JVLV: Cubans Fighting Alongside Russians in Syria? Suchliki's Tale, By Leni Friedman Valenta, 10-29-15

                                                 Incredible!  Cuban troops are being deployed in Syria, to fight alongside Russians!  Since October 14, this message has been flying through the world and surely Botox sales must have boomed with all the raised   eyebrows.   True, the Castros   are audacious.  

 

 But would Raul Castro, overseeing a crumbling regime, and with his oil producer, Venezuela, in crisis, and looking to the U.S. for salvation, really deploy his troops with Putin to save Assad?   Fox News cited the denial of   Gerardo Penalver, a Cuban Foreign Ministry senior official.  I also noticed when the news hit the Syrian embassy, the Russian journal Sputnik likened the story to “Russia sending troops to Madagascar to cope with lemurs.” 

 Finally the source was clarified -- none other than my husband’s former colleague at the University of Miami, distinguished Bacardi professor Jaime Suchliki, head of the school’s Institute of Cuban and Cuban American Studies [ICCAS].   Suchliki’s institute has also reported at least seven times in the last several years the death of Fidel Castro.  If nine lives is the limit, two to go.  Suchliki’s tendency to   hyperbole   is not the only bone I pick with him, however.  There’s a much bigger one to chew on and herein hangs a fascinating tale that has taken 20 years to be told. Moreover, both bones are linked as the reader will see.

 

The trouble for Jiri started when he developed a close relationship with the late Jorge Mas Canosa, [hereafter Jorge] the chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation [CANF].  Jorge’s CANF supported a hard line U.S. policy towards Cuba and generously funded   Suchliki’s institute.  But Jorge also began giving grants to Jiri’s ISEES.  

In 1985, after a decade teaching and supervising a Soviet and East European M.A. program for intelligence   officers at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Jiri won a national competition for a tenured, full professorship at the University of Miami. Unfortunately, Jiri ignored prior warnings about the faculty feuding endemic to the Graduate School of International Studies [GSIS]. His predecessor, Carl Jacobson, also warned him Suchliki had helped to organize his firing, jealous of his State Department grant.

“You need Glasnost here Comrades!"

At the University of Miami, Jiri soon founded the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies [ISEES]. Like Suchliki’s   Cuba-oriented institute, it was part [GSIS].  However, one of Jiri’s specialties was the Soviet-Cuban relationship – also Suchliki’s turf. Editor of two scholarly books, Conflict in Nicaragua, and U.S. Intervention in Grenada, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Jiri had served as a principle witness for Henry Kissinger’s 1983 Bi-partisan Commission on Central America.  

Meanwhile, the school’s pro-Castro leftists –were not pleased with the Jiri-Jorge friendship, particularly GSIS’s late Associate Dean, Enrique Baloyra.  A   member of the editorial board of Arieto, “a magazine supported by the Castro government,” Baloyra tried to steer students away from Jiri’s classes.

Then, shortly before the U.S. election of 1988, Castro, with   the Reagan administration’s   tacit support, agreed to receive a delegation of U.S. leading experts on Cuba. Center-right   Jiri was the only non-leftist aboard. At the conference, Jiri presented a paper entitled “United States and Cuba;   Castroika vs Perestroika,” later published in the Miami Herald.  Opening a Pandora’s Box, he also declaimed to dozens of Cuban and Caribbean leftists, “Comrades you need glasnost here.”

Silence. Pin drop!  Then Jiri was suddenly rescued by two Soviet scholars who suggested “glasnost is a good thing.” They were not applauded, and when the U.S. delegation met with the late Cuban Vice President, Carlos Raphael Rodriguez, he made it abundantly clear he did not agree with Jiri and the Russians. Whoa!  Jiri had discovered a Soviet-Cuban schism!

Suchliki Exposes Anti-Valenta Coup

Jiri’s trip to Havana only intensified an ongoing GSIS power struggle over policies towards Cuba and the USSR.  Jiri was supported by Dean Moss, but both hardliner Suchliki, known in Havana as “Neanderthal,” and Baloyra, dubbed “Progressive,” deeply resented Jiri’s Havana trip. Why had they not been selected?   Meanwhile, Miami’s staunchest hardliner on communism, Jorge, became highly interested in Jiri’s tale of a schism.  “Looks like I’ll have to become a lobbyist in Moscow,” he quipped.  

