WASHINGTON - The "Embassy of Free Cuba,” as it bills itself, has pinpointed the main enemy of freedom for its island nation: the New York Times, CNN, the big TV networks and other mainstream U.S. media outlets. And the younger Cuban exiles are waging war on what they see as this powerful threat to any effort to help the Cuban people from the chains that bind them to Fidel Castro’s communist police state.

Cuban-Americans unveiled Wednesday night a new powerful film documentary, "Covering Cuba 2: The New Generation,” from producer-director Agustin Blazquez.

These are second-generation Cuban-Americans whose parents fled to this country from the tyranny of Castro’s regime.

Speaking in perfect English, these "Americanized” adults recounted the Castro-coddling they detect in establishment outlets. And they detailed Castro’s cruelties.

Among other atrocities cited was Castro’s having ordered a tugboat sunk in 1994, killing 41, including 12 children. Castro even refused to retrieve the dead bodies.

The film is a prelude to an upcoming "book in progress,” titled "The High Cost of Social Revolutions: The Black Book of Cuban Communism,” by Armando Lago. That tome will detail how Castro has killed more than 105,000 innocent people from 1959 to 2000.

The squalor shown on the island belies the glowing reports from Castro’s minions.

"What good is a ‘free’ education when there isn’t anything you can do with it, other than to place a piece of paper on your wall, if that?” asked an embittered exile.

The U.S. media are pictured by the Cuban-Americans as being "obsessed” with "this isolated island” and having adopted Castro as their "cause celebre.” "And it makes me sick,” said an incredulous son of a refugee.

The New York Times is excoriated for championing Castro’s cause, going all the way back to 1957 when Times reporter Herbert Mathews glorified the then-rebel whose troops were in the mountains fighting to topple the regime of Fulgencio Battista.

In the early years after Castro’s takeover, New York City subways displayed a paid anti-Castro ad, picturing the Cuban communist dictator over the caption, "I got my job through the New York Times,” a takeoff on the Times advertising campaign of that era alluding to the supposed effectiveness of its "Jobs Wanted” ads.

Over the film of suffering Cubans and desolate refugees fleeing to freedom in crude makeshift boats, there is the voice of Bill Clinton joking that the real story in the whole Elian Gonzales case was the fact that "we finally found the one immigrant that Pat Buchanan wants to keep in this country.” That was followed by laughter over the continuing pictures of suffering Cubans.

A second-generation refugee speculated the New York Times is against the Cuban-Americans because "they tend to be conservative politically.”

"But they ought to consider this,” he said. "How would we like it to have Bill Clinton running this country for 40 years?”

The documentary is critical of the reporting of Katie Couric on NBC’s "Today” show, as well as NBC reporter Jim Avila and CNN’s Lucia Newman. Geraldo Rivera was a disappointment especially, given his Hispanic and Jewish heritage.

"You would think that he would understand the plight of these people.”

Heavily emphasized was the fact that Castro effectively controls any U.S. media reporting from Havana. It is not complicated. You either report the stories as the Cuban government hands them to you, or your visa is pulled. U.S. reporters in Cuba never leave Havana. They don’t get to see what life in Cuba is really like.

Reference was made to Couric’s interview with the female cleric who accompanied the Cuban grandmothers on their visit to Elian Gonzales when the 6-year-old refugee was living with Miami relatives. When she told Couric of the fear she saw in their eyes, Couric’s first reaction was to ask if the fear was caused by the crowds of Cuban-Americans outside. The correspondent was obviously unprepared for the response, which was that the fear was caused by the Castro regime, which was ready to retaliate against relatives left behind if the grandmothers stepped out of line during their visit to the U.S.

Considerable time was spent discussing the Cuban "diplomats” in Washington who roughed up Cuban-American demonstrators peacefully protesting the kidnapping of Elian.

These "thugs,” opined one demonstrator, "seemed to be provoked by the fact that our demonstration was peaceful. And that’s something they didn’t know how to deal with because they don’t know how to deal with anything in any way other than violence.”

The demonstration was peaceful, but the reaction to it was violent, right here on American soil.

Notwithstanding the fact that such powerful media elite figures as Ted Turner are against them, and notwithstanding that some of President Bush’s nominees for State Department posts are in hot water with the new Senate Democrat plurality because of their anti-Castro beliefs, these second-generation Cuban-Americans are determined to see that their story is told.

As one of them succinctly stated: "We are more than anti-Castro. Much, much more than just that. We are pro-freedom.”