BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 When federal agents stormed the block around Lazaro Gonzalez's Little Havana house last weekend, they employed a long-established assault doctrine of using overwhelming force to stifle resistance.

 But hours of analysis of videotapes and photographs taken from different angles by nine news photographers reveal key mistakes that caused chaos during the mission -- from agents' failing to seal off an obvious pocket of resistance to failure to film or videotape their 57 seconds inside the house.

 An example: Agents made no effort to challenge a gray-haired man who stood calmly at the foot of the house's front steps while agents were inside searching for Elian.

 Unmolested, the man made a last-ditch effort to prevent Elian's removal from the house, dragging Immigration and Naturalization Service agent Betty Mills and Elian into the bushes before agents went in to retrieve them. No effort was made to detain the man and INS officials say they do not know his identity.

 Another example: Not all the federal agents -- and none of the Miami Police on the scene -- were equipped with gas masks. Some federal officers are captured on film retreating from close-encounter clashes with protesters to recover after inhaling pepper spray, leaving people from the neighborhood to continue struggling with fewer federal agents on Gonzalez's front lawn.

 In the end, no major injuries were reported, and Elian was brought out of the house unharmed -- exactly 57 seconds, by a stopwatch, after agents used a battering ram to crack open the Gonzalezes' front door.

 But video footage taken from several angles shows the armed agents had to expend enormous effort to reach the door.

 As many of the 131 agents involved in the raid were arriving, the tapes show, 22 protesters rushed through an open gate to beat federal agents to Lazaro Gonzalez's front lawn and establish a human chain. More jumped a fence and arrived later.

 Among those who entered the lawn at the start of the assault was Democracy Movement leader Ramon Saul Sanchez, who swung the gate shut, but did not lock it.

 Sanchez can later be seen on unedited CBS News footage, struggling inch by inch, sumo-style, to block the small federal force that actually invaded the lawn.

 JOURNALISTS STOPPED

 At one point Sanchez shoved and pushed Mills as she raced to the front door, in plainclothes, a gun on her hip, carrying the white blanket she would eventually toss over Elian.

 The federal force had more success dealing with the media encampment opposite the Gonzalez house, where officers stopped reporters and camera crews in their tracks. Only freelance photographer Alan Diaz -- who eventually snapped the seizure's signature shot of Elian and Donato Dalrymple face to face with an armed federal agent -- managed to beat the agents inside the house.

 Other photographers were forced to retreat from positions near the house to the media area -- making some key moments of the raid difficult to spot in spite of several different angles.

 The INS might have benefited from having more photographers present to record the agents' behavior.

 Several hours after Elian was evacuated, Marisleysis Gonzalez alleged on live television that the agents broke the door to her mother's bedroom in half during the raid. She pointed to the broken door lying on the floor.

 Authorities have no independent record to dispute it -- though still photos shot by Diaz in the room suggest the door was not as seriously damaged as the later TV tour of the house would indicate.

 Diaz's photos show the agents arriving in the bedroom -- and retreating with the child -- beside an intact door. Diaz, for his part, did not reply to a question about how the door was broken in two.

 News video from outside the house shows a clearly terrified Elian emerging in the arms of Mills, who rushes down the steps surrounded by other agents -- and briefly disappears from view behind a bush on Gonzalez's front lawn.

 That was the moment Mills was apparently grabbed by the gray-haired man standing near the steps, but no videographer caught what was going on.

 The man can be seen in much of the footage of the incident. Videotape shot by CBS News early in the raid shows him on the fringes, climbing over a fence from the neighboring house to the west. He can then be seen in several versions standing near the front door.

 Agents ignored him throughout the entire retrieval episode.

 PROTESTER DOWN

 On the ground in front of the gray-haired man, Sanchez was flat on his back, apparently unconscious. A blond woman in olive green shorts was ministering to Sanchez. Behind that scene, a red-shirted young man was hanging from the front steps, trying to grab an agent using a battering ram to open the door -- until a green-clad Border Patrol agent delivered a full-force punch that knocked the red-shirted man to the ground. The knockout was recorded by both WTVJ-NBC 6 and WFOR-CBS 4.

 But no one pushed the gray-haired man out of the way; in fact, once the agents charged inside, the man, who was wearing jeans, a button-down shirt and white sneakers, crossed the walkway, apparently to get a better look.

 As agents emerged ahead of Mills and Elian, the man could be seen clearly grabbing at them. They in turn pushed him away, into the bush. Suddenly, it appears on the WTVJ-NBC 6 videotape that he had pulled the woman agent and child into the bush, too. Two armed agents briefly disappeared into the bush as well, pulled Mills out with the child and pushed her toward the waiting van.

 MYSTERY PAIR

 As they are seen climbing aboard, the background of a tape recorded at 5:21 a.m. by WSVN-FOX 7 shows the gray-haired man emerging from the bushes, perhaps shoved by a federal officer, who moved away.

 The blond woman who had been kneeling over Sanchez appeared to lunge toward Mills, too, as the agent carried the boy down the steps. WFOR-CBS 4 videotape shows an agent knocking her away with his forearm.

 Lazaro Gonzalez and others who were inside the house at the time of the raid could not identify either the man or the woman from photos shown them by The Herald. Neither could people who were outside the house at the time of the raid -- or in days leading up to it -- although some people thought the young woman lived near the Gonzalez house, in Little Havana.

 Department of Justice spokeswoman Carole Florman said Friday that the man's presence had been noted, after the fact, and it was determined he was not with federal authorities.

 The videotapes show clearly that some of the confusion outside the house during the raid was caused by the large number of bystanders who made it to the front lawn ahead of agents.

 CROWD REACTS

 A CBS News photographer posted on a platform above street level began videotaping as the INS vans were moving down the street, but before they arrived at the house. That tape, and one recorded by WFOR-CBS 4, shows the lawn empty. Then, people keeping vigil on the street began rushing past police barricades and through Lazaro Gonzalez's front gate.

 They include activist Silvia Iriondo and six black-clad members of her Mothers Against Repression movement -- who, from a window in an apartment building next door, saw the vans pull up.

 But the federal agents didn't post a guard by that building, to stop the women in black from joining the fray. In all, the tapes show, at least 22 people made it through the gate into the yard before the agents were deployed.

 Among the participants: Rosa de la Cruz and Olga Saladrigas, whose husbands are civic leaders who had been inside throughout the night, attempting to negotiate with federal authorities.

 Agents eventually forced the women to leave the yard, seconds before agent Mills emerged with Elian in her arms.

 AGENTS' EXIT

 The videotapes later show de la Cruz, hit at close range with pepper spray, falling in the middle of Northwest Second Street -- after stretching her arms out in what she later said was a Christian cross of prayer.

 As de la Cruz was convulsing on the street, federal agents had already backed the white van carrying Elian down Northwest Second Street to speed toward Watson Island and the helicopter that spirited the boy to Homestead Reserve Air Force Base and a flight to suburban Washington, D.C.

 Vans carrying support agents similarly had to back down the street to exit, and had several false starts -- giving more protesters time to pelt the vehicles and agents with rocks, lawn chairs and milk crates -- before they sped away.

 The gray-haired man can be seen standing on the street watching the scene. Finally, he hurled a water cooler in the direction of one of the vans. Then he could be seen walking to the front door of the apartment building next to Lazaro Gonzalez's house, where he picked up a bottle of water and doused his face, appearing to wash away traces of pepper spray.

 To write this report, The Herald studied raw and edited video footage from WFOR-CBS 4, a CBS affiliate; WTVJ-NBC 6, an NBC affiliate; WSVN-FOX 7, a Fox TV affiliate; WPLG-ABC 10, an ABC affiliate; footage from CBS News; and still photographs from the Associated Press and Herald staff photographer Jon Kral.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald