Published Wednesday, May 3, 2000, in the Miami Herald
Emotional Reno on 'Oprah' seeks a different audience
By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com
WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Janet Reno took her defense of the government's seizure of Elian Gonzalez to an unconventional forum Tuesday -- a live-via-satellite interview on the daytime talk show Oprah.
Far from a dry news program, Reno appeared before Oprah Winfrey's heavily female audience and nearly cried. She talked, teary-eyed, about her angry Cuban-American friends in Miami. The audience applauded often.
Justice Department officials acknowledged that Reno's appearance on a ``softer'' show not usually identified with news developments was part of a concerted effort to soothe any doubts lingering about the raid. It immediately triggered rebukes from Senate Republicans who accused the Justice
Deparment of spending more time on its image than on meeting congressional requests for documents.
``She didn't say anything new -- she just said it to a different audience,'' Justice Department spokeswoman Carole Florman said of the Oprah appearance. ``It was exactly the right opportunity to reach people who are not up watching Nightline. It's just a different slice of America.''
The Chicago-based show, watched in nine million households daily, is most popular among women. The talk show is No. 1 among women 18 to 54 -- the same group polls show do not approve of Reno's raid.
National surveys show that while 55 percent of men support the government's decision to send an armed force to take Elian from his relatives' Little Havana home, only 40 percent of women agreed with the forceful tactics.
``She doesn't watch the polls -- I do,'' Florman said. ``I've never seen her go in a different direction than the one she thinks is right because of worrying over public perception.''
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, issued a statement condemnning the Oprah appearance, although he did not mention the show by name. Hatch, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, has asked the Justice Department to release all raid-related documents in time for possible Senate hearings. The
department answered by saying it lacked time to fill the request.
Hatch sent Reno a letter Tuesday asking for a status report on the document production ``so that we can schedule a timely hearing.''
``We were going to send her over to the file cabinets,'' Florman joked, ``but now I am going to cancel her appearance on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.''
INS spokeswoman Maria Cardona said the agency felt it important to answer questions Americans have about the operation.
``There was a concerted effort to put out the facts,'' Cardona said. ``I think people are understanding better what exactly went into the agency's thinking. We had concrete reasons and solid facts as to how and why.''
Jim Goldman, assistant district director for investigations for INS' Florida region, appeared Thursday and Friday on CNN and every network's nightly news program. He was a guest on ABC's Nightline on Thursday, a show that featured the associate attorney general Friday.
``It's contributed to a sense of understanding by the American public,'' Cardona said. ``Most of the American public agrees with what we did.''
Gonzalez family spokesman Armando Gutierrez said the public relations campaign would not be necessary if the government hadn't erred.
``They have all the time in the world to go on these TV shows: they are paid by the American taxpayers and need to justify a horrible thing,'' Gutierrez said. ``If they did the right thing, they don't need to be justifying it. That's why they are going on TV.''
Reno's Oprah interview mirrored her earlier statements, but with more emotion.
``We tried so hard,'' Reno said. ``After consulting with law enforcement, we felt the show of force, not use of force, was the best way to take charge. I have been over and over it, and I don't know any other way we could have done it.''
Winfrey asked Reno how she was holding up with her Parkinson's disease, and asked whether she'd get to take a break soon.
``All it does is make me shake,'' Reno said to a delighted audience. ``I can still think.''
When Winfrey asked Reno whether Waco entered her mind while she debated the armed assault, Reno choked up.
``No, the situation is different than Waco. What did enter into my mind was the community I love, people I love,'' Reno answered. ``My Cuban friends are furious at me. They feel betrayed and hurt. . . . I think it is time for us all, father and son, community, people who care about each other,
to make democracy work.''
Most support seizure of Elian
Majority of Americans oppose hearings in Congress, poll says
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com
A week after the raid in Little Havana, a majority of Americans still support the U.S. government's decision to reunite Elian Gonzalez with his father -- and think Congress shouldn't bother with hearings on the matter, according to a Gallup poll released Tuesday.
Sixty percent of respondents said they approved of the raid in interviews conducted last weekend. That's the same percentage as in a one-day Gallup poll on April 24.
Other results:
Most Americans, 64 to 26 percent, believe the reunion of father and son, even if it meant the boy was ``returned to live under communism in Cuba,'' was more important than ``growing up in a democratic country.''
Fifty-four percent said they disapproved of Congress' plans to hold hearings next week on the Justice Department raid; 43 percent approved and 3 percent had no opinion.
