By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday , April 24, 2000 ; A01

Government officials, lawyers, politicians and the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez spent much of yesterday arguing in public
over Saturday morning's armed seizure of the 6-year-old Cuban boy, with virtually no agreement over what was done, how it
was accomplished or whether it was necessary.

A number of prominent Republican members of Congress said they would call for investigations of what they called the
government's excessive use of force against private citizens, and there were charges that the Clinton administration was taking
its orders from Fidel Castro in Cuba.

"I think both branches--the legislative . . . and judiciary-- . . . should look into this in depth, because this is a frightening event,"
said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Attorneys for the Miami relatives said they were contemplating legal action against the government and charged that Attorney
General Janet Reno had launched the operation while there was still hope the situation could be resolved peacefully.

There was even dispute over photographs released Saturday afternoon showing Elian and his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, in a
smiling embrace. In a Washington news conference after they were again refused access to Andrews Air Force Base, where
Elian and his father, stepmother and half-brother remained secluded, the Miami relatives claimed the photographs had been
doctored or weren't of Elian at all.

From inside Andrews, the Gonzalez family responded by releasing a new series of photographs of them hugging, walking
outside and kicking a soccer ball together. The photographs were taken yesterday by a member of their legal team and
processed by the Associated Press.

For its part, the government strongly defended the raid, saying it was made necessary by the intransigence of the Miami
relatives in refusing to give up the boy or to compromise on where and under what conditions they would surrender him. Senior
officials repeated that the use of force was justified by intelligence reports that there may have been guns in the house or among
the protesters outside, although they offered no evidence.

"If there are to be congressional hearings, I hope that I am the first witness who will be called to testify," Deputy Attorney
General Eric H. Holder Jr. said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "Because I will get up there and very loudly talk about what those
agents did, exactly what our legal basis was for taking the action that we did."

Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris M. Meissner denied that the armed agents who burst into the
house had used profanity or threatened to "blow out the brains" of the people inside, as some of them have charged. The agents
currently were being debriefed, she said, but "they don't use that kind of language. . . . Their commands are: 'We are here,
stand aside, don't interfere, we will not hurt you, we will not harm you.' "

The Justice Department released copies of a search warrant, signed Friday at 7:20 p.m. by a federal magistrate in Miami,
authorizing agents to enter the Little Havana home of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, to search for the boy and "to seize
same . . . at any time in the day or night" before May 1.

The relatives and their attorneys said their immediate concern was allowing Lazaro Gonzalez and his 21-year-old daughter to
see Elian. "He's been torn from them," lawyer Kendall Coffey said on ABC's "This Week." "They are the American family that
has nurtured him these last five months. And she's his mother figure, so they need to see him."

Marisleysis Gonzalez, who flew to Washington on Saturday with her father and uncle, said, "I know he's not okay. And the
pictures that they show with the father, that is not Elian. That hair is not Elian's. . . . Look how short the hair looks when he was
taken out of the house," she said, holding a blown-up copy of the now-famous picture of Elian crying as a combat-suited INS
agent held an automatic rifle in front of him during the raid.

"I demand, and I think I have the right, to see this boy," she said at a news conference organized by Sen. Robert C. Smith
(R-N.H.), who has sponsored the relatives in Washington. "I know this boy needs to see me too, and I am going to go
wherever I have to go, and I will be wherever I have to be."

Smith, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, complained about being denied access to "an air base basically
under my control."

The father's attorney, Gregory B. Craig, also made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows. "I have no doubt that they . . .
sincerely would like to see Elian," Craig said on CNN's "Late Edition." While saying that the decision would be up to Juan
Miguel Gonzalez, Craig added that "the worst thing that could possibly happen would be to reintroduce the circus atmosphere,
the television lights, the cameras and the emotions of Miami into this family reunion, which is so special."

"Over time," Craig said, "of course it will be possible for members of the family to talk to Juan Miguel, see Elian. But to come
up to Washington, to make demands without arranging it in advance, I think that's not the way to go about it."

Relatives Fear 'Brainwash'

Several of the relatives' attorneys said they believed the father and Cuban government agents would now try to "brainwash"
Elian so that he will repudiate the asylum petition, signed with his printed name, that the relatives submitted to the INS. That
petition, and two others signed by Lazaro Gonzalez on Elian's behalf, were rejected by the INS on grounds that only his father
could make decisions for his son on immigration matters.

