Tara Reade said she was alone with Biden

Not likely, according to someone who had the same job she had.

An up close look at life in a Senatorial mailroom.

Art Baden, 1976 era.

Art Baden is a retired insurance broker, who now lives in Ashland, Oregon. He grew up in New York, went to college at the University of Wisconsin and then followed his interest in politics to DC, where he landed a job in the office of Senator Thomas Eagleton, in the mailroom.  

Like other politically interested people, a Democrat then and now, he read the news of Tara Reade's evolving accusations of Joe Biden with some worry. Was she credible? Democrats have created for themselves a mantra: believe the woman. But there are unusual problems with Reade. Her story about Biden has changed from telling and re-telling, evolving from "uncomfortable" into rape. She had previously, and long after the incident, been praising Biden in tweets. The story she now recounts echos a story in a novel written by her father. She has used aliases. She has left a series of landlords and former friends who call her manipulative and dishonest. 

Art Baden has another reason to be skeptical. He had been there, not in Senator Biden's mailroom, but in one like it. His own observation was that Senators don't wander alone in empty hallways, they are accompanied every minute of every day in Senate hallways in which other people are present. Mailroom employees don't have access to Senators. That is what senior staff crave and monopolize. It just didn't seem plausible.

Guest Post by Art Baden:

I just read an article on CNN.com about Tara Reade’s allegations against Joe Biden involving her time working in his Senate office. Back in 1976-1977 I held a similar position as she is purported to have held, working for then Democratic Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri.  I worked in the Senator’s mailroom; sorting through the hundreds of letters he received daily from supporters, detractors, his constituents, and others.  

Art Baden currently

That was the job Tara Reade had in Biden’s office in 1993.  And according to one of her supervisors interviewed by CNN, she was let go due to poor performance. 

The first step in the process every morning was opening all the mailbags, running all the letters through the slicing machine.  Then opening them all and pulling out the ones that were from people the Senator knew personally or who held positions of import.  A letter from a big contributor, a local official in Missouri, an important business person or labor official, for example, would be immediately turned over to either the Senator’s personal secretary (they were still called secretaries back then, not Administrative Assistants) or to the legislative aid working on the issue addressed in the correspondence.

Some of the letters were thoughtful missives from constituents addressing a specific issue that should be reviewed by a legislative aid and those were forwarded on, unless there was already a pre-written response ready for word processing to plug-in to a letter.

Some of the letters were angry, or incoherent rants.  At least once a week there would be a letter from someone complaining about extra-terrestrials beaming powerful rays into the writer’s brains.  We were always on the lookout for anything that seemed potentially threatening and those were quickly forwarded to the appropriate authorities.

Most of the letters, however, were form letters that had been generated by various interest groups – pro or against some legislative issue then working its way through Congress – anti abortion, pro-choice, anti-war, more funding for St. Louis airport, for against a new dam proposed by The Army Corps of Engineers – you get the picture.

We sorted through all that correspondence and sent them in batches to the word processing team that worked in an annex building up the street.  That team would generate typed responses primarily using pre-written paragraphs created by the legislative team.

After lunch came the next phase – getting the mail out.  All the letters from word processing would either be run through the signing machine, or for more important letters would be signed by one of the mail room staff who could forge the Senator’s signature. Or for the most important letters, given to the Senator himself to sign and write a personal hand written note.  Then a mad rush to get it all to the Senate Post Office to meet the daily collection deadline.  It was as close to an assembly line job as I’ve ever had.

There were 5 of us in the mailroom, one supervisor who also oversaw the word processors, a mailroom manager and 3 flunkies, one of whom was me.

What I remember for certain is that, in that role, I hardly ever came in contact with the Senator and I can’t remember a single conversation with him.  He never came into the mailroom, nor did his Secretary, Chief of Staff, or any of the ranking legislative staff.  We were located away from his personal office.

The Senator had a total staff of probably 30 or 40 people.  Some were in the Senator’s office; some were staff of Committees or sub-committees of which he was Chair.  

By the time I was working for Eagleton, he had been in office a long time, had lots of Seniority, lots of power and lots of staff.  

Similarly, by 1993, Biden had been in office for 20 years, and was Chairman of The Senate Judiciary Committee.

So Tara Reade’s story seems so unlikely to me.  Even the nice things she had previously said about Biden; how would she know?  I never had enough contact with Eagleton to make any personal judgment about him.  

As for her allegations that she was alone with him in a hallway in the Senate office building where he raped her? 

There is no way Biden would ever have been alone in a hallway with her.  Their senior staff takes up every second of a Senator’s time.  If he were in the hallway of the Senate office bldg on his way to the Senate floor, Union Station (AMTRAK) to go home to Wilmington, or anywhere else he would have been in the company of any number of senior legislative or campaign aids.  I never saw a Senator walking alone.  Staff always accompanied them.  And if he were, unlikely as it seems to me, alone, the hallways of the Senate office bldgs are always full of staffers, lobbyists and reporters, from early morning well into the evening.  It’s difficult for me to imagine any way he would have had either the time or opportunity to do what she alleges he did to her.