Clarence Thomas writes million-dollar autobiography, denounces "left-wing zealots"

[kurth]

Justice Thomas writes autobiography
By MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press Writer

Breaking his 16-year public silence on his bitter confirmation hearings, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says Anita Hill was a mediocre employee who was used by political opponents to make claims she had been sexually harassed. Thomas writes about Hill, his former employee in two government agencies, and the allegations that nearly derailed his nomination to the high court in 1991 in his autobiography, "My Grandfather's Son."

A copy of the book, which goes on sale Monday, was obtained Friday by The Associated Press. He writes with indignation of the nationally televised hearings that he memorably called a "high-tech lynching." A child of the segregated South, Thomas says he was being pursued "not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony." Powerful interest groups were out to stop him at all costs and chose "the age-old blunt instrument of accusing a black man of sexual misconduct," he writes.

Hill, who is also black, had worked for Thomas at the Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She first made her allegations after Thomas had been nominated to the high court, 10 years after she began working for him and only after she was contacted by congressional investigators. In the book, Thomas describes Hill as touchy and apt to overreact, not someone who would wait a decade to level a charge of harassment. She had complained to Thomas only about his refusal to promote her, the justice says. "Her work at EEOC had been mediocre," he writes...

The 289-page book, for which Thomas has been paid more than $1 million by publisher HarperCollins, is an account of his up-from-poverty story from his first home in tiny Pinpoint, Ga., through his swearing-in as a justice at the age of 43... Thomas does not discuss his colleagues or his work on the court. In the roughly one-third of the book spent recounting his nomination to the court, Thomas says his opponents were obsessed with the issue of abortion and determined to stop him because they believed he would oppose abortion rights. As a justice, Thomas has called for overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade decision...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070929/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_thomas_book;_ylt=Aij.txespzw1Nt9jtWrSoJ6s0NUE