Last week, Juan Miguel Gonzalez filed a motion with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asking to be given the sole right to speak for his son Elian. The motion characterized Lazaro Gonzalez, Juan Miguel’s uncle, as an “intruder and uninvited meddler in Elian’s life.” His Miami relatives, Juan Miguel argued, had subjected Elian to “outrageous treatment.” He, by contrast, wanted only the “chance to provide Elian all the love and devotion he deserves.”
The court shot him down. How could it not? If Lazaro, Elian’s closest relative in the United States, had not “intruded” — especially when Elian’s father greeted the news of his son’s near-drowning by sitting on his duff 90 miles away and bellowing threats over a state-controlled propaganda network for almost half a year — Elian would have wound up in an orphanage. There is only one thing a civilized man in Juan Miguel’s position would say to his uncle in Miami, and that is: Thank you.
We stress, as always, that we do not believe Juan Miguel is necessarily as heartless as his public pronouncements would imply. Nor do we make any comment on his decency or his fitness as a father. But he is a subject of a Communist dictatorship — and at the heart of the Elian Gonzalez case has always been the need to find out whether Juan Miguel is capable of speaking his own mind. The way to find that out is in a court of law.
The Clinton administration must have had the same intuition itself, for it has spent the five months since Elian was rescued lauding “the rule of law.” But Bill Clinton and Janet Reno seem to have had a hard time distinguishing between law and decree, and whenever the law has gone against them, they have just rolled right over it. Reno explained last week: “We had started out early on when the matters were first developing to say, look, we will agree to the appeals process if you will agree to peacefully turn the child over at the conclusion of the process.” But what if the Miami Gonzalezes were to win their appeal? Translated out of legalese, Reno’s bargain amounts to: We will abide by the law if you renounce your rights under it. The same concept of the law as an arena for bullying could be found in the 11th Circuit’s April 19 denial of a custody transfer. The INS, according to the Court, “said it would consent to an injunction requiring the INS to bar Plaintiff’s departure from the United States if this Court also entered an order directing Lazaro Gonzalez to present Plaintiff to the INS. . . . We decline to proceed in that manner.”
We think that rebuff was the reason for the middle-of-the-night raid that “reunited” Elian Gonzalez with his father. Resorting to a fantasy jurisprudence, President Clinton claimed he had acted to uphold the 11th Circuit’s decision — when the court actually had refused to consider the administration’s request that Elian be transferred to Juan Miguel’s care.
A mix of duplicity and propaganda followed. Reno said the raid occurred at “the most appropriate time with the least crowd” — appropriate because Elian’s friends and extended family had been at worship on Good Friday, the most solemn day of the Christian calendar. Elian was arrested as an illegal alien — which he never was, until the administration declared him one, without due process, on April 12. The administration claimed to have a “report” that guns were in the house — but didn’t mention that report in either of the two fishy warrants with which it justified the raid. Reno’s deputy Eric Holder later claimed he “didn’t know” whether any guns had been found. Yeah, sure. Reno claims protesters “tried to throw ropes around the agents as they came up to the house.” Is Ms. Reno that ignorant of the raid she herself unleashed, or is she lying? Those weren’t ropes. They were TV cables, belonging to the NBC cameraman who was decked by arriving SWAT teams even before they had found Elian. Apparently the message Juan Miguel’s lawyer Greg Craig faxed to TV stations 10 hours before the raid — “We appeal to your humanity and to your decency to resist the invitation from Lazaro Gonzalez and others in Miami to further exploit this young boy” — was in danger of being treated as a suggestion rather than an order.
The pre-raid negotiations, which Reno conducted by telephone with coaching from Gregory Craig, were an extralegal sham. Reno treated law-abiding citizens as if they had hijacked an airplane: Keep them talking, and lull them. Accounts of the negotiations by independent mediators from the University of Miami make clear that only nugatory differences separated the sides when the men with submachine guns knocked down the doors. Reno calls that “law enforcement that went the right way.” But what law was being enforced? After weeks of attacking Lazaro Gonzalez for being “in violation of the law,” the government pressed no charges, citing a desire to “put this behind us.” But that’s because there were no charges to be pressed.
Then Elian was sequestered at Andrews Air Force Base, before getting moved to the government’s Wye Plantation conference center. Although whether Elian stays in the United States or goes back to Cuba had not yet been decided in any court of law we’ve heard of, the administration set to work reacculturating Elian to his native island. It welcomed playmates, teachers, and psychiatrists who’d been sent on their way by Fidel Castro in Havana. It invited the granddaughter of former National Council of Churches head Joan Brown Campbell and the son of a Cuban diplomat, not to mention 10 Cuban government officials who arrived on Easter Sunday with what was described as a delivery.
Barred were any Americans who’ve had anything to do with Elian over the last five months. Not just his Miami family, but also his best Miami friend, Lazarito Martell, all independent journalists, and New Hampshire senator Bob Smith. Under what law is a U.S. senator barred from a military base? It was hard to tell, because no one would come clean on who was in charge. Presidential spokesman Joe Lockhart referred the question to Justice, but Janet Reno told University of Miami mediator Carlos Saladrigas that she had “no knowledge of who was with the child, and no authority to limit access to the child.” Asked point-blank by a journalist at last Thursday’s press conference, Reno refused to disclose Justice’s role, claiming it was being litigated in 11th Circuit proceedings. (It’s not.) So is Elian under arrest? If so, who’s holding him? Who picks the guest list? Does Juan Miguel? Does Cuba?
The government’s use of psychiatrists to reinforce its fiat is reminiscent of Cuba, and ought to be a scandal for the mental-health profession. Irwin Redlener, a partisan rent-an-expert who worked for the Clinton campaign in 1992 and served on Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force, warned that Elian was “in a state of imminent danger to his physical and emotional well-being in a home that I consider to be psychologically abusive.”
Paulina Kernberg, also retained by the government, revealed that Elian played with toy soldiers without anxiety. Ergo it’s “likely he suffered no lasting harm from the armed raid.” Elian’s beloved cousin Marisleysis, Kernberg says, “may be an idealized love, rather than a maternal figure.” Of course, visits from the Miamians “would not be advisable in their current angry state.” In fact, the whole family “may benefit from counseling.” Why? “To aid them in accepting and supporting Elian’s reunion with his father.”
Meanwhile, the feelings of Jerry Wiener, ex-president of the American Psychiatric Association, were described this way in the New York Times: “He and other experts said Cuba, where Elian may eventually return, has a sophisticated system of psychiatric care and many highly trained child psychiatrists.” As Freedom House and other human rights organizations have noted, that psychiatric “sophistication” generally gets applied — and brutally — when opponents of the regime are being interrogated.
Bringing up Cuba’s Communist reign of terror in any of this is taken to be in bad taste. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, according to the Wall Street Journal’s Al Hunt. “Today’s Cuba is a miserably governed country,” Hunt writes, “which is why Castroism won’t survive the 72-year-old dictator. . . . If he goes back, Elian won’t spend most of his life growing up under Castro.” Really? How do we know? Lenin governed badly, but communism continued after his death for six decades. Of course, if Mr. Hunt can get Fidel’s resignation written into Elian’s repatriation agreement, we might look at the whole case differently.
The president and attorney general — for reasons that are unclear, but which certainly involve dealings with Castro — insisted on settling a complex custody battle by fiat, while trying to dupe the public into believing the administration was merely a neutral observer. They got half of what they sought — at the price of introducing a bit of Cuban-style authoritarianism into American political life. It now appears all but certain Elian will be heading back to Cuba. We may never know whether that was Juan Miguel’s wish for his child. But in its use of state power to flout the law, the administration has been caught red-handed.
The 11th Circuit has issued an injunction against Elian’s leaving the country or taking refuge in any property that has diplomatic immunity. Who speaks for Elian on asylum matters remains a live legal issue. Settling it could require a custody discussion that would allow us to distinguish Juan Miguel’s motives from Fidel Castro’s. This would be a reasonable outcome. After all, the two sides in this matter are not (a) Elian stays and (b) Elian goes. They’re (a) Elian gets his day in court, and (b) Elian gets whisked out of the country with no questions asked.
But we hold out little hope Elian will get his day in court, regardless of how the 11th Circuit rules. We now know — thanks to their conduct before, during, and after the morning of April 22 — how the president and the attorney general react when the law turns against them. They will break the law, if need be, to force Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba, all the while claiming to uphold it.
Christopher Caldwell, for the Editors
