I was the defense reporter for the Boston Globe at the time of the battle over Tower’s nomination, as well as for part of his time as a senator, and well remember both the man and the fight. He was 5-foot-3, ruddy-faced, his hair slicked back, dressed like a dandy, often with a flower in his lapel-hole. He was not a back-slapper—in fact, he was mean, which probably helped propel his downfall. When his nomination started unwinding, few of his former colleagues rallied to his defense; many, who’d been on the brunt of his power moves over the years, enjoyed watching him squirm.
The downfall came suddenly and surprisingly. Looking back at my Globe articles on the subject (which are not freely available online), I’m reminded that, at first, his nomination seemed a sure thing. The Armed Services Committee’s chairman, Sam Nunn, welcomed him back to the chamber where he had once presided, predicting a swift confirmation. There had been a few press reports about his drinking and carousing—the sorts of accounts that Hegseth, in his battle, would later call “anonymous smears”—and Sen. Edward Kennedy, among others, expressed dismay over these “unfair” attacks.
But then, Paul Weyrich, a major Republican activist (he’d invented direct-mail campaigning), volunteered to appear publicly before the committee and testified that he had witnessed Tower, while on official business, drinking and cavorting with women other than his wife.
None of this could have surprised any of the panel’s senators. Tower’s reputation was widely known. A few years earlier, in the late 1970s, I had been a staffer in the House of Representatives. At the start of each Congress, staff members sat through a briefing about the way Capitol Hill operated. The briefer stressed two imperatives: “Always answer constituent mail” and—this was directed at the young women in the room—“Never get in an elevator alone with John Tower.”
It was, to say the least, a different time. Lots of senators and congressmen got away with all sorts of behavior that wouldn’t be kept secret, much less tolerated, today—and in that department, Tower was one of the most flagrant. Weyrich’s public testimony simply brought the fact inescapably out into the open.
After the testimony, Nunn asked the FBI to reopen its investigation into Tower and put off the committee vote until the probe was complete. Meanwhile, a boatload of other accusers and witnesses came out of the woodwork. Some of their charges seemed a bit dubious, but others were plausible and backed up.