By John M. Broder. The New York Times. April 4, 2000
WASHINGTON, April 3 -- On the wall of Gregory B. Craig's office at the powerhouse law firm Williams & Connolly here is a fading photograph taken 14 years ago of Mr. Craig shaking hands with a gaunt 60-year-old Cuban-American man at Homestead Air Force Base south of Miami.
The picture was taken the day in 1986 when the man, Col. Ricardo Montero Duque, was released from a Cuban jail after serving 25 years for counterrevolutionary violence. Colonel Duque was the last imprisoned senior officer from the brigade of Cuban exiles who stormed the shores of Cuba in the
futile Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.
President Fidel Castro of Cuba set Colonel Duque free at the urging of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who sent his senior foreign policy aide, Mr. Craig, to Cuba to accompany him home.
Now, Mr. Craig is embroiled in another situation involving Cuban-American relations, this time as the lawyer for Juan Miguel González, father of the 6-year-old shipwreck victim, Elián.
Mr. Craig's appearance as Mr. González's lawyer has been a bit of a surprise to official Washington, which last saw him delivering a defense of presidential peccadilloes before the House Judiciary Committee.
President Clinton enlisted Mr. Craig to coordinate his legal and political defense against impeachment charges in part because of longtime personal ties -- Mr. Craig was friendly with Mr. Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton at Yale Law School in the 1970's. But the White House also sought Mr.
Craig's services because of his well-tuned ear for Congressional politics and ability to pursue an aggressive legal strategy.
When he was approached by representatives of church groups sympathetic to Mr. González, he accepted the job after consulting with top officials of the White House, the Department of Justice and the State Department, where Mr. Craig had been director of the policy planning staff earlier in
the Clinton administration.
The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, until recently the general secretary of the National Council of Churches, recruited Mr. Craig in March to represent Mr. González on the advice of Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, a Democrat who represents Mr. Craig's native state, Vermont. She said it was clear that
Mr. González needed an American lawyer who could navigate the perilous political and legal currents that enveloped the case.
She is also coordinating the private fund-raising to pay his fees, which he has agreed to moderate from the firm's customary $400 to $500 an hour.
Ms. Campbell said she had already raised $60,000.
Mr. Craig, who is 55, has served as advocate for a number of unpopular clients and causes.
He helped construct the successful insanity defense of John W. Hinckley, the assailant who almost killed President Ronald Reagan in 1981. He advised his former boss, Senator Kennedy, in the Florida rape case involving Mr. Kennedy's nephew William Kennedy Smith.
He represented one of Haiti's wealthiest families, the Mevs, in their efforts to persuade the Bush and Clinton administrations to protect their sugar and oil interests in the political chaos following the overthrow of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Mr. Craig's experience has been put to work in the tense negotiations between the Justice Department and Elián's Florida relatives, and as Mr. González and other family members in Cuba prepare to travel to the United States to be with Elián while the legal process plays out.
In an interview today, Mr. Craig said he felt strongly that Mr. González should be peacefully and quickly reunited with his son; he had harsh words for the Cuban-Americans in Miami threatening to try to prevent the boy's return to Cuba.
Mr. Craig said he believed that Mr. González, his new wife and his children would be in danger in Miami because of the depth of feeling the case has aroused and would be safer waiting in the nation's capital.
"They are better off here in Washington than in South Florida," he said. "There is a quasi-insurgency underway down there with emotions very, very high and people announcing their willingness to sacrifice their lives. I take that at face value."
In Washington, Mr. Craig said, sentiments are less passionate, though no less treacherous. As for Vice President Al Gore, who last week broke with the administration and sided with the Miami relatives and those seeking political advantage by advocating their position, Mr. Craig adopted a
diplomatic silence.
"I am in agreement with the position taken by the president and the attorney general," he emphasized. "Enough said."
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