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Nearly twelve years have passed since he was pulled from a closet by a masked machine gun wielding US agent. Now Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who survived a perilous raft journey that killed his mother and became a symbol of troubled relations between the United States and Cuba, is an adult. Gonzalez currently studies at a military academy on the island and took part in an 18th birthday celebration Tuesday in his native city of Cardenas alongside his father, according to images broadcast on the nightly news.

Her (INS Agent Mill's) instructions: Locate Elian, get him safely into a waiting van, and stay with him and allay his fears until federal agents reunited him with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.After Elian was found in a closet, Mills told him in Spanish: ``I know this seems frightening to you now, but it will all be over very soon,'' said Russ Bergeron, director of media relations for the INS. ``She told him: `We're not going to take you to Cuba. We're not going to put you on a raft. We're taking you...

At the center of the allegations against Herman Cain is current Obama administration employee, who was also the spokeswoman for Janet Reno during the Elian Gonzales fiasco during the Clinton Presidency. For those unfamiliar with Elian Gonzalez, he was a young boy who survived an ill-fated trip to America in November 1999. Twelve Cubans set out for Cuba in an unstable boat, but only Elian and one other person would make it to America alive. Elizabeth Gonzales was attempting to do something that has been done more than a thousand times since Castro's revolution that brought communism to the...

  The Totalitarian Temptation David C. Stolinsky July 14, 2011 This revealing term is the title of a book by the late French author Jean-François Revel. An equally revealing title by Revel is “How Democracies Perish.” Democracies do perish because of the totalitarian temptation. They are in the process of perishing even as we speak. Do you really believe that freedom can survive, if the government seizes the power to: � Raise taxes to confiscatory levels. Prominent Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman was asked at what level taxes would stifle economic activity. He was unable to name a specific rate,...

The New Black Panther Party threatened Philadelphia voters with billy clubs and Eric Holder’s justice department couldn’t be bothered. CAIR was accused of fundraising for Hamas, and Eric Holder shrugged. But back when Fidel Castro demanded the return of an escaped slave, Eric Holder snapped to attention, clicked his heels, and sprung to action. It is scrupulous legality, we’re given to understand by Mr. Holder, that prevents his Department from prosecutions against the New Black Panthers and CAIR. But regarding scrupulous legality, Fox News Andrew Napolitano had (then Deputy) Attorney General Eric Holder’s number way back in April 23rd...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the soi-disant Cordoba Initiative, has gotten all the attention he deserves for his astonishingly insensitive attempt to build a 13-story mosque and community center at the site of Ground Zero. Rauf has largely escaped attention for his efforts to build a sawed-off version of the same on the grounds of the venerable and historically Christian Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. Although the resistance to Rauf at Chautauqua has not made the news, it is deeply felt, and it is coming from both Christians and Jews. As shall be seen, the forced feeding...

Elian Gonzalez says he's not angry at his Miami relatives who fought to keep him in the United States during a nasty international custody battle a decade ago, and is thankful "a large part of the American public" supported him being reunited with his father in Cuba. Now 16, Gonzalez's first comments to foreign reporters in years came after President Raul Castro attended a state celebration Wednesday night marking the 10th anniversary of the famous ex-castaway's return to the island. "Even though they didn't help me in every way possible, they didn't help me move forward, they are still my...

Elian Gonzalez case - 10 years later When federal agents stormed a home in the Little Havana community, snatched Elian Gonzalez from his father's relatives and put him on a path back to his father in Cuba, thousands of Cuban Americans took to Miami's streets. Their anger helped give George W. Bush the White House months later and simmered long after that. Ten years later, the Little Havana home - for weeks the epicenter of a standoff that divided the United States - is a museum dedicated to Elian's brief time in this country, but visitors are rare. Almost no...

A decade later, however, there are new photos of a nearly grown-up Elian Gonzalez - and they present a very different kind of propaganda image. The new pictures show a serious-looking 16-year-old sporting a closely cropped haircut, wearing an olive-green military school uniform with red shoulder patches, as he attends a Young Communist Union meeting. The Cuban government press released the images under the none-too-subtle headline "Young Elian Gonzalez defends his revolution in the youth congress." Since winning Elian's return to Cuba in 2000, the Castro regime has closely tracked the boy and his father. (Indeed, Cuban State Security has...

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba has released photos of one-time exile cause celebre Elian Gonzalez wearing an olive-green military school uniform and attending a Young Communist Union congress. Gonzalez, now 16 with closely cropped black hair, is shown serious-faced with fellow youth delegates during last weekend's congress at a sprawling and drab convention center in western Havana. The images were posted Monday on Cuban government Web sites, then widely picked up by electronic, state-controlled media. When he was 5, Elian was found floating off the coast of Florida in an inner tube after his mother and others fleeing Cuba drowned trying...

Obama pick faces questions over bombers' clemencyBy PETE YOST Associated Press Writer Originally published Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 2:05 PM WASHINGTON — New York police detective Anthony S. Senft's life changed forever when a bomb set by Puerto Rican separatists exploded, blowing him 15 feet in the air and blinding him in one eye. Now, he's angry that Eric Holder, who played a key role in awarding clemency to the bombers, is in line to be attorney general. Holder, as President Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, worked closely with the Justice Department's pardon attorney to raise the possibility of...

The chasm between those who want President-elect Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate to verify his eligibility to hold the nation's highest office and those who simply support the Democrat is widening. "The Constitution means what we today decide it means," opined one participant on a new WND forum that offers readers an opportunity to express their opinion on the birth certificate dispute.

I spent several years of the Clinton administration writing about one scandal or controversy after another. There was, of course, the Whitewater affair and the fight over the independent counsel, Kenneth Starr. There was the Lewinsky matter. Travelgate. The bitter controversy over Elian Gonzalez. The furor over Bill Clinton's last-minute pardons. And more. It seems like so long ago. So why am I suddenly hitting the search feature on my laptop ten times a day, looking for old articles? Why am I looking for names like Eric Holder, Gregory Craig, Rahm Emanuel, and John Podesta? Because change has come to...

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name two attorneys to his administration who helped return Elián González to Cuba, angering some Miami Republicans. Two veterans of the Elián González saga are expected to be named to top posts in Democrat Barack Obama's administration, infuriating some Cuban-American Republicans who haven't forgotten the 6-year-old boy seized in Miami and sent back to the communist regime. The Associated Press is reporting that Obama's top choice for U.S. attorney general is Eric Holder, who served as deputy attorney general during the 2000 raid in Miami. Greg Craig, who represented González's father in the custody...

Obama Appoints Castro's Lawyer as White House Counsel By Humberto Fontova Among the throng of Clinton regime retreads recruited for the Obama administration we find Gregory Craig. Craig served as Obama's advisor on Latin American during the campaign, and was appointed last week as chief White House Counsel. The MSM has mentioned Craig's role as Bill Clinton's impeachment lawyer, but mostly has omitted mention of Craig's role as chief facilitator for Fidel Castro's shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez. Officially Craig served as attorney for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This humble man worked as a hotel doorman in a nation where...

Gregory B. Craig, a well-known Washington lawyer who quarterbacked President Bill Clinton’s impeachment defense, has been chosen White House counsel by President-elect Barack Obama, according to Democratic officials. Craig is intimately familiar with the president-elect’s record because he played the role of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in debate preparations. The officials said Obama has settled on Craig but were not sure when the appointment would be announced. The choice gives the president-elect both experience and loyalty. During the primaries, Craig was an early Clinton alumni defector to Obama. Columnist Robert D. Novak reported back in the winter of 2007 that...

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- The Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle eight years ago has joined Cuba's Young Communist Union. Elian Gonzalez said he will never let down ex-President Fidel Castro and his brother Raul Castro, according to the Communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde. Raul Castro succeeded Fidel as president earlier this year. Now 14, Elian was 6 when his relatives in Miami, Florida, lost their fight to keep him in the United States and he was returned to Cuba in mid-2000 with his father. Elian had survived a boating accident off the Florida coast that...

Early Elián Gonzalez raid was planned BY WILFREDO CANCIO ISLA Before the forced removal of Elián González from his relatives' home in Little Havana eight years ago, federal agents had another plan to return the child to his father in Cuba. But an order from Washington canceled it at the last minute. According to statements by James Goldman, then head of operations for the U.S. immigration agency in Miami, federal agents had been instructed to seize Elián during a meeting in Miami Beach with his grandmothers at the home of Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, then-president of Barry University, in January 2000....

Cuba's Useful Idiot By Humberto Fontova FrontPageMagazine.com | 4/16/2008 Last month Dan Rather’s new gig as host of HDNET's “Dan Rather Reports” found him, as so often during his CBS days, “reporting” from Cuba. From Dan we heard of “dramatic changes” down there, of a “remarkable transformation.” “The door (to the U.S.) is open, “explained Dan. “The best time to talk is now.” Dan was chanting a familiar tune, one we've heard almost nonstop from the MSM's pet “Cuba Experts'” for the past 21 months. As usual when dealing with Cuban matters, a sober look behind the carefully constructed and...

Just a reminder that Elian turned eight years old today for all of those of you cared for his freedom. I want to wish him a happy birthday despite his circumstances.

MIAMI - A Cuban father allowed his young daughter to emigrate legally to the United States with her mother to find a better life. But months later, the mother has become incapable of caring for the girl and the father wants to take the child home. It would seem a simple case, especially since the mother agrees her daughter should return to Cuba. Yet on the eve of the trial, a judge has warned that it could "inflame the community," where the battle over Elian Gonzalez nearly eight years ago divided the city and became an international incident. Testimony is...

In the first public hearing on the fate of a 4-year-old girl whose father wants her to return to Cuba, a frustrated judge called for calm.The closed-door custody battle over the 4-year-old Cuban girl who ended up in foster care after her mother attempted suicide went on public display Wednesday, baring finger-pointing, raised voices and raw emotion. Crushed into a courtroom in Miami's dingy juvenile courthouse were about a dozen lawyers, four psychologists, social workers, guardians, an interpreter and a judge. They met in public after an appeals court ordered the hearings, which had been held secretly for more than...

LET'S BEGIN with the big lie—that Elian Gonzalez was separated from his father by his Cuban-American relatives living in Miami, and that father and son were reunited by Janet Reno's INS storm troopers. (What else can you call them, given their pre-dawn assault on a private home to snatch a child who was not a hostage, at gunpoint?) The entire premise of the Elian drama—that the Miami relatives have kept the boy from his father—is false. Elian was separated from his father not by Lazaro Gonzalez and company, but by Fidel Castro: the world's longest surviving and most sadistic dictator,...

"The Religious Left is far more “Left” than “religious” – they may look like a church on the outside, but on the inside, they’re a political organization advancing a leftist social agenda. And now, there’s hard evidence to back it up." NCC was a major player in the Elian Gonzalez criminal abduction, following are webpages I created throughout this illegal and disgraceful action on Easter Weekend 7 years ago...rto The Taking of Elian Elian Returns to Cuba

<p>FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON ON NOT CAPTURING BIN LADEN: 'At least I tried. That's the difference between me and some, including all the right wingers. They ridicule me for trying. They had eight months to try, they did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed'...</p>

With stories and photos of Fidel Castro's "personal health" bombarding us 24/7, I have given some second serious thought into my own involvement in the infamous Elian Gonzalez case. Once you hear the name "Elian", how can you ever forget this six year old boy and the media rampage that started in late 1999, and came full circle more than six years ago? Looking back, I have come to realize that in my advocacy to advance the concept of fathers' rights, I forgot to understand that young Elian was the wrong boy and the wrong case to champion in the...

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=2292911 Video at link above shows a women holding up a sign protesting the police when one of the police shoots her with a rubber bullet in the back of the leg.She then turns around and gets shot in the forehead(wich can and does kill people) then the video cuts to the police gathering around after the protests and laughing about shooting her and talking about giving out trophys for it

A little Cuban boy named Elian, who in 1999 was scooped up by a federal SWAT team in Miami and shipped back to Cuba, is in the news again for the get well card he and his family sent to communist dictator Fidel Castro. The youngster addressed the 79-year-old as my "Dear Grandfather" and wished Castro a happy 80th birthday. For those not familiar with this child's story or for those who've forgotten, Elian Gonzalez was the center of one of the biggest news stories during the Clinton Administration. Not as big as Monica, but close. While escaping the communist...

ELIAN Gonzalez, the Cuban boy who became the celebrated object of a 2000 US-Cuba tug-of-war wished Cuban leader Fidel Castro a speedy recovery from surgery. "We send you this letter so that you know that we are concerned about your health," Elian Gonzalez, now 13, said in a letter also signed by five other children in his family and published today in the official newspaper, Juventud Rebelde. A week ago, Mr Castro, 79, handed power "temporarily" to his younger brother, Defence Minister Raul Castro, while undergoing surgery for intestinal bleeding. In November 1999, Elian, who was six at the time,...