In 1988, Miami was the most anti-communist city in the Union.  Communist visitors were welcomed with riots – once even a bazooka.  Yet Jorge wasn’t joking as he asked Jiri, “Will you help me organize a dialogue with the Russians at your institute?” Jiri was happy to oblige, “If   you protect me,” he replied.   Said the CANF chairman, “I already have.  You are still alive.” 

  Jorge couldn’t protect Jiri from everything.  A decade later, CANF treasurer Feliciano Foyo, a friend of Jeb Bush, would recall to Jiri and me what Suchliki told Jiri and some GSIS   supporters at his home in August 1990.  Not only Jiri, but the late Ted Rubel,   Sanford Ziff, and Elsa Eaton, were shocked to learn that Baloyra had urged Suchliki’s help in organizing a political coup against Jiri.   Suchliki had taken notes. Baloyra had picked an appropriate time for a coup -- Dean Moss had just been hospitalized with   a heart attack.   Baloyra hoped he would be the new caudillo. Then Suchliki read his notes at a faculty meeting, embarrassing Baloyra.  Jiri was relieved and thought of Suchliki as “a brother.”

 

But the anti-Valenta plot was still to thicken.   Baloyra was   joined by Vendulka Kubalkova, born in Czechoslovakia like Jiri, an expert on Marxism and Leninism.  Moss and Jiri hired her in 1988, but soon regretted it.  A year later she launched a campaign and then a lawsuit against them, claiming sexual discrimination in her pay.  More was to come.  

 

While Moss was in the hospital still another faculty foe joined the plot; Kubalkova’s friend, the late Alexander McIntyre, whom Jiri had not recommended for tenure.  No scholarly publications!   McIntyre’s and Kubalkova’s effort to discredit Jiri were also helped by Jiri’s and Kubalkova’s student, Craig Simon. Author of a monograph on Frisbee the   ultra-leftist   Simon began a letter-writing campaign among the students, suggesting they go to another program.  The campaign was revealed by several students who supported Jiri. Louis Rodi (now a homeland security senior official) wrote in a February 14, 1991 letter, “… Mr. Simon is venting his own personal frustrations stemming from his own shortcomings on both Dr. Valenta and the Soviet Studies program.”

As the “Moscow-Miami Dialogue” envisioned by Jorge and Jiri was evolving, Russian opposition leader Boris Yeltsin began his September 1989   tour of America and visit to the White House.  Not pleased were Gorbachev, the Bush ’41 administration and a majority of academics, adoring Gorbachev and angry at spoiler Yeltsin. Among the latter was Kubalkova. But Jiri, aware that Yeltsin had a more democratic vision than Gorbachev, invited him to Miami.  Within 48 hours he became the only professor in the country who both raised the money for Yeltsin’s honoraria and invited Yeltsin to his school.    

 

Knock Knock, Guess Who’s Coming for Lunch?

Kubalkova, writing a laudatory monograph on Gorbachev, was aghast.  That “alcoholic?”  As Pravda was busy demonizing Yeltsin, one of her students blasted Jiri in the university   paper for inviting the “bum” from Moscow. Worse yet from Kubalkova’s perspective, Yeltsin came to the Valentas’   home for lunch.  There he explained to Jiri’s Cuban and Jewish co-sponsors, prominent Cuban-American writer, Carlos Montaner, and Miami Herald reporter Fred Tasker that his aim was a democratic peaceful revolution!   Mouths dropped open!  

Following the lunch, Yeltsin was scheduled to address a town hall meeting Jiri had scheduled at the Omni Hotel in Miami. The following incident was subsequently confirmed by prominent Miami Herald writer-turned CNN anchor, Andreas Oppenheimer, in his book, Castro’s Final Hour.   As Jiri and Yeltsin were driving to the hotel in a white limousine, Yeltsin asked Jiri, "But isn't Castro undertaking his own version of perestroika?”

 

“No, said Valenta. Speaking Russian [rusty Russian, indeed, but one Yeltsin understood well] …the professor told his guest about the Ochoa affair, about the recent incidents of repression against dissidents in Cuba, and of Castro's refusal to accept any meaningful political or economic reforms.”

Yeltsin was astounded.  He had not been briefed.

