FrontPagemag.com | April 25, 2000

Search the Seizure

by: Lowell  Ponte

AS HITLER TIGHTENED his grip to create a Nazi dictatorship, why did Germans do little to stop him? Those Americans who have asked this question can now see the answer by looking in their bathroom mirror. The Clinton Administration, like a thief in the night 24 hours before Easter sunrise, staged a Gestapo-like raid with storm troopers in Miami, Florida. When most Americans learned of this, they shrugged. Some cheered, as anti-Semitic Germans did as they watched Jewish neighbors dragged away by Hitler's brownshirts. "Those aliens with their foreign ways had it coming."

At the home where six-year-old Elian Gonzalez slept peacefully, armored goons sprayed tear gas into the faces of women kneeling in prayer outside, clubbed one peaceful protestor into unconsciousness, and, without warning or warrant in hand, smashed in doors and entered while screaming threats and obscenities. One of the Clinton–Gore goons, victims recounted minutes later, was screaming "Gimme the f—king boy or I'm gonna shoot!" Moments later an Associated Press photographer snapped the image of one storm trooper with his MP-5 submachine gun aimed at the terrified boy and the unarmed fisherman who five months earlier had rescued him. Welcome to Munich, 1938, and America, 2000.

What those automatic weapons and tactics reveal is that President Bill Clinton, advocate of gun control for the rest of us, was ready and willing to kill Elian and every member of his Miami family rather than wait two weeks and risk the boy winning a chance for freedom in the courts.

It was to preempt and deny Elian's legal rights to due process that this lunatic assault was made. The only danger posed to Elian and his physical and mental health has come from Janet Reno, Fidel Castro, and the Clinton Administration.

This is what it was like at the nightmare dawn of Nazi Germany six decades ago. Strong-arm thugs defying the law, the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of appeals, and all human decency and morality. Within hours their atrocity is befogged with a cloud of government lies whose falsity is obvious to anybody with an IQ above 65. These orchestrated lies are parroted by the Leftist sock-puppets of the ruling national media. An instant poll released by the Castro News Network, CNN, proclaims that unidentified Americans by 57 percent applaud the government's brutality. The networks air Castro praising the pre-Easter human sacrifice of Elian to Caesar as a "Christian act"—this from a dictator who has made free Christian worship a crime. The opposition parties that could have resisted the consolidating dictatorship mutter against the Nazis but seem paralyzed, unwilling or afraid to act.

Elian Gonzalez, screaming in terror, was whisked away in a government van. By arrangements put in motion even while the Clinton "Justice" Department pretended to negotiate in good faith, the terrified boy was carried by jet to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C. Hours later, carefully posed propaganda photographs depicting a smiling Elian joyously reunited with his happy father are released to the press. Many noticed that the boy's hair seemed mysteriously longer than hours before, that in our digital age it is easy to fake a photograph, that a spot on his arm where a needle would be injected now sports a bandage, and that Elian's once-bright eyes looked glassy and lifeless.

No reporters are permitted to see the boy or videotape him, which might become evidence that Elian has been heavily drugged, zombized, or subjected to electro-shock or torture. (Only days earlier the United Nations Human Rights Commission reported that people in Cuba are now routinely being medically treated with mind-altering drugs and electro-shock if they manifest symptoms of "apathy to Socialism." The message to 11 million slaves in Cuba: smile enthusiastically when Massa Fidel tells you to, as Elian was shown doing in those mysterious propaganda still photos, or risk very severe consequences.) The Clinton Administration, ironically, has granted asylum to a young African girl fleeing genital mutilation at her parents' hands, but it refuses to give Elian asylum from the threat of brain mutilation in Castro's Cuba.

No reporters are permitted to see Elian or videotape his situation because this might reveal the presence of a large contingent of armed Cuban secret police surrounding him and Juan Miguel's family. The Miami relatives were denied any access to Andrews Air Force Base, as was their ally, U.S. Senator Bob Smith (R., NH). Should Americans care if a U.S. Senator is prevented from entering this militarily sensitive US Air Force base, but Fidel Castro's secret police are given free run of the place by President Clinton's direct order? (Janet Reno has no authority to command policy on a military base, remember. Mr. Clinton cannot pretend that this responsibility is hers alone.)

