REPORTER ALFONSO CHARDY wrote an important but little-noticed article for last Wednesday’s Miami Herald. It adds to the proofs that we never got the whole story behind the Clinton administration’s case for deporting 6-year-old boat person Elian Gonzalez back to Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Young Elian had fled the island on a rickety raft in November 1999, with a mother who drowned on the voyage.

On January 5, 2000, INS commissioner Doris Meissner ordered that Elian be sent back to his father and to Fidel Castro–an order that was enforced three months later when Attorney General Janet Reno sent shock troops with automatic weapons to spirit Elian from the Miami home where he had been staying with his uncles.