Smitten with Gorbymania, university President Tad Foote excused himself from the town hall meeting that followed.  But Jiri, moderating the event, and fearing the worst from the anti-Castro crowd, was unexpectedly surprised.   A builder like Donald Trump, Yeltsin had a similar hypnotic effect on the audience.  He radiated charisma, completely conquering the crowd with his honesty,   wit and democratic heart.  They adored him!  Nor were Kubalkova and Suchliki amused, when Jiri and his former wife, Virginia, enjoyed a vodka dinner the following month with the Yeltsin family at their Moscow apartment.  

 

Suchliki   Turns Against Moscow-Miami Dialogues

In late May 1990, another dialogue with prominent Russians took place at the Doubletree Hotel in Miami, organized by Jiri together with a Russian counterpart, Andrey Kortunov, a rising star of Georgi Arbatov’s Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada.   It involved key legislators,   foreign policy officials and prominent opinion makers in both the U.S. and USSR responsible for Latin America.  Invited to teach with Jiri for a semester. Andrey soon became the superstar of Miami, helping Jorge and Jiri open the most anti-communist city in the Union to Russian business like Aeroflot and political interests.  Jiri also organized with Igor Kokorev, the best Russian expert on U.S. cinematography, a festival of glasnost films in Miami Beach.

 

Both Jiri and Andrei had ensured the Russian delegations would include prominent supporters of both Yeltsin and Gorbachev.  The first formal Moscow-Miami Dialogue included both Yeltsin and Gorbachev supporters.  Among those   in the Yeltsin camp were Yuri Pavlov, head of the Soviet Latin American desk, Yeltsin’s friend, the late Argumenty y fakyi editor-in-chief and parliamentarian, Vladislav Starkov, and prominent economist Nikolai Shmelev.  Shmelev became so popular with the Cuban Americans in Miami that Moss and Jiri invited him to teach a semester at Jiri’s institute.  But Kubalkova, objected and Shmelev did not come.  Moreover her campaign led to canceling the visit of another distinguished professor, then Ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock.  A close friend of Jiri’s he was eager to come.  He ended up working with Legvold at Columbia University.  

 

Co-sponsoring the visit of these men was Moscow’s Peace Committee, then headed by prominent writer, Genrik Borovik.  A KGB favorite in the past, he was now a Gorbachev reformer.  Meanwhile, another participant, Georgi Arbatov, a-Gorbachev foreign policy advisor, was now firmly in the Yeltsin camp.  Nevertheless, Kubalkova, Suchliki and a CIA scholar in residence at Suchliki’s institute, labeled Arbatov, Kortunov and Borovic “KGB agents.”

 

Also among those invited   to the dialogue by Jiri was Friz Ermath, then the chief Russologist at the CIA. Fritz must have known that Borovik’s Peace Committee sponsored the travel of the Russian visitors.  But did he realize what was really going on?  Jiri and Andrey had succeeded forging a unique debate over  Kremlin subsidies for Castro’s regime. KGB Chief Vladimir Kryuchkov was outraged.  He   wrote in his memoir that the Miami dialogue was a dangerous CIA project.  Also, that Arbatov was the head of the pro-U.S. lobby in Moscow.

 

CIA my foot!  It was not involved. And speaking of Foote, again he didn’t come, still disliking Yeltsin and his friends.   Likely  the CIA was unhappy it wasn’t involved. The new dialogue attracted tremendous publicity   throughout Latin America. Unannounced, a few dozen Russian reporters rushed to Miami, eager to write critical articles about glasnost-adverse Cuba. Jorge told Jiri to accommodate them as most were short of money.

 

 Easier to say than do. They needed immediate cash. It was the weekend and the university was closed. Paperwork could not be processed. To help these guests, Jiri opted to utilize small amounts of cash from the conference proceeds with Jorge’s approval.  None of this was according to Hoyle, but extraordinary circumstances required unusual measures. When Suchliki got wind of this though, he went ballistic

 

Naturally the Cuban dictator was furious.  Soviet high officials meeting in Miami for a tête-à-tête with Cuban exiles led by Jorge? On May 23rd, only hours before the departure of the Soviet delegation for Miami, the Cuban ambassador, Joachim    Balaguer, tried to prevent its departure.  Since weeks before the opening of the dialogue, moreover Jiri, Andrey and their cohorts had been receiving were dozens of bomb threats and menacing calls at the institute staff and students. The FBI was called in to protect participants, some of them beautiful young agents disguised as prostitutes.

