Over the course of the Elian saga, Gregory Craig, the attorney for Juan Miguel Gonzalez, has stayed extremely busy not returning phone calls from skeptical reporters. So it seemed rather sporting of him to subject himself last week to pointed inquiries during an on-line chat hosted by the Washington Post. At least it would have been sporting, had there been any.
Instead, we got the following: An interlocutor from Washington, D.C., wished to know, "wouldn't the implication of a victory by the Miami relatives be that anytime we don't agree with the parent . . . we could take the kid?" An inquisitor from La Paz invited Craig to go mountain climbing in the Bolivian Andes ("I'll visit soon," promised Craig), while another D.C. native invited Craig and Elian to take a trip to the National Zoo. A Craig fan from Kansas City declared the Cuban embargo "cruel," before asking, "Is there anything besides letter writing that will accelerate some fair play?" Craig declined comment. "I've tried to eliminate politics from this case as much as possible," said the man who castigated the Miami relatives for allowing swingset viewings of the boy, but who himself toted Elian to a play-date at a Georgetown house populated with Democratic donors.
We fired off several questions during the discussion, all along the lines of asking Craig how he feels about fighting for the return of a child to a country where they conscript schoolchildren to do farmwork, instruct them to inform on their parents, and force them to wear those fruity Pioneers outfits while singing hymns to Che Guevara. We were fully prepared for Craig to defend the indefensible (he has after all represented Bill Clinton and John Hinckley). Instead, our questions never saw the light of day. It may not have been Craig's fault. After all, he had to knock off ten minutes early -- he's a very busy man, and the Bolivian Andes beckon.