Sentence:  The I. A. P. A. found itself driven from journalism into politics as it did its best to bring about the downfall of the Castro Government and the return of the Cuban press to the freedom it <WSD>knew</WSD> before Batista 's dictatorship began in 1952 . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have firsthand knowledge of states, situations, emotions, or sensations