BY CAROL ROSENBERG

 Some people saw off-camera glances, imagining there were carefully scripted cues.
 Some saw the heartfelt sentiments of a 6-year-old boy. Some wondered why Elian
 Gonzalez wasn't in bed.

 Forty seconds of home-made videotape, taken in the wee hours Thursday inside
 Elian's great-uncle's Little Havana home, sparked reactions from all sides.

 ``That video was political kiddie porn. It's clearly exploitation,'' said University of
 Miami medical ethicist Kenneth Goodman. ``Children are not competent to give
 their consent to be on TV. It never should have been taken. It never should have
 been broadcast.''

 Countered Norma Lopez, 44, a Kendall bank account representative, in Little
 Havana Thursday night: ``I don't think he was coerced. I don't think he was
 pressured. I think this was what he wanted for a long, long time. They finally let
 him express himself. I think it came from the heart.''

 Shot sometime after 12:30 a.m. in the bedroom that Elian shares with his cousin
 Marisleysis, the footage was delivered to news crews camped outside the house
 early Thursday.

 EMPHATIC GESTURES

 It contained two segments with Elian speaking in Spanish -- divided by a short
 shot of the child leaning lethargically against the bed's headboard. In each, the
 child gestures emphatically with his right index finger and occasionally looks at
 someone off camera:

 ``Dad, I don't want to go to Cuba. If you want, stay here. I'm not going to Cuba,''
 he says in the first take.

 ``Dad, did you see that old woman who went to the home of that little nun?'' Elian
 says in the other take, chewing a wad of gum and looking more animated than in
 Take One. The reference is to Attorney General Janet Reno, who spent 2  1/2
 hours meeting with Elian's Miami relatives at the Miami Beach home of Sister
 Jeanne O'Laughlin.

 ``She wants to take me to Cuba. I -- tell him -- I tell you all -- I told you that I don't
 want to go to Cuba, but I tell you all now that I don't want to go to Cuba. If you all
 want -- want -- stay here, but I don't want to go to Cuba. Hmm?''

 Employees of Univision, the Spanish-language network that originally got
 possession of the pool tape, said family spokesman Armando Gutierrez gave it to
 them outside the house at about 1:30 a.m. They said the 40 seconds of Elian
 appeared on a home-video tape that had nothing else on it.

 Gutierrez said he wasn't certain of the time and circumstances of the footage.

 TAP ON THE KNEE

 Sometime overnight, he told The Herald, he was asleep in an armchair in the
 Gonzalez house when Elian tapped him on the knee and presented him with the
 tape.

 Soon after, he delivered it to a camera crew outside.

 In suburban Washington, the footage brought tears to the eyes of the boy's father,
 Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of
 Churches.

 ``Oooooh my, it made him incredibly sad, very sad. I think his reaction was,
 `What are they doing to my son?' '' she said.

 ``That is not a 6-year-old talking. That is not what a 6-year-old would say. I am a
 grandmother of seven children.''

 Greg Craig, the father's attorney, fumed over the tape, which he called proof that
 the child was ``exploited by those who have him in their care.''

 In Washington, a Justice Department official said the tape did not change any
 U.S. officials' minds about the need to return the boy to his father.

 MANIPULATION

 ``This is the most appalling example so far of this child being manipulated and
 exploited by the Miami relatives who continue to block Elian's immediate
 reunification with his father,'' said an official, who spoke on condition that she not
 be named.

 Added another government official: ``It only served to strengthen the resolve of
 those people who believe that Elian should finally be returned to his father.''

 There was speculation on whether the tape represented the spontaneous
 emotions of a small child or the political stagecraft of a desperate family.

 ``That was an eye opener to the American public. The child hasn't spoken. The
 American public didn't know. Those were his feelings -- not what his family told
 him. It's what he's lived,'' said bank worker Lydia Cabrera, 64, of Miami.

 ``Whether he was pretty spontaneous or subtly promoted, this obviously wasn't
 his idea,'' said University of Miami pediatric psychologist Alan Delamater.

 Of greatest interest, he said, was the fact that the child ``wasn't saying that he
 didn't want to be with his father. He said, `You can stay here.' ''

 EXPERTS CRITICAL

 Both Goodman and Delamater, however, said the boy's Miami family was open to
 criticism for making and then releasing the videotape without consent of his legal
 guardian in the eyes of U.S. law, his father.

 Herald staff writers Ana Acle, Andrea Elliott and Frances Robles contributed to
 this report.

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald