The connection comes from an unnamed `source' of Cuba's intelligence directorate.

 BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 Anti-Castro militant Orlando Bosch, a Miami-Dade resident since 1988, reportedly claimed to have sent "explosive materials'' to Cuba before a 1997 Havana hotel
 bombing, but Bosch wasn't sure if his materials were used in the bomb attack, according to an uncorroborated allegation read to jurors Thursday in the Cuban spy trial.

 The Bosch claim, attributed to an unnamed "source'' of Havana's intelligence directorate, would be the first direct link between Bosch and the April 1997 bomb attack against the Melia Cohiba hotel -- or to any of a series of hotel bomb attacks carried out in Havana that year.

 Bosch, now 74, was held in a Venezuelan jail for 11 years on charges of masterminding the October 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed all 73 people on board. Cuba has long wanted Bosch for its own trial in the bombing.

 A pediatrician, Bosch was released in 1988 without conviction or acquittal and arrived in Miami, where lawyers eventually were able to secure his residency after he did a stint in federal prison.

 Bosch could not be reached for comment Thursday. But in an interview after the Cuban government first blamed exile groups and "followers of the activist Orlando Bosch'' for the bomb attacks, he denied any participation, yet left room for doubt.

 "We had nothing to do with those attempts,'' Bosch told The Herald in September 1997. "Besides, even if we had, we would deny it because it's illegal to [direct
 bombings] from this country.''

 In any case, he added, "We don't criticize that form of struggle, if it's the Cuban people's choice.''

 The allegation about Bosch was but one line among some 250 pages introduced by the defense Thursday. The pages contained clandestine communications from the
 mid- to late 1990s between Havana and its Miami-based intelligence agents, primarily alleged spy master Gerardo Hernández, one of five accused spies on trial.

 The communications -- seized by FBI agents off encrypted computer disks in Hernández's apartment -- show that Havana assigned its intelligence agents to investigate certain exiles and groups it had labeled as ``terrorists'' for their alleged involvement in bomb attacks and assassination plots against Fidel Castro.

 The assignments reflect a laundry list of Cuba's favorite "counterrevolutionary'' targets, from Bosch and acknowledged bomber Luis Posada Carriles to the Cuban
 American National Foundation and numerous exile organizations, some of which have engaged in covert operations.

 They include Alpha 66, PUND and Commandos L.

 The Cuban government has accused the CANF of orchestrating and financing the bomb attacks, naming President Francisco ``Pepe'' Hernández and others as among the organizers. The foundation has denied any involvement.

 The Miami-based agents were assigned to surveillance missions targeting Bosch and other exile-group leaders, the messages show.

 Bosch had fled Miami in 1974 while on parole from his 1972 conviction for leading a bazooka attack on a Polish freighter moored in Miami. He was imprisoned upon returning from Venezuela but was set free in 1994 on the condition that he not engage in any terrorist activities.

 The Cuban native was also ordered deported but was allowed to stay in the United States after 31 countries refused to accept him.

 In the espionage trial, the government has charged the co-defendants with trying to infiltrate U.S. military bases and Cuban exile groups, including Brothers to the Rescue. Four fliers with the pilot group were killed in a Cuban MiG attack on their planes in international airspace in 1996.

 The defense acknowledges the accused men were working for Castro's government. But lawyers argue that the Cuban agents were justified in their undercover work because the United States was either unwilling or unable to prevent exile-supported terrorist acts in Cuba.

 Today, the trial will take a break so the judge can hear arguments about whether to allow testimony from retired Marine Corps Gen. Charles Wilhelm, head of the U.S. Southern Command until last September.

 The government is challenging the defense's use of Wilhelm as a witness.

                                    © 2001