ABC, April 28, 2000
"There’s a big difference between the use of force and a show of force," Goldman told Nightline. "And that show of force was needed."
April 28 — While Elian Gonzalez remains in seclusion in Maryland, the federal agent who led the mission to remove the boy from the home of his Miami relatives is defending the tactics used, saying authorities had evidence that they could meet armed resistance during the operation.
In another development, a lawyer for Elian’s Miami relatives says he is pleased with a federal court’s ruling Thursday that allows their case to go forward.
And in Miami, political fallout over Saturday’s raid in Little Havana resulted in Mayor Joe Carollo firing City Manager Donald Warshaw. Carollo had demanded that Warshaw dismiss Police Chief William O’Brien for failing to warn the mayor about the raid to seize the 6-year-old Cuban
boy, but Warshaw refused to carry out the order.
‘Sufficient Intelligence’
Responding to critics who say agents who burst into the home during a pre-dawn mission to snatch the boy were overly aggressive and threatening, Immigration and Naturalization Agent James Goldman tells ABCNEWS that they had "sufficient intelligence" to suggest that the team might
encounter armed resistance and other threats.
"There’s a big difference between the use of force and a show of force," Goldman told Nightline. "And that show of force was needed."
He described an extensive security network around the Miami home, including a cadre of five bodyguards, four of whom had permits to carry concealed weapons. A second group was gathered in a home adjacent to the Gonzalez residence.
Concerns of Resistance
Goldman says he and his team had intelligence reports that indicated that many of the protesters outside the Miami home had prior gun convictions and may have belonged to an anti-Castro paramilitary group called Alpha 66, originally connected to the Bay of Pigs invasion and allegedly involved in
a 1995 terrorist attack on a Cuban resort hotel.
Goldman also claimed that the INS had been monitoring activities in the house behind Lazaro’s residence in the weeks leading up to the raid because its occupants would go back and forth to the great-uncle’s home at all hours of the night. According to Goldman, most of these
neighbors had criminal records. Elian Gonzalez is staying near the Wye River compound in eastern Maryland. (ABCNEWS.com)
"The first thing I saw as the van doors were sliding open was people yelling commands on the front lawn of Lazaro’s home, directing people to form a human chain," Goldman said.
Goldman said that Elian’s Miami relatives did not cooperate with federal marshals as they had promised they would if law enforcement came to take the boy. He recalled someone inside pushing a couch in front of the door after officers ordered them to open up. Meanwhile, Goldman said,
protesters began jumping over the barricades.
"It was a threatening environment," Goldman said. "It got overwhelming at a certain point. The people absolutely fought to prevent us from getting to the front door."
While the INS acknowledges that it found no guns Saturday morning, they also say they were not looking for any: the mission was to get the boy and leave.
It was a mission they completed in just under three minutes.
Mixed Bag From Federal Court
In two separate rulings Thursday, the 11th Circut Court of Appeals addressed a variety of issues in the Elian case. In the first, the court denied a request by the Miami relatives for access to the boy and refused to appoint a guardian to oversee his legal interests. The court also rejected a
request by the Miami relatives that they, their attorneys and their doctors be given "regular and reasonable access to him" until the court rules on a claim of political asylum, or that the court name an outside guardian to look after him during that time.
The court did, however, uphold its previous order that Elian not be allowed to go any place in the United States where he could receive diplomatic immunity.
The court said the government has offered to supply the court with bi-weekly reports from a psychiatrist as well as enlisting a social worker to monitor Elian’s progress.
In a second ruling, issued shortly afterward, the court put off a decision on the father’s request that he be substituted for Elian’s great-uncle as the boy’s representative in the case. Such a move would allow the father to drop the appeal.
But the panel did granted the boy’s father’s request to let him intervene in his son’s asylum case but refused to immediately consider a request to remove the child’s great-uncle from the action.
That decision pleased Kendall Coffey, a lawyer for the Miami relatives.
"The effort of the father, of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, to knock out that appeal immediately, before it is heard on May 11th, has failed," he said.
The court told the father, Juan Miguel, that he could intervene — but the judges also said they would not consider whether to remove Elian’s great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez from the case until May 11, when arguments in the relatives’ appeal are scheduled to be heard.
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