Jim, my biggest quandry in all of this is that I find it puzzling that Cain has been in business, in powerful positions, for 40 years. Yet he was only a serial harasser for the 2.5 years he served on the board at NRA? What about Godfather's? Pillsbury? Burger King? I used to handle these claims in my former professional life and this just does not pass my smell test.

I am sure you are right.

I agree. If Can is innocent and wants to put this behnd him, he should bring out all of the evidence. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, as they say. He should request that Hilton release the information about any hotel room he reserved or upgraded that day. That he isn't trying to bring out all of the evidence suggests that he doesn't really want to openly address this, as he says, and that the evidence will corroborate the allegations.

You mean there isn't an app for that?

Hotel chains keep very detailed records on their favored customers and they keep them for a long time. I have an acquaintance who makes a good living maintaining and mining the database for one of them (not Hilton). He tells me he can trace all the transactions for any frequent customer back 20 years or more. It wouldn't be a bit surprising if Hilton kept records on Cain going back to the 90's and had them readily accessible. Notice that Jim's contact didn't say the records didn't exist, only that they couldn't be revealed without violating Cain's privacy.

Since Hilton will never get a subpoena it will never part with the records unless Cain asks for them and it would be astonishing if he were to ask. That, of course, is one of the things he would be doing if he were really innocent, but he isn't and so he won't

Beau, you've completely taken leave of your senses and left reality far behind.

If Cain upgraded a reservation for Ms. Bialek that would be a transaction between him and Hilton. The hospitality business keeps careful track of transactions with its favored customers, even when those transactions don't invovle "points" but especially when they do. For marketing purposes they want to know as much as possible about how they can serve the relatively few people who represent significant repeat business for them.

It isn't certain that the information in question is available, but it is likely, the more so because Hilton doesn't say that it isn't.

If Cain can show he never upgraded the reservation in question to a suite, it would bolster his naked denial enormously. Cain should be hammering on Hilton to help him attack Ms. Bialek's credibility. Instead he's nattering on about all the litigation she's been involved in, as if that has anything to do with the price of tomatoes. There's nothing twisted about the observation that this is compelling evidence guilt. Cain isn't taking the steps an innocent man would take to clear his name, which strongly suggests that he isn't innocent.

Can the hotel give a statement as to whether or not it's possible for someone to "upgrade" the room for another person? It's a little odd that you would be able to change another guest's room selection.

It is revealing, in an of itself, that the hotel states, "The hotel has a privacy policy which prohibits releasing specific information regarding guests.” If only Ms. Bialek was the "guest," then she herself can waive the privacy protection (the hotel's statement says it is a prohibition against releasing specific information regardings "guests" and she alone, apparently, was the "guest," according to her own statement. Herman Cain apparently was not the guest, but, instead, was only someone who assertedly upgraded her room to a palacial suite. The hotel's privacy policy, apparently, does not protect him. And even if it does (under some broad reading of the phrase "specific information regardings guests") the hotel could release under her waiver that information that pertains to her reservation and withhold information regarding any changes in the reservation made by a third party.

If the hotel's records reflect that Mr. Cain himself was an intended guest (which is doubtful), that itself would be quite interesting.

Mr. Geraghty would do well to contact Ms. Allred and Ms. Bialek and ask them to consider having Ms. Bialek waive her right to privacy in the hotel record regarding her reservation at that hotel. The way the hotel reportedly has framed its response seems to suggest the record still exists; the hotel cites privacy concerns alone, not the implementation either of a records retention policy or of a records destruction policy as the reason for not releasing the information.

And in any event, it might be interesting to know, in fact, whether after the asserted incident that evening Ms. Bialek actually stayed at the hotel that mid-July 1997 night or whether she took the train back to New Jersey that same night (which trip she said was "couple of hours by train" distant from Washington, D.C.). According to Ms. Bialek, she and Mr. Cain met at the lobby of the hotel bar at about 6:30 p.m., had drinks in the bar there, and then went to an Italian restaurant where they had dinner. Thereafter, she says, the incident occurred, after which he took her back to the hotel. In her statement, she does not state when it was that she returned to New Jersey.

The room upgrade probably happened, and it is probably something that Cain has done before for other people. It doesn't make sense that she would provide a detail like that, and it doesn't make sense that Cain would do so in this one instance alone. He either does itfor lots of people, or if the charges are true does it for lots of women.