The Justice Department, led by then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, was criticized after the Pulitzer Prize-winning image was published nationally.
Posted on 04/22/2010 10:43:51 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
Ten years have passed since federal agents seized a Little Havana home snatching a 6-year-old boy from his Miami relatives and reuniting him with his father who lives in Cuba. The Elian Gonzalez saga had major political implications and some credit that single episode to the reason George W. Bush won the presidency in 2000.
Elian Gonzalez survived a dangerous journey from Cuba after his mother and others died trying to reach South Florida. A fisherman found the 6-year-old boy holding onto an inner tube on Thanksgiving Day in 1999.
Now, the fisherman who found him and his Miami relatives – his great-uncle Lazaro Gonazlez and his daughter Marisleysis Gonzalez -- have been selective about giving interviews.
Earlier this month, Marisleysis Gonzalez, the boy's cousin spoke with CBS4's Gary Nelson. Marisleysis, now 32, with a daughter of her own, gave her first television interview in years. She expressed sadness by the new photos of Elian that cast him as a loyal member of the Cuban revolution.
"We were expecting this," she told Nelson. "He's not in a free country. He has to do whatever he's told."
The Little Havana home Elian Gonzalez briefly shared with his Miami relatives is now a museum featuring photographs of the boy playing the yard. But the most painful picture for the Miami relatives is that of a nameless federal agent pointing aiming his gun at a terrified looking child in the arms of Donato Dalrymple, the fisherman who found the boy.
The Justice Department, led by then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, was criticized after the Pulitzer Prize-winning image was published nationally.
"It was a very sour taste left in their mouths," said Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. "But, realistically, it was a battle to be lost."
Elian Gonzalez eventually returned to his father's home of Cardenas, Cuba, and images of the boy have occasionally been released by the state-run media. The latest one shows a 16-year-old Elian donning an olive-green military school uniform attending a Young Communist Union congress.
Former President Bill Clinton, who was in Miami last weekend, stood by his decision and said he had no regrets. That's in spite of the opposition from Miami relatives and other Cuban exiles who fought an order by U.S. immigration officials to return him to Cuba. Reno insisted the boy belonged with his father.
"I did everything I could to try to have this resolved in a peaceful way," Clinton said. "Believe me, I hated what happened because I thought we would be able to do it in a different way."
On the Little Havana street where Elian lived for five months, the tiny family home has been maintained as a museum and memorial to the struggle to keep the boy in the United States. Many who live in the neighborhood now weren't there when the Elian drama played out. Rene Morales, a Cuban-American who moved in across the street six years ago, said he is familiar with the controversy over Elian but has "gotten over it."
"Do I care about it?," Morales said. "No, not really."
The Justice Department, led by then U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, was criticized after the Pulitzer Prize-winning image was published nationally.
Now he’s a brownshirt for the Dear Leader of Cuba. Way to go there, Slick.
The hell you say. Elian was waiting at that house peacefully, completely at the beck and call of the courts.
And then YOUR ARMED GOONS showed up.
For this statement alone, I hope that Elian returns to the US as an adult someday, and relieves himself on Clinton's final resting place.
Democrats are the enemy of freedom.
Never forget, an agitator on the Left who wrote for the LA Times tried to start a riot that she could then "document".
Undercover Photographer - L.A. Times staffer Carolyn Cole crosses a line, again. (By Andrew Breitbart, National Review May 14, 2002)
Little critical attention has been given to the recent antics of Los Angeles Times staff photographer Carolyn Cole, who on May 2 joined a group of "peace activists" who had clandestinely entered Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, in solidarity with the Palestinian militants holding dozens of civilians and clergymen hostage.Upon her arrival inside the holy site, Cole took on the dual role of photographer and reporter for the Times, offering first-person accounts from within the church.
The Times, often accused of carrying an anti-Israeli grudge, confirmed many of its critics' suspicions by printing Cole's blatantly pro-Palestinian church dispatches. Cole even noted that she felt safer with the Palestinian militants than she did with the Israelis. (A collection of her like-minded photos from inside the church appear in this week's Time.)
...But this isn't the first time Cole has stepped over a professional line in her career. In April 2000 — at the height of the Elián Gonzalez affair — Cole was arrested on felony charges of "throwing deadly missiles" at police during protests in Little Havana, apparently in an effort to stir up her subjects and thereby generate "better" news.
