Christopher Ruddy. NewsMax.com. Friday, June 2, 2000
The ruling yesterday by the federal appeals court should have come as no surprise to NewsMax.com readers.
On the day of the raid I was in Miami. In the hours afterward I explained to our readers in an article "Why Elian Lost."
That piece was somewhat fatalistic about Elian’s future. It was based on my experiences with the media, the Cuban-American handlers and the Miami lawyers swarming around Uncle Lazaro and Elian’s Miami family.
It was clear that several well-connected low lifes of Miami viewed Elian not so much as a boy who needed to be rescued, but as a commodity they could trade for political favors.
The truth was that the freedom "movement" for Elian was controlled by Democratic Party hacks. Any chance they would really oppose Reno and Clinton? Not a prayer.
After the April 22 raid, Miami attorney Jack Thompson wrote one report after another for NewsMax.com detailing how the lawyers around the Miami family were throwing the legal case.
The lawyers, after the outrageous raid, didn’t even bother to file a motion with the court seeking to declare the raid illegal. One also would think they would have demanded to see their client Elian, since he was being held incommunicado from them.
"Possession is 9/10 of the law" is an old common-law adage. It applies here. The longer the Castro crew controlled the boy, the greater the likelihood the boy would remain in their clutches forever.
It appears that the 11th Circuit was at first very sympathetic to the Miami family and Elian’s plight. Early on they could have ordered the boy’s immediate return to Cuba, but they didn’t.
The administration feared the court.
This is why they launched that incredibly dangerous raid to gain control of the boy. The administration knew possession is 9/10 of the law.
If they and the Castro crew controlled the boy, even if the court ruled against them, they could still drug the kid and get him to say he wanted to leave America for poverty-ridden Cuba.
But the Clinton administration had other things working for them too.
As Jack Thompson has underscored so many times his voice is probably hoarse, Kendall Coffey, the lead attorney for the Miami family, had tremendous conflicts of interest. The first was he had been a close associate of Janet Reno for decades. He was even appointed by her to be U.S. Attorney for
Miami! How could he honestly represent the interests of this boy against Reno?
Coffey and the Cuban-American Democratic Party hacks who surrounded Uncle Lazaro demonstrated their real interests by failing to file the proper legal motions early on.
When Coffey finally had the opportunity to speak on behalf of Elian and the Miami family during oral arguments before the 11th Curcuit, Jack Thompson again pointed out on NewsMax.com just how weak and pathetic Coffey’s arguments were before the judges.
Coffey gave the judges no specifics about what awaited Elian upon his return to Cuba, such as Castro’s statements he planned to "re-educate" the boy in his showcase "re-adapatation" center.
The judges needed to be persuaded by overwhelming facts and evidence that proved Elian would be harmed by returning him to Castro’s Cuba. The judges were not persuaded by Coffey. In their opinion, they only said such treatment of Elian by the Castro government was simply "not outside
the realm of possibility."
Indeed, the 11th Circuit acted on the motions and information provided to them. It’s no surprise they didn’t act in Elian’s favor.
One must also remember that the court, for all its claims of independence and impartiality, is still influenced by public opinion and media pressure.
No doubt the judges saw how the full weight of the federal government and the establishment media machine had swung behind Castro and against the boy. Coffey and company gave the judges little "air support" that could have helped them take a position in the boy’s favor.
I have no doubt that the judges knew their own opinion rejecting the asylum hearing is weak. For example, they acknowledged that since Juan Miguel lives in a totalitarian state, his stated opinions cannot be accepted at face value.
Still, the judges claimed in their opinion that the INS had good reason to accept Juan Miguel’s claims and that his desire for the boy were not coerced by Castro.
The judges wrote, "The INS official, after meeting with Juan Miguel face-to-face, concluded – based upon her observations of his demeanor – that Juan Miguel’s statement was not the result of duress or coercion."
I am sure the judges must have laughed when they wrote this, as any rational person would not decide another person’s fate based on such flimsy evidence as "observations."
The judges were not acting based on logic and information, but on the prevailing winds emanating from the government and the major media. The Miami legal team offered the judges practically nothing to hang a hat on.
The judges decided to quickly wash their hands of the little boy saved from the sea. Elian survived the sharks of the Caribbean, but no one saved him from the Miami sharks who have sold him out for less than a few shekels of silver.
