The Saga Of Elian. Miami Herald. Posted 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, April 26, 2000
Psychiatrist finds Elian, dad functioning 'very well'
Herald Staff And Wire Reports. frobles@herald.com
WASHINGTON -- A psychiatrist who interviewed Elian Gonzalez and his father at the attorney general's request "found the family functioning very well as a family," INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said today.
Elian, his father, stepmother and half brother were relocated Tuesday to the Wye Plantation, a secluded and privately owned 1,100-acre compound on Maryland's Eastern Shore located 70 miles from the nation's capital.
"(The psychiatrist) said Elian was very playful, very active; he does a lot of watching and mimicking his father; he helps his father change the baby's diaper,'' Meissner said on NBC's "Today'' show.
As for the Miami relatives' attempts to meet with Elian and his father, Meissner said, the doctor believes that issue is something "that the adults need to sort out among themselves.''
Meissner added: "She said something I found very touching ... that the father is not hostile to the Miami relatives, he is very hurt. They have said very cruel things over recent weeks and the adults need to sort that out before the child is involved.''
To test whether the boy had been traumatized by the military-style raid on the Miami house, the psychiatrist gave him toy soldiers to play with. Meissner said.
"She said Elian played readily with the soldiers. ... He didn't seem in any way to be bothered by it,'' Meissner said.
The State Department announced Tuesday it would issue visas to four of the boy's Cuban classmates so that the 6-year-old at the center of a hotly contested custody battle could have playmates at the sprawling estate.
Each child, the State Department said, could bring an adult relative and stay no longer than two weeks.
''This is a group of four friends visiting for two weeks,'' one administration official said. ''This is not a school, not a circus.''
A former kindergarten teacher of Elian's and a 10-year-old cousin, who were previously issued visas and left Cuba for the United States today.
On Saturday, federal agents raided the Little Havana home of Elian's Miami relatives who'd cared for him for almost five months and removed the boy. Hours later, he was reunited with his father.
The raid, however, has drawn sharp criticism from Republican lawmakers and Cuban exiles. On Tuesday, exile groups organized a work stoppage that shut down parts of Miami. More protests were planned in the Washington area today and Thursday.
The Gonzalez family's transfer from a townhouse at Andrews Air Force Base to the private Wye River compound was intended to give the family privacy and normalcy -- and to get them off a U.S.-owned military base.
The compound is a private conference center owned by the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit foundation involved in global issues. Each of its three complexes has more than two-dozen rooms and elegant dining areas. Elian, his father Juan Miguel, stepmother Nercy and baby brother Hianny are expected to
live there in seclusion while their family feud winds through appellate courts.
Meanwhile, Elian's Miami relatives failed in another attempt to see the boy at Andrews on Tuesday shortly before he was taken to Wye. Georgina Cid, one of the Miami relatives, condemned base security for not allowing the family ''as American citizens'' to enter the base and accused U.S. marshals
of ''kidnapping.''
The Miami family said little else to reporters during the remainder of the day, ignoring pleas from members of the news media who trailed after them on Capitol Hill while visiting Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
''They just don't want to talk to anyone,'' said the family's escort, Emilio Vasquez of the Cuban American National Foundation.
WHO PAYS?
Administration sources said both the visa request and the move off the base came at the request of Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, through his attorney, Gregory Craig, but it was not immediately clear who will pay for the stay. Security will be provided by U.S. marshals, according to the
Justice Department.
''The boy and the father are trying to be in the best possible environment, a calm one with no distractions so they can continue the reunification process of father and son,'' said Luis Fernandez, spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.
''They're well. They feel happy.''
Fernandez said he did not visit the Gonzalez family at the base, but others from the Cuban Interests Section brought them food and clothing.
The Miami side of the Gonzalez family has wielded sharp criticisms of the decision to keep Elian out of the public eye. They question his health and happiness and suggest the privacy is meant to shield the world from learning his true whereabouts and conditions.
''My house was always open to cameras,'' cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez said.
NEED OF SOLITUDE
The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, a friend of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said Elian and his father were simply in desperate need of solitude. ''Why is it so hard for people to grasp that they need time alone, to talk to each other?'' Campbell asked.
''He's a kid. He plays, reads books with his dad, and plays with toys,'' Campbell added. ''There has purposely not been a parade of visitors. They're keeping it private and are having a hard time doing that.''
One visitor who did talk to the first-grader Tuesday was a child psychologist sent by the INS to help determine how best to tackle a prospective meeting with the boy and warring sides of his family.
Dr. Paulina Kernberg, a professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, interviewed the father and Elian for 2 1/2 hours Tuesday but apparently made no immediate recommendation about the reunion with other members of the family.
''It's going to be tough,'' INS Commissioner Doris Meissner said. ''A lot of things were said about the father that were offensive to the father. It's natural that he wants some solitude with his son for a few days.''
The psychologist's visit sparked reports on Miami's Spanish-language radio that the boy had been hospitalized for an emotional breakdown. Federal officials and others close to the case vehemently denied the rumor.
CALLS FROM MIAMI
U.S. marshals spokesman Bill Likotovich said he has spent much of Elian's three days in Maryland fielding telephone calls from people in Miami who believed the boy had been spirited out of the country and back to his communist island nation.
''I tell people that I had just seen the kid 10 minutes before,'' he said. ''They don't believe he's still here. I tell them, 'He's here. I've seen him.' And they ask me, 'Do you really believe that?' It's obvious this is a really intense and emotional issue.''
The U.S. Marshals Service, he went on, has no evidence that the boy was hospitalized Tuesday.
Officials do not yet know if the four children joining Elian will be among the 12 Castro had wanted to fly to Washington along with several doctors, nurses and a political advisor to recreate a little Cuban village for Elian jokingly dubbed ''Cardenas on the Potomac.''
State Department officials said the larger group should not be optimistic about getting visas. Three previously issued visas -- for Elian's kindergarten teacher, doctor and little cousin -- remain unused and available.
Herald staff writers Frances Robles, Juan Tamayo and Frank Davies, special correspondent Ana Radelat, Online News Reporter Madeline Baro Diaz and Herald wire services contributed to this report.
Clinton lauds Reno on raid; probe likely
BY FRANK DAVIES fdavies@herald.com
WASHINGTON -- With public opinion supporting the government's move to seize Elian Gonzalez in a predawn Miami raid, President Clinton Tuesday offered his highest praise so far for Attorney General Janet Reno's handling of the operation.
But Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said he expects hearings next week by the Senate Judiciary Committee, even as some analysts and Republican pollsters were warning that the issue could backfire if the public thinks it is being politicized.
Appearing with Reno at a White House ceremony, Clinton said: ''I would like to commend the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General [Eric] Holder, law enforcement and the INS. They had a very difficult job to do with no easy choices, and I am grateful that they were able to safely reunite
the young boy with his father.
''I believe it is time for all of us, including the media and those of us in public life, to give this family the space it needs to heal its wounds and strengthen its bonds, to work to lessen the pressure on them as the matter goes forward in the courts,'' Clinton said.
Earlier in the day, the attorney general was quizzed during a private meeting by 13 senators, several of them very critical of the raid. ''Many of the questions were not adequately answered,'' Lott said.
Reno and Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner were grilled about the raid and the legal issues surrounding the case, but Floridas two senators said they learned little new about the operation.
Before Lott spoke, Republican Connie Mack said he supported a Senate hearing on the use of force. ''I am deeply troubled and horrified that our government would use armed force in a family home to remove a 6-year-old child,'' he said.
Democrat Bob Graham said he would also support a hearing, ''so the American people can fill in the details of what happened.''
Meissner said most of the senators questions were about the legality and justification for the operation and the status of the asylum claim for Elian, which will be heard by an appeals court May 11.
''I hope we allayed some of their concerns,'' said Meissner of the meeting, which lasted almost two hours.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also attended the meeting with Reno, but did not commit to a hearing.
Hatch, whose committee would run the hearings, released a letter to Reno seeking documents and other information related to the raid, and a committee spokeswoman said, ''Some of the answers we seek we may get in private meetings.''
Lott listed Miami attorney Aaron Podhurst and University of Miami President Edward T. Foote II as potential witnesses at Senate hearings. Both were involved in unsuccessful negotiations with the Justice Department before federal agents entered the Little Havana home of Elian's Miami relatives.
Nonetheless, some analysts and pollsters are telling GOP leaders that the issue could backfire.
A Gallup poll conducted Saturday for CNN and USA Today also showed widespread support for the raid, by 57 percent to 37 percent. And by a 62 to 30 percent margin, a strong majority in an NBC News/Zogby poll opposed congressional hearings on the raid.
''The Republicans have been tone-deaf on things that the American public doesn't want to hear about,'' said Andrew Kohut, director of Pew Research Center for The People and The Press.
Hearings on Elian also have ''some potential to backfire -- and Republicans have been known to overreach,'' said George Edwards, director of the Center for Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University. ''Their hatred for Clinton and their desire to win the White House may cloud their
judgment.''
''No one wants to look like they're using this for political reasons,'' said Frank Luntz, a pollster for Republicans who predicted that the Elian saga would hurt Al Gore, who broke with the administration on the handling of the case. Gore said Tuesday he disagreed with the decision to forcibly
take Elian, telling National Public Radio: ''I would have handled it differently.''
After the meeting with Reno and Meissner, senators sparred over the meaning and tactics of the raid and what should happen next.
Graham said he continued to push the Justice Department to allow Miami relatives of Elian to spend time with Elian and his father, but Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, questioned the immediate need for it.
''Talk about family values -- the relatives have called the father unfit, accused him of abusing his son, having doctored photos taken,'' Leahy said. ''This family in Miami wanted to hurt Castro and help Elian, but ended up helping Castro and hurting Elian.''
Jodi A. Enda of The Herald's Washington Bureau and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Elian must stay within U.S. court control, judge rules
By Jay Weaver . jweaver@herald.com
A federal appeals court judge Tuesday barred Elian Gonzalez from being taken anywhere in the United States outside the control of the courts, such as the Cuban mission in Washington, D.C., or a Cuban official's home with diplomatic immunity.
''Elian Gonzalez is enjoined from going to any place within the United States lying beyond the power and jurisdiction of the courts of the United States,'' U.S. Circuit Judge James L. Edmondson ruled.
Earlier Tuesday, attorneys for the 6-year-old boy asked the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to prevent his father Juan Miguel Gonzalez from taking him to Cuban property in the United States because Cuban officials ''could simply put Elian on a plane . . . bound straight to Cuba or a
third-country way station.''
Last week, a three-judge appellate panel that included Edmondson ruled that the child could not be removed from the United States until his appeal seeking a political asylum petition is concluded. Oral arguments are set for May 11.
On Tuesday, the boy's attorneys also asked the appellate court to appoint an independent guardian to assess the best interests of Elian during his appeal because neither his Miami relatives nor his lawyers nor any of the relatives' medical experts can gain access to him now that he is with his
father outside the Washington, D.C., area.
Edmondson, in asking the government to respond to the attorneys' request by today, seemed to be open to the idea of naming a guardian.
''In their writing, [Justice Department officials] should especially explain why the court should not now appoint someone . . . to report to the court directly on the plaintiff's condition.''
After the seizure of Elian from his great-uncle's house on Saturday, Elian's Miami relatives and one of their lawyers tried to visit with Elian outside Washington. But Elian's father, who flew from Cuba earlier this month, rejected their requests.
