“All of you are going to have to get over it. I’m not–I’m not taking any questions right now. I’ve got a prepared statement here, so I will brief you all on the facts as we know them at this point in time. Yesterday evening, at approximately 11pm, in accordance with Attorney General Reno’s announcement on Friday, agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service attempted to extract the minor child, Elian Gonzalez, from the residence of his uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez. As part of the extraction team, two armored personnel carriers carrying a Border Patrol Tactical team were sent for the purposes of crowd control and personnel transport. The armored personnel carriers were in the advance position in the extraction column, followed by several conventional vehicles and two civilian vehicles, white, late model Chrysler minivans. The minivans were there for the purposes of transporting the boy, Elian Gonzales, and any members of the extended family who may have wished to come. Upon arrival at the Gonzalez residence, the extraction team encountered a group of protesters that was substantially larger than our intelligence suggested or that we anticipated. Our intelligence, which was fresh, and given to us by reliable sources, suggested a crowd of no more than one hundred persons. When the extraction team arrived, at least five hundred persons were surrounding the house and blocking our way. As the extraction team attempted to secure a path to the residence, the crowd, many of whom appeared to be intoxicated, continued to grow, and became more aggressive in their efforts to block the extraction team. The APCs and our agents were pelted with dangerous debris, including stones and glass bottles. As one of our agents attempted to exit one of the APCs, one individual, Wilfredo Flores, became very confrontational and attempted to grab the weapon of the agent in question. In an attempt to ensure the safety of both the civilians in the crowd and our agents, the agent in question was forced to fire upon Mr. Flores, which did, in fact, result in his death. At that point, seeing that the BORTAC unit was greatly outnumbered, and in an attempt to prevent further loss of life or injury, the Special Agent in charge of the operation made the decision to abort. The other two deaths were unrelated to the actions of our agents. One of the decedents, an elderly woman, died of an apparent cardiac arrest. The other decedent appears to have been trampled by the mob itself…”
—--Robert Wallis, Miami District Director of the INS, speaking at a press conference the morning of Sunday, April 9th, 2000.
“Bullshit. If Ricardo was trampled, how come there was tire tracks on his shirt?”
—--Adoncia Alvarez-Ortiz, widow of Ricardo Alvarez-Ortiz, April 10th, 2000.
“But for all the folks talking about lawlessness, talking about mob rule, you’ve gotta ask yourselves, where would this crowd have been in 1775? Which side would they have been on then? Because it’s a patriot’s duty to resist tyranny, and I don’t know how much more tyrannical you can get than sending a bunch of jackbooted thugs–and that’s what Reno’s goons are, people–into a quiet residential neighborhood to kidnap a little boy and pack him off to Castro’s Cuba! The whole operation stinks! You’ve got the Justice Department claiming that Mr. Alvarez was trampled, but every witness on the scene says that he was run over like a dog in the street.
And now–now–we’ve got the memo! We don’t know the identity of the leaker yet, but we now know, for a fact, that Juan-Miguel Gonzalez applied for a visa. A lottery visa. Which is proof positive, dear listeners, that the father is now being coerced! Of course, I don’t have to tell most of you that. Most of my listeners have the good sense to know that Castro’s–let me repeat–that CASTRO'S not on the level! But if any of you, out there in America, if any of you had any doubts in your heart—it’s time to open your eyes!”
—--Rush Limbaugh, April 12th, 2000.
"Russert: General Reno, suffice it to say, it’s been a tumultuous week. Last Saturday, we had the aborted raid–
Reno: Extraction operation.
Russert: –to secure Elian Gonzalez. On Monday, we had the leak of the Meissner memo. Every day since, we’ve seen huge demonstrations and widespread, if intermittent, rioting in Miami. On Friday, Doris Meissner, head of the INS, resigned, something that many on the right were calling for. The head of the Miami District Office of the INS, Robert Wallis, also resigned, and there have been calls for your resignation as well. We’ve seen attacks on federal property in the Miami area, and to top it all off, Elian Gonzalez is still in the custody of his Miami relatives. What’s the next move?
Reno: Right now, we’re doing everything we can to reunite Juan-Miguel Gonzalez, at least for the purposes of visitation, with Elian. He’s been in the country for ten days at this point, and he’s been separated from his son for almost five months now. That’s our highest priority.
Russert: Then why hasn’t there been another attempt to extract him?
Reno: We want to reunite them safely. With the unrest in the city right now, we don’t believe that would be the wisest option in terms of safety.
Russert: Well, if safety is the priority, why send in the SWAT team at all?
Reno: At the time that decision was made, we felt that we had reached an impasse with the family, and the extraction operation was the quickest and safest way to resolve it. We still believe, had news of the operation not been leaked to elements of the Exile community, that would have been the case.
Russert: And do you know the identity of the leaker? When this is coupled with the leaking of the Meissner memo, it seems like you've got a serious problem with leaks at the DO--
Reno: We’re conducting a full investigation as we speak, Tim. I can’t give details on an ongoing investigation.
Russert: --at the DOJ. You cited the civil unrest as the reason that there hasn’t been another attempt to extract Elian. There have been reports that the Miami police have turned a blind eye to some of the attacks on Federal property–is the Department of Justice, or the Federal Government more broadly, going to do anything to restore law and order to the city of Miami?
Reno: All options are on the table at the moment.
Russert: Does that include federalizing the National Guard?
Reno: Well right now, this is still a state matter. We’ve been in contact with Governor Bush, and as of yet, he hasn’t made the decision to send in the National Guard.
Russert: But President Clinton can go over his head and federalize the National Guard–
Reno: And right now, he’s given the latitude to the Governor of Florida, Governor Bush, to make that call, as to whether to deploy the Guard. I can’t speculate as to how much longer the President is going to let Governor Bush continue to have that latitude, but for now that's the situation.
Russert: Moving on to the Meissner memo. In that document, which is a summary of a conference call between INS employees, including Meissner, written by INS attorney Rebecca Sanchez-Roig, we apparently have the INS discussing the Elian situation back in December. It says here--and let me quote--'it appears that the father had made application (potentially lottery) to depart Cuba,' intimating, of course, that Juan-Miguel is now being coerced into saying that he wants to stay in Cuba. Now, I'm going to put a graphic of the memo up on screen here--you can see in the corner there that someone has handwritten on the typed memo that the document should be destroyed. Before her resignation, but after the leak of the memo, Director Meissner said that INS could find no record of a visa application from Juan-Miguel Gonzalez. Many in the Republican Party are calling this evidence of a cover up. What say you, General Reno?"
-----Tim Russert and Janet Reno, Sunday, April 16th, on
Meet the Press
Robert Wallis, April 14th, 2000 immediately after resignation.
Roberts: ...and later, for our roundtable dicussion, EJ Dionne, Mary Matalin, and George Will, join Sam and I to discuss the entrance of talk-radio firebrand Bob Grant into the New Jersey Senate race--on the Reform Party ticket--and the ongoing unrest in Miami. But first, Miami Mayor Joe Carollo joins us live from Miami this morning.
Mayor Carollo, good to have you with us.
Carollo: Good to be here, Cokie.
Roberts: Mayor Carollo, we've received numerous disturbing reports that the Miami Police Department has been, in essence, turning a blind eye to the destruction of Federal property by predominantly Cuban-American rioters in the city of Miami.
Carollo: False. Totally false. And I have to correct you there, Cokie. It's not Cubans rioting in Miami, and I wouldn't even call it riots--
Roberts: You haven't? What do you call it?
Carollo: We've had demonstrations! And these demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful, Cokie. There has been some looting, opportunistic looting, where the police have been stretched so thin attending to the demonstrations. And not in Cuban neighborhoods, either. You're seeing this looting in all the usual places. Liberty City, Little Haiti...and we wouldn't even be having these demonstrations if it wasn't for the actions of Clinton and Reno. And, listen, I'm going to tell you--at risk to myself, because there have been threats--what we've really got here, the problem in Miami, we've got an out of control federal law enforcement, killing loyal, freedom-loving citizens in our streets.
Roberts: Threats, Mayor Carollo?
Carollo: Absolutely. It's a disgrace. And down here in Miami, we've practically been abandoned by the media and by the national politicians. Everyone's talking about law and order in Miami. But it's not the people of Miami who are killing federal agents--
Roberts: Now, according to former Director Wallis and the Department of Justice--
Carollo: --BUT FEDERAL AGENTS WHO ARE KILLING US! You want to start with law and order, you start in Washington DC, with Reno and Clinton! The Gangsters-in-Chief!
Roberts: Mayor Carollo, Mayor Carollo. Please. Ah, prior to the raid last Sunday, you and Mayor Penelas--for our viewers who are unfamiliar, Penelas is Mayor of Miami-Dade County, you're the Mayor of the City of Miami--you both vowed that you would not aid federal efforts to secure Elian Gonzalez. Some are saying that decision directly led to the tragic situation and loss of life that we all witnessed. If there is another attempt, another raid, would you reconsider your stance with respect to allowing the Miami police to assist federal law enforcement?
Carollo: I'm going to have to correct you again, Cokie, because the INS never advised us that they were going to try and seize Elian.
Roberts: But you had already publicly vowed that you wouldn't allow the Miami PD to assist them in any way--
Carollo: Please. If they had valued the lives of our community, they would have reached out to my office. Even if I would not assist them, I could still take steps to make our community safe.
Roberts: You say you feel abandoned by the national politicians. But up until this past week, most of the national Republican Party has been very supportive of the position of the Cuban-American community here.
Carollo: And when things got tough--in Spanish, we have an expression: amigos de conveniencia. Friends of convenience. When it was convenient for them, when they needed our votes, they were very supportive. But now the primaries are over, and where are they? The only national politician who has stood by us, even when there wasn't a primary? Donald Trump! And he's not even a Republican!"
Cokie Roberts and Mayor Joe Carollo, Sunday, April 16th, on
This Week With Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts
Miami was burning, the Republican Party was locked in the longest, most bitter primary battle since 1976, and a third party candidate was polling within striking distance of the major party candidates. And with all that, John Kennedy, the hottest magazine publisher in the country, was struggling to get a decent cover story for June.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
He’d had a sit down with McCain planned since just after Super Tuesday–when McCain won California, New York, and the rest of New England–and turned this thing into a real race. Way back then, they’d agreed to a date in mid-April. For reasons the RNC had no doubt come to regret, they had scheduled a month-long break in the primary calendar. Between the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin primaries on April 4th and a trio of primaries–Indiana, North Carolina, and DC–on May 2nd, no contests, conventions, or caucuses took place. During what was some of the best campaigning weather in the country, the only thing to occupy the candidates was the hot air they blew at one another and the slow avalanche of bad luck and trouble that was the Elian Gonzalez saga. It was a recipe for turning an already contentious primary into a blood feud.
For now, McCain was ahead in the delegate count by three or four whiskers. How long that would last was anyone’s guess. Of the fifteen nominating contests scheduled between May 2nd and June 6th, McCain was favored to win exactly one–the DC primary–with its fifteen delegates. The polling showed McCain as competitive in Indiana, and though Kennedy hadn’t seen any polling out of Jersey, it seemed like a state where McCain might do well. Aside from that, the month of May was the Heart of Darkness for the Straight Talk Express. States like Arkansas, Kansas, and Kentucky dominated the calendar; places where McCain’s rebuke of the Religious Right was unlikely to win him many friends among the voters, or influence among the people who told the voters how to vote. There was a chance–becoming more and more likely with each passing day–that McCain would end the primary season as the Republican candidate with the most votes but not the most delegates. Deep in the dogfight with Bush for the hearts and minds of Middle America, McCain had decided that a
George cover would do him more harm than good at the moment.
“I’m going to have to put you off, John,” McCain had said to Kennedy, after he’d already ducked him for three rounds of phone tag.
Even when the guy was flip-flopping, he was a straight talker. “I’ll get square with you after June. It’s the best I can do.
George is too hot right now–the goddamn Looney Tunes contingent is still up in arms about the Castro interview, for Christ’s sake, you know how many Cubans there are in New Jersey?”
Kennedy leaned forward at his desk, massaging his eyeballs, trying to keep the tension out of his voice. “You’re not putting me in a good position here. We’ve had this lined up for a
month. The Castro interview was already out when you agreed to do it.”
“Well that was before Miami had turned into the goddamned state of nature, wasn’t it?” said McCain. “Things change.”
After the night of the failed raid, whole sections of Miami had descended into violence and chaos, first as demonstrations, then as riots. They were the largest civil disturbances in America since the LA Riots back in ‘92. More than one Post Office had been firebombed, and several windows had been shot out of the Federal Building on Brickell–a section of the city that was somewhat adjacent to Little Havana. “I’ve got a magazine to put out. The interview’s a regular feature. I’m supposed to get an in-depth lined up and ready to go in what, a week? Two weeks?”
“Well I’ve got a fucking nomination to secure! This is the
presidency we’re talking about. Get some fucking perspective.”
That was rich. Kennedy made a noise that was somewhere between a sigh, a groan, and a growl. “Listen, give me a date. When do you want to reschedule?”
“We can always do it in August,” said McCain, a sly smile coming through his voice on the telephone line.
“So it runs
after the convention? Gimme a break. The last primary’s on the 6th. That’s a Tuesday. How about that Friday?”
McCain agreed and they said their goodbyes. Once he heard the line go click on McCain’s end, he slammed the receiver down in the outburst of private, petulant rage that had been building for the entire conversation. In the process, he managed to–somehow–tweak his neck, and a spasm of pain froze him in asymmetrical lurch. It was always like this. Even in the moments when his mind had wandered from the crash, his body missed no opportunity to make him remember.
Luckily, he had a bottle half full of Oxycontin in his desk drawer.
He popped a few back and tried to figure out what he was going to do while he waited for the pain to dull.
There were three people who might end up as President in November–Gore, Bush, or McCain. (Although, if you wanted to be generous and throw Trump in the mix, Kennedy supposed that there was an outside chance that there might be four.) McCain had already backed out of his interview, and if he thought
George was too controversial for the base, then that probably went double for Bush. As far as Gore went, it seemed vaguely disrespectful to ask the sitting Vice President to understudy for McCain on short notice. McCain might not even get the nomination, after all. Gore already had the nomination of
his party sewn up.
Plus, Gore wasn’t even good copy.
His policy platform was so unambitious that his slogan might as well have been
Gore 2000: Nothing to See Here, Folks. And while the same thing could have probably been said about Clinton, at least Clinton’s personality and proneness to scandal were engaging enough to make you forget about it. Gore was best known for having a wife who slapped warning labels on rock records. He seemed to be striving mightily to be the Democratic Party’s answer to Bob Dole; the living embodiment of the word “staid.”
There was a reason why, even in the two-way polls, that Gore’s numbers liked to hang out in the high thirties, and it wasn’t because of a huge contingent of undecideds. If a man was trying to sell magazines– and John Kennedy
was trying to sell magazines–there were few ways to make it harder on himself than to slap Al Gore’s face on the cover.
That left Trump as a possible substitute, but Kennedy knew Trump and he didn’t take him or his run particularly seriously. There wasn’t much
there there, and what was there, Kennedy didn’t particularly like. Everything was a pissing contest with Donald, even when no one was contesting anything. About a year ago, he’d found himself sitting next to Trump at a Knicks game–one of the many times in his life he’d inadvertently found himself in the same room as the man who Graydon Carter, now a colleague at Conde Nast, had memorably referred to as a “short-fingered vulgarian.” All night, Trump had tried to make bets with him about which one of them could pick up the most cheerleaders–despite the fact that John was married and trying to politely ignore him the whole time.
But even if John
had wanted to politely ignore Trump’s run for office, Donald was going to make it difficult–just as he had at the Knicks game. These days, Trump was polling in the twenties, well on track to match Perot’s numbers from ‘92. Add to that the fact that Trump seemed to have a savant-like quality to say things that were both controversial and popular, and it made it nearly unavoidable that
George was going to have to devote many thousands of words to his run.
Just not necessarily in the June issue.
The Trumps had always had a middling-to-bad reputation in New York. Fred Trump, the family patriarch, had always been a little too comfortable flouting the landlord/slumlord line to ever be Manhattan respectable, and Donald, an inveterate daddy’s boy if there ever was one, had a driving pathology to be even brasher, tougher, and more hard nosed than his father was perceived to be. In the world of upper class New York in the 80s and 90s, that added up to a guy who was always bragging at parties about head-to-heads with aging mobsters and nickel and diming people whenever he could get away with it. It was not behavior likely to endear one to the New York aristocracy–they preferred their exploitation performed from a plausibly deniable distance and converted into numerical abstractions. Stiffing plumbing contractors was too gauche for the mahogany and leather set at the Century Club, and gossiping about it was even worse. So while there was plenty of rumor and innuendo in the air, it was all light on details.
When John covered Trump, he didn’t want the coverage to be light. He didn’t want the people to have to read between the lines. He wanted the people reading the coverage to get the feeling of what it was like to be in a room with Donald Trump–the boorishness, the narcissism, the incipient megalomania, the feeling that somehow, he was on the verge of sucking all the oxygen from the space. He couldn’t do that justice in the space of a week or two.
Donald would have to wait.
The Oxys were finally starting to kick in, and the rhythm of phones ringing and keyboards clacking in the offices and cubicles outside began to coalesce into an ambient beat.
He leaned back in his chair and squeezed his stress ball back and forth.
A plan was coming together.
“Rosie!” he yelled. Rosemarie Terenzio was John’s fierce and diminutive executive assistant–more a right hand than secretary. She’d kept
George going before the crash, and now he leaned on her more than ever. When his leg was acting up, sometimes literally. “McCain just bailed. See if you can get me Jesse Ventura’s phone number.”
Ventura, the former pro-wrestler-cum-Minnesota governor, was affiliated with the Reform Party, and, like McCain and Trump, had a reputation for shooting off at the mouth and attacking the entrenched “interests” who were pulling the strings of American democracy. He’d been a big booster of Trump’s all season, and Kennedy suspected that Trump would tap him for VP when the time came. An interview with him might be a way to softly check some of the same boxes as a McCain or Trump interview without shooting his wad too early.
While Kennedy waited for Rosie to work her magic, he put in a call to John Dougherty down in Phoenix. Dougherty was the reporter who’d helped him out on short notice with the Arpaio piece. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Kennedy remembered that Dougherty had broken the Keating Five story.
John McCain was one-fifth of the Keating Five.
“Straight-Talk Express, Dougherty: buy or sell?” asked Kennedy after they’d said their preliminaries.
“Oh, God.” Dougherty gave a weary laugh. “Hard sell.”
“Reasoning?”
“Because it’s bullshit, man.” Dougherty’s voice sounded like a shrug. “John freaking McCain, of all people, talking about money corrupting politics… It’s like a pawnbroker complaining about banks ripping people off.”
“Does this go back to Keating?”
“It goes back to Keating-the-guy. ‘
It’ goes back before the scandal.”
“In what way?” said Kennedy.
“Alright, Keating Five scandal. Charlie Keating, investor and impresario, has been using granny’s money down at the savings and loan as his own personal marker for years–taking stakes in all kinds of risky ventures. Illegal as hell, of course. By ‘87, ‘88, the regulators are onto him, and Keating wants them to piss off. So Keating gets his five pet Senators to go down to the bank regulators and tells them to knock it off. The regulators don't like being intimidated, and the shitstorm ensues. McCain’s big cover-your-ass excuse for the whole thing was that he was just a baby senator at the time. Only been in office a few months, blah blah. The thing is, McCain had been in Washington for
years before then. He’d been in the House since ‘82, and back then, he was Charlie Keating’s
boy. Keating cut him in, to the tune of two, three hundred thousand on the same kind of development deal that made the savings and loan go belly-up. He had the keys to Keating’s vacation homes–”
“Gotcha,” said Kennedy. He’d heard enough to make his decision. “I’ve got an interview scheduled with McCain for the 9th of June. It’s going to be the cover, and since he might be the nominee by that point, I want this to be meatier than just an interview.” Kennedy hadn’t planned for it to be a heavy-hitter, not before McCain had put him off, but as John McCain himself had said–
things change. “I want you to partner with me on it. You broke Keating Five, you’ve been covering Arizona politics for years… There’s literally no one better, maybe anywhere in the world, to work with on this. You’ll get a byline on the piece, of course, along with me.”
“Well…”
“Yeah?” said Kennedy.
“How much?”
Kennedy didn’t feel like haggling, and the Oxys were making him feel generous. “We’ll shoot for 5,000 words. We go over, we go over. Let’s say 75–no– 80 cents a word.” If staff writers at alt-weeklies in Phoenix made anything like what they made in New York, that was probably more than Dougherty made in a month. He didn’t wait for Dougherty to say yes. “If you can give me some preliminary research by the end of this week, I’ll have my EA, Rosemarie, call you and set up a time next week for us to work up an outline.”
“This week?”
“If you deal with McCain the same way you deal with Arpaio, you’ve probably already got a dossier. Just give me some good bullet points on the Arizona stuff. I’ve already got a decent handle on his campaign now, and I’ll have my people here see what they can find out about what he’s been up to in Washington. We gotta deal?”
Of course they did.
