By Donna St. George and Jennifer Lenhart
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday , April 23, 2000 ; A21

The world's most watched custody battle, over Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, suddenly swept into Washington yesterday
morning, delivering all the political intrigue and family rancor of the past five months to the region where the boy's father has
been waiting.

Before the afternoon's end, Elian was reunited with his father at Andrews Air Force Base--and his Miami relatives had
followed the 6-year-old to Washington on commercial flights: two great-uncles, his cousin, a family attorney and one of the
fishermen who rescued Elian off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving.

The Miami contingent, arriving at Reagan National Airport shortly before 4 p.m., met early in the evening with U.S. Sen.
Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) on Capitol Hill.

About 7 p.m., Smith escorted the relatives to Andrews Air Force Base, where in three vans they drove to the main gate to
request a meeting with Elian and his father. After being turned away, they circled back, parked in the lot of the Holiday Inn
Express across from the base and came out of the vans to call a news conference.

Almost instantly, Smith and the relatives were mobbed by about 150 anti-Castro protesters, gawkers and journalists who had
crowded in front of the gate. The relatives returned to their vans, but Smith stayed to chastise reporters.

"The press conference is off," he said. "The family had enough of this this morning. This is ridiculous. . . . This family is
distraught, and you're not helping matters."

The day's events may have set the stage for a new chapter in the battle over who will raise Elian.

Smith has become one of the family's most ardent supporters and has been meeting with the relatives since January, when he
was moved by a plea from Elian for his involvement. He said the family called him yesterday to seek his help in getting into
Andrews, help he was unable to provide.

Smith said he has been attempting to broker a meeting between both of Elian's families to give them a chance to meet on neutral
ground to settle the dispute themselves. But Smith said last night that he has met with considerable resistance. He was rebuffed
by the Justice Department yesterday, when he was told "in no uncertain terms that there would be no meeting soon," Smith
said.

The Justice Department "didn't say there would never be a meeting," Smith said, but he was discouraged by the response.

Smith lashed out at the government, calling the raid in Miami a "fiasco" that included pepper spray, tear gas and profanity-laced
commands. "I'm wondering whether I'm in Cuba or whether I'm in America," he said. "I'm just very disappointed in my
government right now."

The drama's move to Washington started before the sun rose in Miami, when armed federal agents raided the home of Elian's
great-uncle and spirited the child away to a secretly planned reunion with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who has been living
in a borrowed house in Bethesda for two weeks.

The father had been called shortly after the child was in federal custody, just after 5 a.m., and told that agents would pick him
up in 30 minutes to meet his son's plane. He left Bethesda in a white van--with his wife and infant son but no Cuban
diplomats--followed by two black vans filled with U.S. marshals.

At Andrews Air Force Base, reporters had started arriving at 6 a.m. to wait for Elian's plane.

By 8 a.m., so much traffic had backed up along surrounding roads--with the arrival of journalists, protesters and curiosity
seekers--that workers and residents had trouble getting to the base.

Elian's plane landed at 9:20 a.m.

The van that transported his father had arrived at a hangar near the runway, where several other vans with Immigration and
Naturalization Service officials were waiting. The plane taxied into the hangar, the hangar doors were closed, and in rare
privacy, Elian's father boarded the plane.

Gregory B. Craig, the father's attorney, said Gonzalez lifted the boy from the plane and carried him out, Elian hugging his father.

The family was escorted into visitors' quarters on the base, a cluster of small homes with grassy lawns, intersected by bike
paths. Once inside the transitional home--where Elian played with his 6-month-old half-brother, Hianny--his father signed
papers and photographs were taken of a seemingly happy boy.

Plans were made for the family to spend a couple of days at Andrews and then find a new refuge from the glare of public
scrutiny at Wye Plantation, a secluded conference center in the quiet Eastern Shore town of Wye Mills.

But through the day, protesters were mobilizing, growing in their number and in their fury. Demonstrations had started--large in
Miami and smaller in Washington--and questions were being asked about the government's tactics.

How could it be right, detractors asked, to steal away a boy at gunpoint--just before the holy celebration of Easter?

About 70 Cuban Americans gathered outside the Justice Department at noon, carrying mini-posters showing the photograph of
a frightened Elian being confronted by a gun-toting INS agent in Miami. They raised placards with such reprimands as:
"Custody Is Never Resolved By Force" and "Elian Came on Thanksgiving and Was Betrayed on Holy Saturday."

"They trampled the Constitution. This is much more than Elian. They're breaking the Fourth Amendment," said Rafael Madan
Sr., of Oakton, who attended the demonstration with his wife and son.

At Andrews Air Force Base, Jose Montero, of Atlanta, who said he was with the Alliance to Free Elian Gonzalez, called for
reconciliation. "We hope there will be a meeting between the families to work out their differences," he said, milling with
demonstrators and carrying a bullhorn about 5 p.m. and asking for calm.

But others were less forgiving.

At National Airport in the afternoon, about 70 anti-Castro demonstrators lined a road, locking arms and chanting, "Libertad,
Libertad," as the van carrying Elian's Miami relatives passed. Cuban flags fluttered in the crowd, as did a Peruvian flag borne by
Francisco Amado, of Alexandria, who said he was there "to show solidarity with the Cubans."

Among Cuban Americans in the region, the latest turn in Elian's story--which started when his mother died while making the
perilous journey with Elian to the United States by sea across the Florida Straits--reflected sentiments that had roiled in Miami
for months.

Jay Fernandez, head of Casa Cuba, an organization of exiles in Northern Virginia, said in an interview: "I think that the Statue of
Liberty should be crying today because of the way Elian was taken and for forgetting a woman died to make her son free."

But others looked at it as a tougher, more complex call--political beliefs colliding with the closest of family ties.

"I don't know there's any outcome that's going to be correct," said Roger Perez, 51, a Cuban American and owner of Perez
Salon and Day Spa in Rockville. "It's like your heart tells you one thing, and logic tells you something else. Because a child
should be with his parent. But it's just become such a political issue. . . . It's a very difficult thing."

                                 © 2000 The Washington Post Company