Kendall Coffey, another of the relatives' attorneys, said that chilly reception left them with no recourse but to ask the appellate court to appoint a guardian who would have the authority to talk with both sides and make a recommendation to the three-judge panel.
Coffey said a guardian is necessary to make sure the child is not influenced by Cuban diplomats to change his mind about requesting asylum.
To support this claim, Coffey filed an affidavit that says Attorney General Janet Reno told four negotiators gathered in Herald Publisher Alberto Ibargüen's office on Saturday that she had ''no knowledge of who was with the child and no authority to limit access to the child.''
Meanwhile on Tuesday, one of the United States' preeminent constitutional scholars, Laurence Tribe, joined critics of the raid, saying he believed the search warrant was invalid.
Tribe, a Harvard law professor recognized as a constitutional law authority, called ''absurd'' the government's position that Elian was an illegal alien.
''He has an asylum petition pending,'' Tribe said.
He also criticized the government's position that Elian was ''concealed'' at Lazaro Gonzalez's house a misrepresentation. ''It's as absurd as saying Janet Reno is being concealed at the Justice Department,'' he said.
Tribe initially voiced his criticisms in an opinion piece in The New York Times on Tuesday. When he wrote the piece, he had not read the affidavit the government filed with U.S. Magistrate Robert Dube in requesting the search warrant.
In its request, the government said Elian was an illegal alien and that Lazaro Gonzalez was illegally restraining the boy in his home. The Immigration and Naturalization Service routinely obtains such warrants for removing immigrants with no legal status. But after reviewing the affidavit
Tuesday, Tribe said he still thought the warrant was invalid.
Herald staff writer Mark Seibel contributed to this report.
Publisher listened in on Reno conversation
Conference call with mediators took place in office at Herald
Andres Viglucci. aviglucci@herald.com
Hours after the government forcibly seized Elian Gonzalez, Aaron Podhurst and three of the community leaders who led a failed mediation effort held a two-hour phone conference call about the negotiations with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno in the office of Miami Herald Publisher Alberto Ibargüen,
court filings revealed Tuesday.
Ibargüen said Tuesday that he listened in on the conversation on a speakerphone, but believed it to be off the record, meaning it could not be used by the newspaper or any of the participants. He told only Herald Executive Editor Martin Baron about his participation in the call, Ibargüen
said, but instructed him not to tell others because he regarded Saturday's talk as private.
But in their court filing attorneys for the Miami relatives used comments purportedly made by Reno during the conference call as evidence to support their request that a federal appellate judge issue an order that, if granted, could alter the complexion of the legal battle over Elian's fate.
The revelation in court papers of Ibargüen's participation in the conversation raised eyebrows in the newsroom. At the time of the conversation, reporters were hurriedly compiling stories on the raid and the negotiations -- which have become an important focus of coverage as the mediators
and Reno have given conflicting versions of how close they were to an agreement.
Herald reporters were aware Saturday that Podhurst and University of Miami President Edward T. Foote II, another mediator, had been in Ibargüen's office, and interviewed them as they were leaving the building. But they did not know that the two men had just spoken to Reno.
Baron, The Herald's top editor, said he learned of the conversation from Ibargüen late Saturday and that it formed the basis for his directions to news editors that Podhurst be interviewed in depth. Podhurst gave a more extensive interview Sunday to Herald staff writer Ronnie Greene that
was the basis for a story on the negotiations published Monday.
REPORTER UNAWARE
That story mentioned that Podhurst had spoken with Reno for two hours after the raid, but Greene did not know that the conversation had taken place in The Herald building or that Ibargüen had participated.
''What I did was ask that we do certain kinds of stories so that we got at the issues raised in the meeting,'' Baron said. ''There are many instances where journalists learn things off the record and use that as basis for pursuing certain stories. This is unusual in that it involved the attorney
general, but that's what happened here.
''Everything I learned in my discussion with Alberto made its way into the newspaper one way or another, other than the fact that he participated in this meeting, and the names of the other people at the meeting.''
