Voters caught in Miami vice

0 Comments | Insight on the News, March 16, 1998 | by James P. Lucier

Insight has obtained the 1994 depositions of Lula Rodriguez and a certain Mercedes Rodriguez (no relation) relating to these events. In a sworn statement, Lula, identifies 14 of the allegedly fraudulent ballots as bearing her true signature, including the ballot for Mercedes. Mercedes Rodriguez, in her deposition, stated that she was in Santo Domingo, and had not punched a ballot. Before she left for Santo Domingo, she swore under penalty of perjury, she had signed a request for a ballot but did not actually see the ballot. The inference is that someone else had voted in place of Mercedes, and that Lula witnessed the ballot as valid.

In her deposition, Lula stated that she only was sitting at campaign headquarters answering phones and taking care of the front desk for a few days at the end of the campaign. "I have worked in all of Raul's campaigns," she said.

She described in detail a casual atmosphere in which people were coming and going and sometimes placed envelopes in front of her to witness. "My understanding was that this person had just voted in front of me and wanted me to verify the fact that they had just handled their absentee ballot and voted however they saw fit, closed it and signed it and given it to her. So I was a witness that this had just taken place."

Indeed, Rodriguez admitted that she did not know the persons who were voting and asked for no identification. She was merely a witness that someone had voted, no matter whether it was the actual voter or not. She stated: "I never stopped to think about that while this was going on."

A source close to the election-fraud case told Insight that she "could have been a witness to fraud and therefore became part of the fraud which took place. She was a very sophisticated woman who had worked in political jobs all her life. She should have known what she was doing." But in her deposition, she said "If I would have known it was something wrong or illegal, I wouldn't have done it." Lula Rodriguez did not respond to several Insight requests to discuss these matters.

News accounts at the time said that the case of Lula Rodriguez had been referred by Reno to Deputy Attorney General Philip B. Heymann. But Heymann tells Insight that he did not handle the Rodriguez case, and that there was no connection between the case and his leaving the department in January 1994 (complaining of a failure of "chemistry" in his relations with his boss). However, Lula resigned on Jan. 24 at the same time that Heymann's resignation was announced.

Despite the anomaly of participating in the campaign of a convicted felon while she was on the Justice Department payroll, Lula soon found other high-level employment in the Clinton administration. She was appointed as director of the Office of International Visitors of the U.S. Information Agency. Here she directed a budget of $50 million, managed cultural exchanges and ran a staff of 120 employees and two district offices in Miami and New York. In April 1997, she was named to her current position, deputy assistant secretary of state for public affairs.