Miami detective Delrish Moss said Cole "was seen throwing two or three rocks and then picked up her camera and proceeded to take photographs."
Michael Parks, her boss at the Times, said in a statement that her arrest was "an abridgment of the people's right to know."
"Carolyn Cole was covering the protests in Miami as a news photographer, not participating in them, and her photographs published in the Times make that clear," Parks insisted.
Of course, Ms. Cole would never overstep the law nor defy journalistic principles to get a story. And there's no way that she held the anti-Castro crowd in contempt and wanted to create shots that would portray them in the most frenzied and violent light.
That was on EASTER SUNDAY, lest people forget.
I wish someone would identify that storm trooper some day. I don’t care what training they had or what erroneous information they were given, you don’t point an automatic weapon at anyone, trigger or no trigger, and especially not an unarmed man holding a child.
B*st*rds. No matter how many times I see it, this image always gets my blood pressure up.
Odd isn’t it, that in 10 years there hasn’t been a name connected with that face in the MSM?
The media had classified info on Joe The Plumber’s child support payments within a matter of days because he told the President he didn’t like Marxist redistribution.
"Do I care about it?," Morales said. "No, not really."
That must be the most inconsequential piece of reporting this year. Who is Rene Morales? Answer - the guy who lives across the street. Does he otherwise have anything to do with the story? No.
A good artist could create a decent sketch of the guy. If I knew what kind of lens the photog was using I could estimate his height taking into account that high-riding helmet.
CNN actually had a segment on that infamous day. It was chilling and heartbreaking at the same time.
Bubba’s legacy.
Of course the pervert-in-chief has no regrets. He wasn't sent back to live in a repressive communist regime.
That was on EASTER SUNDAY, lest people forget.
That is incorrect. I believe it was Easter weekend, but it was not Easter Sunday (not that that would have made any difference to Clinton/Reno).
Wonder if they will also note the 10th anniversary of the USS Cole (October 12, 2000) bombing and the 15th anniversary of the Khobar Towers bombing (June 25, 1996).
Ronaldus Magnus would have told Castro to STUFF it. I don’t doubt either of the Presidents Bush would have also thumbed their nose at the Cuban government.
Barry Sotero would have delivered the boy back to his buddy Castro on Air Force One.
"In the pre-dawn hours of April 22"
I never knew it was Saturday morning. It took 24 hours to make the news cycle?
Clinton said, “Believe me, I hated what happened because I thought we would be able to do it in a different way.”
You could have done a lot of things different, Slick. George W. would have done a lot of things different. For one, he would’ve told the Cuban gov’t what Cheney told Pat Leahy. For another, he never would have made arrangements for Cuban school children to be brought to the United States and allowed them to be taught indoctrination lessons in Communism on American soil.
Remember the ridiculous female agent bouncing around the backyard, with a pistol in her hands?
If anyone ever writes a book titled “Clinton’s America,” I hope that photo is on the cover.
It didn’t take 24 hours. It was instantaneous.
I live in Orlando amongst a decent-sized Cuban exile population, have a best friend who was flown out of Cuba in 1961 as part of Operation Peter Pan and I am very familiar with the Elian event.
It was a Saturday morning. My (now) ex had just gotten home from her nursing shift (7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) at her usual time, about 8:15. When she came in, she told me to turn on the TV because she heard on the car radio they had just grabbed Elian. We watched the just 2 or 3 hours old footage over and over, as I cried tears of rage, shame and grief for my Cuban friend and the whole exile community.
It was awful enough that they did it as that devout Catholic community was preparing for Easter and Elian for his first Christian celebration of redemption as a free being. But it was not Easter Sunday.
One of very few incidents of illegal aliens being deported.
We need to see more of this.
It was shocking enough to see this show up on CNN last night.
I didn’t catch the whole segment. I stopped to watch when I saw that they were in Elian’s sanctuary.
He’s a trophy of the State. Wonder where they fly him for medical care.
130 INS agents were devoted to this case of a mother and child seeking political asylum from a communist dictatorship. They met the rules for legal sanctuary under asylum.
And this was what the INS was focused on, not illegal immigration but a custody dispute and the benefits of a life under Communist dictatorship.
Humm And now Gloria Estefan and her Husband Kiss the A&& of Obama.
Another example of Clinton & Reno and their Democrat bullying tactics.