In an affidavit filed with the pleading, mediator Carlos Saladrigas says he asked Reno at one point whether ''she could guarantee that the child was alone with the family and outside the control of Cuban agents.'' Saladrigas said Reno responded, ''that she had no knowledge of who was with the
child and had no authority to limit access to the child.''
Ibargüen declined to comment on the quotes attributed to Reno, saying the conversation had been off the record. He did describe Saturday's conversation as ''emotional'' and ''extraordinarily frank.''
'SURPRISED'
''My reaction is, I'm surprised'' the talk turned up in the court filings, he said. ''Perhaps I misunderstood it.''
Ibargüen, who is a member of the civic group Mesa Redonda, along with two of the mediators, Saladrigas and Eagle Brands chairman Carlos de la Cruz, said he offered the use of his office to the group after attending a morning meeting during which the raid was discussed. The mediators wanted
a place to begin setting down a chronology of the negotiations while their recollections were fresh, he said.
When Podhurst checked his messages at The Herald, he learned Reno wanted to speak with him. He asked Ibargüen and the three other mediators whether they wanted to participate, and they agreed. Reno also consented.
''I participated almost exclusively as an observer,'' Ibargüen said. ''I don't think I said anything during the bulk of the conversation.'' Ibargüen said he saw no conflict between his role as publisher and his participation in the call. He noted he deliberately missed two Mesa Redonda
meetings earlier in the week because they were discussing how to respond to the Elian case.
''If I had been one of the negotiators, it might have been a conflict. Had I participated in the earlier Mesa Redonda meetings, it might have been a conflict. But I didn't.''
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the government was aware of the private conversation, but did not know whether it was off the record or not. Neither Saladrigas nor Podhurst could be reached late Tuesday.
Federal raid invokes anger in Vietnamese exiles
Anticommunist fervor shared with Miami's Cuban Americans
By Anne Martinez And Truong Phuoc Khanh . Knight Ridder News Service
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- After Saturday's raid to snatch Elian Gonzalez from the Little Havana home of his relatives, tensions ran particularly high within Silicon Valley's Vietnamese-American community, one of the few immigrant enclaves outside of Miami that share such a vehement anti-communist
belief.
They speak different languages, eat different foods and often follow different faiths. But when it comes to politics, Cuban Americans have more in common with Vietnamese exiles than their Hispanic brethren.
''Americans don't know the price of freedom and democracy as we know it,'' said Nhut Ho, 61, who escaped Vietnam with his wife and two infant children by boat in 1976.
''For us, it was fight for freedom or die.''
Those who reduce Elian's plight to that of a simple child-custody case lack the empathy over the 6-year-old's fate that Cuban and Vietnamese immigrants painfully share.
''How can an American understand that?'' asked Le Van Minh, a gift shop owner in San Jose. ''We should all protect this little boy.
By no condition should we accept his return to Castro.''
The common bond between the Cuban-American and Vietnamese-American communities was demonstrated in January after a former South Vietnamese air force pilot, Ly Tong, 51, rented a plane from Key West to Cuba on New Year's Day, then dropped leaflets over Havana that advocated rebellion.
TONG HAILED
Cuban-American activists hailed Tong's flight. Tong, who forfeited his pilot's license after the incident, was later honored during Miami's Three Kings parade.
Polls show that most Americans do believe Elian, whose mother died trying to raft with him to America, should be returned to live with his father.
Cuban Americans overwhelmingly support keeping Elian in the United States.
Other Hispanics, however, do not share Cuban exiles' do-or-die position.
In fact, most of the country's largest Hispanic advocacy groups have remained officially neutral on Elian's case.
''We have deep splits within our community, and there's passions on both sides,'' said Lisa Navarrete, spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza, a predominantly Mexican-American organization based in Washington.
''The Cuban community sees this as a political issue while many others view it as a custody issue.''
For many Vietnamese, however, returning Elian to communist Cuba is equivalent to sentencing the child to death. Family separation, they say, is part of the price of freedom.
To say Elian belongs only with his father is ''simplistic thinking,'' said Le, the gift shop owner.
''Americans live in a country of peace and freedom. Children live with their parents, that is normal,'' Le said. ''But in the world of communism, it is an entirely different situation.''
IN COMMON
Like countless Cuban exiles, many Vietnamese fled their homeland in cramped boats, often leaving behind family and loved ones.
In many ways, Miami's anti-Castro protests are not unlike the rallies that arise within the Vietnamese community when images of Ho Chi Minh appear in public.
Despite their similarities, Vietnamese and Cuban exile communities also have their crucial differences.
Vietnamese Americans failed to prevent Washington and Hanoi from establishing diplomatic relations.
Cuban exiles, meanwhile, have successfully blocked opening up ties with Cuba.
And Cuban Americans wield more financial and political influence, in part because they have been here longer.
They began arriving in the United States after Castro seized power in 1959, more than 15 years before South Vietnam fell to communism.
Relatives will need new media strategy in D.C.
tjackson@herald.com Terry Jackson.
Elian Gonzalez's Miami family has taken their battle for the boy to a land some media experts say will quickly seem quite foreign -- Washington, D.C.
No longer do Lazaro and Marisleysis Gonzalez hold the media high ground, able to step out the front door of their Little Havana home to speak to dozens of reporters, backed by a cheering throng of supporters. So if they are going to be heard in media-jaded Washington, communication consultants
recommend the Gonzalezes change the tenor of their campaign.
''The coverage is going to start to change. The boy is now with his father, and we have moved on to another phase,'' said John Hellerman, a senior consultant with Levick Strategic Communications, a Chicago company that helps lawyers get the best media spin for their clients. ''This is going to
be much more spikey in terms of what gets covered.''
Hellerman predicts that daily coverage of Elian will soon subside, at least outside South Florida. That's because the Miami Gonzalezes no longer hold the key to television coverage -- daily video moments with Elian. And in the Beltway they face a tougher press corps, one that is likely to be
more cynical about the saga now that the boy is with his father and out of sight from the media.
''The reality is that the media is drawn to things that are attention-getting,'' said Jerry Brown, a Denver-based media consultant who once worked in Washington as an assignment editor for the Associated Press. ''What you had in Miami was made for television -- the boy, the crowd, the drama of
who was going to get the kid. Elian is no longer available for the cameras. There is no place for that crowd to gather.''
Marcy McGinnis, CBS' vice president for news coverage, said the Miami family is no longer driving the story.
''It will be a very different scene in Washington. The story will now pretty much be dictated by the calendar -- the court hearing, any scheduled congressional hearings,'' she said.
On Sunday, just a day after INS agents seized Elian, CBS, NBC and ABC declined to cover an early morning Washington press conference by Marisleysis Gonzalez.
''The cable channels covered it, but the major networks passed, because she didn't have anything to add from what she said in Miami,'' McGinnis said.
Although the Miami Gonzalezes have had some good media advice -- it was no coincidence that a distraught Marisleysis went before the cameras Saturday at the same time Attorney General Janet Reno was holding her press conference -- Hellerman and others believe there have been some bumps.
STATEMENT INSTEAD
''I think the family mishandled this,'' Hellerman said. ''I think that they would have been better served if they had issued a statement about how having a bunch of federal agents swoop into our home and having the boy removed from us so swiftly was very emotional. And then say they were very
pleased to see that Elian appears happy to see his father again.
''Make it a clean change of heart and then focus on the issue of lobbying for safeguards once the boy returns to Cuba with his father.''
Brown said that to continue to fight the father and make accusations about brainwashing or doctored photos will now prove counterproductive.
''You cannot win a fight over whether you or the father should have custody, '' he said. ''My advice would be to let go of those issues. Now their real issue should be what happens in Cuba.''
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |