ANDRES VIGLUCCI AND DAVID KIDWELL

 Federal agents who seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives believed they were facing a well-organized resistance that included exile paramilitary operatives, bodyguards known to carry weapons, violent felons, and a well-thought-out plan to spirit the boy out the back door, federal authorities said Thursday.

 The organized resistance functioned as an early warning system to alert demonstrators and the Gonzalez family that agents had arrived, the officials said. That system included instantaneous radio broadcasts calling for reinforcements from a house near the Gonzalez home over Spanish-language station La Poderosa, 670 AM, the officials said.

 In the week before the operation, federal officials deliberately flew helicopters over the house and sent undercover agents into the area in an effort to monitor the response of people nearby.

 On Saturday morning, some elements of the resistance plan were put into motion, authorities said, but government planners were effective in countering them.

 ``This was orchestrated resistance,'' said James D. Goldman, the commander of the tactical squad for the Immigration and Naturalization Service. ``The element of surprise and the show of force was essential.''

 The allegations were rejected by Gonzalez family spokesman Armando Gutierrez. No spokesman for La Poderosa could be reached for comment.

 Goldman and other top planners, including the person who directed surveillance of the house, made details of the operation and its planning public Thursday as part of a government counteroffensive to offset widespread criticism of what some say was an excessive show of force. They granted interviews to The Herald in addition to CNN, ABC News Nightline, The New York Times and other media outlets. Under the ground rules of the briefing, only Goldman could be quoted by name.

 The interviews also anticipate hearings in Congress next week.

 Government surveillance and informants had been in place near the house and among demonstrators since April 14, the day after Lazaro Gonzalez defied a federal order to bring Elian to Opa-locka Airport. They supplied enough evidence of a threat to agents' safety that planners felt they had no choice but to go in fully armed, the officials said.

 ``It clearly indicated we had a potential for some very serious violence. That's why this operation was structured the way it was,'' said a Border Patrol supervisor from Texas who directed the organizing of a six-man tactical entry team that actually entered the house. He spoke on the condition he not be named.

 Among the danger signs agents feared they faced:

 Five members of the paramilitary group Alpha 66 -- including three men responsible for a 1995 attack on a hotel in Cuba -- were seen frequently visiting the home and milling in the crowd of demonstrators outside. All five had weapons training, and some of them expressed a willingness to use violence to block Elian's removal, officials said.

 A ``cadre'' of 15 to 20 supporters of Elian's Miami family took up residence in the house directly behind, including seven identified convicted felons with records for armed robbery, burglary, firearms charges and assault. They acted as a ``freelance'' security force, equipped with radios and cell phones, and challenged any visitors to the neighborhood who seemed out of place.

 Five bodyguards guarded the Gonzalez family. Four of them had concealed weapons permits and had been seen carrying arms, including Cuban American National Foundation security chief Mario Miranda, a claim he has denied.

 Prompted by federal law enforcement decoys -- helicopters overhead, and agents entering the neighborhood to gauge the reactions -- radio station La Poderosa broadcast warnings on several occasions from a nearby house that functioned as a ``communications center,'' mobilizing protesters to the house. Agents said they don't know whether a call went out over the air the morning of the raid. The station owner, Jorge Rodriguez, could not be reached.

 Some elements of the resistance plan were put into motion Saturday morning, authorities said: As agents came out of the caravan, they were met by people who ran out of the yard, tried to form a human chain, and began throwing rocks and wrestling with the officers, while the Gonzalez family locked the doors and barricaded the front entry with a sofa.

 But planners had anticipated the plan for the informal security force to enter the Gonzalez yard from the rear house, and deployed 20 agents to the backyard alone to foil them. The occupants of the house had built a platform overlooking a 7-foot fence that divided the properties so they could observe the Gonzalez home, and jump the fence easily.

 The day before the raid, agents in cooperation with the Miami police detained two of the men identified as the worst ``instigators'' in the group on immigration charges. They would not name any members of that group.

 Alpha 66 said it had no members at the scene the night of the raid.

 ``We don't use such degrading tactics,'' said Andres Nazario Sargen, founder and secretary-general of Alpha 66. ``If anyone claimed they were a member of Alpha 66, they were lying, and I'd like to know who it was.''

 Miranda, the CANF security head, has adamantly denied carrying a gun into the Gonzalez property.

 The account by the federal agents significantly broadens the so-far thin descriptions they had provided of the threats they faced in deciding how best to seize Elian.

 While the Gonzalez family and their supporters had publicly said they would step aside and turn over Elian if agents came for him, operation planners said they were virtually certain that would not happen.

 Agents had to fight their way to the front door, as they were attacked by demonstrators who punched them and grabbed at them. Even so, Goldman says he stood knocking at the door for 25 to 30 seconds trying to get the Gonzalez family to answer.

 ``Unfortunately they deliberately increased the level of aggressiveness,'' Goldman said. ``In 20 years of serving search warrants, that was the longest 25 seconds I've ever had to do anything. I was intimidated by the surge, by the crowd, by the shouting. They were surging over the barricades just challenging us to get to the front door.''

 Once they forced open the front door, six Border Patrol tactical agents and a female INS officer encountered no physical resistance, and never touched anyone inside the house, they say.

 They denied using profanities or threats, saying they are trained to refrain from using more than short, direct commands.

 Critics of the raid said the fact that no demonstrators or family members were seen with weapons undercuts the threat of armed resistance cited by the federal authorities.

 Family spokesman Armando Gutierrez also said the allegation of there being guns in the Gonzalez house, or in the house behind it, are false.

 ``The police had checked the house in back days before, and they checked for guns, so that's a lie,'' he said. Gutierrez acknowledged after the raid that a gun belonging to Lazaro Gonzalez had been removed from the house earlier.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald