By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer

It was an unusually sober meeting for Washington, a telephone chat among five
government agencies to discuss how to react to the embarrassing videos of Coast
Guardsmen blocking six Cubans as they swam to freedom in Miami in clear
daylight.

But tough decisions flowed easily Tuesday evening after the Coast Guard raised
the possibility that the case involved people-smugglers and admitted that one of
its men had violated regulations by spraying pepper gas at one of the Cubans.

``We immediately said we needed an in-depth investigation. And for that we had
to let into the United States the four Cubans who had been picked up by the
Coast Guard,'' said one participant in the hourlong conference call.

As a result of that decision, the government was able to prevent deportation of the
Cubans and placate the Cuban-American community in Miami, even while
denying that it had changed policy or caved in to exile pressure.

Re-creating the Clinton administration's reactions to the refugee saga that
unfolded off Surfside shows government officials trying to get a grip on the facts
as Cuban exiles pulled, pushed and sometimes even abused them.

Still to be resolved, however, is how the U.S. government will deal with any
would-be Cuban refugees who might resist when approached by Coast Guard
vessels with crews bent on returning them to Cuba, according to one of the
participants.

``There is no review of policy but we will be looking at how to improve the
implementation of the policy in the face of this kind of aggressiveness,'' said a
U.S. official.

One likely possibility: stepping up the Coast Guard and Border Patrol presence
around the Florida Straits and increasing prosecutions of suspected immigrant
smugglers.

In Washington, Tuesday's events first raised alarm when Radio Marti director
Herminio San Roman called the State Department around 4 p.m., according to
one official. He reported that ``something really big, not just another crisis,'' was
taking place.

Within the hour, virtually every Cuban exile group and leader had telephoned their
best contacts in the U.S. government to complain bitterly about the Coast Guard
actions and demand redress, another official said.

Among the callers: The League of Cuban Municipalities; Agenda Cuba, a human
rights group; Miami Major Joe Carrollo; Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez; Cuban
human rights activist Ruth Montaner; and the Cuban American National
Foundation.

All three Cuban-American members of Congress -- Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, Miami Republicans, and Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey
-- also called. So did Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, who called ``every
half-hour'' to relay updates on the situation and make suggestions.

They called the State Department's Michael Ranneberger, head of the Cuba
Desk, and Stuart Eisenstat, undersecretary for economic affairs. They called Lula
Rodriguez, Cuban-born assistant secretary of state for public affairs, and the
White House's National Security Council.

``Some people were really abusive, shouting and swearing,'' said one official in
Washington. ``We had to assign a person just to handle the complaints while we
tried to handle the situation.''

By about 5:30 p.m., the Cuba Desk initiated the first of two telephone conference
calls with working-level officials at the INS, the NSC, the Coast Guard and the
State Department's Bureau of Public Affairs.

The Coast Guard reported on the incident, noting that initial evidence indicated
that the six might have been smuggled in from the Bahamas. Then, by admitting
fault in the pepper-spraying, the Coast Guard cleared the way for resolving the
concerns of callers over the fate of the six refugees who had been picked off the
water. Two reached shore.

As potential witnesses in an investigation of alien smuggling, they would be
allowed into the United States. Otherwise, they would have joined thousands of
other would-be refugees returned to Cuba.

``This was about an investigation, not a humanitarian gesture or any bowing to
exile pressures, or any change in policy,'' said one participant in the conference
call who, like the others interviewed, requested anonymity.

The telephone conference lasted about one hour, and the five agencies held a
second conference call around 8 p.m. to discuss details of a news conference to
announce the decisions reached at the earlier meeting.

The five agencies held another conference call Wednesday morning to again
review the previous day's events and plan for the future.