By Michael J. Sniffen, Associated Press, 04/27/00
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department has spent more than $578,000 on the Elian Gonzalez case, including Saturday's raid, since the 6-year-old Cuban boy was plucked from the Atlantic Ocean last Thanksgiving, officials said Thursday.
The most recent Miami city cost figures were $1 million through last Thursday, two days before the raid and the street disorders it set off. Nearly 80 percent of that was for police overtime.
At her weekly news conference Thursday, Attorney General Janet Reno said the Border Patrol agents, who carried automatic weapons on the early morning raid, "had to be in force.'' As reasons, she cited the hostile crowd of Cuban exiles outside and the family, which had stopped saying it would stand aside and had "started talking in the last days about `you're going to have to use force to take the child'.''
"There had to be a show of force, not a use of force, to show that we were in control,'' Reno said.
Elian's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez and his family, who cared for the boy for five months, had refused to obey federal orders to turn him over his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who had come from Cuba to retrieve him.
A senior Justice official also has said four or five men acting as bodyguards for the family had permits to carry concealed weapons, there were reports of guns in a house behind Lazaro's, and Lazaro's daughter, Marisleysis Gonzalez, warned a federal official that "there are more than cameras in the house.''
Reno knew photographers were present to record the raid. The American people "don't like the picture any more than I do,'' Reno said referring to an Associated Press photo of a uniformed agent holding an automatic weapon near an obviously frightened Elian.
"They don't like the thought of having to take a little boy to his father in this fashion any more than I do,'' Reno said. "It may not be the prettiest thing in the world, but it is effective.''
But law enforcement experience "demonstrates that the show of force does so much to protect life, rather than harm life,'' Reno said.
Preliminary Justice Department figures, through Monday, showed the largest spending was $374,000 for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. That included the cost of training and housing 131 immigration agents who participated in the raid and Elian's government airplane flight to Washington and the airplane that would have taken Lazaro Gonzalez to Washington had he agreed to a peaceful transfer.
U.S. marshals, who provided 20 deputies for the raid and security for Elian's father in Washington since April 6 and the entire family since Saturday, spent $161,000.
Justice's Community Relations Service spent $25,000 on mediators and conciliators who worked to calm the crowd and to set up negotiating sessions with the family.
U.S. attorneys in Miami and Atlanta and Justice's civil division spent a combined $18,000 on legal work.
The figures included overtime but not regular salaries which would have been paid anyway. They also included copying costs and expenses for psychiatric consultants.
Justice was awaiting a Defense Department bill for the three nights Juan Miguel Gonzalez' family spent at Andrew Air Force Base. The Pentagon said Thursday that would total $540.
At 4 a.m. Saturday and even after that, Reno told Aaron Podhurst, a Miami lawyer who served as an intermediary with her during last-ditch negotiations, that they were "out of time.''
She ordered the raid then because "this seemed to be the safest time possible.''
"There were very few people outside the house,'' Reno said. "If we did not go, people were sure to find out that we were prepared to go, and the crowd would gather and keep a vigil and make it more difficult for the future.''