Sunday, July 2, 2006 ELIAN – Elian Gonzalez has never spoken before about the battle between the U.S. and Cuba that he was in the middle of five years ago when he was just 6. He does now in an interview with Bob Simon. Draggan Mihailovich is the producer. AL QAEDA’S TOWN – When terrorist insurgents led by Al Qaeda took over the Iraqi town of Tal Afar, the U.S. military had to devise a way of retaking it. Their methods have become a blueprint for the war on terror. Lara Logan reports. Josh Yager is the producer. FIRST...

I have a few thoughts for you in response to some letters of late. The voices now crying for the impeachment of Bush were silent during Waco, Elian Gonzales and the first World Trade Center attack, Ruby Ridge and the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. Their favorite president presided over the the largest bubble burst in U.S. economic history (DOT.COM). China, India and Pakistan get nukes. The U.S. bombed Yugoslavia for weeks; hit the Chinese embassy and killed thousands of untold civilians. The U.S. did a lot of bombing from 30,000 feet because Clinton was afraid to lose one soldier....

Just wondering, besides going around FISA during the investigation of Aldrich Ames, did the Clinton Administration go around FISA during the investigation and deportation of Elian Gonzales?

THOSE EVIL AMERICAN TROOPS FRIGHTENING THOSE POOR IRAQIS Yesterday we noted that John Kerry was resorting to his old ways; bashing our men and women in uniform. On last Sunday's Face the Nation Kerry had this to say about the actions of American troops in Iraq: " ..... there is no reason, Bob, that young American soldiers need to be going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women ...." Well, there you go. Now we have the Democratic Presidential candidate, The Poodle, applying the "T" word to our own troops...

LIKE WINSTON SMITH, Elian Gonzalez has learned to love Big Brother. CBS News loves him, too. Elian's excuse is that he is 11 years old and has been brainwashed by a totalitarian police state. What excuse is there for CBS? Last week, ''60 Minutes" aired an interview with Elian, the Cuban boat child who survived a desperate escape from Fidel Castro's island dictatorship in November 1999 only to be forcibly turned over to the Cubans by the Clinton administration the following April. The story was a shameless piece of agitprop. From correspondent Bob Simon's opening description of the Elian affair...

(CBS) In the annals of conflict between Cubans and Americans, there was the Bay of Pigs, there was the Cuban Missile Crisis and, in 1999, there was Elian Gonzalez. The last time we saw Elian, he was a 6-year-old in the eye of a storm in Miami, and possibly the youngest person ever to become the focus of an international crisis. Now, five years after he returned to Cuba with his father, you will hear Elian’s story from his point of view. 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon reports. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- At the age of 5, he survived an incredible sea journey...

Elian interview sparks Miami row Relatives in Florida of the shipwrecked Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez have criticised an interview with him to be shown on US television on Sunday. Cubans celebrated when Elian was returned to his father In excerpts from the CBS network's 60 Minutes show Elian, now 11, calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his friend. He also accuses his family in Miami of trying to turn him against his father during a custody battle in 2000 which culminated in his return to Cuba. A spokesman for the Florida relatives said Elian had been brainwashed. Elian turned six soon...

Elian Gonzalez, 11, calls Castro 'friend,' 'father' MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of an international custody battle five years ago, calls Cuban President Fidel Castro his friend and says he hopes someday to see his Miami family again. "Despite everything they did, it was wrong, they are (still) my family ... my uncles," the boy said in an interview with CBS's "60 Minutes." Excerpts were released Thursday for the program that airs Sunday night. Elian, now 11, set off a seven-month custody battle after he was rescued off the Florida coast in 1999...

Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno wowed the crowd at the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association's conference in Montreal on Sept. 24 with an impassioned speech on universal healthcare, wrapping up the GLMA's annual conference with an inspired bang. Reno stressed the importance of gay healthcare professionals to come out and work as a community as the best means of standing up to an increasingly conservative, homophobic culture and government. “By utilizing the professional bonds and friendships built up through your work, I believe you can build a system of healthcare delivery that will make us all proud,” said Reno....

Cuba's longtime communist leader said he was proud to be the friend of Elian Gonzalez, now 11, who graduated this week from Grade 6. "I have the privilege to be his friend," Castro said in speech that was published in Cuban media Friday, a day after the leader attended Elian's graduation ceremony.

Cuban President Fidel Castro said in a speech published Friday that he's honored to be a friend of Elian Gonzalez, the boy at the center of an international custody dispute five years ago. "I have the privilege to be his friend," Castro said Thursday night during Elian's sixth-grade graduation in the coastal city of Cardenas, east of Havana. The speech was broadcast on state television and published Friday in the Communist Party daily Granma. Elian, now 11, was the subject of a high-profile legal and ideological battle between his father in Cuba and family members in South Florida, both who...

