Elian, Dad Reunited After Raid

For Janet Reno, the eleventh hour came at 4 in the morning.

Tired, exasperated, unable after hours of negotiations to reach a peaceful solution to the impasse over Elian Gonzalez, she sat at her desk in the Justice Department early Saturday and asked half a dozen top advisors whether the time had come to use force. Each of them said yes.

It was an excruciating moment for the attorney general, who has always maintained that the care of children is her priority but whose tenure began tragically with the bungled raid of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in which 19 children died.

It was time to act, Reno decided, not only for the sake of 6-year-old Elian but also for Juan Miguel Gonzalez, the 31-year-old father who had made an indelible impression on Reno when they met only two weeks earlier.

Reno spoke into her telephone headset.

“Go,” she said.

A few minutes later, the phone rang. Intermediaries working with Elian’s relatives in Miami were on the line. They wanted more time to negotiate.

But it was too late. White vans carrying a score of helmeted and heavily armed agents already were caravaning toward the relatives’ tiny white stucco house. Using a battering ram to break through the door, they retrieved Elian at gunpoint from the family members who wanted to keep him in America forever.

Within a few hours, father and son were reunited.

For Reno, the bond forged with Juan Miguel Gonzalez was complete.

It was an odd combination from the start: a hotel doorman and self-avowed communist in common cause with the highest law enforcement official in the world’s largest democracy.

For a while, their unusual alliance reversed the polarity of post-Cold War politics and brought about a rare alignment of two traditionally hostile governments.

For more than 40 years, since Fidel Castro seized control of the Caribbean island south of Florida, the two nations have rarely seen eye to eye. Yet on the question of Elian Gonzalez, both governments found themselves in fundamental agreement: Juan Miguel Gonzalez is Elian’s rightful legal guardian, and father and son should be reunited as soon as possible.

It was a relationship patched together by each nation’s anguish over the fate of the young shipwreck survivor whose mother perished in her attempt to reach America and freedom last November.

It was a relationship that deepened along with Reno’s growing conviction that Juan Miguel Gonzalez truly loved his son and that he had come to America in good faith as the boy’s only surviving parent.

What follows is a reconstruction of key moments in that relationship, based on U.S. government documents and interviews with participants in the international drama that began with Elian’s rescue on Thanksgiving Day and Saturday’s predawn raid on Northwest 2nd Street in Miami’s Little Havana.

U.S. Officials Visit Father in Cuba

On Dec. 13, three weeks after Elian was found clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic Ocean, U.S. officials knocked on the door of No. 170 Calle Cossio, Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s home in Cardenas, Cuba.

“The U.S. government would like to resolve the matter pertaining to Elian as quickly as possible,” they told him, according to a government transcript of the meeting.

Worried that Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s home might be bugged, they slipped him a handwritten note: If they could get him to the United States to rejoin his son, would he want to defect?

Juan Miguel Gonzalez did not bite. Instead, he read from his own handwritten notes, insisting that while he and his ex-wife had shared the boy, he was the primary custodian.

“As his father, which option would you choose for Elian?” the U.S. representatives asked.

“Return immediately to Cuba,” the father replied.

A week later, on Dec. 20, a U.S. official interviewed Lazaro Gonzalez, the great-uncle who had taken Elian into his home, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s district office in Miami.

Lazaro insisted the dead mother had been the boy’s real parent, not Juan Miguel Gonzalez. He remembered the child from visits to the father’s home in Cardenas. He described the harsh life there and vowed that this boy would not be returned.

“During the time that he’s been here, everything he has, if he goes back, it’s all changed,” Lazaro Gonzalez warned, saying that Castro would surely brainwash the boy into hating America.

He would tell them more later. He claimed that Juan Miguel Gonzalez was an unfit father, that he frightened the boy, that Juan Miguel Gonzalez knew Elian was coming to America and had given his son his blessing, suggesting that he might come too, in a bathtub.

After the shipwreck, Lazaro Gonzalez said, Juan Miguel Gonzalez called from Cuba and told him, “Take care of him.”

So U.S. officials went back to No. 170 Calle Cossio.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez was offended that there had to be a second interview, according to a transcript of the session. He felt insulted, said he did not trust the U.S. government. Bring me my boy, he insisted.

He denied that he knew Elian and the boy’s mother had set sail for Florida. He denied that he wanted Lazaro Gonzalez--”a distant relative”--or other cousins in Miami to care for Elian.

Then he lashed out. His son was being “used” in America, he said. He was angry that people in Florida “even went to the extreme of wrapping Elian in the American flag when they know that is not his flag.”

“He is Cuban!” Juan Miguel Gonzalez said.

Lawyer Pushes Father to Come to the U.S.

Washington lawyer Gregory B. Craig was hired to represent Elian’s father. White-haired, ruddy-complexioned, Craig was best known for helping defend President Clinton in last year’s Senate impeachment trial.

He flew to Havana. There, sources said, he met Juan Miguel Gonzalez and pleaded: If he would only come to America, he could get his son back. But he would have to come himself, in earnest, because his presence on U.S. soil would force the Justice Department to go after his child for him.

Then they went to the Palacio. Present were Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, and the big man himself, Fidel Castro.

Castro was adamant, sources said. No trip for the father to America, he said. He was angry; he pounded his fist. Cuban pride, he said.

The talks wore on. They sought a compromise. The sources said Castro softened. But he would not allow Juan Miguel Gonzalez to fly out with Craig. It would look too much like a U.S. rescue mission, he said, too much like “Jesse Jackson.”

So Craig flew home alone. The next morning, at dawn on April 6, Juan Miguel Gonzalez stepped off a red-eye flight at a suburban Washington airport. With his new wife and their infant son, he proclaimed, “This is Elian’s true family, and we love him very much.”

Desire to Return Boy to Cuba Quickly

The next day, an anxious Juan Miguel Gonzalez was ushered into Reno’s suite on the fifth floor of the Justice Department headquarters. He was uncertain whether his trip from Havana would bring him any closer to his son.

With the help of a State Department interpreter, he told Reno that he wanted to take Elian back to Cuba immediately. But he understood the complications. He might be willing to stay longer while a U.S. court reviewed the situation.

Reno was noncommittal, sources said. “We’ll have to see what we can do,” she told him.

Then, suddenly, Juan Miguel Gonzalez placed a series of photographs on the tabletop. They were casual snapshots of him and Elian and other Cuban family members: one taken at a park, one in their Cuban home, some 10 photos in all.

“This is my mother,” he said. “This is my father.”

He passed them down to Reno. Then he stood up and asked, “Can I hug you?”

The attorney general nodded yes, and they embraced.

On April 12, Elian and his Florida relatives left Little Havana for the gated waterfront house of Barry University President Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin in Miami Beach.

For a rare moment, the relatives were nowhere near the boisterous street crowds that had kept vigil outside Lazaro Gonzalez’s home.

Reno, seizing the opportunity, made a snap decision: She would go to Miami Beach and meet with the Gonzalezes at the nun’s home. She and her top staff dashed to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. By 3 p.m., they were airborne in a private plane loaned to them by FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.

The attorney general busied herself with a crossword puzzle, rushing through the clues and filling in the blanks with an ink pen, sources on the plane said.

Twenty minutes into the flight, the puzzle done, she turned to the matter at hand, dictating a proposal for the Miami relatives.

There would be a family-only meeting between Lazaro Gonzalez’s family and Juan Miguel Gonzalez at a secure, private retreat outside Washington. The government would have a plane ready for them at the Miami area’s Opa-Locka Airport at 2 the next afternoon; the Miami family would be escorted to the retreat by U.S. marshals.

The bottom line: Elian’s legal custody would be temporarily transferred to the INS during the meeting. Then he would be turned over to his father at the end of the retreat.

The staff saw the plan as “vintage Janet Reno”: an attempt at personal diplomacy, an appeal to everyone’s better nature. Children, she always said, mattered most.

But there is an old adage about leadership: Never take a meeting, never take a trip, unless you already know the outcome.

In Sister Jeanne’s home that night, Reno didn’t read them the plan she had drafted. She simply spoke it.

It was not awkward, sources said, but it was a little strained. Everyone in the dining room, decorated with Spanish art and religious artifacts, was aware that this was a significant moment.

For 2 1/2 hours, they confronted one another: Reno, the longest-serving attorney general in a century, at one end of the long table; Lazaro Gonzalez, a body-and-fender man and chain-smoker (who managed to lay off the cigarettes in Reno’s presence), at the other.

Elian occasionally wandered in the room, choosing different adult laps to flop atop. Reno smiled at him, but the boy kept his distance.

One observer said Elian seemed oblivious to the complex negotiations being carried out around him, “like he was just walking around a whole bunch of chess pieces.”

Eventually, the hour growing late and Elian growing irritable, he was taken into another room by one of his psychologists, where, tired and grumpy, he bit her on the hand shortly before he was led to bed.

Reno made her pitch for the retreat. Lazaro’s first-blush response was that any meeting would have to be there, in the nun’s house. They did not want any Cuban government representatives at the meeting, something they feared might happen if it were held near Washington.

Great-Uncle Makes a Defiant Vow

The meeting broke up when Lazaro Gonzalez said they would get back to her later. That was expected, and when the government officials left the house, they carried with them their hopes of an end at hand.

Then everything fell apart. Lazaro walked outside the gates of the nun’s home and vowed to the crowd that had assembled: “We will not turn over the child anywhere!”

Reno flew back to Washington the next afternoon.

On the plane, a staffer asked, “Are we still negotiating?”

There was no immediate reply. The plane was quiet. They thought a lot about their next steps, including whether and how to go into Lazaro Gonzalez’s home and seize his great-nephew and return him to his father.

If only they had had a victory in Miami. “It would have been wonderful,” the staffer said.

All the while, different scenarios for getting the boy out were being evaluated by federal and local officials.

As Reno met inside the nun’s house with the relatives, INS agents were strategizing about what they might do next. Agent John Woods, an INS investigations sections chief in Miami, telephoned Miami Beach Police Maj. Jerry Tollefsen, who was stationed in a police van in front of the nun’s home.

“If it turns out we have to go get him, what would you have available?” Woods asked Tollefsen.

Tollefsen said he told Woods “it was a bit premature” to discuss such things; the attorney general was still in the meeting.

He said Woods wanted to know what kind of backup the Miami Beach police could provide if federal agents were to spirit Elian away from the nun’s home in the night.

Tollefsen told the agent that the bridges that led to the canal behind the nun’s house had been locked down. The street in front was also closed. Everyone thought Elian and his family were going to spend the night at the house.

But when the family unexpectedly left the home shortly after midnight, any plans to snatch the boy vanished with them.

Father’s Patience Wears Thin

Back near Washington, Juan Miguel Gonzalez grew more frustrated with each passing day, his patience withering with every new turn in the legal battle over Elian.

Joan Brown Campbell, former secretary-general of the National Council of Churches and a frequent advocate for the father, visited Juan Miguel Gonzalez several times in the Bethesda, Md., home where he was staying. He wanted badly to speak directly with his son, but his efforts to reach Elian by telephone were rarely successful.

“In my presence he tried three times,” she said, “including using my cell phone to see if the number was blocked. He kept getting an answering machine that said it was full.”

At one point, Lazaro Gonzalez’s older brother Delfin Gonzalez flew to Washington. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, he pushed his way through the crowd of protesters, prayer groups and journalists toward the split-level home. Hailing a security guard, he asked him to carry a note inside the house.

The answer that came back was discouraging. Juan Miguel Gonzalez did not want to see him.

Delfin Gonzalez returned Sunday and passed another note. This time he got no response at all.

Things began to move last week. On Wednesday, the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Elian must remain in the United States while the court weighed the petition for political asylum made on his behalf.

On Friday, Juan Miguel Gonzalez returned to the Justice Department to ask Reno once again to help him get his son back.

The attorney general was sympathetic but blunt. She told him she “could not commit to a particular course of action or timetable.”

But planning for a raid was already underway.

Miami Police Chief Bill O’Brien was told Friday afternoon that the operation might take place Saturday at 5 a.m.

Although the city’s mayor earlier had declared that local police would not help take Elian from the house, someone from the department had to be in on the mission.

