these are sorority presidents, mortar boards, editors of the yearbook, and they were being given menial tasks, and that was simply an eye-opening experience to me to see the loss of the use of the talent.
58:02
SPEAKER_20: And that was the sea change for me.
58:04
SPEAKER_20: I uh I grew up in the in the same era that everybody else did, but I would like to think that that all of my activities and all of the ways that I run my office and all of the ways that I've run my campaigns from that time onward have been in conformance with the principles of gender equality.
58:21
SPEAKER_20: I admit my conduct was wrong.
58:26
SPEAKER_20: I don't think the way that I've run my offices and advanced people and judge people on merit and put people in positions of responsibility regardless of gender has been wrong.
58:37
SPEAKER_20: Yes, ma'am.
58:40
SPEAKER_20: Pardon me?
58:45
SPEAKER_17: Staff members are there of these incidents, and they didn't they need to say something to the clear that this is walking to the government?
58:52
SPEAKER_20: Not that I recall.
58:54
SPEAKER_20: Uh uh I remember when the Washington Post interviewed me and they would ask of an incident 15 or 20 years ago and a name I couldn't recall.
59:02
SPEAKER_20: I couldn't recall.
59:03
SPEAKER_20: I'm not I don't think so, but I can't recall.
59:06
SPEAKER_20: I mean that's the best way I can answer it.
59:11
SPEAKER_20: No, no.
59:14
SPEAKER_20: Let me go, let me go way back there.
59:16
SPEAKER_27: Um I'm I'm not sure I know what that means other than to say yes, my conduct was wrong.
59:23
SPEAKER_27: Do you feel you owe them anything?
59:27
SPEAKER_20: Oh, yes.
59:27
SPEAKER_20: Uh and more than an apology, I would like to meet with them personally and apologize that my conduct was wrong.
59:33
SPEAKER_20: As I say, inappropriate is is too soft a word.
59:36
SPEAKER_20: Uh inappropriate has a certain sense of timeliness, like, well, you you shouldn't have done it then.
59:41
SPEAKER_20: It was just plain wrong.
59:43
SPEAKER_20: And and and and I owe them an apology at a minimum, and I give them that.
59:49
SPEAKER_20: Way back there, way back there, sir.
59:51
unknown: Senator, you said you uh will not use alcohol as we're going to be able to do that.
59:54
SPEAKER_20: That's right.
59:55
SPEAKER_20: But your institutions might have an interest in knowing whether you do in fact believe that you have an alcohol problem at this point, do you?
1:00:01
SPEAKER_20: I don't I don't think so, but I'm going to I'm going to continue uh talking to some people who are who are going to give me counseling in this area.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_20: Uh I don't think it has deterred my work in the past, and I think you'd better ask my fellow senators on that, but uh I I'm going to seek counseling on that in addition.
1:00:17
unknown: Do you believe you've got a problem with alcohol in the past?
1:00:20
SPEAKER_20: Well, I I don't you know it's hard to it's hard to ask a person who uses alcohol.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_20: I don't think so.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_20: But in any event, I'm going to seek counseling in that area also.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_09: Are you going to not use alcohol, Senator?
1:00:31
SPEAKER_09: Will you decline to use alcohol?
1:00:32
SPEAKER_20: So I'm going to I'm at the moment I'm not using alcohol.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_20: I'm going to seek counseling and s and and to see further what the situation is.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_13: Since you won't get into the specific cases, can you tell us exactly what conduct you're apologizing for?
1:00:47
SPEAKER_20: I'm apologizing and I'm not even going to debate the conduct as alleged.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_20: That's what I'm apologizing for.
1:00:53
SPEAKER_13: But what actions did you take that you're apologizing for?
1:00:57
SPEAKER_20: As I said, I'm not I'm not going to get into the specific charges case by case by case by case here.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_20: I'm apologizing for the conduct that was that was alleged that I did, and I and I say I am sorry.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_20: Senator Yes, sir.
1:01:21
unknown: But what did you think back then?
1:01:25
SPEAKER_20: Did you think it's supposed to weigh things off?
1:01:29
unknown: Tell us what your state of mind was.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_20: No, I I can't tell you what my state of mind was.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_20: When the Washington Post first came, I couldn't even believe I engaged in this kind of conduct.
1:01:37
SPEAKER_20: I couldn't believe that I would treat women this way when I felt so strongly about equality and fairness.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_20: When uh when the post came, I could not recall many of the incidents.
1:01:54
SPEAKER_20: Uh they just uh and it was as if as if you were in a circle, and and uh the the circles divided into a a variety of pieces of pie, all of which are different women's issues, and there is just a blank, and I it was at variance with everything else that I believed.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_20: I cannot explain it.
1:02:11
SPEAKER_20: I don't try to exonerate it, and there's no excuse for it, and it was wrong.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_10: Hold it, hold it, hold it.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_10: Last question, please, Mike.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_20: Wait, who?
1:02:20
SPEAKER_10: Mike Donhuer.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_20: Yeah, Mike.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_13: Some of your supporters have described this as a modern witch hunt.
1:02:26
SPEAKER_13: Uh, these two have been denied due process at all if to when the sentence Well, I understand uh no, I don't I understand the news media on this and understand the story.
1:02:37
SPEAKER_20: Uh by and large, the Washington Post broke the story.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_20: Uh I I think they have uh I think they've they've played it very fairly, and I think they've treated me fairly, and I have no complaint.
1:02:45
SPEAKER_20: Thank you for the Senator Senator, what do you like to say?
1:02:52
SPEAKER_00: You've been watching Senator Bob Packwood's first public appearance since late November when the allegations of sexual harass harassment involving him first were published in the Washington Post.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: If you're just joining us, you've probably already gathered that he will not resign.
1:03:06
SPEAKER_00: He says he will not resign under any circumstances.
1:03:09
SPEAKER_00: He pledged to, using his word, restructure his relationships with women.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_00: He guaranteed nothing like the alleged harassment will happen again, and he says he will seek appropriate counseling.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_00: He says his conduct was wrong and at variance with his beliefs.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_00: He apologized to women hurt by his conduct, and here's a little bit of what he had to say.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_20: Although most of these incidents are a decade or two decades old, and no one's job or pay or status in the office was threatened, my conduct was still wrong.
1:03:42
SPEAKER_20: I just didn't get it.