Published Wednesday, January 24, 2001, in the
Miami Herald
Staff opposed Elián seizure
Backlash feared, INS e-mails reveal
By Jay Weaver, jweaver@herald.com.
In the weeks leading up to the seizure of Elián González, some
local employees of the Immigration and Naturalization Service expressed grave
concerns about a raid on the boy's Miami home, saying it would be a "black
day for the nation,'' according to INS memos cited in a lawsuit against the
federal government.
In one of the memos, an INS special agent implies that Miami Police were
involved in the operation at least 11 days before the April 22 raid to reunite
the 6-year-old Cuban boy with his father. The city's role was to provide "outer
security'' during the seizure, according to the e-mail.
Former Miami Police Chief William O'Brien said at the time that he was not
aware of the exact timing of the raid on the Little Havana home of the boy's
relatives until the afternoon before it was executed.
This new information came to light Tuesday as U.S. District Judge Federico
Moreno issued an order requiring a labor attorney for some INS employees to
reveal their names as part of the civil suit by Elián's Miami relatives
against the government.
The attorney, Donald Appignani, works for the union representing the
workers.
He had turned over two internal INS e-mails to lawyers representing Elián's
Miami relatives.
Appignani said Tuesday night that he had not made up his mind whether to
comply with the judge's order or appeal it.
He has cooperated with the González family's lawyers by providing the
initial deposition that accused the INS of destroying sensitive Elián-related
documents, e-mails and other information.
He also brought to light a post-raid INS souvenir, a coffee-cup holder, that
was seen as derogatory toward the exile community.
The two April 12 e-mails -- all between INS employees who are members of the
American Federation of Government Employees, Local 1458 -- reveal that some
Miami INS employees thought the raid might put district employees "at risk
of serious public reprisals,'' such as the public criticism following a 1998 INS
raid on a West Dade flower warehouse.
In the e-mail to the union's national office, Jose M. Touron Jr., the Miami
local's vice president, said the INS employees thought the boy should get an
asylum hearing, contrary to the INS's official stand to reunite him with his
Cuban father.
"If INS intentions against the child Elián González is
carried out, it will be a black day for the nation,'' Touron wrote to the
union's national officers, including President William King, based in Orlando.
He also copied then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, INS District Director
Robert Wallis and other agency officials.
Touron, speaking on behalf of INS Special Agent David Wallace, the Miami
local's shop steward, urged the union's national officers "to speak up''
against any plan to take the boy by force.
SAFETY CONCERN
"You cannot remain silent on this issue,'' wrote Touron, an immigration
inspector at Miami International Airport. "If INS is still stubborn and
still insist[s] on going down the path of political destruction, we should care
for our employees and their security and security of their families.''
In another e-mail, Wallace told Touron that as of April 11, the plan to
reunite Elián with his father would involve Miami Police, U.S. marshals
and INS agents. He said the information was provided by his first-line
supervisor, Phil Warfield, and confirmed with an agent from the U.S. Border
Patrol office in Pembroke Pines.
"So far all of this plan has been verbal, no written plan has been
provided,'' wrote Wallace, who Appignani said was demoted over the e-mail. "All
agents are expected to be at work on Thursday, April 13, 2000. No leave will be
authorized for that day.''
The night before, Attorney General Janet Reno had met with the González
family at the Miami Beach home of Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin to discuss turning
over Elián peacefully. But Lázaro González, the boy's
great-uncle, refused to budge on her request.
ORDER DEFIED
On April 13, the government gave official notice ordering González to
surrender the boy at 10 a.m. at Opa-locka Airport. He defied that order as
hundreds of Cuban exiles gathered outside his Little Havana home, including
celebrities Gloria Estefan and Andy Garcia.
González family attorney Frank Quintero said the two INS e-mails show
there was "dissension'' among immigration employees about the government's
planned raid and that the Miami Police were involved in its strategic planning
earlier than first thought.
He also said the e-mails show the negotiations between the boy's Miami
lawyers and the Department of Justice were a "hoax.''
"They were buying time to finish getting ready for the raid,'' Quintero
said.
Post-Elián dialogue highlights healing
By Nicole White. nwhite@herald.com
Lingering tensions from the Elián González saga again thrust
Miami into the limelight Tuesday, as local and national leaders converged to
discuss what the community learned after Elián and map out a plan to fix
the problems.
The sixth annual forum, sponsored by the National Conference for Community
and Justice (NCCJ), is often used as a balm for residents in communities torn
apart by crisis.
