Jill Abramson Smears Justice Thomas Again. Part 5: âBrock and Cooke
Clarence Thomas
Jill Abramsonâs hit piece on  Clarence Thomas  remarkably relies on David Brock and Fred Cooke  although Brock himself rebutted Abramsonâs own work on  Thomas  and has highlighted Cooke as a problematic source. Here are the facts.
Mayer and Abramson have made these accusations on the basis of accounts from sources who tell me they were either flatly misquoted or misrepresented  or refused to confirm information attributed to them. The list of these people who say they were misquoted includes the only woman whose allegations against  Thomas  have not been previously reported â and refuted â in prior books or articles. In addition to relying on fake evidence  doctored quotes  and unsupported hearsay  the book is brimming with anonymous and discreditable sources. Key figures were never interviewed. Where evidence does not fit the authorsâ point  it is ignored entirely. And a whole array of alleged facts â small and large â are simply wrong.
The case that  Thomas  exhibited an interest in pornography after his student days rests on the accounts of two people: Barry Maddox  the proprietor of a Washington  D.C. video rental shop  and Frederick Cooke  a Washington attorney. [A third source  Kaye Savage  who claims to have information linking  Thomas  to Playboy magazine  is discussed later in this review.] Mayer and Abramson write:
âBut the interest in pornography that  Thomas  first exhibited at Yale apparently continued through the early 1980s  when Long Dong Silver was a well-known figure among fans of X-rated movies. According to Barry Maddox  the proprietor of Graffiti  a video rental and equipment store just off Dupont Circle  a few blocks from the EEOCâs headquarters  the store began to rent pornographic videos in 1982. Not long afterward  Maddox recalled   Thomas  became a regular customer.â
There are several problems with this account  including that the EEOCâs headquarters at 18th and L Streets NW  a few blocks south of the Dupont Circle area  did not open until August 1989.  Thomas  worked at that location for only a matter of months  and during the entire time  he  was in the middle of a brutal confirmation fight for a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals  which  he  won in March 1990. In the early 1980s  when Maddox claims  Thomas  was a regular customer  the EEOCâs headquarters were at Columbia Plaza at 24th and E Streets NW â nowhere near Dupont Circle or Graffiti.
âIt was also in Graffiti that Frederick Douglass Cooke  Jr.  a Washington attorney and the former D.C. corporation counsel  saw  Thomas  at the cashierâs counter in the late 1980s with another âfreak-of-natureâ kind of film. Cooke thought it pretty amusing to run into the chairman of the EEOC  whom he had met once or twice on a social basis  standing with a triple X videotape entitled The Adventures of Bad Mama Jama.â
These sentences appear on page 107 of the book  where  though he is not quoted directly  it appears as if Cooke himself has told the authors what he supposedly saw. There is no note indicating otherwise. Not until flipping to a note for page 330  where efforts by  Thomas  opponents to extract damaging information from Cooke are discussed  do we learn  âReached on two separate occasions  Cooke would neither confirm nor deny the account.â[5.]
Jill Abramsonâs hit piece on   [TGT]   remarkably relies on David Brock and Fred Cooke  although Brock himself rebutted Abramsonâs own work on  Thomas  and has highlighted Cooke as a problematic source. Here are the facts.
Mayer and Abramson have made these accusations on the basis of accounts from sources who tell me they were either flatly misquoted or misrepresented  or refused to confirm information attributed to them. The list of these people who say they were misquoted includes the only woman whose allegations against  Thomas  have not been previously reported â and refuted â in prior books or articles. In addition to relying on fake evidence  doctored quotes  and unsupported hearsay  the book is brimming with anonymous and discreditable sources. Key figures were never interviewed. Where evidence does not fit the authorsâ point  it is ignored entirely. And a whole array of alleged facts â small and large â are simply wrong.
The case that  Thomas  exhibited an interest in pornography after his student days rests on the accounts of two people: Barry Maddox  the proprietor of a Washington  D.C. video rental shop  and Frederick Cooke  a Washington attorney. [A third source  Kaye Savage  who claims to have information linking  Thomas  to Playboy magazine  is discussed later in this review.] Mayer and Abramson write:
âBut the interest in pornography that  Thomas  first exhibited at Yale apparently continued through the early 1980s  when Long Dong Silver was a well-known figure among fans of X-rated movies. According to Barry Maddox  the proprietor of Graffiti  a video rental and equipment store just off Dupont Circle  a few blocks from the EEOCâs headquarters  the store began to rent pornographic videos in 1982. Not long afterward  Maddox recalled   Thomas  became a regular customer.â
There are several problems with this account  including that the EEOCâs headquarters at 18th and L Streets NW  a few blocks south of the Dupont Circle area  did not open until August 1989.  Thomas  worked at that location for only a matter of months  and during the entire time  he  was in the middle of a brutal confirmation fight for a seat on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals  which  he  won in March 1990. In the early 1980s  when Maddox claims  Thomas  was a regular customer  the EEOCâs headquarters were at Columbia Plaza at 24th and E Streets NW â nowhere near Dupont Circle or Graffiti.
âIt was also in Graffiti that Frederick Douglass Cooke  Jr.  a Washington attorney and the former D.C. corporation counsel  saw  Thomas  at the cashierâs counter in the late 1980s with another âfreak-of-natureâ kind of film. Cooke thought it pretty amusing to run into the chairman of the EEOC  whom he had met once or twice on a social basis  standing with a triple X videotape entitled The Adventures of Bad Mama Jama.â
These sentences appear on page 107 of the book  where  though he is not quoted directly  it appears as if Cooke himself has told the authors what he supposedly saw. There is no note indicating otherwise. Not until flipping to a note for page 330  where efforts by  Thomas  opponents to extract damaging information from Cooke are discussed  do we learn  âReached on two separate occasions  Cooke would neither confirm nor deny the account.â[5.]