When asked to think ``specifically about the methods the Justice Department used'' in the raid, 53 percent said they disapproved, compared to 43 percent approving of the way it was done.
Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll, an independent Princeton, N.J., based survey group, said the American public was apparently well aware that Elian would suffer certain disadvantages back in Cuba, but still favored the father over his more extended South Floridian family, led by
great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez.
``Apparently the more generally negative environment that the public perceives to exist in communist Cuba is outweighed by its perception of the positive benefits of Elian being with his natural parent,'' Newport said.
Gallup said 1,003 adults had been interviewed for the survey. The results had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
Gallup also tackled the touchy topic of whether children should be able to seek political asylum in the United States on their own, without the involvement of their parents. That is the issue that will be debated when attorneys for the government and the Miami relatives appear for oral arguments
May 11 before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Most respondents, 61 percent, said children should not be allowed to apply for political asylum without their parents' consent -- compared to 25 percent who supported that right. Nine percent said it depends and 5 percent had no opinion.
Elian 'stuff' hits Net, wallets
By Marika Lynch. mlynch@herald.com
GET YOUR ELIAN GEAR
Here are the prices bid, or being asked for, for Elian-related items on eBay, as of 5 p.m. Tuesday:
A picture painted on a license plate of Elian urinating on Fidel Castro; asking price $4.99.
Rosary used to pray for Elian; asking price $59.
''Lunch for a Squirrel,'' picture allegedly colored by the boy; bids for $67.
Another Elian coloring of sharks eating Attorney General Janet Reno (seller admits it's fake); bids for $1,026.
A drawing of a guardian angel someone dreamed was protecting Elian; asking price $10.
The domain name www.eliannation.net; asking price $20.
At one point, someone offered to sell Elian the boy, himself, on eBay. That asking price: $1,000,100. eBay pulled the item.
Elian's cup. Elian's tennis ball. Elian's monogrammed handkerchief.
Sand from Cardenas, Cuba. Little Havana holy water.
All of it can be yours, for a price. Plus shipping and handling.
Over the Internet and on the streets of Miami, people are cashing in on the extended saga of the world's most famous 6-year-old. While Little Havana street vendors sell $6 cotton T-shirts with the boy's smiling image, eBay Tuesday listed 134 items -- from Elian coffee mugs to a rosary used to
pray to keep the Cuban-born child in the United States.
''The marketing of Elian,'' said Kenneth Goodman, a University of Miami ethicist. ''It's among the prices we pay for the free enterprise system.''
New Jersey businessman Jeff Colonna even tried to sell what he claims is the very raft used by the boy on his five-day voyage at sea. Bids hit $10 million, but eBay pulled the item Tuesday because Colonna couldn't document its origin, said company spokesman Henry Gomez.
Besides, Elian arrived on an inner tube, not a plywood-and-tire number as Colonna pictured on the site.
Colonna told The Herald the tire was authentic Monday, but didn't return calls Tuesday.
Sellers from Miami to rural Illinois are doing it for cold cash, others for yucks. Michel Paradis, the man behind the Little Havana holy water, wanted to make a statement.
He insists the water actually came from a tap in the neighborhood surrounding Elian's Miami house. And it was actually blessed by a priest, he said. But the 20 year-old New York philosophy student posted the one-of-a kind bottle on eBay as social satire, he said.
''I'm seeing all these people exploiting the boy for profit, whether it be politicians, Castro, or the people of Miami,'' Paradis said. ''I'm demonstrating how exploited everything has become by selling holy water.''
Regardless, the Little Havana family that cared for the boy for nearly five months doesn't like the commercialization, said spokesman Armando Gutierrez. The family has turned down book deals and movie rights to avoid commercializing the boy, he said.
Elian sales even border on vulgarity, Goodman said.
However, he makes a distinction between ''Free Elian'' buttons and an item billed as ''Elian's Frisbee. The first is a form of political expression, he said.
Roberto Santana, who traded selling pink lace dresses for toddlers for hawking Elian emblazoned T-shirts near the boy's former Miami home, thinks so too.
''I'm helping the cause, said a salt-and-pepper haired Santana, who proudly said dozens of protesters wore his wares at Saturday's march down Southwest Eighth Street.
Besides, he said, ''Somebody has to sell the T-shirts.
Then there are folks selling tall tales, like the sketch allegedly drawn by Elian of sharks eating up Attorney General Janet Reno. It's a fake, said the California-based seller, the result of a long night of partying -- though bids eclipsed $1,000 Thursday. It's not the only fake listed.
A 1/2-inch lock of what was advertised as Elian's hair, allegedly plucked from the Gonzalez family trash can, also is phony, said Orlando artist and seller Bruce Miller. He told The Herald Tuesday he cut the hair from another ''Latino boy here in Florida.'' He pulled the ad after getting a half
dozen nasty e-mails, he said.
Exasperation led Deerfield Beach's Chuck Brockman to auction the tennis ball Elian allegedly tossed with movie star Andy Garcia. It's a story contrived by Brockman, who is fed up with the whole controversy.
And if you agree with him, you may want to buy this: a button made by a Gainesville man that shows the boy stuffed inside a box marked ''To: Castro. It reads, ''Enough Already!
Yours, for just $4.25.
Elian-type seizures rare, say children's advocates
By Shari Rudavsky. srudavsky@herald.com
The picture has become an icon of the Elian saga: federal agents with guns drawn as they remove the boy from the home of his Miami relatives.
But that striking image by no means depicts a routine child removal.
Done throughout the country when social workers deem a home unsafe for children, removals are rarely as dramatic -- or as traumatic.
Child-protective investigators draw sharp distinctions between what they do and what federal agents did to remove Elian Gonzalez from his relatives' Little Havana home.
``That removal was not a removal by any stretch of the social work model,'' said Millicent Williams, a senior staff associate with the National Association of Social Workers in Washington, D.C.
In Broward, of the approximately 1,400 complaints of abuse and neglect that the Broward Sheriff's Office responded to last month, only about 4 percent resulted in children being removed from their homes.
Drawn guns, a quick strike and a terrified child are not typical of those cases. In most instances, an unarmed social worker in civilian clothes spends a long time talking to the child and the parents, trying to ensure calm.
The social worker must reassure the child and at the same time strive to make it clear to the parents why the child can't stay in the home.
``This is where your training comes in and your professional expertise. You have to be a good salesperson. A lot of it is talking,'' Williams said.
The Elian case highlights a tension in the field between police and social work methods, social workers say.
``It was a police model in the operation with Elian. This could raise questions about what the other model is, and that could be very helpful,'' said Robert Schachter, executive director of the National Association of Social Work's New York chapter.
A handful of areas have ceded responsibility for child protective investigations to law enforcement personnel. Four county sheriffs in Florida, including Ken Jenne in Broward, have taken over that task from the Florida Department of Children and Families.
Child protective investigators remain unarmed civilians, and like their Children and Families counterparts, embrace the social work model.
``If they take law enforcement, they don't come out with guns waving,'' said DCF spokeswoman Page Jolly. ``They make every attempt to discuss the situation and carry out their duty as defined by law to protect the children in as peaceful a manner as possible.''
In Manatee County south of Tampa Bay, the first place where the sheriff took responsibility, officers and civilian employees conduct investigations hand-in-hand. The civilians look at the case from the standpoint of whether the children should be in state custody; the police consider whether the
parents' actions constitute criminal abuse or neglect.
``Law enforcement needs to be there, making their own assessment of whether something is criminal or not,'' said Maj. Connie Shingledecker, Manatee investigative bureau chief. ``If law enforcement is present, you will probably save more lives. It sends a much, much stronger message to people
that we're taking this very seriously.''
In Broward, the nature of the case determines whether law enforcement or child protective investigators take the lead. In more-serious cases, the sheriff office's child protection unit takes a back seat. If it's a safety issue, they come to the fore, said George Atkinson, a member of BSO's child
protective investigations unit.
Decisions to remove children are not made on a snap basis.
``It is the most difficult decision our child protective investigators make,'' said Wayne Wallace, a management review specialist with the department. ``We have trained and worked with the work force to make this the last thing you consider, not the first thing you consider.''
Since July, when the sheriff's office started to take over the job, no families have physically resisted, and Atkinson said he thinks he knows why.
``Any time we remove a child, the ultimate goal, if possible, is for the child to be reunited with the family,'' he said.
Still, the seizure of Elian Gonzalez caused some social workers to express concern that others might misconstrue how they conducted child removals, Wallace said.
But they didn't dwell on that for long.
``Our folks have a tough enough job to do rather than worrying how someone's going to perceive them doing their job in light of recent situations,'' he said.
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