Each night, Miami police enforced a tight perimeter around the house. Barricades blocked anyone from getting into the neighborhood.

If armed federal agents in unmarked vans tried to get past those blockades, they would have been met by uniformed police officers under orders not to let anyone in.

In Miami, where home invaders have been known to wear police garb, that could have been a recipe for disaster.

O’Brien had assigned one of his deputy chiefs, John Brooks, to serve as liaison with the Feds. The secret plan called for Brooks to meet with the INS and enter the neighborhood in one of their vans. He would not go inside the house. O’Brien, meanwhile, would go to the police station to open the emergency response center.

No one else knew. Not the city manager. Not the mayor.

“There’s no way I’m going to notify a nonessential person of a tactical mission,” O’Brien said.

At 3:15 a.m., Brooks called O’Brien. The mission was on hold. Negotiations were ongoing.

“These negotiations were not a ruse,” O’Brien said. “They were hoping they would be successful. I told John to call me back. They didn’t know at that point if the mission would be scrubbed.”

Phone Diplomacy Still Attempted

Back in Washington, Reno, Deputy Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., INS Commissioner Doris Meissner and a handful of top aides were still attempting to negotiate a peaceful solution to the standoff. The talks were conducted in a series of phone calls from Reno’s fifth-floor office to civic leaders in Miami who were acting as third-party intermediaries.

The last deal on the table called for Lazaro Gonzalez and his daughter, Marisleysis, to bring Elian to a neutral hotel or conference room near Washington. There, the boy would be turned over to his father.

But the Miami relatives insisted that any such meeting had to be held in Miami, the date unspecified.

A weary Reno, who presided over the talks alternately sitting or standing at her desk, said the family’s counterproposal was unacceptable.

It was 4 a.m. Saturday. She asked her aides for their input. They all agreed it was time to use force. She gave the “go” order to U.S. Atty. Tom Scott in Miami. O’Brien was informed about 4:10 a.m.

Then the call came from the Miami civic leaders, who asked for five minutes more.

Again speaking into the headset, Reno told the enforcement team to hold off.

More than five minutes ticked by. Nothing more was heard from the civic leaders. The clock reached 4:21 a.m.

Finally, the enforcement team called back.

Keep waiting, they asked, or proceed?

Red light or green light?

Reno wanted any rescue operation to begin by 5:15 a.m., before more street protesters could arrive, before traffic would pick up outside.

Green light, she said.

At 5:15, the government of the United States burst through the front door.

*

Times staff writers Mike Clary in Miami and Lisa Getter, Esther Schrader and Robert L. Jackson in Washington contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

How the International Tug of War Began

Here are some key events in the custody fight for Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old Cuban boy who was rescued off the coast of Florida.

*

Nov. 21

Elian and 13 others leave Cuba for the United States aboard a 16-foot motor boat. The boat capsizes a day later

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Nov. 25

Two passengers come ashore. Elian is rescued at sea and taken to a hospital. His mother is among 11 people who died at sea.

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Nov. 26

The Immigration

and Naturalization Service releases Elian to his great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez until the agency can determine immigration status.

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Nov. 27

Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian’s father, demands his son’s return to Cuba.

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Dec. 10

Lazaro Gonzalez applies for asylum for Elian.

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2000

Dec. 13

The INS meets with Juan Miguel Gonzalez at his home in Cardenas, Cuba.

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Dec. 31

INS interviews Juan Miguel Gonzalez in Havana.

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Jan. 5

INS commissioner decides Elian “belongs with his father” and must be returned to Cuba by Jan. 14. Attorneys for Florida relatives ask Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to reconsider.

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Jan. 7

Lazaro Gonzalez files petition for temporary custody in state court.

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Jan. 12

Reno upholds father’s right to custody of Elian.

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Jan. 19

Lazaro Gonzalez files federal lawsuit to block Elian’s return to Cuba.

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Jan. 21

Elian’s grandmothers arrive in the United States from Cuba to meet with Reno and, later, Elian.

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Jan. 28

U.S. lawyers seek dismissal of relatives’ federal lawsuit.

