American Notes FLORIDA

"The Venezuelans stiffed us. They really did." The Bush Administration official was complaining about how Venezuelan authorities placed Orlando Bosch, a convicted anti-Castro Cuban terrorist, on an airliner bound for Miami in February 1988. His arrival in the U.S. presented the Reagan Administration with a quandary: lock Bosch up or free a man widely seen as a hero in Florida's Cuban-exile community?

For more than two years, Reagan and Bush officials tried to avoid facing the issue. They treated the former pediatrician, now 63, mainly as an immigration problem, keeping him jailed in Miami as an "excludable alien" while trying to find a country that would accept him. Meanwhile, Florida Republicans pressed for his release. Last week the Justice Department yielded to the pressure, freeing the Castro foe. Explained one official: "The Cuba lobby did it again."

Bosch will be kept under virtual house arrest while the State Department tries to find a country to which to ship him. But he seems undaunted by the restrictions. Although he must log all visitors and wear an electronic anklet, Bosch vows that he will "speak to anybody I want to" during the three hours a day he is free to walk the streets of Miami's Little Havana.