after the president selected Thomas as his nominee that Democratic committee staffers began hearing rumors that Thomas had in the past sexually harassed one or more women, and in early September that committee chairman Joe Biden asked the Bush White House to authorize an FBI investigation into Hill's charges. FBI agents interviewed Hill on September 23, and interviewed Thomas on September 25. Notwithstanding the allegations, Biden saw no reason to postpone the committee's scheduled vote on Thomas' nomination. After Totenberg's story aired, Biden quickly came under pressure to reopen the hearings, from House Democratic women, and from various groups that had opposed the Thomas nomination earlier in the process. As a result, the final Senate vote on the nomination was postponed and the confirmation hearings were reopened. It was only the third time in the Senate's history that such an action had been taken (and had not been done since 1925, when the nomination of Harlan F. Stone was recommitted to the Judiciary Committee). Amid the resulting frenzy the president declared that he had "total confidence" in Thomas. Anita Hill testimony On October 11, 1991, Hill was called to testify during the hearing. She said she was testifying as to the character and fitness of Thomas to serve on the high court and was ambivalent about whether his alleged conduct had in fact risen to the level of being illegal sexual harassment. Ten years earlier, in 1981, Hill had become an attorney-adviser to Clarence Thomas at the United States Department of Education (ED). When Thomas became chairman of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) in 1982, Hill followed Thomas to serve as his special assistant until she resigned in mid-1983. Hill alleged in her 1991 testimony that it was during her employment at ED and EEOC that Thomas made sexually provocative statements. She testified that she followed Thomas to EEOC because "[t]he work, itself, was interesting, and at that time, it appeared that the sexual overtures ... had ended." She also testified that she wanted to work in the civil rights field, and that she believed that "at that time the Department of Education, itself, was a dubious venture." Hill provided lurid details about Thomas' alleged inappropriate behavior at the Department of Education: "He spoke about acts that he had seen in pornographic films involving such matters as women having sex with animals and films showing group sex or