Word: woode
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...Baird debacle, officials vowed there would be no premature announcement, no surprise about illegal aliens, no misreading of public sentiment. So, while staff members completed their check of candidates for the post of Attorney General, the White House floated the name of New York Federal District Judge Kimba Wood to coax any opposition out into the open. When none emerged, word leaked from the White House that the Wood nomination was almost a sure thing. Then last Friday night came the awful deja vu. Again, a woman withdrew her name from consideration for the post. Again, the conflict involved...
...second time in two weeks, a respected woman with a high-profile career watched her reputation shredded by a brutal vetting process. Unlike Baird, Wood had broken no laws; the dilemma for the Clinton Administration was that the circumstances faintly echoed the previous case. While Baird admitted flouting the law by hiring two illegal immigrants and failing to pay taxes for them, Wood insisted she was innocent of any wrongdoing. When she had first employed an undocumented Trinidadian baby-sitter in 1986 for her son Ben, the law allowed citizens to hire illegal aliens. Moreover, Wood said she had paid...
...White House version portrays Wood as failing to disclose all the details early in the process. Officials claim that when she was first reached by phone while vacationing in Colorado, she was asked, "Do you have an illegal-alien or tax problem?" She answered no. She was then summoned to Washington. In separate meetings on Jan. 29 with White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum and President Clinton, the illegal-alien issue was pressed a second and third time. In each instance, Wood denied any problem. Six days later, the vetting process began in earnest. Wood sent her household-employment records...
...understand and respect Judge Wood's decision not to proceed further," Clinton said hours later. "I wish her well." Privately, White House officials said they didn't want to risk another failed confirmation hearing. They feared that the legal distinction between Wood's nanny situation and Baird's might be too subtle for the tabloids and radio talk shows. Wood, like Baird, had been a highly paid lawyer at the time she hired someone to help care for her child. "We could just see some Senator saying, 'Are you telling me that on $400,000 a year there...
...Wood's supporters tell a different story. The judge, they say, was forthcoming from the first phone contact in Colorado. Asked about a "Zoe Baird problem," she answered that in regard to her baby-sitter, she had complied with all laws and paid all taxes. At the time, Wood was not asked, , and she did not offer, that the baby-sitter had once been an illegal alien. On Friday, Wood released a statement that offered her side of the story. It said that employment of an illegal alien was within the law as it stood at the time and that...