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

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

As the story unfolded, information of the sort that Chavez and I had to offer was exceedingly hard to spread or obtain. The Bush team forbade Chavez to talk to the press, and reporters clawed at a few details that persuaded them to believe that this was a reprise of the Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood experiences of eight years before, when a pair of Bill Clinton's candidates for attorney general were scuttled for not paying taxes on their domestic help. And if this weren't bad enough, Tucker Eskew of the Bush team added to the confusion by telling the media that Chavez didn't know Mercado was an illegal alien.

This was not true. On January 12-three days after Chavez formally withdrew-Eskew told me his statements were based on "a misunderstanding." In fact, on January 6, Chavez told me exactly what she has maintained in public ever since the Mercado story came out: She knew Mercado was not in the country legally. Mercado has said that she told Chavez of her status about three months into her stay at Chavez's home, but Chavez doesn't recall this conversation. She says she probably knew the whole time. To a certain extent, it hardly matters. Chavez broke no law by housing Mercado. There is a legal term called "harboring" illegal immigrants, but this typically refers to smuggling them into the country, hiding them from the law, and receiving payment in return. Two former general counsels of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Grover Joseph Rees of the Bush administration and Paul Virtue of the Clinton administration, have reviewed the Chavez case and determined that nobody would bother trying to prosecute her.

Yet it is against the law to employ an illegal alien knowingly. This matter takes on special importance during the background check of a woman nominated to enforce labor laws. Although it was clear to me from personal observation that Mercado was not an employee, others weren't so sure. A former neighbor of Chavez's, Margaret Zwisler, apparently told the FBI that not only had she hired Mercado to work part-time in her home, but she thought Chavez had maintained a similar arrangement of her own. In addition, Zwisler said Chavez had contacted her sometime in December, and that Chavez said she didn't plan to volunteer any information about Mercado. There have been suggestions that Chavez, by doing this, intended to manipulate a witness. Yet Chavez herself maintains that she simply wanted to refresh her own memory about Mercado's stay-which sounds exactly like her purpose when she called me on January 6-and can't believe anybody seriously imagines she would try to badger Zwisler, an accomplished attorney at a Democratic law firm.

The Mercado revelations took the Bush transition by surprise, and Chavez has spent much of her time apologizing for not letting them know about Mercado during what-it must be said-was a truncated vetting process. Yet she never lied to Bush aides, and she told them everything she knew about Mercado when it came up. Her mistake was in failing to reveal a non-crime. It might be said that her misjudgment was similar to that of George W. Bush's refusing to reveal the DUI arrest that made headlines right before Election Day. The main difference between the two cases is that Bush broke the law, and Chavez didn't.