President Clinton's Cuba advisor was so worried about a confrontation between Havana and Brothers to the Rescue on Feb. 23, 1996, that he wrote an e-mail to the White House national security deputy that evening warning of a possible shootdown.

The next day, Feb. 24, 1996, Cuban MiGs shot down two Brothers planes, killing four men.

Richard Nuccio told The Herald Saturday night that he never got a reply to the memo he sent at 6:44 p.m. Feb. 23, using the White House electronic mail system, to Sandy Berger, who today is Clinton's national security advisor.

He also tried several times to speak to Berger by telephone, before and after he sent the note. But, he said, he has since concluded that ``the crisis du jour was taking priority over my phone calls.''

At the time, Berger was the No. 2 person at the White House National Security Council, the deputy to advisor Anthony Lake. Nuccio was special advisor on Cuba to both Clinton and the secretary of state.

Memo was read later

White House spokesman P.J. Crowley said late Saturday that Berger did receive Nuccio's memo ``but he did not have a chance to read it that evening.''

He added: ``Rick was acting on his intuition. In point of fact, we had no intelligence to suggest that the Cubans would act in a hostile manner.''

Nuccio said Saturday from his home in the Washington suburbs that he included the shootdown scenario to get Berger's attention.

He said that he did not believe a shootdown was imminent and that he considered it unimaginable unless the Brothers overflew Cuba. He was worried, Nuccio said, because he had unsuccessfully tried to get the Federal Aviation Administration to stop Brothers founder Jose Basulto from flying.

``But because of the kind of laws we have in this country we live in, we couldn't stop his provocations and aggressive behavior,'' he said.

Nuccio left the administration in February 1997. He first disclosed the existence of the memo to El Nuevo Herald staff writer Peter Katel.

`Tensions sufficiently high'

Expanding on the disclosure Saturday night, Nuccio read The Herald his archive copy. It included the following:

``Reports by Miami police have raised suspicions that a Cuban-American group, Brothers to the Rescue, may be planning another in a series of violations of Cuban air space tomorrow. Previous overflights by Jose Basulto . . . have been met with restraint by Cuban authorities. Tensions are sufficiently high within Cuba, however, that we feel this may finally tip the Cubans toward an attempt to shoot down or force down the planes.

``We only know for sure that Basulto . . . has filed a flight plan for the Bahamas. He has done this before and diverted to drop leaflets over Havana. . . .

``We have repeatedly tried to get FAA to act on the previous overflights without success. Informed of the possible overflight, Miami authorities have only agreed to issue another warning to him, if they encounter him.

``By our laws there may not be much more we can do.''

Elaborating, Nuccio said he had conflicting sentiments when he wrote the memo. ``No one thought the first thing that the Cubans would do would be to shoot them down,'' he said. ``But they were practicing confronting slow-flying aircraft in the couple of months before the shootdown.''

Tampa attorney Ralph Fernandez has claimed for more than a year that a Cuban commercial pilot -- Adel Regalado Ulloa, who defected to the United States several months after the shootdown -- had his aircraft used in a dry run of the Brothers attack.

`Castro given opportunity'

Upon learning of the Nuccio memo, Basulto said its disclosure bolstered his argument that ``somebody [high up in the Clinton administration] must have put their hands in there and made it possible'' for his planes to be shot down.

``The State Department never sent a note to Cuba saying, `Don't you dare shoot down those airplanes over international waters,' '' said Basulto. ``I was sentenced to death by the U.S. government and Castro was given the opportunity to execute me.''

Basulto and his Cessna escaped the MiGs, but Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña and Armando Alejandre were killed in two other planes.

Nuccio said that, on the eve of the shootdown, he and State Department officials didn't know that the FAA routinely passed along the Brothers' flight plans to Havana traffic control. So, although he considered delivering a stern warning to the Cubans on Feb. 23 -- after a performance of the Cuban ballet at Washington's Kennedy Center -- he consulted with Joseph Sullivan, chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, and decided against it.

``We thought, naively, as it turns out, that we would be calling the Cubans' attention to something they might not be focused on otherwise.''

Added Crowley, the White House's National Security Council spokesman: ``The responsibility lies with the Cubans in shooting down unarmed civilian aircraft in an action that amounts to cold-blooded murder. . . . My understanding is we had no information to suggest that the Cubans planned to shoot these aircraft down.''