BY ELAINE DE VALLE

 The continuing and increasingly volatile local debate on Elian Gonzalez
 apparently has the U.S. Secret Service paying attention to Miami radio.

 An agent with the federal security forces called a well-known Cuban radio doctor
 in Miami on Tuesday about comments apparently threatening President Clinton
 made Monday on his nationally syndicated Salud en Cuerpo y Alma show. Host
 Dr. Manuel Rico-Perez said he got a call from Agent Rodolfo Peña about 10 a.m.
 asking if he had recorded the show, which airs in Miami from 4 to 5 p.m. on
 WAQI-AM (710), Radio Mambi.

 ``He wanted to know if we had caller ID to see who made the calls because he
 said some of the callers had threatened the president and other officials of the
 government with death,'' Rico-Perez said.

 Peña said Tuesday evening that the agency was alerted to the calls by listeners.
 ``We at the Secret Service do investigate any and all vile or direct threats to any
 of our directees, which include the president, vice president or anyone in our
 protection.''

 After hearing from the agent, the doctor went back to the recording and found two
 calls. ``One woman who was a bit exaggerated and violent in her political opinions
 said the president better take care of himself,'' Rico-Perez said. ``Another woman
 called and said her cat had been castrated and asked if that was the same
 procedure as the testicles that had been castrated on [Vice President Al] Gore.

 ``Things of bad taste, but I couldn't cut them off.''

 For two days, the doctor has stopped his regular talk of diets, vitamins and
 nutrition to concentrate on the Elian issue. He calls the Secret Service's interest
 in his callers ``a witch hunt.''

 ``For a moment there, I didn't know if I was here or in Cuba again. I thought it was
 very much like the state security in the Cuban government.''

 Peña said he would pick up the tape this morning. The telephone threateners
 could face five years in the federal pen, he added, ``if we prove that there is intent
 behind this.'' But Peña, who is from Miami, said callers to Cuban radio can
 sometimes get enraged without meaning harm: ``It may be nothing to it. But we
 have to investigate everything that comes across our table.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald