By Timothy W. Maier. maier@insightmag.com. Insight Magazine. May 1, 2000
Fallout from the Elian Gonzalez fiasco shrouds Janet Reno and the Clinton administration. Congressional Republicans have launched hearings to see where the buck should stop.
Enraged by the Fidel Castro-like tactics used in the seizing of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, congressional Republicans im-mediately called for an investigation into Attorney General Janet Reno’s decision to send armed federal agents to snatch the child from the home of Miami relatives in the
dark hours of April 22.
"I think both branches — the legislative and judicial — should look into this in depth because this is a frightening event," House Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas told reporters following the raid in which federal agents armed with submachine guns stormed the home,
battered in the door and tore up the house. On NBC’s Meet the Press, DeLay reiterated, "You bet there will be congressional hearings. I was sickened and, afterwards, I was ashamed."
According to Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, President Clinton promised him that Elian would not be taken in a home invasion in the middle of the night. Clinton gave his word and then broke it, Graham says. But the senator adds that the president may not have been informed of the
details.
Elian’s cousin, Marisleysis Gonzalez, denounced the move: "Janet Reno and everybody else, don’t say you came here with no violence and that this boy’s okay! How can this boy be okay when he had a gun to his head?" Renowned Los Angeles child psychologist Robert
Butterworth says Reno’s decision will add to this child’s long-term trauma. "I cannot believe that a government psychologist would have approved this plan. This sounds like tactics used by Castro."
Clinton approved Reno’s actions immediately after he and Vice President Al Gore were grilled by prosecutors for four hours over possible campaign-finance abuses, wiping that event from the news with the certainty of a missile attack. A congressional probe of the home invasion may not
have approval in the polls at the moment, but Republicans seem to be acting on their civil-libertarian principles. Even Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. George W. Bush ignored polls indicating early public approval of the raid and blasted the Clinton administration.
House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts of Oklahoma found it "troubling that the Clinton-Gore administration may be using selective law enforcement to pursue the Elian case with such overzealous vigor" even as it all but ignores enforcement of gun and campaign-finance
laws, as well as laws against the stealing of U.S. nuclear and missile secrets.
House Committee on Government Reform Chairman Dan Burton of Indiana says Reno’s action was "reckless and it unnecessarily endangered lives. The American people have a right to feel safe and secure in their homes. They shouldn’t have to worry about federal agents breaking
down their door when there is no illegal activity going on."
Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said hearings will be held by that panel in early May to find out why Reno failed to seek a court order and relied on an Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, order of dubious legality.
Reno and Clinton claim a federal court approved their handling of this case, but no such order exists. The lower-court position that Reno had acted within her discretion in allowing Elian’s father to withdraw the boy’s asylum application also is suspect after the 11th U.S. District Court
of Appeals suggested the lower court was wrong because Elian had signed for the asylum hearing and Reno had failed to interview the child.
Indeed, Congress will want a series of answers and accountability for every nickel spent on this commando operation. Did Reno’s indecisiveness lead to what may become the most expensive "rescue mission" in the history of the United States? Already it has cost millions and
the meter is still running. While some of the legal bills of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian’s father, have been paid by the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, according to the pro-Castro National Council of Churches, the INS reportedly will shoulder some of those
costs. Most of the Miami relatives’ expenses are being paid by the anti-Castro Cuban American National Foundation, according to re-ports out of Miami.
Who ordered that the father-son reunion take place at Andrews Air Force Base? Only the president had that authority, which suggests the White House called the shots from day one. The posed pictures released by the government from the base show Elian smiling and hugging his father — a
far contrast from those terrifying mo-ments during the commando-style raid in which the terrified boy begged for help.
