BY DAVID KIDWELL

 On a sunny April morning in 1986 in South Dade, FBI agents armed with 9mm handguns and 14 rounds each met up with what they thought were run-of-the-mill bank robbers in a stolen car.

 They were not expecting to face two .357 handguns and a Ruger Mini-14 assault rifle with a banana clip filled with wall-piercing .223 caliber rounds. Five minutes and 131 shots later, the bloodiest FBI shooting in history was over: two agents and two suspects dead, five other agents wounded just south of the Suniland shopping center in Pinecrest.

 That is the kind of tragedy that frames the way law enforcement officials think.

 Last week, congressional leaders promised -- then indefinitely postponed -- hearings to investigate what many critics suggest was an excessive show of force that played out on national television and on newspaper front pages around the country.

 Politicians lamented it. Civil libertarians screamed about it. The Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez felt violated by it.

 But the commander of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, or BORTAC, that stormed the Gonzalez home is unapologetic.

 In addition, more than a dozen experts on police tactics -- including two Cuban-American federal agents who believe the April 22 early-morning raid in Little Havana was premature and unnecessary -- agree that it was a classic, by-the-book ''dynamic movement'' in which everything agents did had a legitimate reason, from the weapons they chose to the intimidating commands they screamed.

 ''People are trying to shade this case anyway they can for their own reasons, and it's regrettable,'' said Tom Cash, former special agent in charge of the Miami office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. ''I've been in charge of literally thousands of these types of raids, on search warrants, and I'm telling you it was textbook.

 KNOCKING FOR 25 SECONDS

 ''You do not wave a red flag in front of a bull and expect him to sit there and shrug his shoulder,'' Cash said. ''People joining arms, throwing a sofa in front of a door, a crowd throwing stuff and still [the federal agents] pounded on the door for 25 seconds.

 ''Go look at your watch and stand at the door -- that's an eternity under those conditions.''

 Philip Grivas, a retired SWAT team commander for the FBI in New York, agrees.

 ''When that [1986] massacre happened down there with the FBI, everybody's heart sank,'' Grivas said. ''People have to realize that we show that kind of overwhelming, intimidating force to prevent violence.

 ''The problem you have is that nothing you can say and nothing I can say to people can make them understand or justify that picture we all saw,'' he said. ''Not unless you've been there and done it.''

 Tactical experts interviewed by The Herald -- while differing in their opinions about whether the raid was necessary -- say that once it was ordered, it went by the book. They say the tactics used were justified because overwhelming force is safer for everyone than marginal force.

 NO TIME FOR COFFEE

 ''The intimidation is by design,'' said Bob Hoelsher, a semiretired Miami-Dade Police tactical team commander who started the force's SWAT team and commanded it for 10 years. ''They don't have time to sit down and have coffee or watch them hug goodbye. Not when you might have a crowd of hundreds of protesters amassing outside.''

 Said one Cuban-American agent who sympathizes with the Miami relatives and believes Attorney General Janet Reno should have waited and relied on negotiations: ''As much as I would like to be able to point you to the regulation they violated, there just isn't one. I think they should have waited, but once the order came, it was pretty much by the book.''

 Both Jim Goldman, on-scene operations commander for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the BORTAC commander who spoke to The Herald on the condition he not be named, agree.

 ''This operation was as close to flawless as I have seen,'' the BORTAC commander said. ''There were no critical failures, no minor failures.''

 Said Goldman: ''I've witnessed this from A to Z and I am 100 percent convinced it was the right thing to do.''

 Law enforcement experts agree that critics in Congress will be hard pressed to find any regulation, policy or procedure that was violated in this case.

 ''They're in trouble because their political skirts are showing, not their knowledge,'' Cash said. ''The worst they [agents] could have done was tarried and sat down in there to discuss their options. Obviously, they did their homework.''

 NAGGING QUESTIONS

 Here are some questions about the way the raid was conducted and answers from the agents who carried it out:

 Why break down doors, shout commands and generally treat the home's occupants like criminals?

