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ALONG with tightening the economic squeeze on Cuba, the Helms-Burton law has also increased the alternative tactics that Washington employs for promoting political change in Cuba.
Under the Law, the President is to make available $2.5 million annually to be distributed to NGOs engaged in promoting 'democracy and human rights in Cuba.'
Last year Clinton granted the Washington based right-wing NGO Freedom House $500,000 and in the Autumn a case came to light of what happened to the money.
In September, the national daily paper Granma, published a two page exposé of the activities of a U.S. citizen who had been detained and deported after being caught red-handed carrying out a 'mission' entailing requirements characteristic of espionage.
According to the newspaper, David Norman Dorn, was detained on August 15 and sent back home after the U.S. Interests Section in Havana was informed that he had come to Cuba as a tourist but with instructions to provide material and financial aid to illegal dissident groups.
Dorn who is the American Federation of Teachers' head of international relations, was carrying papers that proved he was visiting Havana at the request of Frank Calzón, the Cuban-American director of the NGO Freedom House.
Granma published photocopies of a list of instructions Dorn was given by Calzón, and a hand-written receipt detailing the delivery of 500 dollars in humanitarian aid to a dissident Cuban group.
Dorn was instructed not to identify himself nor reveal his place of lodging, to walk facing the traffic at all times, immediately leave any house where more than three adults were present, and not answer anyone asking for arms, because they could be Cuban security agents.
" Dorn acknowledged his ties to Freedom House and that he was following concrete directions from Calzón," Granma reported, adding that Dorn met with the U.S. deputy consul in Havana while in detention.
U.S. measures to " promote political change in Cuba," are designed to contribute to the fall of the revolutionary government through more flexible private contacts.
Granma underlined that Clinton's announcement in 1995 included " a generous allocation of $500,000 dollars in aid for the destruction of the Cuban revolution - precisely through Freedom House."
Besides establishing contact with dissident groups, Dorn was to provide specific information, requirements ''characteristic of espionage, and coinciding with interests detected among officials of U.S. special services.''
Dorn was asked for graphic descriptions of the surroundings of important economic objectives in Havana and Santiago de Cuba, the country's two chief cities, and in Moa, a municipality where nickel is produced, located 770 kms from the capital.
The instructions demonstrate ''the coordination between the supposedly independent human rights organisation (Freedom House) and the U.S. intelligence community,'' the newspaper underlines.
Behind Freedom House lies a ''hidden apparatus of subversion closer to a service of intelligence and 'dirty war' than to a humanitarian organisation,'' it adds.
Cuban authorities report that in the past two years they have detected ''dozens of similar operations'' entrusted to ''emissaries'' of Freedom House. But the foundation usually avoids sending U.S. citizens in order not to implicate Washington in such activities, Granma added.
Government officials say that by using Dorn, Freedom House intended to make relations between Havana and Washington even more strained, and to trigger an international scandal in case he weredetained and imprisoned.
The revelation followed on the heels of an Interior Ministry report of the detention of a Salvadoran citizen who admitted responsibility for a recent wave of bombings against tourist installations in Havana, in which an Italian businessman was killed.
The government accused the Clinton administration of ''tolerating'' the organisation on its territory of more than 30 terrorist operations against Cuba in the past three years.
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