The Chavez Debacle: A personal account - onetime Secretary of Labor appointee Linda Chavez

National Review, Feb 5, 2001 by John J. Miller

There was a good deal more such distortion of her views. The "borking" of Linda Chavez was well under way-and then came the news about Marta.

When Chavez asked me on January 6 whether I remembered Marta Mercado, my answer was yes. I had started working for Chavez in December 1992. She was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and took me on as an assistant. Although the New York-based think tank then maintained an office in downtown Washington, Chavez worked primarily out of her home in Bethesda, Md. For the first six to eight weeks of my employment, I took the bus to her house every day and worked there from roughly 9 to 5. I got to know her husband, her kids, her pets-and Mercado.

Actually, I didn't get to know Mercado very well. But I did recall her, and Chavez wanted my observations. I remembered Mercado as a houseguest, someone who lived with the family for reasons I never fully understood and, frankly, never thought about. Sometimes she was in the home the whole day, and sometimes she wasn't there at all. Chavez wanted to know if I had thought she was an employee, such as a live-in maid, and I said no. If that had been true, I would have seen her vacuuming the carpets, mopping the floor, and dusting the office. I didn't recall her doing any of these things. I did remember her doing the odd chore, such as washing the dishes. What I saw was someone pitching in to help around the house, just as any family member or guest would do. And Mercado certainly wasn't a nanny-the youngest of Chavez's three children was 13 or 14 years old and didn't require that kind of attention. No, my impression of Mercado was that she definitely wasn't an employee.

This mattered, Chavez told me, because Mercado had been an illegal alien, and the FBI was asking around, as were a few reporters. Chavez had wanted to talk to me, she said, to refresh her own memory about Mercado's stay. She also told me a few things I hadn't known. Mercado came to her homeless and battered, and in desperate need of shelter. Chavez said that she occasionally gave Mercado spending money, encouraged her to learn English, and eventually helped her return to Guatemala. She had thought Mercado lived with her for about a year, but said that Mercado believed the period was more like two years. Finally, she said she knew Mercado was an illegal alien at the time of her stay. "When people are in trouble, I don't check for their green cards," she said. (Mercado has since returned to the United States, and is now a citizen.)

Our conversation turned to confirmation strategy-I urged her to go in front of a camera and tell her story as soon as possible, so that she could explain what happened before someone else tried to do so, falsely. Then I asked what I should do if someone came to me with questions about Mercado. I had in mind a call from a journalist, thinking "no comment" was an option. But Chavez assumed I meant the FBI, and she said: "Tell the truth." That was a given. I asked: "What about a reporter? I can always refuse to talk." She paused for a moment, then said, "Go ahead and tell them what you know." I'm glad I asked, because the next morning a newspaper reporter rang me, and that evening I taped an interview with a television network. In the days that followed, I did much more of the same.