"What we're trying to say is, let's get over it and move on,'' said
Carol Spring, executive director for the Broward/Palm Beach region of the lead
sponsor. "We all have prejudices, but this is an opportunity to bring
people together who would otherwise never get together.''
The Elián González case forced South Florida and the nation to
speak candidly about other issues, said panel members and the hundreds who
crowded the discussion rooms at Miami-Dade Community College's Wolfson Campus.
For example, they said, racial and economic disparities still exist in the
education system and immigration policies favor one group over another.
HEALING DYNAMIC
Miami is struggling to emerge from under that cloud of tension and to
identify new leaders to help heal itself -- a dynamic that older cities like
Chicago grappled with under different circumstances, said Clarence Page, a
syndicated columnist and one of 12 panel members.
"The differences are never going to go away,'' Page said. "We just
have to find the commonalities.''
One panelist, the Rev. Walter Richardson, pastor of Sweet Home Missionary
Baptist Church in Perrine, said he was eager to embrace the notion of an
inclusive city. But so many layers of discrimination, especially among some
blacks and Hispanics, make that goal difficult, he said.
"We do not see simultaneous sensitivity in this community,'' said
Richardson, who spoke of the willingness of blacks to hire Hispanics but the
latter's being unwilling to do the same. "Until we come to that reality,
we're going to be back here next year.''
POSITIVE RESPONSE
T. Gomez Urtiaga, community-relations director for Barry University, found
the dialogue refreshing and progressive, even though no policies can be set.
"Finally, we have a discussion at a nonpolitical level where leaders
are genuinely passionate about solving this issue,'' said Urtiaga, an observer
Tuesday who remembers the acrimony during and after Elián.
Rose M. Ochi, director of community relations service for the U.S. Justice
Department, said she was optimistic that the dialogue would lead to tangible
changes.
REPORT ON INTERNET
The NCCJ will publish its plans and details from the dialogue (The National
Conversation on Race, Ethnicity and Culture: Our Growing Diversity -- Emerging
Leadership Across the Divide) on its website at www.nccj.org. Members will also
discuss the findings at their upcoming regional meeting in San Diego.
Other sponsors of Tuesday's event include: The Herald, which along with
WTVJ-NBC 6 led a series of community dialogues after Elián called Moving
Forward; Dade Community Foundation; Aetna; and Levi Strauss.
Other panel members were: Abbey Chase, president of Chase Marketing Group;
Tanya Dawkins, senior vice president of resources management for the United Way
of Miami-Dade; Christopher Gates, president, National Civic League; Jorge
Hernandez-Torano, Holland and Knight; Alberto Ibargüen, publisher, The
Herald; Maricarmen Martinez, architect, Upstairs Studio; Jorge Mursuli, chairman
of SAVE Dade; Carlos A. Saladrigas, chief executive of ADP Total Source; and
Gepsie Metellus, director of public relations for Miami-Dade Commissioner
Barbara Carey-Shuler.
State politicians were top targets
Cuban spies ordered to harass 'right-wingers of Cuban origin'
By Gail Epstein Nieves, gepstein@herald.com. Published Tuesday, January 23,
2001, in the Miami Herald
Florida politicians -- "especially right-wingers of Cuban origin'' --
were high-priority targets for Cuba's intelligence agents, who made plans to
cause trouble by "penetrating'' the offices of U.S. Reps. Ileana Ros
Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, among others.
The anti-politician mission -- conceived in Havana and code named "Operation
Girón'' -- targeted a list of Cuban-American elected officials who "could
have an impact on formulating policy toward Cuba,'' according to Cuban
intelligence communications read to jurors in the Cuban spy trial Monday.
"Among these, we can mention such figures as [Miami-Dade Mayor Alex]
Penelas, Herman Hechevarria, Mario Diaz-Balart, etc.,'' read a coded September
1997 message to Cuban agents in Miami that was decrypted by the FBI.
Echevarria, whose name was misspelled, was Hialeah Council president at the
time. Diaz-Balart was a state senator at the time.
Another Havana communication referred to the three Cuban Americans in
Congress as "the three pests'' -- Miami Republicans Ros Lehtinen and
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and Bob Menendez of New Jersey. All three are strongly
anti-Castro.
Havana directed its agents to get inside the congressional offices to learn
about any plans involving Cuba and to discover the "vulnerabilities'' of
Ros Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart.
Such information "will enable us to act in time in order to neutralize
these plans [about Cuba], as well as . . . give us an opportunity to harass them
[Congress members]. This is the most important point,'' the message said.
Operation Girón was to be overseen by accused spy Ramón Labañino,
one of five men on trial in federal court. The mission was among a host of "active
measures'' directed out of Havana, according to testimony and documents. It was
called "Operation Girón'' after the beach in Cuba where the
ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion took place.
Active measures was the term used by Cuban intelligence for, among other
things, offensive tactics against the Cuban exile community. They included
letters, flyers and phone calls that spread scandalous misinformation or
threats.
The measures were designed to create internal dissent or to discredit the
image of exile groups, according to some 1,400 pages of secret communications
that were contained on encrypted computer disks confiscated during FBI searches
in the case.
The Miami agents were directed to carry out smear campaigns against Ramón
Saúl Sánchez and the Democracy Movement, the Cuban American
National Foundation and other anti-Castro groups, testified FBI Agent Richard
Giannotti.
One of the most chilling plans: a telephone call to Democracy Movement
leader Norman del Valle to tell him "Remember Letelier; he didn't even have
time to get out of his car'' -- a reference to the 1976 bombing murder of former
Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C. The slaying originally was
attributed to Chilean secret police and Cuban exiles.
Apparently not wanting to miss any opportunity to foment controversy,
accused spy Gerardo Hernández recommended that "a threatening phone
call'' be placed to the Miami Herald and its then-publisher, David Lawrence.
Hernández made the suggestion in August 1996, after a simmering feud
between late CANF leader Jorge Mas Canosa and Lawrence flared.
New facts surface in Elián affair
Liz Balmaseda. Published Thursday, January 11, 2001, in the
Miami Herald
In the hostility of the Elián González era, caffeine breaks at
Miami's U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service offices took on an added
edge.
The jolt didn't come from café cubano -- just the opposite.
One insider remembers seeing a custom-made coffee cup holder bearing an
alarming message: On one side it boasted an image of a stopwatch showing the
number 154, clearly a proud reference to the number of seconds it took
gun-wielding federal agents to remove the 6-year-old refugee boy from his
relatives' Little Havana home last April 22.
"On the other side of the cup . . . there is a Cuban flag with a red
circle around it and a red line drawn through it,'' said the insider, a labor
lawyer who represents INS workers, in a recent sworn deposition.
The lawyer, Donald Appignani, gave his interpretation of the emblem to
attorneys for Elián's Miami relatives, who filed a federal lawsuit
against officials of the U.S. Justice Department and Miami Police Department,
claiming the raid was unconstitutional.
"I think it's derogatory to the Cuban community,'' asserted the Coral
Springs lawyer.
Exactly. Café con contempt. But there's more.
The agency's anti-Cuban streak seems to go beyond the tacky accessories,
according to Appignani's deposition, taken in December.
He telephoned González family lawyer Ronald Guralnick to relay
potentially damaging information from his INS clients about their bosses.
"I became privy to some knowledge from some employees. . . . I heard
that there was a possibility that the U.S. government could be breaking the
law,'' he testified.
His clients told him they had been ordered to destroy or conceal documents
and e-mail related to the Elián case.
"Basically, that is what I heard, that somebody was -- that people were
instructed to remove anything derogatory to the Elián González
case,'' Appignani testified.
The labor lawyer, who handles arbitrations and equal employment complaints
for the union that represents INS workers, refused to name the employees,
invoking his attorney-client privilege. He says his clients feared trouble from
their bosses at INS.
The attorneys for Elián's relatives -- great-uncle Lázaro,
great-aunt Angela and cousin Marisleysis González -- have asked U.S.
District Judge Federico Moreno to compel Appignani to reveal names and all
pertinent information.
In that motion, the González lawyers say Appignani advised Guralnick "that
his clients felt that a great wrong had been done and that they wanted to come
forward with this information, but were afraid of retaliation.''
The judge is expected to rule on that motion next week.
Meanwhile, the González and the government lawyers have signed a
joint agreement to preserve all materials concerning the Elián González
case.
Guralnick and his co-counsel, Frank Quintero, believe Appignani's statements
represent a critical break in their lawsuit.
Certainly, Appignani's statements have opened new questions in the
government's handling of Elián's reunification with his father.
Although it is touted by the Justice Department as a swift and clean mission
worthy of its code name, "Operation Reunion,'' images of the raid's
gratuitous force still rattle this community.
Although the government has gone out of its way to honor those who took part
in the raid -- with decorations more weighty than coffee cup holders -- it has
kept the identities of most of those involved secret.
What else, we now must ask, has the government kept a secret in this
overkill of a raid?
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 