(DAI), the prime contractor working with USAID, which had won a $6 million U.S. government contract for the program in which Gross was involved, a controversial "democracy-promotion program" that ballooned under the George W. Bush administration, to provide communications equipment to break the Cuban government's 'information blockade.' Gross received less than $300,000. He spoke little Spanish and had not worked in Cuba before. USAID's $20 million Cuba program, authorized by a law calling for regime change in Cuba, has been criticized in congressional reports, which called it wasteful and ineffective and accused it of putting people in danger. Funding was held up briefly in 2010 over concerns following Gross's arrest. According to American officials, Gross visited Cuba four times in five months in 2009 on a tourist visa before his arrest to deliver computer and satellite equipment to three Jewish community groups. In December 2009, according to DAI, he was on a follow-up trip researching how the groups were making use of the equipment he had previously distributed to them. As reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, Cuba's small Jewish community, numbering fewer than 2,000 people who mainly live in Havana, enjoys full religious freedom, the possibility to emigrate to Israel and fairly good relations with the government under Raúl Castro, but has little influence, making observers wonder why the United States provides material to them under a USAID program that usually targets dissidents. According to a Latin America specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, it is possible that Gross’s mission was useful only inasmuch as it satisfied Congressional demands to take action in Cuba. In January 2012, it was reported that Cuban authorities claimed that Gross has visited Cuba as early as 2004, delivering a video camera to a leading Freemason who later declared that he had been a Cuban intelligence agent since 2000. Gross filed reports for DAI of his four visits to Cuba in 2009. The report of the fifth and final trip was written by DAI. A review of the reports was revealed on February 12, 2012, by the Associated Press (AP). According to the reports, Gross was aware of the risks he was taking. AP reports that Gross did not identify himself as a representative of the U.S. government, but claimed to be a member of a Jewish humanitarian group . To escape Cuban authorities' detection, he enlisted the help of American Jews to