New Questions Trouble Bush Cabinet Picks

President-elect George W. Bush’s two most controversial Cabinet choices came under heightened attack Sunday, with Labor Secretary-designate Linda Chavez acknowledging that a woman who was an illegal immigrant lived in her house in the early 1990s.

Former Sen. John Ashcroft, Bush’s choice for attorney general, also drew criticism from Democrats, including Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, who said he was considering voting against the nomination. Ashcroft, who was defeated for reelection to the Senate from Missouri, has been targeted by civil rights and abortion rights groups.

The developments raised the prospect that Chavez and Ashcroft would face even greater scrutiny than anticipated during confirmation proceedings in the Senate, echoing the difficult confirmation battles that the fledgling Clinton administration encountered eight years ago.

And they followed reports about two less controversial nominees. Colin L. Powell, Bush’s widely popular choice for secretary of State, accepted a speaking fee paid by a senior Lebanese official for an address Powell gave at Tufts University, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Meanwhile, Bush aides sought to defend Donald H. Rumsfeld, his pick for secretary of Defense, after a report that Rumsfeld could be heard on White House tape recordings in 1971 saying “yes” and “that’s right” when President Nixon made pejorative comments about blacks.

The Chavez development, first reported by ABC News, caused the greatest stir Sunday.

Chavez acknowledged through a Bush spokesman that a Guatemalan woman who was in the United States illegally had lived in Chavez’s house for about a year. The woman did occasional odd jobs for Chavez, who gave her spending money from time to time, the spokesman said. Eight years ago, Clinton’s first two choices for attorney general--Zoe Baird and Kimba M. Wood--were scuttled over questions about their failure to pay household employee taxes.

Chavez and the Bush transition office characterized the arrangement as one of compassion, in which Chavez helped the woman find work in the Washington area, learn about the subway system and enroll in English classes. The transition team said Chavez suspected the woman may have been in the country illegally, but that because she was not paying her on a regular basis, did not believe she had hired an illegal immigrant.

The nomination of Chavez already had raised the ire of labor and minority groups for her opposition to affirmative action in schools, bilingual education and government policies based on race and ethnicity.

On ABC-TV’s “This Week” on Sunday, Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) said he supported the Chavez nomination. And Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), appearing on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” defended Ashcroft. “This is an extraordinarily experienced candidate. . . . I think the preemptory attacks here on John Ashcroft are more politics, and they don’t bode well for the spirit of bipartisanship, which I thought we were all trying to promote.”

However, Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota said he foresaw “very serious problems” for Chavez.

“This is the [proposed] Labor secretary,” Daschle said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “The Labor secretary ought to set the example, ought to be able to enforce all of the laws. If she hasn’t been able to do that in the past, one would have serious questions about whether she’d be able to do it in her capacity as secretary of Labor.”

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who has called Chavez’s nomination “an insult to American working men and women,” issued a statement Sunday saying, “Unfortunately, her explanation sounds too much like the explanation of employers who have tried to skirt the law by saying that individuals are not their employees.”

Tucker Eskew, a spokesman for the Bush transition team, said a friend of Chavez had told her that the woman was in dire circumstances and needed shelter.

“It was done as an act of charity, a compassionate act,” Eskew said of the decision to let the woman live in Chavez’s house.

He said that, over the years, Chavez had offered similar help, for a few weeks, to two Vietnamese refugees, and had brought two New York City children into her suburban Maryland home, then helped pay their parochial school tuition after they returned home.

Asked whether the advisors who vetted Bush’s Cabinet choices had raised questions about the situation, he said they had asked whether Social Security taxes were paid for domestic help, but had not asked potential nominees “to enumerate their acts of compassion.”

Michael Cardozo, a Democrat who eight years ago helped Baird on personnel matters before her nomination to be attorney general foundered over the question of Social Security payments for illegal immigrants, said that “after Zoe Baird, the Senate has to be very careful it doesn’t gloss over the illegal thing.”

“If the woman was with her for two months and it was an act of compassion, that’s one thing,” Cardozo said. “If it lasted over a year, and she was employing her as a housekeeper, that’s something that will hurt the Bush administration.”

Eskew expressed confidence in Chavez’s and Ashcroft’s prospects.

Biden, however, said Ashcroft must show the Senate that he “will vigorously pursue the civil rights laws that he has--with good reason, from his perspective--argued against for the last 20 years.”

The nomination of Ashcroft, an abortion opponent, has drawn criticism from women’s groups, who have vowed to fight his confirmation. Civil rights advocates also have said they will fight it, in part because of his opposition to the nomination of Ronnie White, Missouri’s first black Supreme Court justice, to the federal bench.

On Sunday, Biden said he also wanted to question Ashcroft about why he granted interviews to magazines with “white supremacist” views. “I don’t say he subscribes to what they have to say, but he gives interviews to those magazines,” Biden said. “It makes a difference, the perception someone is going to project. There’s only two places race can be resolved: the courts and the Justice Department.”

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), appearing on “Meet the Press” with Biden, also criticized Ashcroft’s nomination, saying it refuted a pledge Bush made during the presidential campaign. “It is a divisive, not a unifying nomination, and [Bush] has specifically said he is a uniter, not a divider.”

In the Powell development, the Jerusalem Post reported Sunday that, shortly before election day, the retired Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had accepted a speaking fee that it said was put up by a senior Lebanese official for an address Powell gave at Tufts University near Boston. Powell was a private citizen at the time, but the fee raises questions about his acceptance of money from a fund endowed by a foreign official with whom he might have future official dealings.

Spokesman Bill Smullen said Powell did not know who paid his fee when he spoke Nov. 2.

The Post reported that Lebanese Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares, described as a Tufts trustee and billionaire businessman with close ties to the Syrian government, had funded the speech as part of an annual lecture series he has endowed in his name since 1991.

The paper reported the fee was about $200,000, but Smullen called that figure “grossly overstated.” He would not disclose the fee.

“All of this happened prior to the election . . . and when he was first asked, I might add, no one was mentioning his name as secretary of anything,” Smullen said. He said the speaking invitation was extended March 29.

The Rumsfeld-Nixon encounter occurred when Rumsfeld was a Nixon counselor.

As reported by the Chicago Tribune, Nixon complained about remarks by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew that African blacks were smarter than American blacks.

“It doesn’t help,” Nixon said on tape, according to the Tribune. “It hurts with the blacks. And it doesn’t help with the rednecks because the rednecks don’t think any Negroes are any good.”

“Yes,” Rumsfeld said.

Later on the tape, Rumsfeld responded, “That’s right,” and “That’s for sure,” to other racially derogatory remarks by Nixon.

Jim Wilkinson, Rumsfeld’s spokesman, said in a written response that, in other parts of the conversation, Rumsfeld had been “expressive and talkative,” but when the racial matters arose he “merely acknowledged Nixon’s characterizations of statements Nixon said were made by Vice President Agnew and some Southerners.

“Don Rumsfeld is proud of his long record of support for civil rights, going back to . . . 1962. He consistently voted for civil rights legislation as a member of Congress in the 1960s and he would intend to continue his long-standing efforts at the Defense department.”