A Father's Love (22 page)

Bernie regularly wrote op-ed articles about U.S. policy in Latin America for newspapers such as the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, and the
Wall Street Journal
. He maintained close ties to senior government leaders in both Latin America and the United States and testified before Congress on important issues concerning U.S. policy in Latin America.

Sitting at his home in Takoma Park, Maryland, on Friday, January 30, he was flipping television channels when he heard me mentioning Brazil on the
Dateline NBC
special. Bernie didn't know me or anything about me, but as he watched the program, which was already about halfway through the broadcast, he heard my plea. “I need help. I need someone to help me.” He later told me that as a father, he was profoundly moved by my plea.

At about that same moment, in New Jersey, Congressman Chris Smith was watching the
Dateline
program and was equally moved by my plea. These were two men uniquely suited to helping me regain my son: Congressman Smith was the leading advocate for children in the Congress and the author of a major piece of legislation aimed at curbing child trafficking around the world; Bernie Aronson had served in the top diplomatic post for Latin America under two U.S. presidents. What are the odds that both men would view the same television program and feel compelled to volunteer for my cause? Maybe it was just a coincidence, but it seemed like something more. So many times in my struggle, people appeared just when I needed them, almost as if in answer to my prayers.

Another “coincidence” helped me immensely. Meredith Vieira, the
Dateline
correspondent who conducted the interview, was married to a longtime friend of Bernie's, Richard Cohen, a former producer for CBS News. In fact, Rich and Meredith, while still dating, had attended Bernie's wedding years before. After hearing my televised plea, Bernie reached out to Rich, asking him to pass a message to Meredith. If I thought he could help me, Bernie would be happy to do so. “Let me know how to get in touch with him, if he would like my help,” Bernie wrote. Meredith made the connection, and passed the information along to me. Although I didn't even know where to start with someone of Bernie's stature, I was not about to turn away his offer of help. I had already seen the kind of effect that someone like Congressman Smith could have on the situation, simply by his presence.

I told Meredith yes, I would love to have Bernie Aronson's help, and she passed along my contact information. Bernie called me immediately. I told him I was coming to Washington in a few days to meet with Congressman Smith, so we agreed to meet at Chris Smith's office the night I arrived.

During that meeting I showed Bernie some of the swimming pool tapes from my initial visit with Sean in Brazil. He was visibly moved, as was Mary Noonan, Congressman Smith's chief of staff.

I told Bernie, “I just don't know what else to do. For the last several years, I've faced one painstakingly absurd obstacle after another by the Brazilian courts and this family.”

Bernie believed it was crucial to ensure the recognition that this was a nation-to-nation issue and not merely an individual case. To do that the case had to go beyond the Office of Children's Issues of the Consular Affairs Department at State, and be elevated to the diplomatic level, where the U.S. government could make my case a major foreign policy issue between Brazil and the United States.

Although it was about 8:00 PM, Bernie called Tom Shannon, who held Bernie's old job, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. Tom had served under Bernie years ago when Bernie was assistant secretary, and they had stayed in touch. When Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser to President George W. Bush, was considering naming Tom as senior director for Latin America on the National Security Council staff at the White House, Bernie had put in a word with Rice for Tom. In President Bush's second term, when Condoleezza Rice became secretary of state, she asked Tom Shannon to move to State with her and become assistant secretary.

Bernie got Tom on the phone immediately and quickly briefed him on my story. The assistant secretary was vaguely aware of my case but had had no direct involvement in it. Bernie asked Tom if he would meet with me, and he agreed to do so the following morning. Frankly, I was amazed. I had been planning to return to Tinton Falls that evening, but I gladly tossed my schedule out the window for the chance to meet the highest-ranking U.S. government official responsible for Latin America. Mary Noonan kindly offered to let me stay with her family, and since I hadn't planned on a two-day trip, I went out and bought a shirt to wear to the next morning's meeting.

The next day Assistant Secretary Shannon and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michael Kirby joined us in Congressman Smith's office. After having me recount my story for Tom, Bernie said, “Tom, this has to be an issue in U.S.-Brazil relations.” President Lula was scheduled to meet with President Obama at the White House in mid-March, their first direct encounter. To my amazement, Bernie asked Tom to do two things: one, to have Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raise my case when she met with her counterpart, Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim, to prepare for the meeting of the two presidents. Tom agreed that he would.

Bernie's second request of Tom was even more ambitious. “And can you have President Obama raise the issue with President Lula during their upcoming meeting?”

As I sat there listening, I was in awe at Bernie's boldness and the audacity of his requests. Here I was, a guy from Tinton Falls, New Jersey, and this man, whom I had only met the night before, was asking that the president of the United States and his secretary of state place Sean's return front and center in relations between the United States and Brazil. An individual case like mine is rarely broached during meetings between heads of state, much less during their first ever face-to-face encounter, when both nations want to start relations on a positive note. I understood that by any objective standard, as helpful as many people wanted to be, and as much as they were drawn to the heartrending aspects of Sean's and my story, our dilemma alone would not normally have risen to that level of attention at the State Department or the White House. Yet somehow, the right people kept stepping into place. It was almost as if somebody much bigger than us were orchestrating these relationships.

As kind and concerned as Tom appeared to be, he could not make any assurances that President Obama would raise the issue with President Lula. But he was willing to put his name on the line to encourage the president to do so.

Bernie was confident that Tom's commitment was solid, and that at least Hillary Clinton would raise my case with the Brazilian foreign minister. But he believed that the most important message that could be delivered would be president to president. To help cement that commitment, Bernie contacted Ambassador Robert Gelbard, a career foreign service officer with a long and distinguished résumé. Bob had served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia when Bernie was assistant secretary of state. After Bob's tenure expired, Bernie asked him to come to Washington to serve as his principal deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, the number two position in the bureau. Bob went on to serve as a special envoy to the Balkans and later as the U.S. ambassador to Indonesia. But a more recent addition to his résumé was serving as outside adviser on Latin America to the Obama presidential campaign. Bob had multiple contacts inside the administration, including Dan Restrepo, who now served as senior director of the Latin American Division of the National Security Council. Dan would be intimately involved in preparing President Obama's upcoming meeting with President Lula.

Bob immediately offered to help. Within days he had set up a meeting for me with Dan Restrepo at the Old Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex. At the same time, Senator Lautenberg and Congressman Smith kept pushing the resolutions through Congress, urging Brazil to “act with extreme urgency” to return Sean to me. Both the House and Senate resolutions passed unanimously days before President Lula's visit. The pressure was steadily growing.

On Friday, March 6, 2009, Bernie, Bob, and I met with Dan Restrepo and several of his aides. Never in a million years would I have envisioned meeting with a key member of the National Security Council staff to discuss my case in the context of the president's upcoming first meeting with the president of Brazil. Yet I was not one bit nervous. I remained focused and somehow knew exactly what to say and how to say it. After I recounted the facts, and pointed out that Brazil was holding a total of sixty-six abducted American children, Bernie asked Dan if the president would raise our case with President Lula. To his great credit, and once again to my astonishment, Dan assured us, insofar as he was able to, that President Obama would do just that.

 

 

ANDREA MITCHELL, NBC'S chief diplomatic correspondent, was another point of contact. By then, Sean's story had been adopted by NBC. Andrea had been briefed on the case by Tricia, and to put the icing on the cake, Bernie urged Andrea to mention my case at the press conference following the meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Brazilian foreign minister Celso Amorim.

As the two ministers emerged from their private meeting, they stepped to the podium, made brief comments, and opened themselves to questions from the dozens of reporters standing there. Then, as Secretary Clinton and Minister Amorim waved good-bye and started back inside, Andrea Mitchell saw her chance. “Madam Secretary, what about the Goldman child?” she shouted to Clinton.

The secretary later confirmed in a full interview with Mitchell that she had indeed raised the issue with Brazil's foreign minister. From Tom Shannon, we learned that Sean was the first item on Secretary Clinton's agenda when she conferred with Amorim. Consider for a moment just how astounding that is. The world economy was facing a global financial crisis. Brazil was the largest country in Latin America and the eighth largest economy in the world. Yet somehow my son,
Sean Goldman
, was the first issue on the table when the foreign ministers of the two countries held their first official meeting. I was overwhelmed with gratitude.

Now our strategy was to find every possible means to place Sean's case on the national agenda before the White House meeting between President Obama and President Lula. Bob Gelbard reached out to a contact at the
New York Times
, who ran a very positive story about Sean and Brazil's pattern of noncompliance on Hague abduction cases.

Bernie then contacted a friend at the
Washington Post
, who wrote a front-page story just days before President Lula's visit, stating that the Sean Goldman case was going to be a central issue in the discussions. The
Post
followed up with an editorial, “A Boy in Brazil,” calling on the Obama administration to help resolve the matter, and for Brazil to “uphold the law.” Our hope was that the media would feed upon the media. If NBC, the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate were all highlighting Sean's story, we hoped other media outlets would pick up the drumbeat, too. And they did.

Days before Lula's scheduled visit, a reporter asked Brazilian foreign minister Amorim if he thought that President Obama would raise the case with President Lula. Amorim replied dismissively, “Oh, of course not; he's not going to.” But Amorim was wrong.

Bernie met with the Brazilian ambassador to the United States to help bolster our position. His message was that this issue wasn't going to go away; if not resolved according to the Hague Convention, it was just going to escalate and damage Brazil's standing with the United States. “The law is very clear,” Bernie reminded the ambassador. “Sean Goldman was retained wrongfully; the Hague Convention's stipulations have been met, and Brazil is going to pay an enormous price if you don't do the right thing here.”

The Brazilian ambassador was sympathetic personally, and agreed that Sean should come home, yet he didn't think that the issue was as important as Bernie seemed to imply. But the Brazilian ambassador, like his foreign minister, misjudged the American commitment.

WHILE PRESIDENT LULA was getting ready to meet with President Obama, I was back in Brazil for another court ruling. On the Thursday before President Obama's scheduled Saturday meeting with President Lula, I received a call from an aide at the State Department informing me that Secretary Clinton wished to speak to me. In a few seconds, Secretary Clinton came on the line, and suddenly, there I was, David Goldman, regular guy from New Jersey, speaking with the U.S. secretary of state. Secretary Clinton and I spoke only briefly, but she was winsome and very kind, and wonderfully supportive. More important to me, we spoke as parent to parent.