Couple accused of spying for Cuba for 30 years - State Department charges 72-year-old and wife

Couple accused of spying for Cuba for 30 years - State Department charges 72-year-old and wife
By Daniel Dombey in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: June 6 2009 01:09 | Last updated: June 6 2009 01:09
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0c84e56c-522c-11de-b986-00144feabdc0.html


An espionage saga that involved a well-liked teacher of US diplomats, the illicit use of shopping carts and a much publicised denunciation of the US-UK special relationship took a new turn on Friday when the US state department accused a former employee of working as a Cuban spy for almost 30 years.

The indictment of Walter Kendall Myers, who was given “top secret” security clearance in 1985 and went on to work part-time for the department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1988 and full time from 2001, followed a three-year investigation by the FBI and the department.

The accusations against the Washington-based 72- year-old – and the length of time for which he allegedly worked for Fidel Castro’s government – come as a reminder of the US and Cuba’s long history of mutual antagonism.

The Obama administration is seeking to normalise relations with Havana, having agreed at the weekend to begin high-level talks on immigration and joining other Organisation of American States members this week to end Cuba’s 47-year suspension from the group.

During his career, Mr Myers worked for the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute where he was a popular teacher, remembered by students as dishevelled but with one expensive taste – a liking for sailing.

On Friday the Department of Justice described the charges against Mr Myers as “incredibly serious”. It added that evidence incriminating Mr Myers, allegedly also known as “agent 202”, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, “agent 123” and “agent E-634”, was obtained after a sting operation.

After an FBI source posing as a Cuban agent congratulated Mr Myers on his birthday and offered him a cigar, the two Myers allegedly offered to provide information on this April’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago.

According to the affidavit, Mrs Myers said her favourite way of passing information to Cuban intelligence agents involved swapping shopping trolleys in a grocery store because it was “easy enough to do”.

Mr Myers won a moment of international prominence in 2006, when, in his capacity as an expert on Europe, he lambasted Britain’s support of George W. Bush and the Iraq war while still on the State Department payroll. Describing Tony Blair, then UK prime minister, as a “tragic figure” he added: “The last prime minister to resist American pressure was Neville Chamberlain . . . We typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, ‘There are the Brits coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let’s park them’.”

The US alleges that after first contacted by Cuban intelligence agents in 1978 and visited by an official from the Cuban Mission in New York, the Myers liaised with spies in Mexico, Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica, and New York City.

The State Department said Hillary Clinton, secretary of state, had ordered a comprehensive review of the case that would feed into administration policy on issuing security clearances.