Here are the most recent photos, as well as a story indicating that Elian’s father, a one-time restaurant employee named Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was elected to Cuba’s parliament shortly thereafter — a seat he retains today:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?show_article=1&id=D9ET4SA00
Than you for remembering the true date (it was the morning of Holy Satruday, actually)— As a person who has lived in Cuba and is involved in Cuban culture, and an activist inthis case — I was at the Senate Judiciary Committe hearing in March of that year translating testimony from a Cuban witness — I saw an entire other dimension of this case — This entire saga was based on something so creepy that the normal mind cannot even understand it. On the Thursday before the event I suddenly realized that Castro’s proxies in the U.S. were going to have to get their hands on the child BEFORE Easter in order to perform necessary rituals of the Congolese religion that Castro practices called Palo Mayombe. I tried to call every person in government I could think of in Miami, but everyone was out because of Good Friday. I remember speaking to a friend in Miami at about 11:30 pm on Friday night and telling him tht a government attack was imminent. Even though he’s Cuban, he thought I was nuts — until 5 a.m. when he called me up screaming — “Oh my God, it’s on TV!” and we turned on the TV and saw it. I remember being at a demonstration in MY during the time that the child was being held at the house outside D.C., and a reporter asked me what would happen if he were returned to Cuba — I answered that he would be drugged and then submitted to extensive electroshock — the reported almost dropped his notebook — and gasped “Are you serious?’ I said that I was, that I had lived in Cuba and it was a common practice — I handed him a copy of a press relese I had writtten that gave a detailed report on what they do to children in Cuba — but the information never made it into the media.
The amzing thing is this:
After the 51 day standoff and resulting deaths of 76 men, women, and children in Waco; the Gonzales fiasco; the leak to the news media regarding Richard Jewell that led to the widespread and incorrect presumption of his guilt in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing (she later apologized, saying “I’m very sorry it happened. I think we owe him an apology. I regret the leak”); and a 1998 vote by the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee vote to cite her for contempt of Congress for not turning over documents during the impeachment of Clinton (the full House of Representatives never voted on the resolution and the documents were eventually turned over to the House), on April 17, 2009, Reno was awarded the “Justice Award” by the American Judicature Society. Eric Holder presented Reno the award, which Seth Andersen, Executive Vice President of AJS said recognized “her commitment to improving our systems of justice and educating Americans about our great common enterprise — to ensure equality under the law.”
It makes me sick to my stomach. And to think that she was nominated and confirmed as the first female Attorney General under Bill Clinton, after both of his previous nominees, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood (remember those dim bulbs?), had confirmation problems when it was revealed both had previously employed illegal aliens as chauffeurs and nannies and (in the case of Baird) neglected to pay their social security taxes.
Brazil. Just like all the government employees.
“Do I care about it?,” Morales said. “No, not really.”
I still care. My monikor ‘aelian nation’ is because of Elian Gonzalez.
That was the day, for me, when I realized the America of freedom and liberty had changed, and look where we are today.
I was an immigrant child arriving in America at the same age as Elian. I was blessed and fortunate beyond words.
I wonder if the desire of freedom still beats in Elian’s breast now that he is a poster boy for the Young Communist Union in Castro’s world. I hope so.
And yeah, Clinton could have done it differently. He could have used his Waco option. At least Elian got out alive.
I just hope one day I’m standing right behind Clinton when he faces his Judgement Day. I’m not saying I’m going the other way, but my last schadenfreud moment will be seeing Clinton get his.
It was on the front page of my Easter Sunday paper. Must have happened on Holy Saturday.
Are you able to expand a little on Palo Mayombe, Castro and Elian? Because your post was dynamite.
For instance - what was the ritual?
Thanks for your private reply. Chilling stuff.
Bill Clinton will burn in HELL forever for what he did to that kid.
“Bill Clinton will burn in HELL forever for what he did to that kid.”
Add Janet Reno to that list as well.
Uhhhh.... if you want to stay happy, don't remember "Miroslav Medved". Really.
I don’t doubt either of the Presidents Bush would have also thumbed their nose at the Cuban government.
Also, don't research how a certain semi-literate GOP candidate in 2000 called the Elian issue "a loser". Sorry FRiend, the Bushes worshiped all JBTs.
Idiots shouldn't be allowed to post here.
No need to call anyone an “idiot”. She was probably too young to know the history.
Interestlingly, the leader of the GOP congressional outrage against the Elian atrocity was J D Haworth. But, he was silenced by the Bushy party hacks.
I wasn’t talking about her.
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