 

Moreover, excited by Suchliki’s criticisms through a local radio station and Kubalkova’s whispers about the KGB taking over Miami, some Cuban exile groups were planning to protest the dialogue.  Jorge took to the airwaves, however, and saved the day.  

 

The “mini-summit” as this dialogue was also called by the U.S. press, preceded a Washington summit between Bush ’41 and Mikhail Gorbachev.  Primarily it became a discussion of Cuba and a key part of it was Suchliki’s presentation.  While some Russian speakers were critical of the imperial overreach of the Kremlin Empire, Suchliki   hyperbolized   the Russo-Cuban military cooperation, as he would 25-years later with Syria. He viewed with great suspicion Gorbachev’s “New Thinking.”

During this dialogue, Yeltsin won a free election and became the leader of Russia. Several months later,   in September 1990, Jiri led a CANF delegation to   the Yeltsin White House and lobbied the new president to reduce Russian subsidies to Castro. Shortly thereafter, Yeltsin did.    

Prague- Miami Dialogue

 By late 1989, a new spring had arrived not only in Moscow but in Prague.  Born in Czechoslovakia, Jiri, had fled Prague as a student activist after the 1968 Soviet invasion. Arriving in America as a political refugee, he had been waiting for this for two decades.  In America, with Prague ever on his mind, he had written a seminal book, Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia 1968, Johns Hopkins University Press.  Now, his book was published again, with an introduction by the late Alexander Dubcek.

 

In August 1990, Jiri invited to Michael Cermak to Miami.  A Czech radio reporter   just   expelled from Cuba for a broadcast critical of Fidel, Cermak was about to become a press spokesman for Czech Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier.  In October he helped Jiri launch a Prague-Miami Dialogue, the two of them bringing Dienstbier to Miami.   After a dinner co-sponsored by the CANF, the minister, Jiri,   Jorge, Foyo, and a top CANF leader, Domingo Moreira, met in private circle   and forged the ending of the Czech representation of Cuba in Washington.  All without the approval of Foggy Bottom.  Dienstbier also offered to make Jiri his Ambassador to Cuba.  Jiri refused, asking instead to direct Dienstbier’s foreign ministry think tank. Done.  Jiri started in the spring.

 

Still teaching, commuting between Miami, Prague and Moscow, Jiri enjoyed his new line of work.   He raised funds for large institutional grants from the Konrad Adenauer and the PEW Foundations. He launched a project resulting in two books on Czech national interests.  Among other things, they proposed a better relationship with NATO, rescinding Czech subsidies to Cuba,   and closing the PLO embassy in Prague. Encouraging Havel to return to the traditional Czech ties with Israel,   Jiri also arranged with Sanford Ziff, President Vaclav Havel, Dienstbier and Yeltsin, an alternative air route for the emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel through Prague.  

 

You’re Fired!

The most pleasant activity for Jiri at IRR however, was giving a Trump-like notice “You’re fired!”  To several agents of the KGB and the Czech Secret Service [STB] working for his think tank. Unfortunately, with all the communists Jiri dismissed in Prague, he could not fire his chief menace, Kubalkova, back at the University of Miami.  Kubalkova later revealed  to him she was a former member of the Czech Secret Police.  Now she forged an alliance with   few some of the former secret police agents Jiri had fired.  Their subsequent attempts to try to blackmail him are discussed in Jiri’s forthcoming memoir. 

 

In a January 15, 1993 notarized statement, Cermak, would cite Kubalkova’s letter to the foreign ministry. She was,

“…attacking Professor Valenta’s  achievements as a scholar and his personal contacts in the United States and abroad.  …I was surprised as to why she would be attacking Dr. Valenta, a man of outstanding character and scholarship.  I then remembered that at that time the Czechoslovak government was looking to appoint an Honorary Czechoslovak Consul to ‘’… Miami and that she was extremely interested in the position.  “…I also remember that Dr. Valenta opposed her being appointed because of her lack of substantial ties with the Jewish and Cuban communities in Miami…”  (Thanks to Jiri, his lawyer, Alan Becker, became Czech consul).