Editor's Note: The following are just a few of the articles revealing the betrayal of Elian that have appeared on NewsMax.com.
Reno: Gonzalez Family Filed Meaningless Application
UPI. Thursday, June 1, 2000
WASHINGTON – Attorney General Janet Reno said today that an emergency application "lodged" by Miami relatives of 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez with the Supreme Court "serves no purpose" because of a lower-court delay.
After ruling that the Justice Department could allow the boy's father to take him back to Cuba, the lower court stayed its ruling for 14 days and the issuance of its order for one week after that.
That means that Elian will remain in the United States for at least three weeks. Reno said the actual time of Elian's departure for Cuba would depend on whether anything else is filed either in the lower court or the Supreme Court.
The 14-day delay allows the Miami relatives to ask for a full hearing before all the judges of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a three-judge panel ruled against them today.
The application for an emergency stay at the Supreme Court says immigration officials did not consider the harm that would be done to the boy in Cuba, where children are subject to "abuses ranging from brainwashing to forced labor." The request also cites U.S. immigration law, which
allows "any alien" to apply for political asylum.
The Justice Department has maintained that although "any alien" may apply for asylum, only a child's parent may "speak for" the minor in immigration matters. Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, wants to take him back to Cuba.
The emergency request by Miami lawyer Kendall Coffey, who has been representing Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez, was actually in the Supreme Court before today's ruling by an appeals court panel in Atlanta.
The request, which still may play a role in the Elian saga, asks the Supreme Court to issue an injunction "to preclude [Elian's] physical removal from the jurisdiction of the United States" until the nine justices decide whether to review the case by hearing argument next term.
Supreme Court procedure allows an emergency injunction from the justices if there is the prospect of "irreparable harm" to a party in a case, but only in the "most extraordinary circumstances."
"In light of the emergency presented by the prospect of Elian's imminent removal to Cuba, a land of no return for U.S. purposes, this motion [for an emergency stay] presents those 'most extraordinary circumstances' within the meaning of [high court procedure]."
The (Lazaro) Gonzalez family request to the Supreme Court uses bitter language to describe the actions of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which in January ruled that only Elian's father, Juan Miguel, had the "right to speak for" the boy.
"The ironies of this case abound and are tragic," the request says. "With all its proclamations about its allegedly enormous powers over aliens like Elian, the INS has insisted that it is helpless to facilitate visits by Elian's [U.S.] priest or U.S. family members. Meanwhile ...
the U.S. government allows over 20 community government officials along with Clinton administration fund-raisers to be with this child."
The references are to Elian's stay with his father in the Washington area under the protection of federal marshals until the court battles over his future are resolved.
"Indeed, on U.S. soil, Elian is garbed in the uniform of Young Communist Pioneers, a police organization that indoctrinates children and specializes in paramilitary skills," the request said.
The legal document recounts at length Elian's ordeal at sea, and says that his distant cousin Marisleysis, Lazaro's daughter, "assumed the role in Elian's life of the mother he lost at sea."
The request complains that INS made "no effort ... to look past Juan's own statements that he was a loving father." It insists Juan Miguel expressed the wish to leave Cuba in the past, and that his views on living in Cuba have been "transformed drastically."
The request insists that though "Elian clings to the rememberances of his lost mother," her memory "would be purged by the government 'psychiatrists' " supplied by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
(C) 2000 UPI. All Rights Reserved.
Judicial Watch Files Emergency Motion to Keep Elian in U.S.
NewsMax.com. Thursday, June 1, 2000
WASHINGTON – Early this morning, on behalf of Donato Dalrymple, who helped pull Elian from the sea and saved his life, Judicial Watch filed an emergency motion to depose Elian and Juan Miguel Gonzalez and restrain them from leaving the country until this discovery is completed.
The motion is part of Dalrymple's lawsuit to protect our constitutional rights to be free of police state tactics such as those in the Miami raid of April 22, 2000.
Judicial Watch seeks this discovery since both son and father have information and are material witnesses to the events that led up to and occurred during the illegal Miami raid.
Attorney General Janet Reno, Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner are personal defendants in Dalrymple's lawsuit.
In the last few days, a spokesman for Juan Miguel Gonzalez has stated that Cuba would remove the father and son from the jurisdiction of the United States regardless of the expected ruling today by the 11th Circuit.
"This brazen disrespect for the American legal system cannot be permitted," stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman.
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