News Release; April 22, 2000

DIAZ-BALART ACCUSES CLINTON & RENO OF MONSTROUS CRIME

Miami, FL -- Congressman Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL) accused William Jefferson Clinton and Janet Reno today of committing a monstrous crime by turning over Elián Gonzalez to the control of the Cuban dictatorship, by force and in violation of law.

"Clinton and Reno took Elián by force so that Castro’s totalitarian psychiatrists will have time to brainwash the boy, because Clinton and Reno fear that the Court of Appeals will force them to grant Elián a hearing for political asylum as required by law. With today’s action Clinton and Reno have sought to annul by force the judicial process since, even if the Appellate Court grants Elián a political asylum hearing, the boy is already under the total control of the Cuban dictatorship.

I accuse William Jefferson Clinton, the president who sold military secrets to the Communist Chinese, of committing his most cowardly crime when he ordered a defenseless six-year-old boy to be turned over by force to Castro’s totalitarian psychiatrists, with the grotesque, condemnable, assistance of an Attorney General who has shown that her incompetence is outweighed only by her hypocrisy and her callousness. What Clinton has done, in effect, is to throw a six-year-old boy over the Berlin Wall. I accuse Clinton of turning a young boy over to totalitarian psychiatrists who will destroy him.

Clinton and Reno say they have returned the boy to his father. No, his father will have no say in Elián's life. Elián has been placed under the control of the dictator’s Gobellian psychiatrists, who will, as Castro has not denied, "get to work immediately" to destroy his young mind.

Today will be remembered by history as the emblematic day in the presidency of the coward who sent in the "Clinton commandos" in the dead of night to fetch a six-year-old boy while he was sleeping in his home."