BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@herald.com

The daredevil pilot who dropped anti-communist leaflets over Havana has already accepted the toughest punishment the U.S. government can impose: He gave up his pilot's license.

Ly Tong, the 51-year-old former South Vietnamese air force pilot, also might have to pay a fine for flying over Cuba's air space on New Year's Day, but he won't be going to jail.

The United States has no criminal laws that affect a pilot who enters a foreign country's territory without properly notifying its officials.

Indeed, Tong probably escaped his worst possible fate when a Cuban MiG fighter took no action against his small rented Cessna. Under its aviation regulations, which follow international rules, the Castro government could have ordered Tong to land his plane after he crossed Cuba's 12-mile territorial boundary. And it could have imposed whatever restrictions it wanted against him -- including imprisonment.

But Cuba merely tailed Tong.

Like Tong, any pilot who flies over the island and returns without incident will find little turbulence with criminal authorities back home.

HERO, POLLUTER

A U.S. State Department official said Tong's raining of leaflets over Havana may be pollution, but it's not a violation of the Neutrality Act. That law forbids any U.S. citizen from taking a hostile action against a foreign country not at war with this nation.

For its part, the Federal Aviation Administration is continuing its investigation into Tong's risky flight over Cuba -- but it's strictly a civil matter.

``If pilots don't follow the regulations, they are subject to enforcement action,'' FAA spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen said, declining to comment on the agency's probe of Tong.

Tong voluntarily surrendered his license to authorities after landing at Kendall-Tamiami Executive Airport. Bergen said that even if the FAA permanently revokes Tong's aviation license, he could apply for a new one after a year.

But Bergen and other federal officials strongly discouraged similar stunts, saying the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes showed what the Cubans might do.

In this case, the Cuban government said it does not plan to lodge a complaint with the U.S. government or with the International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency based in Montreal that establishes worldwide flight standards.

``There is a fundamental principle that each country is sovereign of its own air space,'' said Chagnon Denis, an ICAO spokesman. ``But if Cuba does not complain, I suppose there would be no case.''

CUBAN MOCKERY

In the weekly newspaper Trabajadores -- Workers -- Cuban officials mocked the U.S. government's handling of the Tong case:

``They'll detain him for a few hours. They won't even send him to a psychiatrist and will free him. Otherwise, they would have to apply the same punishment to [Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose] Basulto and his gang, which is inconceivable.''

The unsigned article pointedly referred to Basulto because his group flies over the Florida Straits looking for Cuban rafters fleeing the island nation.

The FAA revoked Basulto's pilot's license after he was accused of penetrating Cuba's air space on Feb. 24, 1996 -- the infamous day two Cuban MiGs shot down the Brothers to the Rescue planes, killing four volunteers.

That summer, a National Transportation Safety Board administrative law judge ruled that Basulto's license should be suspended for 150 days instead. The ruling applied not only to the Feb. 24 incident, but also to Basulto's flight on July 13, 1995, when he dropped leaflets over Havana.

The FAA appealed the suspension, and Basulto ended up losing his license. But the exile leader was granted another license a year later.

BASULTO DEFENDED

``Basulto did not ask the Cuban government for permission to go into Cuban territorial air space,'' said Miami attorney Sofia Powell-Cosio, who represented him. ``That was simply his only violation.

``That's a rule everybody has to follow on a regular basis, but it's violated all the time,'' she added. ``There are a lot of small private planes that fly over Cuba on a regular basis, and a lot of them don't ask for permission.''

The shoot-down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes sparked an outcry from Cuban exiles and the Clinton administration, leading to a probe by the International Civil Aviation Organization. It was only the fifth investigation in the ICAO's 55 years of existence.

Other inquests included the U.S. Navy downing of an Iranian jetliner in 1988, the Soviet downing of a Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983 and the Israeli downing of a Libyan commercial plane in 1978.

In June 1996, the United Nations agency backed the U.S. claim that the Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down occurred over international waters, not in Cuban territory. Its report struck a blow to Castro government's argument that it acted in defense of Cuba's air space -- leading to the Clinton administration's suspension of certain travel privileges to the island nation.