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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| State Department officials admit spying for Cuba due to ideology |
| 2009-11-21 |
| A retired US state department official and his wife have admitted spying for Cuba for nearly three decades. The former official, Walter Kendall Myers, 72, had access to top-secret government information. Under a plea deal, Mr Myers will spend the rest of his life in jail while wife Gwendolyn, 71, will serve a term of no more than seven-and-a-half years. She pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy to gather and transmit national defence information to Cuba. The couple also agreed to forfeit $1.7m (£1m) in assets - including a Washington DC apartment and a 37-ft yacht - an amount equal to the total salary he earned from the state department. They have been in custody since being arrested in June, following an undercover FBI sting operation. Myers was known as Agent 202, while his wife was Agent 123, according to court documents. Prosecutors say the couple were recruited three decades ago while living in South Dakota by a Cuban intelligence agent, who had In 1981, the husband and wife returned to Washington where Myers got a job back at the state department and worked his way up. A mole in the State Department? Say it ain't so! Good thing they caught this pair, surely they are the last ones. US authorities say that from 1983 until this year the couple had a shortwave radio to receive messages from the Cuban government. The famous shortwave "numbers stations". They also delivered government secrets by swapping shopping trolleys with their Cuban handlers at stores, and spent an evening with then-Cuban leader Fidel Castro in 1995, say officials. But the couple's lawyer, Bradford Berenson, said they had acted "not out of selfish motive or hope of personal gain, but out of conscience and personal commitment", reports AP news agency. Except for the money they took. And I guess their 'conscience and personal commitment' didn't include the value of patriotism ... |
| Posted by:gromky |
| #8 Not necessarily just at State. There's lot of other agencies and educational institutions that would be "of interest" Could be something as innocuous as a school district. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2009-11-21 13:50 |
| #7 If the Cuba Intelligence system tracks agents numerically by the foreign activity to which they are assigned, appears there may be another 79 agents at, or retired from State. Oh they do. Trust me. |
| Posted by: Perry Stanford White 2009-11-21 11:47 |
| #6 You'd have to execute most of the State Department. |
| Posted by: Frozen Al 2009-11-21 11:08 |
| #5 Whatever happened to executing traitors? |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2009-11-21 09:53 |
| #4 Myers was known as Agent 202, while his wife was Agent 123, according to court documents. If the Cuba Intelligence system tracks agents numerically by the foreign activity to which they are assigned, appears there may be another 79 agents at, or retired from State. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2009-11-21 09:44 |
| #3 but out of conscience and personal commitment You know, you and wifey could have taken one of the Mariel Boatlifts in the opposite direction and saved the country a lot of grief. It probably would have done your conscience a lot of good too. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-11-21 09:15 |
| #2 So, why didn't they just retire to the Workers Paradise(tm) they believed so much in? /sarc off |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-11-21 08:50 |
| #1 And they shouldn't be electrocuted in an electric chair, but just "placed in a seated position between to substantially different electrical potentials." |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-11-21 08:37 |