So will Americans believe the free press photograph taken by Associated Press in Miami, asks New York Times columnist William Safire, or will they swallow the propaganda still photos created under the direction of Clinton & Castro mouthpiece Greg Craig and the Cuban secret police? Hey, lots of Americans enjoyed those old Stalinist propaganda images of smiling, dancing peasants who, we were told, loved and worshipped the glory of Marxism … and in our retro era here they come again to our morally numbed nation. Look into Elian's glazed eyes and repeat after me, "You are becoming forgetful, very forgetful that all those past photos of 'happy' Communists were lies concocted to put you to sleep or delude you."

Ask yourself if what you are being shown in those still photos is real, why has Clinton refused to allow any independent journalist who could be trusted by Cuban-Americans and the rest of us—Britt Hume of Fox News Channel, for example, or Cokie Roberts of ABC, or Chris Matthews of MSNBC/CNBC, or Tim Russert of NBC—to bring a film crew and talk with Elian and Juan Miguel?

Mr. Craig had sent letters to the national networks prior to the assault asking them not to broadcast any pictures of the seizure of Elian, that such images would "harm the boy." (Gee, what I-feel-your-pain concern from the man who commanded Reno to make a brutal assault that will give Elian a lifetime of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder nightmares, a "benign" assault, as the Washington Post editorially praised it.) CNN lived up to its nickname, accompanying the raid but broadcasting no images it videotaped of the Gestapo horror. New York Times reporter Don Van Natta, Jr., on Monday revealed that "some officials had urged Ms. Reno to allow the agents to take steps to prevent photographs from being taken." We may infer that Reno and the political appointees around her were afraid of images of her thugs attacking news people, or of turning even much of the liberal press against Clinton and Gore by heavy-handed censorship.

The establishment national media has, for the most part, deliberately concealed some pertinent facts about the Elian Gonzalez case from the American people. Allow me to remind you of a few of them:

· When Elian first arrived, the Clinton Administration initially agreed that his case would be resolved in Florida family courts. Only after Fidel Castro made a ranting speech demanding Elian's return did the Clintonoids act politically to jerk away the boy's right (as I noted here, a right also guaranteed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which the Clintons pretend to worship) to due process. It was Castro and Clinton who politicized this.

· When Elian arrived, the Immigration and Naturalization Service named his great uncle Lazaro Gonzalez his legal guardian. In this capacity, Lazaro as well as Elian himself applied for asylum. As veteran Judge Andrew Napolitano has observed, under federal law and INS regulations, once such an asylum claim is filed, the INS and Justice Department lose all power to remove the original guardian. If they could do this, the government could deny any asylum application a fair hearing merely by assigning a new and unfriendly guardian to his case. Be very, very clear about this. By law, therefore, Lazaro Gonzalez remains Elian's legal guardian … no matter what illegal papers Janet Reno files.

· Sometime before Elian's early-May day in court, the Clinton Administration will declare that Juan Miguel or some other pro-Castro figure has become Elian's legal guardian and now legally speaks for "the boy." (They use "the boy" rather than Elian's name to minimize him and make him appear a mere appendage of adults—even after the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that Elian could apply for asylum in his own right.) You will then be told that this new guardian—or perhaps Elian himself, although he will never be permitted to speak freely—has withdrawn his application for asylum. This, like everything else from the Clinton Administration, will be a lie. Even if Elian, under drugs or duress, could be coerced into signing such a document, it would be irrelevant. The asylum application by his legal guardian Lazaro still has standing and requires adjudication before the courts.

· If it appears that Elian will be granted due process, then get ready to be told—as former New York Congressman John LeBoutillier predicts—that the only attorney who will be permitted to represent Elian in court is Greg Craig or some other Clinton-designated Castroid.

