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“INDEPENDENT” LIBRARIANS
The anti-Cuban “Czech
connection” of Agent Kent lies in Rhode Island
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Special for Granma
International—
THE “Czech connection” which
supposedly was to supply strategic support to CIA
agent Robert Kent, creator of the group “Friends
of Cuban Libraries”, in order to attack Cuba at
the world convention of librarians in Oslo, is
made up of an official of U.S. military
intelligence, formerly Czech, who emigrated to the
United States in 1951.
The United States annually
spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to
attack Cuba. The administration which abandoned
the black population in New Orleans is the same
one who maintains an expensive propagandistic
apparatus in the south of Florida in order to
damage the image of the island.
Among the individuals who
always have the budget to assault the
international image of Cuba, New York “librarian”
Robert Kent, stands out. It is said that he
represents a small network of so-called
“librarians” which the U.S. Interest Section in
Havana created over the course of the last few
years with some paid informants.
In carrying out his campaigns,
Kent pretends to have at his disposal mysterious
“supporters” from Eastern Europe. Nevertheless,
the reality is that the European “connection of
the U.S. agent is reduced to a few individuals,
such as the Czech “Stanley” or “Stan” Kalkus.
From his real name, Stanislav
Kalkus is an individual who is the son of a Czech
businessman of the extreme right who, after the
Nazi defeat, confronted the new authorities.
“Stan” Kalkus emigrated from
Czechoslovakia to Austria in 1948 and later to the
United States in 1951 where he settled in Chicago.
According to confidences from
his friends, scarcely one year after his arrival
in North America, he was recruited by the U.S.
military intelligence.
From that time, he was added to
the armed forces of the United States and, over
many years, “worked” in the intelligence sphere in
various parts of the world.
In the 1970’s, he was Library
Director of the U.S. Navy in Washington. In 1979
and 1980, he was President of the Military Library
Association [a division of the Special Library
Association] of the United States.
Kalkys “officially” retired in
1992.
But Robert Kent’s friend and
“supporter” stays active in his real activity.
Making the most of the
political changes in Eastern Europe and the need
for the United States to strategically insert
people in the region, the “retired” military man
reappeared in the position of an assistant
professor of Library Sciences at the Karlova
University in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
It is from there that he
developed his “collaboration” with Kent.
The “Czech librarian” Stanislav
“Stan” Kalkus continues living, for at least half
the year, in Rhode Island, United States, where
his real residence is found.
At the world librarian
convention in Oslo, in August, Agent Kalkus,
unwisely valued showing himself at Robert Kent’s
side, whose image deteriorated, isolated.
Kent, an old CIA agent,
remained excluded from the podiums.
“Mr. Kent introduces himself as
a representative of a group that has two members,”
recalls Eliades Acosta, Director of the Jose Marti
National Library, who heads the Cuban delegation,
at the final debate of the FAIFE session where
Kent interrupted with his habitual anti-Cuban
show.
“That moment of Mr. Kent is a
ritual,” said Acosta. “I would have liked to have
heard his opinion about the U.S. Patriot Act.”
“In Cuba books aren’t burned
like the National Library in Baghdad was burned!”
emphasized the Cuban librarian while Kent showed
clear signs of nervousness.
“POLISH” LIBRARIAN AND U.S.
SENATE CANDIDATE
The Eastern European
connection, which Kent boasted about at certain
opportunities, involves other peoples whose path
is also something strange like Silvia Stasselova,
Slovakia Technical University, where she is head
of the library and the “information center”.
Stasselova is said to be
President of the "Slovakian Association of
Librarians.”
Nevertheless, that association
is not the National Librarian Association, created
in 1920, but a separate association, created… in
1990 and which gathered some individuals connected
to that same activity.
Another Eastern European buddy
of Robert Kent in his anti-Cuban adventures and
misadventures is Wojciech Siemaszkiewicz, a Pole
from Krakow who was a professional “dissident” in
his time.
Siemaszkiewicz declares himself
in favor of Kent in protests that he generously
shares on the Internet.
Nevertheless, it has to be
known that the other character of the
“connection”, who is a colleague of Kent at the
New York Public Library, lives in New Jersey where
he is known for his extreme right proselytizing.
In this state adjoining New
York, he tried in 2001 to obtain the Republican
candidacy to the Senate, and failed.
In the anti-Cuba campaign
centered on the issue of libraries, in addition to
the "Eastern Europeans" Kalkus, Stasselova and
Siemaszkiewicz, there is the French "NGO,"
Reporters Without Borders, which recently
acknowledged (because it couldn't avoid it)
receiving financing from the National Endowment
for Democracy and USAID--two U.S. agencies used by
the administration in its attempts to destabilize
countries whose governments don't share its
imperialist vision of the world.
Translation sent by: Dana Lubow |