 

Not only with the Czech foreign ministry did she seek to damage Jiri’s reputation; also with American academia.  While Robert Legvold of the Harriman Institute at Columbia, was visiting for the Dialogue, she gave him a secret letter badmouthing Jiri.  Legvold gave it to him.  Then came her assault on FPI’s Daniel Pipes. who  had received a joint PEW grant with Jiri.  In a May 27, 1992 unsolicited call to FPI, she spoke to economist Patrick Clawson, who wrote Pipes a memo on their two-hour phone conversation.

 

“...  he [Jiri] has taken money from the Cuban American National Foundation and various Jewish organizations which no dignified research institute would do …She is sending me a newspaper article by two members of the Oriental Institute in Prague, bitterly complaining that Valenta is a U.S. agent because he advised Dienstbier to close the PLO’s Prague office, which she sees as abandoning Czechoslovakia’s traditional Arab friends…”

 

Jiri had made that proposal partly because of a report he received from Czech intelligence that the PLO served as a support center for terrorist activities and contained explosives and arms. To Pipes and Clawson, but also to Jiri’s former wife, Virginia, some of Kubalkova’s comments sounded anti-Semitic.  Virginia later testified   Kubalkova had told her, “There are too many Jews around Jiri.” Jiri was also aware Kubalkova had questioned his Jewishness.  I can testify that Jiri is a mischling whose mother is Jewish. In 2000 I saw the names of his relatives on the holocaust wall of the Pinkas synagogue.

 

Political Correctness:  From Sexual Discrimination to Sexual Harassment

As a CANF public relations campaign against Fidel Castro’s regime continued in both Moscow and Prague, major articles appeared in the media questioning the Kremlin’s economic aid to Cuba. Castro’s response was at hand.  Only later would Jiri learn that Fidel’s DGI was preparing the publication a book, entitled, El Chairman Soy Yo, naming Jiri, along with Jorge, as the main organizers of “a prostitution ring from Prague to Miami.”

 

Was that what inspired Kubalkova?  Or was it the serendipitous eruption of Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas?   Whatever. Kubalkova now changed her target and mode of attack.  While she initially went after both Moss and Valenta on sexual discrimination, she now zeroed in on Jiri, by then in the midst of a divorce, with a charge of sexual harassment.  She wrote a letter to President Foote, hurling incredible charges at Jiri of repeated sexual harassment towards her, oppression, threats and excluding her from his school activities.  Thus she asked that he be dismissed!  A word of disclosure. 

 

Jiri was an easy target -- handsome, naturally flamboyant, at times abrasive, European, macho, warm, and much liked by women of all ages.  Having lived for 23 years in Central and Western Europe, he sometimes hugs someone who does a favor or pats them on the back.  Flirtatious? Yes, guilty as charged.   But that’s only a crime under The Mikado, courtesy of Gilbert and Sullivan

 

As the Washington Times, stoutly defending Jiri, observed, “Her word against his!”  Moreover, I have seen the lady and gotten to know his beautiful former wife who testified on his behalf.  There is no way my tall, handsome and charismatic husband, a magnet for women all his life, could ever have been interested in Kubalkova, this plain-faced, thickset termagant, known to make anti-Semitic hints.  Virginia, who I got to know, agreed.  

 

Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Palous, who frequently lectured at Jiri’s institute, also weighed in on Kubalkova’s claim that she was excluded from Jiri’s projects.  “Significantly, I noticed that at all times when I was visiting the University of Miami, Professor Valenta acted in a highly professional manner towards Professor Kubalkova.  In addition, he invited her to attend all the lectures and seminars that I was delivering at the university and in no way attempted to exclude her from these events.”

 

Admired in Life, Reviled in Death

Alexander McIntyre, as Jiri learned, was the organizational brains behind the coup. He now spread rumors of Jiri’s sexual harassment and helped to prepare the Kafkaesque kangaroo court that subsequently prosecuted Jiri.   Ironically, this 350 pound giant was later found to be a sexual predator when his grown stepdaughter complained of his playing with her genitals since she was eleven. To avoid jail time --or worse-- as a “short eyes” in prison lingo, he, committed suicide, chaining himself to his car and driving it into a canal. The story, hushed up by Foote as we learned,  appeared only in Miami’s  New Times on October 19, 2000 under the title, “Admired in Life; Reviled in Death.”   

 

Troublemaker! President Tad Foote at first wanted to fire Kubalkova. Afflicted with Gorbymania, he also disliked Yeltsin. At any rate, he decided to support her, and the university paid all her legal fees.  

Thanks to Foote’s deception, Jack Matlock still believed for a long time that Jiri’s only witness was his former wife, Virginia.   The university has never admitted that during the hearings twelve witnesses appeared for Jiri.  A few more unexpectedly left town. What they observed was summed up by Daniel Pipes:   “Kangaroo court.” In a letter to the Miami Jewish Journal, he and Clawson complained, “…when one of us in testimony before the UM Faculty committee, tried to raise the issue of Dr. Valenta’s accusers’ anti-Semitic and anti-Cuban attitudes, he was not allowed to speak.”

Testimony as to Kubalkova’s possible motives was not admitted.  Even Baloyra, though he complained about Valenta’s CANF ties, denied there was sexual harassment of Kubalkova. His own motivations against Jiri, however, were exposed by Jorge, who declared Baloyra “a Cuban agent.” A few years after the kangaroo court, Jorge and Pepe Hernandez helped Jiri get on a major TV radio station, where he engaged Baloyra in a sharp dialogue.  For the first time Jiri had the guts to reveal that Baloyra was on the editorial board of Arieto.  Baloyra died shortly thereafter of natural causes.

 

 Only six of Kubalkova’s alleged 18 witnesses – which she proudly said she had herself recruited   -- ever showed up and their testimony wasn’t serious.  One of them was a spurned secretary who admitted she loved him.  Another was a   graduate   of Patrice Lumumba University, a school for third world radicals and terrorists.  And so it went.  This one claimed Jiri had touched her buttocks during a meeting with the late John Swing, then Executive Vice President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).  Swing   debunked her and presented many photographs, showing Virginia sitting next to Jiri.  “It could not have happened in my presence,” he declared.

 

Suchliki Again Switches Sides

Back to the professor, who could have exonerated Jiri – Jaime Suchliki.    By now we know Suchliki had strong motives for not helping Jiri; his unrepentant Neanderthal ideology, his battles for grants and his jealousy of Jiri, now the favorite of the CANF.  Suchliki’s dark side prevailed. Recall he had a smoking gun -- notes on his conversation with Baloyra about an anti-Valenta coup.  But he changed sides, even blaming Valenta in the press for mishandling a CANF grant and railing that his wife was paid $4000 for her hard work helping to prepare the Dialogues.

 

Most ridiculous was his claim Jiri had taken the Russians to Key West to see the Hemingway Museum, a trip approved by Jorge and CANF president, Pepe Hernandez as both of them testified.  Suchliki could have exploded Kubalkova’s whole story and saved Jiri, but he didn’t. He disappeared.

 

Justice often comes at a price the accused cannot afford.  While the university paid Kubalkova’s legal fees, Jiri sold all his property to defend himself –then he ran out of money, and was fired after losing   everything he owned.  Kubalkova got his job and also replaced him on Dante Fascell’s State Department Fellowship Board.  Meanwhile, for Jiri, another marriage crumbled.  He ended up homeless for weeks on the beaches of Dania. When I met him in October 1998, he was living in a shack provided by a member of the Baptist Church of Dania.  To support two minor children, he was cleaning bathrooms at Winn Dixie while retraining himself as a broker.

 

Nobody will ever be able to repay Jiri’s suffering, described in his memoir.  It is hard to envision the devastation he endured spiritually and economically, being cut down in his prime and given what one reporter termed “an academic death sentence” by this university kangaroo court!  And what was he doing?   Helping democratic revolutions in two countries!  

 

Also, think of our country’s loss.  He had arrived In America in 1970 barely speaking English. In four years he was a Brookings fellow. By 1984 he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He had earned every top fellowship imaginable.   In my view he is more brilliant and more qualified than the last four Secretaries of State.

 

Kudo to Daniel Pipes, who supported Jiri for a long time, and whom Kubalkova also tried to destroy,   Pipes summarized Jiri’s case in a letter to a Jewish University trustee in July, 1993. “This case fits a terrible pattern in which American universities repress views which run against the majority faculty opinion.  As you know, Dr. Valenta boasts a strong anti-communist, pro-Israel and anti-Castro record. His colleagues don’t care for this so they are tar and feathering him.”

 

 Jiri and I were married in 1999 and he moved on with his life. In 2005, Martin Palous presented to Jiri the Jan Masaryk Silver Medal awarded by minister of the Foreign Affairs “for Jiri’s contribution in preserving and promoting relations between the Czech government and the United States of America.”  In 2008, at the Czech embassy in Washington, Vaclav Havel, in a remarkable, 2 A.M. meeting organized by now U.S. ambassador, Palous, whispered to Jiri, “You were right about national interests and you were right about closing the PLO embassy.” 

 

Jiri had argued that the PLO embassy in Prague supported terrorism.  Several years later in 2014, Czech police found a significant number of arms and explosives at the embassy after the new PLO ambassador opened a booby-trapped book, dormant for at least two decades that exploded and killed him.

Suchliki’s story having raked up Jiri’s old wounds, I am aware of Kubalkova’s sue-happy nature. She’s an old hand at it.  Having gone through Jiri’s case with my late father, a distinguished lawyer, I know she doesn’t have a leg to stand on. In a civil court she would have faced a charge of perjury.

 

As I see it, however, Jiri and I would likely not have met if his outcome had been different. Nor was he wholly defeated.  He rose out of the ashes, and with the financial support of my late father, we were able to travel, do on-site research, and to found our own small institute dedicated to the study of post-communism and terrorism.  Paraphrasing William Ernest Henley, Jiri is the captain of his fate and the master of his soul.  So am I!

 

Tragedy of “Neanderthal”

Unfortunately, Suchliki seems not to have understood the Kremlin is engaged in complex decision-making.  As revealed by Pavlov, author of The Soviet Cuban Alliance,  there exists a pro-Cuban lobby in Moscow.  It was represented at the Moscow-Miami Dialogue by Sergo Mikoyan and Genrik Borovik, who advocated continuous Russian support of Castro. But Suchliki, hogtied in his own convictions, could not adjust to new realities, even amidst Russians who seriously questioned further Russian military and economic support for the brutal parasite sucking the vital juices of their nation. 

 

Nobody has brought out the point that during the dialogues, Suchliki played into the hands of the KGB which attacked the reformist Russians in Miami.

As in the past, Moscow’s pro-Cuban lobby is presently supported by senior leaders of the Russian military, the military-industrial- security complex – men like the key players in the 1991 attempted, anti-Yeltsin coup.  The lobby was much dismayed that Yeltsin cut subsidies to Cuba.

 

That said however, a key supporter of renewed military ties with Cuba is the Russian Society of Friendship with Cuba and its Vice President Major General, Mikhail Makaruk.  Having engaged in a thorough analysis of Suchliki’s hyperbolic claims regarding Syria, however, Makaruk debunked Suchliki’s story, labeling it “disinformation” and “information warfare.” Significantly, he seemed to blame Yeltsin, who as we saw, was lobbied by Jorge and Jiri.  He stated the Cuban armed forces are not presently in good shape for an intervention in Syria (as they were in Angola and Ethiopia in the 1970’s).

 

Suchliki surely has observed that, in the last few years, the pro-Cuban lobby has revived some of the Old Russian military ties with the anti-U.S.  Caribbean trio, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela. All three are part of Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu´s 2014 global strategy   to extend Russia´s naval and strategic bomber power. However, using the false Angola and Ethiopia analogy, Suchliki engaged in hyperbole with Syria.  His unconfirmed report can only harm the research of respectable institutions. Thus, there have been increasing voices calling for Suchliki’s head. “Suchliki… makes the university look like a fabricator of lies at best,” wrote Alvaro Fernandez in Progreso.  “Suchliki should be fired,” wrote Conexion Miami.

 President Obama’s approach to Cuba has been like “progressive” Baloyra’s in the 1980’s-- recognition of Cuba without security safeguards.  Obama has also unwisely declared he doesn’t “need George Kennan.”  But as we concluded,   “we should heed Kennan’s wise advice and still insist that extra-hemispheric powers like Russia do not develop military ties with radical regimes in the Caribbean Basin.”

Finally, we do not suggest that Suchliki be fired.  I have learned enough about human suffering from Jiri.  I only hope Suchliki has absorbed some lessons from this account and will try to be not just a better analyst, but a better human being.