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Sunday, April 23, 2000

Medal winner met with Elian

Resident had participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion

By Jeremy Schwartz
Caller-Times

David Adame/Caller-Times

Hal Feeney met Elian Gonzalez when he received his Medal of Honor for his participation in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Hal Feeney was in Miami last week where he was given a Medal of Honor for his role in the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
   But the Corpus Christi resident's most defining memories of his trip may have been the brief afternoon he spent with Elian Gonzalez at his Miami relatives' home.
   Feeney, 77, was introduced to the family by Jose Basulto, the head of the Miami-based, anti-Castro Brothers to the Rescue organization. Basulto was a former partner of Feeney's in the Bay of Pigs operation.
   At the time of the attempt by U.S.-trained Cuban émigrés to overthrow Fidel Castro, Feeney was the intelligence chief at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay.
   "The house was very peaceful inside," Feeney said. "We sat for awhile in the back yard. Sometimes he would go to the fence and look out at the crowd. I talked to the boy in Spanish. It was very interesting to talk to the little boy."
   Feeney asked Elian what his favorite plaything was and said the boy told him it was the swing set in the back yard, where he was away from the media and the throng of chanters lining the front of the house.
   "He would smile a little bit, but in general I noticed a sadness about the boy," Feeney said.
   Feeney said he was sickened and ashamed when he learned of Saturday's pre-dawn raid in which U.S. immigration officials snatched Elian from his relatives' Miami home to reunite him with his father in Washington, D.C.
   "I can't imagine what it must have been like for the poor kid to have a SWAT team break down the damn doors," Feeney said. "From my point of view, I see eight armed men coming through the house at 5 a.m. to get a little kid."
   Feeney said that he hadn't spoken with any of the boy's relatives, or supporters of the family in Miami Saturday, but that he didn't think the relatives were armed or showed any indication of violence.
   "The normal procedure would have been to serve a warrant," he said. "This has nothing to do with the father. That's something for the court to decide."
   Feeney's Medal of Honor was awarded to him by the Cuban Pilots Association, a group that flew air missions during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Feeney had been honored five years earlier, but said this trip was much different.
   "The whole atmosphere was really weird," he said. "But then everything that's happened to that kid since he was picked up in an inner tube has been weird."
  

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