Washington Times-April 11, 2000
Consistency finds a jewel in Janet Reno
By Wesley Pruden
Whatever else she may be, Janet Reno is consistent. She
"saves" children wholesale, as she did at Waco, and she "saves"
them retail, as she is determined to do with Elian Gonzalez.
It's tough on the children, particularly when she gives an
order for the feds to burn their house down. That's just a risk
this brave lady is willing to take.
Not even the defenders of the decision to let the
bureaucrats of the Justice Department and the Immigration and
Naturalization Service � and not the courts � decide what happens
to Elian are under any illusion about what will happen to the boy
when he returns to Fidel Castro's satrap.
Cuban law decrees that Elian must be taken from his family
for long periods of time to be indoctrinated into the harsh
communism of the Castro dictatorship, and taken from his family
permanently if the state decides that his "communist personality"
is not developing satisfactorily. The carefree little boy in
tennis shoes and Disney tee shirts, whose life in Miami has been
suffused with love, warmth and good times, will disappear into
the maw of a brutal and remorseless state.
"He is a possession of the state," Luis Fernandez said last
week in a rare outburst of Cuban truth-telling. "Once the
transfer takes place, no other entity can remove this." A
firestorm of protest compelled Mr. Fernandez to complain that he
had been misquoted by this newspaper, that he was speaking of the
house where Juan Miguel Gonzalez would be staying, not of his
son. He was quoted correctly. (His "explanation" makes no sense,
since the house is already an undisputed possession of the
state.)
Miss Reno pronounced herself "satisfied" that the father
spoke freely in his visit with her. Yet Greg Craig, the
president's impeachment lawyer who hotly pursued the Castro
government until he got the business to represent the father in
America, now admits what was obvious to everybody, that the
Castro government wrote the father's "spontaneous" remarks,
bristling with venom for the United States.
Bill Clinton, on the other hand, is easily spooked by Cuba.
He remembers, with a certain residual anger, that Cuban refugees
rioting at a resettlement camp at Fort Chaffee, Ark., cost him
re-election as governor of Arkansas in 1980. Now he wants to
"normalize" relations with Fidel Castro as a part of his legacy.
Sending Elian to a grim life in Cuba is a small price to pay for
his own gratification. Mr. Clinton insists that Juan Miguel
Gonzalez is a "fit" father, and indeed he may be. But the
president is the last man in America to talk about being a "fit"
father.
Fidel obviously wants Elian back in time for his big May Day
parade, when he can parade him like a hunter's trophy for the
crowds on the streets of Havana. That may be why Miss Reno and
her acolytes are so evasive about whether Elian's father will be
required to stay in the United States with the boy until court
appeals are exhausted. Miss Reno says only that Mr. Gonzalez has
"indicated" � "indicated" being the bureaucrat's favorite weasel
word � that he would stay "if he could have the child turned over
in a thoughtful, careful way." U.S. law gives Miss Reno the
authority to require him to stay, but she continues to let Fidel
Castro, through Mr. Gonzalez, decide when turning Elian over to
his father is done in "a thoughtful, careful way."
Miss Reno's deputy attorney general, Eric Holder, on the
other hand, is itching for a little action. He has been all but
contemptuous of the feelings of Elian's family in Miami, and
continues to suggest that force will be used to take Elian. (Mr.
Holder came along too late in Miss Reno's term to get in on the
fun at Waco.) The government, he says, "will do what is
necessary."
You can pity the president's defenders, almost. The
perpetually befuddled Patrick Leahy, the senator from the
Boutique of Vermont, was the best ABC-TV could find Sunday
morning, and he looked like he wanted to be in Havana himself, or
Newark, or Pyongyang � anywhere else.
George Will put the question plainly: "Senator Leahy, you
say flatly the boy belongs with his father. Now, clearly, if his
father lived in Denmark, we'd all agree with that. The question
is, is this a special case? Let me ask you a hypothetical
question. It's 1850 and a child escapes from slavery in the
South. The Fugitive Slave Law comes along and says, 'send him
back.' Would that child belong with his father in the Deep South
on a plantation?"
Replied the senator, squirming: "But that is not the case
here." (Give the senator a point or two for knowing what time it
is.) Then, oblivious of the question, he spins a clumsy riff on
Republican fund-raising letters.
Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
--end--
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