OFFICER'S PRIVILEGE: THE COL. GEORGE MARECEK STORY

Czech and Mate

There were others, of course, who saw tension taking hold in the marriage. Friends of Viparet told the court that when they visited for two or three weeks in the spring of 1991, they noticed a pronounced iciness in the house, a tension that, they claimed, had been absent earlier in the couple's relationship. In hindsight, prosecutors and others have speculated that perhaps Viparet's playful banter with Cinkoske, and her offer to set him up with the Colonel's cousin, might have been an attempt to mask her real feelings about the Colonel and the woman who would later be identified as Hana Marecekova.

In fact, says Tommy Hicks, who prosecuted the case, by late spring 1991, Viparet Maracek had already begun to suspect that her husband was having an affair with Marecekova. The genesis of the relationship is, as much else in the Maracek case, shrouded in mystery and contradictions.

What is clear is that beginning in 1990, Maracek began traveling frequently to Czechoslovakia. Hicks believes that the trips were more than simply nostalgic visits to his former homeland, or simply opportunities to catch up on family and friends he had left behind.

Map: Czech Republic map with Prague locator

Hicks contends that Maracek had bigger fish to fry. He was, Hicks says without equivocation, working as a contractor with the CIA, a line of work that other former Special Forces officers have drifted into after discharge or retirement. In fact, "he was deeply connected," Hicks says, not just with American intelligence operatives, but also with Czech nationals who were working to establish a new, more western friendly government in the former Soviet satellite. If Hicks is correct, it was the kind of operation for which Maracek was uniquely qualified. There was even some talk that Maracek had entertained thoughts of running for the presidency of the newly established democratic government in Prague.

In truth, Prague, like much of the eastern bloc in those days, was rife with intrigue. All sides in the complex and shadowy underbelly of the political world did their best to collect intelligence, and recruit people who could provide it.