Word: podhurst
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...Reno who set the deadlines for a deal--first 2 a.m., then 3 a.m. and finally an hour later--and it was Reno who kept letting them slip. At 4 a.m. Reno told Podhurst, "We're out of time." But when he came back 20 minutes later begging for time, she gave him five more minutes to work something out. When the five-minute deadline came and went, Reno told Podhurst his time was up, but she remained on the phone, not talking but on hold while Podhurst tried to get the family lawyers to wake up Lazaro and change...
...even Reno may not have realized was that the mediators weren't dealing only with the Gonzalez clan: they wanted the blessing of the Cuban-American leaders too, so there would be no picketing or problems. "We wanted everyone to be able to leave the family alone," says Aaron Podhurst, one of the mediators and a longtime Miami lawyer who has been a friend of Reno's for 30 years...
...Podhurst claims that he felt they were very close to a deal as late as 3 a.m., and that it was Reno who suddenly balked. The neutral safe house would have to be around Washington, she said, not Miami. Even if he could get the family and the lawyers to agree, he was worried about the Cuban-American leaders. "They couldn't wake everyone up to ask them if they would accept moving the safe house to outside of Florida," he says. "I had the Attorney General on hold while I was talking to [family lawyer] Manny Diaz. And then...
...could see she was very anguished. You could see the pain," says one of those in the room. So she told the negotiators, "Time has run out," gave INS chief Doris Meissner the go sign, and the wheels of Operation Reunion began to roll. "I was shocked," says Podhurst. "I think we could have worked...
...Before government agents seized Elian Gonzalez last Saturday, Miami attorney Aaron Podhurst, who was negotiating with the family, asked Attorney General Janet Reno for six more minutes. Instead, Reno gave...