· Or even more likely, expect to turn on the news and hear that Elian has been flown back to Havana in defiance of the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals order that he remain here. Bill Clinton and Al Gore would rather brazen out yet another of their thousands of acts of lawbreaking than to risk the boy winning in court—or the court ordering medical tests that would reveal that Elian had been doped up, given a memory-erasing drug, electro-shocked, or tortured by the Cuban secret police.

· Elian, with a court case pending in early May, is now systematically being denied access to his legal guardian, to his attorneys, and to independent psychologists and others who need to be developing evidence in his case. This sequestering of Elian away from people with a legal right to see him is itself a violation of his right to due process. It is more clear evidence that the "fix" is in and that no law or court order or constitutional right will be permitted to prevent or delay Elian from being sent back to a Cuban dictatorship that has already declared him a "possession" of the state, not of the father.

· (For the record, Juan Miguel divorced Elian's mother two years before the boy was born, never re-married her, never paid child support, slept with other women, and was not named as the father on Elian's original birth certificate. Juan Miguel, one day after learning that Elian's mother drowned trying to bring him to freedom, had a new birth certificate issued, that she could no longer contest, naming himself as Elian's father—and it is this newly minted birth certificate the INS relies upon to declare him the father. A family court, where the standard is what is best for Elian, could have weighed sworn testimony about Juan Miguel's violence and character, and whether merely sending any child to the Cuban dictatorship, with its nightmare record of human-rights violations, inherently constitutes intolerable child abuse. An Elian trial would put Castro and Cuba on trial. But if re-enslaved in Cuba, Elian will be required to do more than embrace Castro and Marxism. As veteran Seattle talk radio star Tom Isenberg noted on my Monday radio show, Elian will be forced in this Orwellian dictatorship to denounce his family in Miami and to denounce as a traitor the mother who died trying to bring him to freedom. This is "family values" Clinton–Gore–Castro style.)

· The Clinton–Gore Administration justified its extreme use of force in seizing Elian by the opinion of one pediatrician who had never seen the boy and who has no credentials as a psychologist or psychiatrist. This doctor, nevertheless, pronounced Elian a "hostage" of his loving relatives in Miami and urged immediate action to "rescue" him. It now turns out that this doctor making claims far beyond his expertise was a key member of Hillary Clinton's secret (and hence under federal law, illegal) task force dedicated to socializing all of American medicine. NBC at first demonstrated incompetence by putting this doctor on its Today show without revealing his background or bias—and, after his lack of credibility was widely published, NBC disgraced all of journalism by continuing to interview him as an expert even after Elian had been seized at gunpoint. This doctor, whose last name is pronounced "red-leaner," has not denounced the holding of Elian incommunicado with the free press locked out as a "hostage" situation. And the national media have almost entirely ignored the assessment of independent psychologists—including ones hired by ABC and MSNBC—that the boy should not have been removed by force from his Miami family. Such is the slanted, distorted propaganda Americans are being fed.

· To her great credit, Cokie Roberts of ABC on Sunday interviewed Senator Bob Graham, who prior to Elian's seizure was on the short list to be chosen Vice President Al Gore's VP. A senator and former governor from Florida, Graham would have given Gore a good shot at winning this key state. But Sen. Graham told Roberts that three weeks earlier Bill Clinton had promised him personally that Elian would never be seized in a nighttime assault, that Cuban-Americans could sleep without such fear. Graham was shaken at how (like all other Americans) he had been lied to by the Administration. He also noted that his five-year-old grandchild was visiting for Easter and, upon seeing the news photograph of the storm trooper with gun aimed at Elian, had in fear asked him: "Grandpa, are they going to come and take me away like that, too?" Cokie Roberts did not recount what Senator Graham said to his grandchild. The ugly truth is, when Nazism of the Bill Clinton–Al Gore variety takes control, no one is safe anymore. As one Cuban-American hand-lettered protest sign said on Saturday, "Wake up, America! This could happen to you!"

· Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic candidate for president, was careful to stay "out of the loop" and away from the press while the Elian issue heated to boiling point. Gore knows that Janet Reno is mentally unstable—taking as she does for her Parkinson's Disease the drug Sinemet, which as attorney Jack Thompson has written, can produce potential side effects that include "hallucinations, paranoia, severe depression, sleeplessness, confusion, nausea and dehydration." Gore, hedging against the risk that on Clinton's orders Reno might create "Waco II: Inferno Sequel," cleverly fuzzed up his own position and snuggled up as close to the Elian pronouncements of his opponent Texas Gov. George W. Bush as he could. Even on Saturday, Gore continued to say that Elian's case should have been decided in Florida family court. But Gore, like Republican leaders in congress, has not lifted a finger to protect Elian's rights. On Saturday, Gore was busy celebrating his "High Holy Day," as Jay Leno called Gore's pagan worship of the Earth Mother goddess. But was Gore genuinely celebrating the 30th Anniversary of Earth Day or the 130th birthday of Lenin, Marxist founder of the extinct Soviet Union? It reveals all we need to know about the environmental movement that its commissars set Earth Day on Lenin's 100th birthday.

· So why is Clinton willing to violate the law, human rights, and morality to railroad this one six-year-old back into slavery? The political wizard who re-elected Clinton–Gore in 1996, Dick Morris, suspects that Clinton is terrified by Castro's threat of a new Mariel boatlift just prior to the November elections that would defeat Gore. I prefer my analysis of two weeks ago here that Castro, after Clinton and Gore's massive 1996 campaign fundraising from drug dealers in Havana, is able to blackmail both. Ask yourself this: Castro is crazy (or do you think a 73 year old who wears a phony Hollywood military getup like some 1930s banana-republic junta jefe could be sane?) and, like Reno, is far more in need of psychiatric evaluation than Elian is. But although nuts, Castro is not stupid. Would he really prefer a Republican congress and president than Democrats and an Al Gore he can control through blackmail? A new Mariel boatlift would elect Republicans. If Castro is putting a gun to his own head and threatening political suicide if he isn't given Elian, I'd tell him to pull the trigger. But Dick Morris believes Clinton remains so traumatized by his experience as Arkansas governor with a Marielito problem that he will do anything Castro commands. He will not call Castro's bluff. And, hey, Clinton secretly shares Castro's Marxist ideology anyway, so why not let Fidel take over our air bases and our government?

· But imagine that you are a Cuban-American. Your nation was betrayed by an American media (especially the New York Times) depiction of Castro as an "agrarian reformer" deserving our support. Your relatives were murdered, your family property stolen. More relatives were murdered when John F. Kennedy withdrew his promised air support even as your freedom fighters were landing at the Bay of Pigs, set up to be massacred and betrayed by yet another lying Democratic president. But you make it to the United States, to Miami, and you tell your children that this is not Communist Cuba, that their door will not be kicked in during the night by Gestapo thugs at the command of Fidel Castro. And then comes Saturday, April 22, 2000, and the door of that modest, honest home in Miami is kicked in and Elian is seized at gunpoint by Gestapo thugs because of the command of Fidel Castro.

Circle this date on your calendar, my friends, and remember it well. This is the day America died as a free country, the day Castro and the Communists officially took control here. I would like to say that it will be remembered as such in history—but history is written by the winners, and will be written by the Castroids. The only place the memory of freedom might remain is in your mind and heart—but most of you are willing to let Elian go off into slavery. Hey, father's rights. Sperm is thicker than water. Hey, the kid has dark hair, speaks Spanish, and is an illegal immigrant. Flush him. And anyway, we're fat and happy and don't want to do anything that might rock the boat. As you leave the bathroom take a quick sideways glance at yourself in the mirror. That mark you just glimpsed forming on your upper arm … is it a shadow, or a swastika taking shape, or a number soon to be tattooed when you are ordered to join Elian in the concentration camp? Most Germans became accomplices by their acquiescence. Are you one of them?

 Mr. Ponte hosts a national radio talk show M-F 2-4 PM EDT and Saturdays 9 PM-Midnight EDT that can be heard live via TalkRadioNetwork.com. His live show's call-in number is 1-800-876-4123. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader's Digest. Click here to send him a message.

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