A confidential USAID memo from March 22, 1996 -- less than one month after the Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down -- notes the agency supported sending as much as $400 at a time to ''victims of repression'' in Cuba.

The memo says USAID's Latin American and Caribbean Office, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, the State Department and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee supported direct cash assistance of up to $10,000.

The Office of the Inspector General, citing an inability to track the money because auditing the program from Cuba was difficult, left the decision to USAID. Larry Byrne, an assistant USAID administrator from 1993 to 1997, decided to ban sending cash.

''I was not in favor of them trying to buy somebody to shoot Fidel Castro or whatever else they might do with the money,'' Byrne told The Miami Herald.

USAID's mission statement advocates a peaceful transition to democracy.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, said USAID-financed groups should be allowed to send cash to the dissidents: ``I have always advocated for such measures.''

-Oscar Corral