After a federal court upheld the INS refusal to consider the petitions, the relatives appealed. The government is due to file its
response to the appeal today, with the relatives to respond by April 30. Oral arguments are scheduled to be heard May 11.
Last week, the 11th Circuit granted a temporary injunction requested by Lazaro Gonzalez that prevents Elian from leaving the
United States until the appeal is decided.

The INS yesterday also released copies of a Departure Control Order, dated Saturday and delivered to Juan Miguel Gonzalez
at Andrews, ordering him "not to depart or attempt to depart with your son from the United States."

But Coffey said that even if he remains in this country, the relatives are concerned that Elian will be under the control of "Castro
government officers" here. "The question is," Coffey said, "if he's handed over to Cuban authorities in this country, does that in
some sense violate the court order?" The Justice Department confirmed that it had received a letter from Coffey asking Reno
for her position on Cuban government access to Elian.

At Andrews, the Gonzalez family is under the protection of U.S. marshals, and officials have said that protection will continue
when the family moves to Wye Plantation, a secluded conference center on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Cuban government
officials are believed to have access to them at both locations.

Much of yesterday's back and forth, however, concerned the circumstances of the raid itself. Some Democratic members of
Congress defended the operation and joined with the government in saying it was legally justified and made necessary by the
Miami relatives.

"I think the attorney general's conduct was commendable," said Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.). "As a former law
enforcement official, I can tell you that enforcing a search warrant is never, never, never a pleasant thing. We ought to take a
deep breath and get on with it. That is all we should really want, the boy and his dad together."

But Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) accused President Clinton of breaking a personal promise to him "that there would be no taking
of this child during the night. . . . It was a clear commitment which was violated." A White House spokesman said yesterday
that he had "no information regarding those comments" and suggested there might be a response today, when Clinton returns
from the Easter weekend at Camp David.

Friday Fax in Dispute

Attorneys for the relatives said that Reno had moved precipitously in allowing the raid to proceed just after 5 a.m. while
negotiations were still underway. "I have a fax that was sent to the federal government, that was sent to Janet Reno at 5 on
Friday evening," said lawyer Roger Bernstein, who traveled to Washington with the relatives.

"It was signed by Lazaro, Marisleysis and Delfin," another great-uncle, Bernstein said. "It agreed to a neutral site" where both
sides of the family could meet. "It agreed to a facilitator to be named. This was presented, signed, to the attorney general. She
preapproved the plan. It had to be presented to Greg Craig and Fidel Castro."

But the Justice Department and Craig disputed virtually every aspect of that description, and insisted that the draft in question
simply restated positions that had been advanced by the relatives--and repeatedly rejected by the department and the
father--for weeks.

The department released what it said was the fax in question, stamped Friday at 4:52 p.m. Unsigned, it proposed a family
meeting "in Miami-Dade County, Florida . . . on a date to be determined" and that a mutually agreed facilitator be present "to
help the family members get together and do what is in the best interest of the child." It asked Reno to delay any decisions on
Elian's fate and said that all family members would agree to remain at the site until "all pending legal proceedings" were
resolved.

According to the Justice Department, several subsequent drafts were exchanged until long past midnight Friday. Although Reno
pressed Craig to accept a reunion whose timing was open-ended, neither the department nor the father would budge on their
insistence that Elian's custody be transferred to the father before a meeting began and that the reunion be held at a retreat in the
Washington area.

According to the department, the family continued to reject any meeting outside South Florida up until the 4 a.m. cutoff point
where Reno had to decide whether to begin the operation to retrieve Elian from the house. Less than 30 minutes before the raid
began, officials said, she gave them five minutes to agree or negotiations would cease.

"We certainly were negotiating, but we were certainly not making progress," Holder said yesterday. "For five months . . . we
have tried every conceivable avenue to resolve this matter in a way other than we ultimately had to. It seems to me that the
blame for what happened, if there is any blame to be assessed, is on the family that professed to love this boy and yet put their
own interests above his. And forced the federal government to do that which we did in getting him out of there."

                                 © 2000 The Washington Post Company