CUBANET ... CUBANEWS

April 10, 2000



Cuba News

NewsMax.com


Reno Built a Career on Psychologists Examining Kids, But Not Elian

NewsMax.com. April 10, 2000

Janet Reno first appeared on the national political radar screen when the ABC network made a television movie in the late 1980's called "Unspeakable Acts," based upon the book of the same name.

The book and the movie detailed the notorious Country Walk Day Care child molestation case in which dozens of children were abused by Frank and Ileana Fuster. The Fusters were prosecuted and convicted by Janet Reno's office.

The three key characters in the dramatic case were Reno and the husband and wife child psychologists, the Doctors Braga -- who conducted exhaustive interviews with the children. But for those expert examinations, the truth never would have been known about the full extent of the harm to the children or whether the molestations had even occurred.

Fast forward to the present Elian Gonzalez tragedy. We learn on Sunday that Janet Reno refuses to allow her own hand-picked child psychiatrists and psychologist to examine Elian Gonzalez, as the Miami relatives' own team of health care providers have.

One can't help but wonder if Ms. Reno is afraid that her latter-day Bragas will find what the others have found: that Elian is afraid of his father and terrified of going back to him and Cuba.

Add to this mix the admission by one of Elian's grandmothers that she bit the boy's tongue and examined his genitals at the meeting arranged by Reno in January.

Drs. Braga, phone Janet!

Remember Charles LaBella, the investigator Reno handpicked to look into suspect White House fundraising? She didn't want his findings brought to light either.

For Janet Reno, the Elian Gonzalez case is deja vu all over again.

This item was contributed by Jack Thompson, NewsMax.com's "Man in Miami."

Castro Holding Elian's Grandparents Hostage

Sunday April 9, 2000; 7:37 PM EDT

Attorney General Janet Reno told interviewers on Sunday that when she met two days before with the father of miracle raft boy Elian Gonzalez, they were alone -- and that Juan Miguel Gonzalez was therefore free to speak his mind.

What she didn't say was that Juan Miguel's mother and father have been taken from their home in Cardenas, Cuba and are under virtual house arrest in Havana -- just in case their son does anything that might embarrass Castro while he's in the US.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Reno dodged the issue when asked about the fate of Elian's grandparents by Cokie Roberts.

ROBERTS: I know you met with the father and were impressed. But do you feel that he's really free? His parents have apparently been put in some compound where they're being watched by the government. His every movement over the last three months has been watched by the government. Is he really free to say what he believes?

RENO: I talked with him and he wasn't being watched by his government. He said that he understood that people felt that he should stay here. And he said, "I want the exact opposite."

Roberts did not press Reno on the issue of whether Juan Miguel is being blackmailed to toe the party line -- understanding that if he doesn't, the consequences for his mother and father could be dire.

Later in the program, Sam Donaldson pursued the same question with Ricardo Alarcon, the president of the Cuban National Assembly and Castro's key negotiator in the Elian Gonzales dispute. Like Reno, Alarcon first tried to dodge the issue.

DONALDSON: Mr. Alarcon, we have reports that Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who's come to the United States of course with his wife and other child, but we have reports that his mother, his father and other family members have been moved out of their apartment into a compound where the Cuban government can watch them. Is that correct?

ALARCON: (Laughing) I think that there is a lot of rhetoric and maneuvering and distortion. You have there in your homeland Juan Miguel Gonzales, along with his wife and his six-month-old little boy. He's spent more than an hour with Janet Reno, with Doris Meissner at the Justice Department. If he had wanted to remain in the US; ask for asylum or whatever, he was in the right place, completely alone without any Cuban official accompanying him, alone with his family and the authorities that are entitled, according to US law, to grant him an asylum. Now they are talking about the grandmothers and all his relatives. And, of course they have a lot of friends also. But what is the idea? To bring the entire Cuban society to the US just to satisfy a bunch of kidnappers? I think that's too much.

When pressed by Donaldson, Alarcon grew defensive and seemed to acknowledged that Elian's grandparents had been relocated to Havana; though he made it sound as if they were on a family vacation.

DONALDSON: But is it correct that the mother and father have been moved into a compound where you can watch them? That was my question, sir.

ALARCON: No, no, there is no compound. They are free persons that move, they are at their home in Cardenas -- or they may be traveling to Havana. Why not? They are not limited. They are not in jail. They can come to Havana or travel to (unintelligible) or go to Cardenas. What's wrong with that? No compound, please. That's enough for those rhetorical campaigns from Miami. What they have to do is simply to put an end to a kidnapping of a little boy. It's as simple as that.

Reno's Heavy Hand in Elian Case Could Lead to Civil Unrest

Friday April 7, 2000; 8:01 AM EDT

Jack Thompson says there's one person involved in the Elian Gonzalez tragedy who continues to enjoy the media's failure to scrutinize her central, hurtful role -- Attorney General Janet Reno.

Now a prominent Miami attorney, Thompson last took on Reno in 1988 when he ran against her for state attorney in Dade County. But with Elian's case coming to a head, he thinks there are a few details America ought to know about Ms. Reno before she turns Little Havana into Waco II.

In fact, Reno has a long history of causing civil disturbances, riots, and loss of life and property through bone-headed prosecutorial decisions. In the early 1980s, the woman now in charge of bringing about a peaceful resolution in the Gonzales case caused Miami's "Liberty City Riots" through a botched prosecution of police officers charged with killing an African American insurance man, Miamian Arthur McDuffie.

Worse still, relations between Reno and Florida's Hispanic community soured years before little Elian was even born. Cuban-Americans now guarding the home of his Miami relatives well remember Reno's rush to prosecute a Miami police officer, William Lozano, a few years after "Liberty City."

That led to the next disaster on Reno's watch -- the Overtown riots.

Miami police never forgave Reno for her trumped up Lozano prosecution, which likely contributed to last week's announcement by local law enforcement that if violence broke out over Elian, the feds were on their own.

A few years after Lozano, the entire nation watched as Reno incinerated innocent women and children in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, because of alleged child sexual abuse which she later had to admit was not occurring.

The Butcher of Waco is now poised to become the Butcher of Little Havana, warns Thompson. And all of South Florida is convulsed by Janet Reno's latest installment of "Damn due process, damn the facts, full speed ahead toward civil unrest."

Reno is already the worst, bloodiest, most corrupt Attorney General in our nation's history. She's now setting the stage for a massive loss of life in Miami, this time in defense of the specious legal claims by a communist dictator, through her wholesale denial of due process and flouting of the state's judicial process.

To date, Janet Reno has gotten a free ride from the mainstream media who have refused to look at her checkered history of deceit, incompetence, and mayhem. At this crucial juncture, this free ride must stop. The public safety of Miami demands it.

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