Posted on 04/18/2002 11:12:59 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Contrary to recent media accounts, an internal U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service memo indicating the father of Elian Gonzalez was coerced by the Cuban government was made public two years ago but ignored by the press.
The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post published reports last week on hearings held in the case of an INS agent who accuses the agency of harboring an anti-Cuban bias, especially in its handling of the Elian Gonzalez asylum case.
The reports indicated a memo authored by INS attorney Rebeca Sanchez-Roig was made public April 9.
The document, however, was obtained by the Washington, D.C.-based legal watchdog group Judicial Watch and posted on its website in the spring of 2000. The public interest law firm also drew up a press release concerning the memo.
The only new information to surface April 9 was a handwritten note by Sanchez-Roig at the bottom of her memo referring to an order by then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner to destroy or delete all copies of it. But the information contained in that note also was known outside of the INS office a full two years ago.
The memo, a summary of an INS teleconference on the matter, was produced at a hearing for special agent Rick Ramirez, whose corruption and discrimination case before the Merit System Protection Board in Miami was brought by Judicial Watch.
The memo indicated that the U.S. government had reason to believe Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was being coerced, monitored and coached by Cuban government operatives in his statements. It also said that the father had applied for asylum.
The memo specified that Elian's father had made his "own attempts to depart Cuba," and had made two phone calls "from a pay phone in Cuba" to let his family in Miami know that Elian was coming. In addition, "the Cuban government installed what somebody described as a speaker phone" in the father's home in Cuba so that Cuban government agents could coach him on what to say.
'We were kicked in the face'
Why did the major media ignore much of the critical available information? A prominent Cuban-American editor in Miami, who declined to be named, explained that the press and the public "didn't want to hear" it.
"Cuban-Americans are not politically correct," he said.
The editor added that had the memo been covered well at the time it was made public, "more people would have voted against Al Gore."
The editor called it a "very sorry and dirty affair, a terrible thing. Nobody believed us."
The Cuban-American community was talking about all of the things covered in this memo, he said.
"We were kicked in the face," the editor said. "The major media and the Clinton administration presented it as though we deserved [the outcome]."
Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch believes the core issues largely were ignored because the events surrounding Elian were chaotic and "all a blur."
"People went for the easy, quick no-brainer story, as opposed to addressing the deeper issues of policy decision-making and analysis," he said.
Farrell recalls there was no shortage of stories covering the "emotionalism" of "people waving their arms in front of the home," but the most important issues largely were ignored.
"It's very unfortunate," Farrell said. "Media should have been paying attention to this, they should have looked at it, evaluated it, weighed it. It would have had an impact on Elian staying in the United States. People would have demanded a hearing as to whether or not the father was being coerced."
Another member of the Miami Cuban-American community believes that Cubans are sometimes caricatured as being overly emotional and overreacting to political issues.
"There's some truth to that," he said. "We don't always pick our battles well. As a result, sometimes when we cry wolf nobody listens."
But he insisted that the evidence indicates that the Clinton administration hid key information, and he wonders if Fidel Castro didn't "have something" on Clinton, causing the former president to allow Castro to call the shots.
Judicial Watch chairman and general counsel Larry Klayman believes Castro may have had some knowledge of a Clinton/Gore-China connection that would have proved embarrassing were it revealed.
Klayman has blasted Attorney General John Ashcroft for ongoing and repeated failure to respond to allegations of obstruction of justice and anti-Latino racism at the Miami INS office.
Castro is going to be dead soon John. It's going to be exciting to watch what happens to that country. God willing, it'll be free.
No doubt about it, my friend. The clock's tickin' on the bearded-one. His time is short. Tragically, he's been in power for more than two generations -- that's like an eternity for the long-suffering people of Cuba.
The press knows the difference and would have made the point if it were honest.
True. But it wasn't their only mistake. I wish they'd had the sense to put Scripture on their picket signs:
Deuteronomy 23:15 You shall not return an escaped slave to his master.
This is the same verse by which the Abolitionists justified their resistance to the Fugitive Slave Law. Properly publicized, this single fact could have swayed the entire Religious Right and the entire Black Community into supporting Elian. No politician of either party would dare defy such a coalition. Yet not one well-known preacher (of any color or political stripe) thought to preach on this verse. Sad.
Since they've been vilified for so long, I think they feel they need to react just to be heard. However, the media just uses it against them and as an opportunitiy to again caricaturize them. They had every right to be mad at Clinton-Reno, who proved themselves to be no better than Castro! Hell, a lot of people were mad, but you'd never have known it.
The boy, Elian, had a right to a family court hearing on his immigration status and he was denied. It was ruled he could stay with his relatives pending the outcome and he was denied and taken in an armed raid to be given to the lawyer in opposition to his being free. He was placed in the care of Cuban agents brought from the island.
It is an outrage what was done by the Clinton administration. A similar situation would have been handled differently. But Castro is the media's idol and the Left's favorite thorn in our side, so Elian had to go and the community in Miami was standing in their way. What a gallant fight they made. What a memorable example of doing the right thing in the face of overwhelming opposition. My hat is off to them.
...Castro may have had some knowledge of a Clinton/Gore-China connection that would have proved embarrassing were it revealed.
God's laws are wonderful.
Opinions are like clymers,everyone has one, and thats mine.
The light from the Lady's torch was snuffed and the inscription:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...
was rubbish.
Thanks Bill, Hill and Janet.
America's Fifth Column ... watch PBS documentary JIHAD! In America
Download 8 Mb zip file here (60 minute video)
This is something that now needs to be made 'common knowledge' in as many places as possible across the USA.
It's early in the a.m. Yet the blood pressure is 'perking' over this. I wonder what the 'ship-him-back-with-his-father' crew has to say NOW. I remember the gang parroting the line that the father wanted his son to go back, that the father had NO desire to stay here in the US. That those true Americans who wanted Elian to stay were nothing more than wrong 'extremists'. That we were wack jobs for saying that the father was never allowed a chance to ASK to stay here.
This all the MORE reason to strongly despise the klintlers and the evil filth they left behind.
With this coming out, what will it do to the family of Elian in 'castrol's paradise'????
We know how corrupt the INS is, we knew it then. We knew the financial reasons that caused Fidel to pressure Clinton. We knew it all.
And the vast majority of Americans sat back and made fun of the Cubans. I can recall all the ugly things that were said about Marisleysis, and the Uncle, and the family.
I hope and pray that the Clintons don't sleep well. I hope that they look in the mirror every morning and see their aging faces and reflect on what awaits them: the end of their lives, the judgement of God. I hope that ever-present in the backs of their corrupt minds is the image of a child hiding in a closet, facing a thug with a machine gun. And I hope they live in fear, ignored, laughed at, reviled, and hated until they depart this earth. ELIAN, I WILL NOT FORGET YOU!
While Clinton's personal immorality is well known, less understood is a pervasive anti anti-Communism that has dominated his thinking since his youth.
The problem with this story is that at first it inferred that the father applied for asylum while he was here in the States during the 'circus'. He applied before his ex wife left with the child. We always knew that and it is NOT a new revelation. It was reported widely in the media at the time of Elian's rescue.
As a Cuban American myself, I would urge you to think that over. There is no reason for you or anybody else to ever be ashamed to call yourself an American.
Bill Clinton was not and is not "America". America is many things including the system of Government whereby America has the right to elect political mistakes and then correct those mistakes on the next Election Day.
Today, Clinton is no longer a powerful man but, rather, a pathetic private citizen that will be the punchline in countless jokes well into the 22nd Century.
America did just fine.
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