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.