With hoopla unusual even for the U.S.-Cuba conflict, Havana devoted two pages of its main newspaper Friday to the capture and expulsion last month of an American visitor accused of delivering aid to dissidents on behalf of a U.S. human rights group.

Among the
items confiscated from the American was ``high-tech equipment for political subversion,'' said the report in Granma, official newspaper of Cuba's Communist Party.

The equipment was a $120 electronic typewriter, said the sender, Frank Calzon, a Cuban American who directs the Washington office of Freedom House.

``It's admirable that Granma, which took several years to report that U.S. astronauts had landed on the moon, took only 30 days to report on this case,'' joked Calzon.

David Dorn, head of international relations for the American Federation of Teachers, arrived in Cuba Aug. 15 as a tourist and was expelled two days later as a courier for Freedom House, a private group that promotes democracy around the world.

Calzon often uses visitors to Cuba to deliver aid to dissidents such as cash, fax machines and short-wave radios. Freedom House also has a $500,000 U.S. government grant for democracy-building items like books and videos on civil rights and copies of the International Human Rights Declaration.

At least three of his previous couriers have been spotted and expelled by Cuban state security, but Havana never before made such a fuss as with Dorn, giving him a two-page spread that included a copy of Calzon's 16-point security instructions. Dorn was not available for comment.

Never take official taxis at hotels, and never telephone contacts in advance, the note said. And this: ``If anyone approaches you about weapons or violence of any kind, break off the conversation immediately.''

Granma said the evidence found on Dorn showed that Fredom House is ``a front for a subversive system that is closer to an intelligence service . . . than a nongovernmental humanitarian organization.''

Among the evidence was a receipt for $500 delivered to a dissident for ``humanitarian aid.''

Cuba has repeatedly charged that such U.S. financial aid to dissidents virtually manufactured the entire dissident movement. Calzon said the money goes in $50 installments to the families of jailed political prisoners.

Granma said Dorn was helping ``counterrevolutionaries'' and accused Freedom House of ``espionage, subversion and provocations.''

But he was expelled and not arrested, the newspaper added, ``because this is the way in which they try to provoke a scandal, in case their innocent emissary is punished.''

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald