NEWTON'S LAW: `WILLFUL IGNORANCE' REMAINS IN THE TACTFUL EYE OF BEHOLDER

These are groggy times for all of us, when kids are back in school and summer is still here but not really. Maybe the heat had gotten to me, or maybe the disorientation was of a less specific nature.

Physically, my actions were normal. I turned on the television to watch the latest round of bobbing and weaving by Clarence Thomas, the Zelig of jurisprudence.

There, I was thunderstruck. My God, I thought as I stared at the screen, they've done in Thomas and nominated a white guy.

Worse still, it seems he's in the afterglow of sucking some helium.

Quickly, I righted myself. Programming note: this was the right channel but the wrong confirmation. Bringing the Supreme Court to full staffing was yesterday's news. On this day, the Senate was concerning itself with intelligence.

Yes, there is a first time for everything.

The Senate, of course, performs its advise-and-consent act on a regular basis. Most are short-lived hearings that get a brief newspaper mention on a slow news day. This is bread-and-butter stuff for most senators and most appointees.

In the case of Thomas and Robert Gates, the president's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, television lights are plugged in and programming is disrupted. "Sonja Live" is suddenly having to catch what airtime it can.

America enjoys these exercises the public flogging of people we are ready to hand power to and it really has no choice in the matter.

Under the guise of constitutional concern, senators are obliged to come up with the goods on various high-profile appointees that don't fit partisan agendas of one strain or another.

All this is cloaked in good manners, of course, the Senate being a place of gentility, and where inhabitants are always anxious to "thank the gentleman" for yielding or kind comments or whatever.

Still, naive nominees can find a knife in them and be stripped of belongings in the wink of an eye. Frail sorts aren't treated well in this arena.

Thomas, whose elastic skills at interpretation are what quills are to porcupines, is in his element at such proceedings, since his future endeavors (the hearing of cases and writing of opinions) are open for public scrutiny.

It is quite a different matter for senators to put a would-be spymaster on the hot seat. The nature of the work demands a bit of cover; you seldom hear of the CIA's top officials until foreign harbors are mined or arms are sold to terrorist states.

So the committee members must ask Gates to tell them what he knows, but not tell the nation all he knows. A delicate endeavor.

One can't imagine, say, the British putting their chief spook on display for the probing of Parliament. Ian Fleming would have a fit, sending "M" or "Q" (or whoever it was leading her majesty's Secret Service) before a confirmation panel.

Imagine the questions: "Tell us, Mr. Bond, what does this double-zero mean?"

(Those up on 007 trivia will know that it means "license to kill." Imagine how that information would set with Sen. Metzenbaum.)

If Gates continues his routine of convenient forgetfulness, he might just survive this confirmation process. You have to remember what he is up against. An Intelligence Committee member accused Gates Monday of "willful ignorance" for his uninquisitive behavior in the Iran-Contra affair.

In throwing around charges of "willful ignorance," the pot has indeed called the kettle black. Curiosity didn't exactly kill the cat when Sens. Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn and Alan Cranston, all members of this panel, buddied up to Charles Keating.

The best we can do is adapt a line from Mae West. Accepting a fur wrap from the screen siren, a coat-check girl said, "Goodness, how lovely."

"Goodness," West replied, "had nothing to do with it."

The same sentiment might now be expressed about the Intelligence Committee hearings: Intelligence has nothing to do with it.