WASHINGTON -- Clarence Thomas said Saturday he would have 'preferred an assassin's bullet' to the graphic sexual harassment allegations he denies and that are threatening to end his bid to join the Supreme Court.
And two Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee said flatly they think Anita Hill, the woman who brought the allegations against Thomas, lied under oath.
Thomas accused his opponents of 'the most racist, bigoted stereotype that any black man will face' by the charge that he discussed his own 'sexual prowess' and the 'sexual organs' of black men.
'Senator, I would have preferred an assasin's bullet to this type of living hell that they have put me and my family through,' Thomas told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., a respected moderate Republican and former prosecutor, accused Hill of 'flat-out perjury.'
And Hatch said he thinks the testimony of Hill, a University of Oklahoma law professor, was fabricated, with portions taken from a 1988 federal district court case in Kansas and another part from the book 'The Exorcist.'
'I submit these things were found' by 'very bright minds ... to make this dramatic,' said Hatch, who called Hill's charges 'not consistent with reality.'
A defiant and visibly angry Thomas said he would not withdraw his nomination. The full Senate is scheduled to vote on his confirmation Tuesday night.
'I'd rather die than withdraw. If they're gonna kill me they're gonna kill me,' said Thomas, who said he has lost 15 pounds the past two weeks. 'I will not be scared. I don't like bullies. I've never run from bullies. I never cry uncle and I'm not going to cry uncle today.'
Thomas said 'someone, some interest group, in combination, came up with this story, and used this process to destroy me. ... My view is that others put it together and developed it.'
After a brutal marathon of often lurid testimony Friday that pitted Hill's accusations that Thomas harassed her at two jobs in the 1980s with the federal judge's adamant denials, it was expected Saturday would be relatively quiet.
But on national television the hearings, which were once interrupted by a bomb scare, again became ugly and emotional.
Thomas claimed his opponents were using his race to deny him a seat as the nation's 106th Supreme Court justice.
He said they were using 'racist, bigoted stereotypes ... that are impossible to wash off,' noting that lynchings of black men in the 1800s and early 1900s 'invariably' had to do with sex.
While Thomas did not go further, some blacks were known to have been lynched in the South for having a sexual relationship with white women.
Thomas, 43, is married to Virginia Lamp Thomas, who is white. She has been seated behind him throughout his testimony.
'I cannot shake off these accusations because they play to the worst stereotypes we have about black men in this country,' Thomas said.
Hill, 35, who is black, claimed during seven hours of testimony Friday that Thomas harassed her while she was his assistant at the Education Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in the early 1980s.
She claimed he asked her out 'five to 10 times,' and when she refused, he later made graphic comments to her about pornography and his sexual prowess.
Hatch said the words Hill attributed to Thomas would only be used by a 'psychopathic sex fiend or a pervert.'
'A lot of things just don't make sense to me in Anita Hill's testimony,' said Hatch, who contends she changed her story three different times.
Hatch, who again recanted specifics of the allegations before a visibly weary Thomas, said a 1988 federal court ruling out of the 10th Circuit had a reference to a porn film star called 'Long Dong Silver,' and the book 'The Exorcist' has a reference to 'pubic hair' in a drink.
Hill had claimed both that Thomas referred to 'Long Dong Silver' and also made a comment about pubic hair in a Coke.
Specter pointed to a newspaper article that said Hill had been told by a Senate staffer that her sworn affidavit would, in and of itself, force Thomas to 'quitely and behind the scenes' withdraw his nomination.
Hill denied that Friday, but later said there was 'some indications that ... the nominee might not wish to continue the process.'
Specter called the discrepancy 'flat-out perjury.'
But Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., chairman of the committee, then read more completely from the record, indicating Specter may have been taking the statements out of context.
Biden called Hill an 'incredibly credible woman' who 'at a minimum, impressed this committee on both sides.'
'We have two very credible people in front of us,' said Biden, a sentiment echoed by a number of other senators.NEWLN: more
