Word: reno
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
What 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...
...Miami president Tad Foote, proposed a cooling-off period: both sides of the family would repair to a neutral retreat until the appeals process concluded, where Elian would be allowed to make a gentle transition from his new home to his old. The idea made some sense to Reno, but she had two conditions: first, Elian had to be put immediately into his father's custody, and a deal had to be inked fast. Reno told the go-betweens that if they couldn't work out the details overnight, there would be no deal...
Just before 5 p.m., Reno was sufficiently encouraged to brief Clinton on the deal. By midnight the feds had put a nine-point plan on the table: Lazaro and his family would hand over Elian to the government at 3:30 a.m. at the federal courthouse in Miami; the family would be put up at a hotel under guard and driven the next day to Washington. (The relatives claimed they didn't want Elian to fly. Justice officials assumed someone else in the family had a fear of flying, but agreed to chauffeur them to Washington anyway.) Once in Washington...
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...
When 4 a.m. rolled around, Reno had hit the wall. Huddled in her small inner office, she polled all her top advisers: they were unanimous. "You 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...