The Elian Gonzalez case drags on interminably. In a legal case which seems to have provoked no radically diverse legal opinions from the nation's scholars and courts, it is difficult not to conclude that the protracted four-and-a-half-month saga is little more than an episode of bureaucratic bumbling by the US Justice Department.
The so-called showdown last Thursday provided the most extraordinary example. The federal immigration service determined on January 5th that Elian's father was fit and available to take custody of his son, whose mother drowned at sea after an attempt to reach the US. After a failed final effort on Wednesday to negotiate an agreement between s father Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who has been cooling his heels outside Washington DC for a week waiting to take his son home to Cuba, and the Miami relative determined to keep the six-year-old in the US, the Justice Department issued its final threat to the relatives: deliver the boy to Miami's Opa-Locka airport by 2 p.m. . . . or else.
With their Little Havana home surrounded by 4,000 flag-waving Cuban-Americans exiles, a few politicians, the singer Gloria Estefan and the actor Andy Garcia, with Cuban-born jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval blowing away for the cameras, the Miami relatives defied the government's ultimatum. They simply ignored it. Two p.m. came and went.
There must be something of a sweet feeling about calling the bluff of the world's superpower. There has to be something downright empowering, as the lingo goes, in telling the United States' top law enforcement official, the Attorney General, Ms Janet Reno - a woman who has at her disposal the combined firepower of the FBI, the US Marshals' Service and an assortment of other well-armed federal agencies - to go take a jump in the lake.
The criticism of Ms Reno's handling of this case is growing. Temple University law professor, Mr Jan Ting, also a former federal immigration official, opined in the New York Times: "Elian Gonzalez and his father have suffered because of the Justice Department's timidity and indecisiveness. Its attempts to compromise with the Miami family, and indeed with the entire Cuban American community, have not prevented an ugly confrontation but instead have guaranteed that the handover of the child, whenever it happens, will be much more wrenching than it would have been in January."
How ironic. Who would have ever thought Janet Reno would be accused of timidity?
Ms Reno (62) is by any measure quite a character. She stands six foot one, is unmarried, was taught by her mother how to wrestle alligators in Florida's swampy Everglades, and has a fashion sense that veers wildly from a single blue dress to a single blue trouser suit. Her father was a police reporter who covered crime in Miami for 43 years.
She is the first woman to hold the position of US Attorney General, and at eight years, has held the position longer than anyone else. She is the best-known attorney general in the US since Robert F. Kennedy.
Diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease in 1995, Ms Reno decided to stay on in her job and control her disease with medication. But when the drugs interfered with her sleep, she decided to cut the dosages. Her press secretary voiced concerns the tremors would become more pronounced, particularly before the cameras during news conferences.
"So I'll be an old lady who shakes," she replied.
It was certainly not timidity that characterised Ms Reno's previous tenure as a prosecutor in Florida. Nor was timidity a feature of her decision to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate President Clinton in the Whitewater matter.
But it is the spectre of a single event that seems to haunt Ms Reno and that many feel is affecting her decision-making in the Gonzalez case. Just 38 days after she took office in 1993, Ms Reno approved a federal raid on a compound in Waco, Texas, that was home to a strange religious cult called the Branch Davidians.
It was a tear-gas assault carried out by federal officials, and a fiery inferno resulted. Some 80 people died, including many children held at the compound by indoctrinated parents.
Even now, Ms Reno says she thinks of the fire that killed those children every day. Associates say her decision to approve the raid haunts her, even though it was recommended by top officials of the FBI.
Childless, more known for her adventurous holidays hiking and white-water rafting, Ms Reno is nonetheless known as a fierce advocate for children. Before becoming Attorney General, she was known in Florida for her leadership on issues of juvenile justice, and for her work on keeping children safe from crime.
The children who died at Waco seemed to have left their mark on her. And now, at the end of her historic tenure, she has before her the case of a little boy whose life is being torn asunder by Cold War passions and bitter memories. His father loves him and wants him home in Cuba. His Miami relatives love him and do not want to release him to the control of a Communist dictatorship where his life will surely be limited by poverty and repression.
What will Janet Reno do? Will she order armed federal marshals to march into a residential neighbourhood and seize the boy from a home surrounded by angry and protective exiles living in a state where it is quite easy to obtain guns? The law permits, in fact may require, that she do precisely that. Will she continue attempts to negotiate, as the relatives inside that house flout the law?
Hearts rightfully go out to Elian Gonzalez. His life will never be the same, no matter what happens. But who at this moment would want to stand in Janet Reno's shoes and issue that order?