 ''For this operation, speed and surprise were critical. We literally wanted these people frozen with fear; that is the whole point of a show of force in any operation,'' said the BORTAC commander. ''We are not negotiators. Our only purpose is to get in and get out as fast as we can, and with as little resistance as possible.''

 Law enforcement experts agree that what appears to lay people as a bunch of out-of-control agents on testosterone overload is in truth a tactic taught at every SWAT and police training facility.

 The manual of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms calls it ''command presence.''

 ''This means that the entry team attempts to break the subjects' will to resist through the team's appearance, voice commands and physical and weapons skills,'' the manual says.

 Goldman and the BORTAC commander said no obscenities were used and no one threatened to shoot family members during the raid -- as family members have suggested.

 ''Profanity and obscenities get in the way and they can cause confusion,'' the BORTAC commander said. ''We don't have time for that, but we have to make them understand we are serious.''

 Why not try a more subdued approach?

 Goldman said his planners studied all options, but given intelligence reports of ''orchestrated resistance'' at the home all the less forceful options were quickly eliminated.

 As it turned out, Goldman said, there was a human chain, the family resisted by barricading and locking doors and protesters swarmed the yard as the team's caravan arrived.

 ''It became clear very early that four guys in suits knocking on the door was going to be too risky,'' he said. ''The mission was clear, and we realized this was a one-shot deal. We were not going to go in there and come out empty-handed.

 ''If operational security had been breached, we would've been doomed.''

 Goldman and his team were prepared to allow the Gonzalez family to peacefully turn over the boy, he said in an interview.

 Goldman and the ''breach team'' pounded on the door of the Gonzalez home for more than 25 seconds as rocks and bottles were thrown and immigration agents used pepper spray to deter surging protesters, he said.

 ''I was prepared to go to the door, bang on the door, explain my purpose in being there and if they opened the door, to allow them to produce the child,'' said Goldman, who had a search warrant to enter the house. ''Instead, I heard them moving around inside. As it turned out, they were moving a sofa in front of the door.''

 Why not snatch the boy when he left the home?

 Elian didn't leave the home after the April 13 turnover deadline set by Reno. ''The only time Elian left the house was to play in the backyard,'' Goldman said.

 Goldman said no thought was ever given to taking Elian on April 12, when he traveled to the Miami Beach home of Barry University President Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin for a meeting with Reno.

 ''That was still too early,'' Goldman said, adding the Gonzalez family was not in violation of any laws at the time.

 Why go at night?

 Predawn is the preferred time for all such raids because people are asleep and easily disoriented and traffic patterns are light, experts say. In this case, the crowd of protesters outside the home was at the lowest number during the day.

 Why use submachine guns against an unarmed family?

 The Border Patrol entry team was armed with Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns, the preferred weapon of SWAT teams throughout the nation. It is more accurate and less apt to spray 9mm bullets at unintended targets than a handgun or more powerful weapons.

 The weapon has a selector switch on the frame above the trigger with settings for safety, single- or three-round bursts or fully automatic.

 ''The weapon is intimidating,'' the BORTAC commander said. ''But we didn't go in with that weapon because it is intimidating. We used it because it serves a purpose. Its intimidating look was only an added benefit.''

 The purpose, he said, is to quickly and accurately shoot anyone who poses a life-threatening risk. Team members were ordered to keep the safeties on until such a threat presented itself. It never did.

 Why point the gun at the boy?

 The Border Patrol said the weapon was never aimed at the boy, and pointed to the entire sequence of eight pictures taken over a period of seconds by Associated Press photographer Alan Diaz inside the bedroom where Elian was taken.

 ''You'll notice that Dalrymple and the child are all the way in the closet before the agents come in,'' the BORTAC commander said. ''When the agent comes in, his shoulder is hugging the wall and his line of sight into the closet is obscured.

 ''At that point, he sees a head pop out of the closet and go back in.''

 ''As soon as he realized who was in front of him,'' the commander said, ''you will see that the gun does an immediate circumference away from the boy.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald