HERE’S WHAT attorney general Janet Reno would like you to believe: that she actually wanted television cameras and photographers to record the commando raid that plucked Elian Gonzalez from his relatives’ home in Miami. To avoid any charges of a coverup, she decided that agents should not block photographers or obstruct the TV cameras at the Gonzalez house from doing their job. The deaths at the Branch Davidian complex in Waco, Texas, in 1993 are still painful to Reno, her aides told the Washington Post, and she’s been accused of covering up what really happened there when federal agents staged a raid. So, her aides said, this led her to err on the side of openness in Miami. “She did not want allegations of a coverup to surround any aspect of the Elian Gonzalez case,” according to her aides.
Now here’s what actually happened: The only TV cameraman who tried to cover the seizure of Elian inside the house was beaten, maced, threatened, and thus prevented from recording the event. “It wasn’t a pretty sight,” NBC cameraman Tony Zumbado said. “I was kicked in the stomach and pushed down and they kind of like put their foot on my back and told me not to move or else they were going to shoot.” The result was no TV coverage. An AP photographer, Alan Diaz, raced around to the back of the house, entered, and got the picture of an armed Immigration and Naturalization Service agent pointing his assault weapon in Elian’s direction. But the photographer was aided by the Gonzalez family, not by anyone working for Reno.
What we have here is a lie or something awfully close to it. For Reno, the presence of the press was a given. She couldn’t deal with it by forcing reporters and cameramen to pack up and leave the area. She didn’t control Little Havana, and she didn’t have the cooperation of those who did, the Miami police. Besides, driving the media away would have alerted the Gonzalez family that an attempt to seize Elian was imminent, allowing them to flee with the boy. Also, if Reno had been truly interested in letting the media show that everything she did was on the up-and-up, there was a perfect time for this. A press photographer or two could have been allowed to take post-raid pictures of Elian and his father at Andrews Air Force Base. But, of course, only Greg Craig, the lawyer bent on sending Elian back to Cuba, took pictures. When released, his pictures provoked a debate over whether they were staged, exactly what Reno supposedly wanted to avoid.
The spin about open press coverage is but one of many false or deceptive statements by the Clinton administration, including by President Clinton himself, to justify, explain, or mitigate the Miami raid. The deceptions involved small points, such as whether the INS commando who found Elian actually pointed his gun at the boy. Reno said not, but you can check the cover of this magazine and decide for yourself. A larger falsehood was the claim that the Gonzalez family had guns in their house, which would justify the tremendous show of force by INS agents. After the raid, Reno said she had “received information that there were guns . . . perhaps in the house.” A Reno assistant cited a vague statement by Elian’s cousin, Marisleysis Gonzalez, about there being “more than just cameras in the house.” The Gonzalez family insisted they had no guns in the house, INS agents found none, and an INS official who briefed reporters five days after the raid said that, in fact, there had been no reports of guns there.
To buttress Reno, President Clinton appeared on the South Lawn of the White House hours after the raid and asserted that “every conceivable alternative was tried.” In truth, no alternatives were tried. The Gonzalez family said repeatedly they would not resist if officials came to the house for Elian. No INS official showed up — until the armed assault. Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian’s father, told Bill Press of CNN the night before the raid that he was ready and willing to go to the Gonzalez home on his own. Craig, his attorney, said the same. They were warned against that by Justice officials. Meanwhile, negotiations over Elian between Reno and Miami leaders were going on when the raid took place. Reno said the talks were stymied; the leaders said they were near an agreement. Reno claimed the Gonzalez family would not yield custody of Elian. The leaders said the family had agreed in writing and cited specific language in a document signed by family members and sent to Reno. No doubt Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin, who at Reno’s request had hosted Elian and his grandmothers in her home, would if asked have invited Elian’s father, the Gonzalezes from Miami, and Elian to live in her home for a period of joint custody.
Clinton uttered another untruth. He declared repeatedly that he had “done my best to avoid politicizing” the case. In fact, he did nothing to depoliticize it except leave the public handling of the matter to Reno, not the White House. And because she made it her top priority, it became all the more political. What could Clinton have done? He could have stuck with the administration’s first inclination, which was to treat the case as a custody issue to be decided in state court, where both sides would be heard. Absent that, Clinton could have kept the case out of Washington by putting the U.S. attorney in Miami in charge. He could have instructed INS to grant Elian’s bid for an asylum hearing. Instead, the administration is fighting the request in hopes of quickly sending him back to Cuba. Still another option would have been to give Elian permanent resident alien status by executive action, which would have allowed him to stay in the United States but wouldn’t have barred him from returning to Cuba.
Both Clinton and Reno asserted the “rule of law” mandated their actions, notably the raid. It required nothing of the kind. The law didn’t require the case to be handled as a federal matter. Clinton and Reno decided that. Reno said the Gonzalez family was required to turn over Elian, which is true. But the law did not require them to go to the Opa-Locka Airport and hand over Elian, as Reno ordered. It merely required them to release Elian to his father or INS agents. And Reno was not backed up by a court order from the federal judge involved in the case. She only had an arrest warrant, signed by one of her aides, and a search warrant issued by a magistrate. Both were based on the erroneous notion that Elian is an “illegal alien.” Moreover, the legality of INS’s refusal to give Elian an asylum hearing is very much in doubt. A three-judge federal appeals panel indicated INS was flat wrong in doing so.
For Clinton, the most egregious lie was a personal one to Democratic senator Bob Graham of Florida in early April. The senator was fearful of the impact of a nighttime raid on the Cuban-American community in Miami and asked Clinton to promise not to allow one. Clinton turned to his chief of staff, John Podesta, to see if such a promise was appropriate, then made the promise. After the raid, White House press secretary Joe Lockhart denied the president had done so. But Graham noted that Lockhart was not in the Oval Office at the time, and Clinton didn’t dispute Graham. It turned out Clinton wasn’t alone in saying a raid in the dead of night wouldn’t occur. Deputy attorney general Eric Holder had said so, too. When confronted about this by Tim Russert of Meet the Press, Holder gave the perfect Clintonian response. The raid wasn’t at night, he said, it was “just before dawn.”
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
