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State Department officials admit spying for Cuba due to ideology
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 2009-11-21 |
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