Weekly Standard -
The Elian Cover-up***Meissner never addressed the evidence that Juan Miguel Gonzalez was acting under coercion when he requested his son be sent back to Cuba. If Chardy's story is correct, she may even have suppressed such evidence. An unrelated complaint by an INS agent brought to light a memo written by INS attorney Rebeca Sanchez-Roig on December 29, 1999--a week before Meissner made her decision to send Elian back. (The memo was unearthed by the Washington watchdog group Judicial Watch.) According to Sanchez-Roig, INS officials believed Elian's father was being monitored by the Cuban government when he made the angry calls to the United States demanding Elian's return. He also may have previously sought to immigrate to the United States.
The INS--i.e. Meissner, reporting to Reno, reporting to President Clinton--rejected out of hand Elian's standing to apply for political asylum (PA). But that was apparently not the advice Meissner received from Sanchez-Roig, who said that the U.S. government could "potentially accept the child's asylum's application and advise that there is no prohibition on age to child filing application. As such PA should proceed."
And that is far from the most infuriating revelation. According to Chardy, "Hand-scrawled notes at the bottom of the two-page memo said then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner ordered the destruction of the memo one day after it was written when she learned of its existence. According to the notes, Meissner ordered that no more discussions related to Elian be committed to writing." Luckily for the cause of truth, someone at the INS had forwarded the e-mail out of the system by the time Meissner tried to sweep over her traces.***
Cuba closely follows the events in Venezuela ***Cuba's Cuban Workers Union congratulated Chávez supporters Monday for the ''triumph of right and justice'' with Chávez's restoration of power. ''We reiterate to our Venezuelan brothers that they can always count on the sure and unconditional support of the millions of Cuban workers who feel as if the cause of the Bolivarian Revolution is ours,'' read the letter, published in the weekly newspaper Trabajadores.***
U.S. Brazil watchers doubt leftist candidate will win*** Despite the latest polls showing that Brazil's leftist candidate Luiz Inacio ''Lula'' da Silva is widening his lead for the October presidential elections, the majority view in U.S. business and diplomatic circles is that he will not win and that predictions of a dramatic shift to the left in Latin America's biggest country are premature. Is it wishful thinking on the part of Wall Street economists who fear a massive economic downturn for Brazil if da Silva's Workers Party wins the election? Or is da Silva, who has already failed in three previous runs for the presidency, incapable of surpassing the threshold of the estimated 35 percent of Brazilians who traditionally vote for the left?***
