Karen, article...Such Genteel Storm Troopers!
by William F. Jasper
thenewamerican.com
Federal agents are claiming that they politely and delicately removed Elian from the Gonzalez home, but witnesses and photographic evidence tell another story.
As Elian Gonzalez was being flown back to "Papa Fidel’s" gulag state, some Republican members of Congress revived the prospect of an investigation concerning the legality of the Easter weekend raid on the Gonzalez home and related issues, such as the massive levels of armed force used during the military-style assault. "‘Why now?’ That was my first reaction" upon being contacted by Rep. Henry Hyde’s office, one of the witnesses inside the Little Havana home told THE NEW AMERICAN. "Why have they waited until now to consider starting an investigation they should have launched immediately after [the raid]. I am ambivalent about it now and question the sincerity of Congress on this. But on the other hand, an official investigation has to be made to force out the truth, or it will all be swept under the rug, and these kinds of terrible abuses will proliferate."
Abuses? What abuses? The April 22nd federal home invasion and kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez, to judge from debriefing reports of the operatives who carried it out, was a singularly genteel affair. A summary of the INS reports, according to a June 6th Miami Herald story, "said none [of the raiders] used profanity, threatened to shoot or used chemical irritants," and that they acted with "restraint" during the assault. "They are making this sound as if [the raid] is the beginning of a cotillion," observed Carlos de la Cruz, an eyewitness who was in the Lazaro Gonzalez home during the atrocity.
The summary also claims: "News footage of the operation clearly shows that the team members acted with discipline and restraint … as they entered the Gonzalez home. This report indicates that this same level of professionalism and control was maintained during the rest of the operation." This comes as news to NBC cameraman Tony Zumbado, who was in the Gonzalez home during the raid.
"The agents were physically and verbally abusive; they said every bad word in the book and kept me from doing my job," testifies Zumbado. A veteran of numerous SWAT raids and (for the most part) a supporter of the Clinton administration, Zumbado denounces the INS report as "a pack of lies" and "a whitewash." Although the INS report claims, "the video cameraman inside the Gonzalez home was not touched in any way by the entry team," Zumbado recalls that he was knocked to the floor, kicked in the lower back, had his camera slammed down into his stomach, and held at gunpoint. "I was left winded and in pain," he recalls. Eyewitness Roberto Curbelo corroborated the photojournalist’s account: "He got nailed. They whooped him."
Despite his injuries, Zumbado claims that he understood why agents on a military-style mission would behave as they did. However, the self-serving lies told by Reno’s raiders were too much for him to take: "when I read how the agents exonerated themselves of any wrongdoing, my faith in this administration was shaken.... If this had happened to an American journalist in Cuba or Colombia, the U.S. government would have filed a complaint," Zumbado told the June 9th Orlando Sun-Sentinel. "In this case, you get this report."
Many other credible eye-witnesses challenge the INS claims of gentility for its pre-dawn blitzkrieg. Dr. Lydia Usategui, a psychiatrist, was in the backyard of the Gonzalez home when the raid began. She had spent the night outside the home with a group of psychiatrists and physicians, who, as professionals, wanted to be on hand to observe Elian’s state of mind and the manner in which the federal officers conducted themselves, if there were an attempt to seize the boy. "We never expected a military-style raid like this," she told THE NEW AMERICAN. "We were told that when they came it would be two or three women in civilian dress, very non-threatening, so as to cause minimal trauma for Elian." Still, they wanted to be there to make sure there were professionals who could testify concerning the behavior of both Elian and the officials. A federal officer armed with a machine gun ordered her to the ground, face first. "It was very terrifying," she said. "I wanted to look up, but I truly wondered if they would shoot me if I moved my head. And I think that was the point. They didn’t want any witnesses to their actions." A few seconds later she was unable to see anyway, and had difficulty breathing, as the tear gas and pepper spray took effect.
Dr. Usategui’s husband, businessman Alfredo Manrara Jr., was standing in the front yard of the Gonzalez home, several feet off to the side of the front door of the house, when the raid began. News video clips confirm his story that he was not in the way of the federal officers and did nothing to impede their entry. He was struck with the battering ram and thrown against the chain link fence. Mr. Manrara saw another man a few feet away, Ramon Saul Sanchez, knocked down to the ground with blood running from his head. "It was a nightmare, I couldn’t believe this was happening," he told THE NEW AMERICAN. "From the way they [the federal officers] were acting, I thought there was going to be a massacre."
Ramon Saul Sanchez, founder of the nonviolent Democracy Movement, and several members of his group had been given permission by Mayor Joe Carollo to act as community mediators. Over the previous few months they had helped keep the community calm when things had become agitated. Mr. Sanchez, who was standing outside the front door at the start of the raid, was struck in the head with a rifle butt and knocked unconscious to the ground. "We and Lazaro Gonzalez gave no resistance and always publicly stated that we would give none," he told this magazine. "We did not want any harm to come to Elian or other people in the community, and we did not want to give a bad image to the Cuban American community. They knew that we wouldn’t have used any violence to stop them. The government did not take a reasonable approach. They did not want to have to deal with the bad public relations — the image of Elian crying and resisting as they tried to carry him off. That would have looked bad to the whole world. So they chose to use brute force instead, and then justify it with lies."
Luis Meurice, a member of the Democracy Movement, had just passed out crackers to people who had been praying and standing vigil when the raiders struck. He was knocked to the ground by the government van and then knocked down again by officers on foot who began spraying him with tear gas and pepper spray from "big canisters like fire extinguishers." He says they were screaming loudly, "Get down, or we’re going to kill you!" — over and over. "It was very wild, they were very aggressive and pumped up, pointing their guns at everyone — and, yes, they did use profanity, repeatedly. About all the words you can think of."
Mrs. Rosa de la Cruz, a prominent Miami philanthropist and patroness of the arts, was in front of the Gonzalez home holding a prayer vigil with five other women when the melee broke out. "We were praying in memory of Elian’s mother," she explained, while her husband, Carlos de la Cruz, was inside the home negotiating by telephone with Attorney General Janet Reno. "We were women in our 40s and 50s, professionally dressed, praying, in no way presenting any threat or interference," she told THE NEW AMERICAN. She was just a few feet from Mr. Sanchez when he was struck. "We saw him go down, and we all said, ‘He’s dead, Oh my God, he’s dead,’ because he dropped like a dead man and wasn’t moving, and didn’t look like he was breathing."
According to this witness, who was less than 10 feet away, "There was no knocking on the door, as they’re claiming, they just hit it with the [battering] ram and guns, and broke it open." While several heavily armed agents burst inside the home, she says, others "pushed us against the [chain link] fence and sprayed us with tear gas, which was very painful." Then, says Mrs. de la Cruz, "they took us out of the yard and threw us against the barricade," which had been placed in the streets months before for crowd control. "We thought they were going to kill us because they were waving machine guns and being so angry and abusive," she recounted. "I don’t know why, but I just opened my arms — outstretched — in the sign of a cross, both a prayer and a sign of passivity. And it was so shocking because one of them yelled at me in a very insulting and abusive voice, ‘I told you not to move, b****!’ So don’t believe them when they say they didn’t use profanity and abusive language. But I couldn’t move because I was trapped between the barricade and these officers who were yelling at me. I was only two-three feet away from them when they gassed me directly in the face. I couldn’t breathe, or see, or walk or talk. It knocked me down — I felt paralyzed and it felt like needles were stabbing in my fingers. It was terrible."
News footage we have watched clearly shows Mrs. de la Cruz standing by the barricade with arms outstretched, cross-like, as she recounted, and being gassed point-blank in the face by a federal agent with a very large gas canister, similar in appearance to a large fire extinguisher. She immediately begins choking and stumbling and passes out in the street.
Attorneys Manny Diaz and Kendall Coffey were inside the Gonzalez home, in the family room, on a three-way telephone conversation, negotiating with Janet Reno and Miami lawyer Aaron Podhurst, when the assault commenced. Because of their position and the fact that the doorway was blocked by the agents and the family members who had been herded in that direction, they were not able to see much of the raid activity. But, says Mr. Diaz, it was anything but sedate and "sensitive." "The tone of the government’s report and the statements of administration spokesmen would have you believe that this was some sedate affair, like the Avon lady calling on the Gonzalez home," he told this magazine. "Let me tell you, it was pandemonium, and it sounded very violent and tumultuous. I don’t recall what other profanity they [federal agents] were using, but I heard them shouting the ‘F’ word multiple times."
Concerning the government’s claims that it had served a search warrant at the Gonzalez home, Mr. Diaz says, "I never saw a search warrant, and according to all the other witnesses there, no one else did either." No warrant was found at the site, and, as Mr. Diaz points out, after the raid, the Justice Department refused to release a copy of the warrant until lawyers for Elian and Lazaro Gonzalez threatened legal action. "They knew full well that there were two attorneys present in the home because their boss was on the phone with us," Diaz notes. "Why didn’t they knock on the door and say, ‘Mr. Coffey, Mr. Diaz, we are federal agents and we have a search warrant’ before coming on like gangbusters? That is the legal, reasonable, safe way to proceed."
If not for the famous photos shot by AP photographer Alan Diaz showing the machine gun-point seizure of the terrified Elian, and the reels of news footage showing the reality of the Waco-style assault on the Gonzalez home, the Clinton administration might have gotten away scot-free with claiming that young Elian had rushed gleefully into their arms and the federal agents had blown kisses to the assembled well-wishers. Unfortunately, it is getting away with paying a very small price for its police-state brutishness — because the Clinton-friendly press is looking the other way and refusing to use the evidence it has in hand.
This is precisely why Congress must investigate the policies, decisions, and agendas that drove this federal police action and exercise its constitutional powers to rein in these abuses and hold accountable those who would trample the rule of law while feigning to uphold it. |
