4-30-08, 9:18 am

Caught up in a series of scandals that erased what little credibility it had on the Cuba issue, the Bush administration, which until now trusted that its Cuban-American mercenaries would succeed in destabilizing the country, has placed its hopes in the none-too-clean hands of an astute Czech, a fitting student of its spy services.

Selected and recruited by the CIA in the late 1980s, Petr 'Peter' Kolar, ambassador of the Czech Republic in Washington, moved in less than three years from a building maintenance employee and mail clerk to chief researcher at the Institute of Strategic Studies attached to the Ministry of Defense in Prague.

This was thanks to a little push forward by his friend Vaclav Havel, also connected to the U.S. intelligence pipelines.

Kolar began his dizzying ascent after the collapse of the socialist state in the former Czechoslovakia, when his masters sent him, overnight, to Washington to begin a training program for his new tasks, according to his official biography. This training program was at the Woodrow Wilson International Center (WWIC), an institution funded and run by the U.S. government.

What his biography doesn’t say is that the WWIC, attached to the University of Princeton, is as closely tied to the CIA as white on rice. So much so, in fact, that the notorious former CIA director, Allen W. Dulles, bequeathed his personal archives to that institute.

James Billington, director of the WWIC from 1973 to 1988, began his career as Dulles’ assistant and ended as advisor to Ronald Reagan. According Dulles’ declassified documents, a large number of professors from that center also worked as 'high level' advisors for U.S. spy agencies.

Lee Hamilton, its current director, has an even darker résumé. A former congressman from the state of Indiana, he was a member of the presidential advisory council for domestic security, secretary of the National Security Study Group for the Department of Defense and… secretary of the CIA advisory council on economic intelligence. Even more serious: he was on the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, also known as the 9/11 Commission.

What could agent Kolar have studied in Washington, then?

What is certain is that back in Prague, the Havel connection sent him quickly on the way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he would rise from one intrigue to the next at rocket speed until becoming a deputy minister.

Now Washington could reap what it had sowed.

ARRIVES WITH MAFIA FIASCO

On December 2, 2005, Doctor Kolar (he was by now called doctor), presented his credentials to George W. Bush. He knew what the priorities were. He waited until after the New Year’s holiday, and on January 17, 2006, he was in Miami, where he met with some of the most recalcitrant mafia elements.

By May, he was ready to come out as the star of the anti-Cuban show.

In a rather crude move, the conspirators chose the offices of the Center for a Free Cuba, of the notorious CIA agent Frank Calzón, to call a press conference. Kolar had invited a number of diplomats from other former Eastern European socialist countries, in order to launch what he called 'an initiative to support the internal opposition in Cuba.'

Those accompanying him included Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart, son of a government minister under the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship; Caleb McCarry, head of the Bush Plan to annex Cuba; Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, a terrorist recruited from the Cuban Democratic Directorate; the heavily-subsidized Sylvia Iriondo, of MAR por Cuba; Angel de Fana, of the group Plantados hasta la Libertad y la Democracia, a counterrevolutionary organization of ex-convicts; and Mauricio Claver Carone, director of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, which is dedicated to bribing congress members.

Kolar did not suspect at that moment that before the year was over his troop of conspirators would be dispersed by a hurricane: a report in December from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealing that USAID officials assigned to Cuba concealed the final destination of $65.4 million in grants from this federal agency that went to their friends in Miami and Washington.

The suspects indicated by the GAO report included two of Kolar’s best supporters: Frank Calzón and Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, who received millions in subsidies.

The blow was too heavy. Days later, Adolfo Franco, administrator of Latin American funds for the US Agency for International Development, immediately resigned his post… and joined the team of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who just so happens to be a director of the International Republican Institute (IRI), one of the great beneficiaries of Franco’s generosity.

The scandal in USAID continued over the following months, with more resignations and a police investigation that recently 'blew up' Felipe Sixto, Calzón’s right-hand man, and the mastermind of a profitable embezzlement scheme, who has been hiding for a few months as 'special' advisor to the president.

Another activity organized by Kolar’s 'advisors' a short while ago at the Coral Gables Biltmore Hotel brought to light the new plan for creating subversion in Cuba as imagined by the masterminds in Langley.

Acknowledging Washington’s isolation in its dirty war against the island, Cuban-American Senator Mel Martinez, who was heading up the unusual meeting, emphasized a need for involving 'other countries' in their anti-Cuba operation. This was meant to remind Cubans who 'have been trained to hate' the U.S. government that the latter 'is not their only ally.' José Cárdenas, the 'interim' director replacing Franco at USAID, said that USAID would soon begin 'following the model established by the Eastern European bloc in the 1990s,' thus confirming it as the first to benefit.

The mafioso meeting ended with an eloquent piece of nonsense from U.S. Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutiérrez. According to this former multi-million dollar corporate executive, attention must be given to Cuba 'as it has been with Tibet and Darfur,' thus admitting U.S. intervention in both of those crises.

Meanwhile, the Czech ambassador was sanctioning such absurd instructions, his perspicacious associate Calzón did not waste any time on a useless show. He was waiting at the fittingly-named Dulles Airport in Washington for the next flight to Prague.

He knew that from now on, the Cárdenas substitute would favor the Czech capital for distributing the millions from USAID.

Behind Calzón would follow all of his fellow mercenaries, looking to secure new sources of funding, beginning with Robert Ménard, in a line that also featured Boronat and Iriondo.

Vaclav Havel, for his part, has just inaugurated another organization for 'advocating democracy,' on April 16 in Brussels, and behind it is the hairy hand of the godfathers of subversion in Cuba… suffice it to say that the coordinator for the 'new' program is Czech Kristina Prunerova, of People in Need, a group created in Prague by the CIA and heavily subsidized by the National Endowment for Democracy, another agency attached to U.S. intelligence.

In Miami, various factions that have been feeding for decades from the federal government’s anti-Cuba crusades are now reeling in face of the Kolar Plan, wondering how to link up with that subversive structure that benefits European NGOs and satellites of USAID, NED and other channels.

The GAO audit on USAID’s anti-Cuba activities made headlines with the fancy purchases by the hired 'democracy activists' from Miami: cashmere sweaters, Godiva chocolates, Nintendo games and Sony Playstations, supposedly all meant for alleged dissidents.

This is the rotten fruit of the lucubration of Cuban-American congress members Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart, Senator Martínez and the ringleaders of the Cuban Liberty Council. Will the USAID’s millions continue to be reaped in Miami?