The media continues to swoon over Dr. Irwin Redlener's recommendation that Elian Gonzalez should be returned to his father forthtwith, even though Redlener's independence is thoroughly compromised by his ties to the Clinton White House.

But two weeks ago, a truly independent psychologist hired by ABC News said that taking Elian away from his Miami family just months after losing his mother would put him through a "second death" trauma.

Despite the startling prediction, no similar media frenzy ensued.

By Wednesday, after most of the alternative press had revealeled Redlener's advisory role in Hillary Clinton's 1993 Health Care Task Force, The New York Times was still reporting his claim that Elian needed to be "rescued" from his "abusive" Miami family, not as White House sponsored agit-prop, but as straightforward news.

On top of the doctor's obvious conflict of interest, the press managed to overlook the fact the Redlener is a pediatrician by training, not a psychologist or psychiatrist.

Dr. Gunther Perdigo, on the other hand, was the psychologist recruited by ABC News for Diane Sawyer's blockbuster Elian Gonzalez interview last month. Unlike Redlener, he personally examined the boy.

Perdigo confided to US News & World Report's Steve Roberts that at first he, like Redlener, believed Elian should be returned to his father and ultimately go back to Castro's Cuba. But that was before Perdigo actually talked to the boy.

Roberts recounted what Perdigo told him on "CNN's Late Edition" ten days ago.

"I talked to Dr. Perdigo, who went down to Miami, speaks Spanish and talked to Elian over two days. He said he changed his mind completely; that it would be like a 'second death' to remove this boy from this family he's bonded so closely with."

Perdigo's account backed those of other psychological experts hired by Elian's Miami family, leading Roberts to change his own mind.

"Like a lot of people," Roberts told CNN, "I originally thought, as Janet Reno and others have said, that parental rights should control this situation; that he should go back to his father."

But after talking to Dr. Perdigo Roberts said, "The doctors think this boy should stay in Florida and that's what I think now too."

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