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March 21

U.S. district judge dismisses lawsuit.

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March 23

Reno says Elian will be returned in an orderly, fair and prompt manner.

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March 27-29

Elian describes in his first TV interview how the boat sank, says he doesn’t believe his mother is dead and doesn’t want to return to Cuba but also doesn’t like Miami.

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April 3

State Department approves visas for Elian’s father and others.

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April 6

Elian’s father arrives in Washington. Government negotiations with the boy’s Miami relatives break down.

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April 7

Reno announces that plans are being made for Elian’s safe return to his father, emphasizing that it is the right thing to do.

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April 13

Federal court issues temporary injunction to keep Elian in U.S.

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April 19

Federal appeals court extends court order until hearing in May.

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April 22

After weeks of negotiations fail, Federal agents seize Elian.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Friday & Saturday

Friday, April 21

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Afternoon

Miami Police Chief Bill O’Brien is notified that the raid to take Elian Gonzalez will occur at 4 a.m. Saturday.

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Evening

Mediators from Miami’s Cuban community try to hatch a plan for peacefully resolving a family dispute over custody of Elian Gonzalez.

All-night negotiations take place between Elian’s Miami relatives and Justice Departrment officials. Proposals and counterproposals fly through the night by telephone and fax among the Miami house, the Justice Department and the Washington office of the father’s lawyer.

*

Saturday, April 22

*

About 2:15 a.m. EDT

President Clinton tells his chief of staff, John Podesta, in a telephone call that he supports action to forcibly remove the boy if negotiations with the family over a voluntary handover do not appear likely to succeed.

3:15 a.m.

O’Brien receives a call from his deputy that the mission is on hold because of last-minute negotiations with the family.

*

4:10 a.m.

O’Brien’s deputy calls back and says the planned seizure is set for 5:15 a.m.

*

4:21 a.m.

Atty. Gen. Janet Reno says the proposals offered by the Miami relatives are unacceptable and the agents should move in. The Miami mediators ask for five minutes and, after more time passes, Reno sets the operation in motion.

*

Shortly before 5 a.m.

Podesta awakens Clinton to tell him the talks are not likely to succeed and that federal agents will move ahead with plans to remove Elian.

*

About 5 a.m.

Miami family members are on hold on the telephone with Reno when they hear a commotion outside.

*

5:15 a.m.

Heavily armed agents arrive in white vans at the home of Elian’s great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez. They cut the garden fence and break down the front door with a battering ram. Eight agents enter the house for three minutes. A female agent speaks to Elian in Spanish as she takes him from the house.

5:18 a.m.

The agent carrying Elian emerges from the home and places him in a van. Elian is driven to Watson Island and then by helicopter to Homestead Air Reserve Station.

*

About 5:40 a.m.

Miami Mayor Joe Carollo arrives at the home and is greeted angrily by the exiles. The crowd in Little Havana quickly swells to about 300. Some throw rocks, garbage cans and chairs at the agents.

*

About 6 a.m.

Elian is put aboard a U.S. marshals’ aircraft at Homestead Air Reserve Station for the flight to Andrews Air Force Base. Father and son talk by telephone during the flight.

*

9:20 a.m.

The plane carrying Elian arrives at Andrews AFB. The boy is reunited with his father.

*

10:30 a.m.

Clinton says he fully supports Reno’s decision to snatch the boy from his relatives’ home in Miami. “This was, in the end, about a little boy who lost his mother and has not seen his father in more than five months,” Clinton says.

*

Noon

Police in riot gear fire tear gas into a crowd of protesters swarming the streets of Little Havana. The protesters, some throwing rocks and shouting in anger, some waving signs and flags, denounce the government for snatching the 6-year-old from his relatives’ house the day before Easter.

*

1 p.m.

Lazaro Gonzalez and his 21-year-old daughter, Marisleysis, go to Miami International Airport to board a flight to Washington.

*

About 4 p.m.

Lazaro and Marisleysis Gonzalez land in Washington. They head to Andrews AFB to see Elian. Miami relatives are turned away from Andrews.

*

Source: wire and staff reports

compiled by SUNNY KAPLAN / Los Angeles Times