"Elian was crying," wrote Alan Diaz, an Associated Press photographer who was inside the family’s house when the raiders struck and wrote a firsthand account. "He was saying, ‘Que esta pasando’ [What’s happening]? Television news accounts show Elian
screaming, ‘I don’t want to go!’ as he was wrapped in a blanket and rushed out of the house by a Spanish-speaking agent who told him, ‘This may seem scary, but we are taking you to see your father.’ She then rushed Elian out of the house as federal agents shot pepper spray
at protesters."
But the snapshot that will be remembered around the world is Diaz’s photograph of Elian clinging to Donato Dalrymple in a bedroom closet as a federal agent — pointing a 26-inch, 9mm MP5 submachine gun capable of firing 32 rounds in three seconds — demanded the child.
Dalrymple — "the fisherman" who pulled Elian from the sea in November after a boat carrying 14 Cubans capsized, killing the boy’s mother and 10 others — said the agents were shouting obscenities and threatening to shoot everyone unless the boy was surrendered. At least the
agent didn’t have his finger on the trigger, replied Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, and fortunately no one was killed.
A carefully worded CNN/Gallup poll conducted immediately after the raid showed 57 percent of Americans supported Reno’s decision to strike —although 40 percent said the attorney general had authorized too much force.
When news of the 5:15 a.m. raid reached the mass media, the Clinton-Gore administration lined up the usual spin team and a cooperative CNN, which has a broadcast arrangement with Castro, staked out Miami waiting for rioters to burn and loot the city. Police arrested 260 people. More than
200 fires were set in confined areas on the streets, but local leaders called for calm and soon got it.
In Cuba, Castro declared victory. "Today is a truce, perhaps, the only one in 40 years: one day. This is a day of glory for our people," the dictator announced at a staged rally broadcast to the United States by CNN.
Reno, meanwhile, defended her actions, declaring the Miami relatives gave her no choice. Critics ask if the decision to burst through the house with armed agents, shut down a news camera and attack peaceful demonstrators with pepper spray was the only way Reno could figure to uphold the
law. "The law is very clear. A child who has lost his mother belongs with the sole surviving parent," Reno stated repeatedly during the standoff. And Clinton pitched in that "no one is above the law."
But the 11th U.S. Court of Appeals already had decided that Reno may have violated the law when she failed to grant Elian a political-asylum hearing. The court said, "To some people, the idea that a 6-year-old child may file for asylum in the United States, contrary to the express
wishes of his parents, may seem a strange or even foolish policy. But this court does not make immigration policy. If Congress intended that a schoolchild such as [Elian] be able to file personally an application for asylum, this court and the INS are bound to honor [it]." Asylum enables people
to stay in the United States if they are unwilling or unable to return to their home country because of persecution or fear of persecution. Critics claim Reno grabbed for control of the boy to try to change his mind about returning, lest the court simply ask him where he wished to live.
While Clinton’s high-priced personal lawyer, Greg Craig, heads the Juan Miguel Gonzalez legal team and argues Elian was coerced into signing the petition to request a hearing, the Miami relatives argue the father is not speaking freely and that in Cuba children belong to the state
and not to their parents.
Cuban-American Miriam Hernandez-Davis, whose daughter Dria engineered her own escape from an abusive father in Saudi Arabia (see "A Great Escape!," Feb. 14), points to Milagros Cruz Cano, a blind Cuban activist for democracy who was given a choice by Castro either to be
incarcerated in a sanitarium or leave the country. When she asked permission to take her 9-year-old daughter, Castro told her, "No! The daughter stays." As Cano prepared to leave Cuba with her two little dogs, her daughter, Nohemi Herbello, grabbed her blind mother’s clothes and
begged, "Mama, take Chulito and Pelusa from the cage and put me in a dog suit so I can come with you." The mother now is on a hunger strike in Miami, calling on Clinton and Reno to retrieve her daughter.
"I have mixed feelings about the raid," says Hernandez-Davis. "I wish they would have done that for my daughter. I think Elian belongs with his father, but I don’t like the fact that Castro is winning. Elian’s father can’t move or talk or do anything without
Castro’s people being there. He is not free." Cuba historian Walter Petry of Fairfield University in Connecticut says many Cuban-Americans have a difficult time understanding that some Cubans want to stay in Cuba.
Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian’s great-uncle, confirms reports of others directly involved that negotiations were ongoing when federal agents burst through the house shouting obscenities and threatening to blow the family’s "brains out" unless they turned over Elian. The
Justice Department initially denied that charge but since has acknowledged that, while the negotiations were taking place, they had stalled.
INS Commissioner Doris M. Meissner told reporters that the agents who were debriefed said their commands were: "We are here, stand aside, don’t interfere, we will not hurt you, we will not harm you." They allegedly were armed and ready to fire because they feared the family
might have had guns in the house. No guns were found.
It didn’t have to be at gunpoint. Lazaro Gonzalez had agreed that they would bring Elian to a neutral site to meet his father. The family also had agreed to a facilitator to be named. Reno approved such a plan, but it needed to be presented to Castro and Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s
attorney Craig, according to attorneys for the Miami relatives. Reno disputed that account, and Holder defended his boss’ action, blaming the Miami family for intransigence.
Roger Pilon, the first director of the Justice Department’s Asylum Policy and Review Unit under President Reagan and now director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies, believes Reno acted in response to the court’s ruling that Elian must stay in the
United States during the appeal process. "The Justice Department’s night raid on the Miami home of Elian Gonzalez was an unconscionable exercise of police power, made all the worse by its exercise at the very moment a settlement was being reached," says Pilon, who wrote the asylum
regulations cited by the court.
"The plain reason for the raid," Pilon tells Insight, was to change the posture of the legal case the Miami family had brought on Elian’s behalf. "When the 11th Circuit panel decided unanimously that the INS had denied Elian his rights under the law, the department
realized that it had to move quickly to try to moot the legal proceedings — which it may have done — not by force of law but by brute force. This is a shameful episode in this nation’s history."
Dave Thelen, chief executive officer of the Committee for Missing Children, a nonprofit advocacy group in Atlanta, never has wavered in his belief the child belongs with his father. "I think the family has to be responsible for what happened," he says. But Thelen says many
parents whose children remain kidnapped overseas want to know why the U.S. government won’t send in armed troops to get their kids back. "They probably will never do that," he says, "will they?" Thelen believes the State Department considers kidnapped U.S. children "expendable"
in the name of maintaining good diplomatic relations.
On the legal front, Reno’s decision to reunite Elian with his father will make it an even tougher case for his Miami relatives to win an asylum hearing if his father gets Elian to sign legal documents declaring he no longer seeks asylum. The Miami relatives and attorneys say they
fear this. But, as Insight goes to press, the proceedings to determine whether Elian will be granted an asylum hearing still is set for May 11. If he wins the right to the hearing and the case drags on for more than a year, Elian could end up staying permanently. Under the law, applicants who are on
U.S. soil for a year while awaiting a hearing usually are granted asylum.
The decision of whether Elian will receive political asylum rests with three judges: Reagan appointee J. Larry Edmondson, Bush appointee Joel Dubina and Clinton appointee Charles Wilson.
It is possible that these judges already have hinted about their ruling when they granted an injunction to keep Elian in the country, writing: "Plaintiff appears to come within the meaning of any alien. And the statute plainly says that such an alien may apply for asylum." They
failed to grant Reno’s demand that the child be turned over to the Justice Department and may not be pleased at the seizure.
But if the little boy is persuaded to sign a document saying he no longer is interested in staying in the United States, say lawyers, he will be as good as gone. Reno then may be gone, too. Senior Republicans say they are prepared to grill her until they get the entire truth. And after
the disaster at Waco, Texas, her handling of the court cases following the excesses at Ruby Ridge, plus the rollovers on Chinagate, Filegate, Travelgate and the rest, a 6-year-old Cuban boy finally may send Reno into forced retirement.
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