Thirteen people who were tear-gassed during the raid to seize Elian Gonzalez five years ago lost a lawsuit Friday in which they had sought $3.25 million in damages from the government. U.S. District Judge K. Michael Moore issued a 19-page decision saying that the demonstrators and bystanders failed to show enough credible evidence that federal agents' use of force during the raid was "unreasonable under the circumstances." The 13 people claimed they had been sprayed at close range while on their own property or behind barricades. Three neighbors testified that an agent gassed them without warning from 2 to 4...

MIAMI - The Little Havana home that sheltered Elian Gonzalez during his five months in Miami is still scarred from the swift raid in which armed federal agents stormed the house to reunite the boy with his father. Elian's Miami relatives didn't repair the holes created when, five years ago last Friday, authorities kicked in the bedroom door. It is a reminder to visitors that a Border Patrol officer confronted family friend Donato Dalrymple, as he tried to hide in a closet with the boy — an image captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photograph. An enlarged version of...

<p>Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban castaway whose international custody battle ended in his dramatic seizure from a Miami home five years ago, addressed a crowd of thousands Friday, thanking Cubans and Americans alike for fighting for his return to the island.</p>

MIAMI · The Little Havana home that sheltered Elián González during his five months in Miami is still scarred from the swift raid in which armed federal agents stormed the house to reunite the boy with his father. Elián's Miami relatives didn't repair the holes created five years ago today when authorities kicked in the bedroom door. It is a reminder to visitors that a Border Patrol officer confronted family friend Donato Dalrymple as he tried to hide in a closet with the boy, an image captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press photograph.

In his new book "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant," Fontova describes what he calls a staged interview Dan Rather held with Juan Miguel, father of Elian Gonzalez, the youthful lone survivor of a capsized Cuban boat which sank on its way to the U.S. The custody battle culminated in a dramatic, pre-dawn raid by machine-gun-toting federal agents to snatch the 6-year-old from his Miami relatives during Easter weekend and send him back to Castro's tyranny. Fontova also tells a heart-wrenching story of Cuba's execution of American businessman Howard Anderson. Anderson owned a chain of service stations and a Jeep dealership and...

CáRDENAS, Cuba · Elián González says he wants to be a gymnast when he grows up. But his grandfather, Juan González Sr., knows Elián's future career choices are as variable as any normal preteen's and could change next month. "I want him to be a good man, to do good deeds, not do anything he will regret. Everything else is all right," he said, sitting in his home in the coastal town of Cárdenas under a large photograph of a very young Elián. At age 11, the boy whose bitter custody battle stands as a symbol of the Cold War...

Hi, explain this to me. How was Janet Reno able to defy the 11th circuit court, but Jeb Bush wasn't. In 2000, the 11th circuit court ruled the U.S couldn't send Elian Gonzales to Cuba. He had to be in the U.S. What happened to Bill and Janet? NOTHING. They stated that the 11th Circuit had no jurisdiction and that the Florida Court had no jurisdiction. So why didn't Jeb do the same thing and send state troopers to get Terri into a hospital. Read this from April 2000. You'll see the 11th circuit court ruled Janet Reno couldn't send...

Liberals say state courts have the right to decide whether brain-damaged Florida woman Terri Schiavo lives or dies, but they held a different position in the case of Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez in 1999. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund compared the two cases and found that liberals backed federal intervention in 5-year-old Elian's case. He said they supported the Clinton administration's decision to send heavily armed Immigration and Naturalization Service agents in an early morning raid to remove Elian from the care of family members in Miami. But, Fund notes, many of the same liberals don't believe...

Rush: The 11th Circuit Court had said "No" to Johnny Reno, but she went ahead and took custody of Elian anyway...........................

The sad case of Terri Schiavo has raised passions not seen since five years ago. Then another bitterly divided family argued in Florida courts over someone who couldn't speak on his own behalf: Elian Gonzalez. In both cases, those who were unhappy with the courts' decisions strained to assert the federal government's power to produce a different outcome. The difference is that in Mrs. Schiavo's case, Congress backed off after passing a bill that merely asked a federal court to hear the case from scratch, something that U.S. District Judge James Whittemore declined to do. By contrast, those who wanted...