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Couple Indicted For Allegedly Spying For Cuba

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Jun 5, 2009 10:50 pm US/Eastern

Couple Indicted For Allegedly Spying For Cuba

Couple Allegedly Met With Fidel Castro In 1995

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 CBS News Interactive: Fidel Castro And Cuba
WASHINGTON (CBS4) ― A retired State Department worker with top secret security clearance and his wife have been indicted on charges of spying for Cuba.

The indictment handed down by the attorney general's office in Washington says Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, have been clandestine agents for Cuba for 30 years. 

It says the pair met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1995, traveling through Mexico under false names. They allegedly made several other trips to Latin America and the Caribbean to meet with Cuban agents.

An affidavit in support of the criminal complaint states that Kendall Myers began his work at the state department in 1977. He also worked for the department's Bureau of Intelligence Research (INR) from 1988 to 1999. In 2001 he was working full-time for the INR in Washington D.C.—analyzing information on European matters—working there through retirement in 2007. He eventually obtained Top Secret information clearance. He viewed more than 200 intelligence reports related to Cuba. 

Myers allegedly started his contacts with the Cuban government when he visited the island in 1978, after receiving an invitation from an official with the Cuban Mission to the U.S. in New York City.

The Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS) used the opportunity to asses and develop him as a possible Cuban agent.

In April 2009, the FBI launched an undercover investigation, using an operative posing as an agent from the Cuban government who asked Myers to "ascertain" his duties for the CuIS. Not only did Myers allegedly confirm his activities through a series of conversations, but he brought his wife along, sharing information on U.S. government personnel working Latin American affairs. They admitted to using shortwave radio to receive coded messages from Cuban intelligence agents.

"We have been very cautious, careful with our moves and, uh, trying to be alert to any surveillance," Kendall Myers allegedly told the FBI source.

His wife worked for a Washington D.C. area bank, not for the U.S. government, but she is still accused of handing over state secrets to the Cuban government. The indictment alleges they even handed state secrets in person using supermarket shopping carts at the local grocery store.


South Florida has had its own share of couples tried as Cuban spies. Former FIU professor Carlos Alvarez, and his wife Elsa, who worked as a counselor at the same university, pleased guilty to working for the Castro government as agents.

Alvarez was slapped with the maximum sentence of 5-years in prison and 3-years supervised release on Tuesday. Elsa Alvarez was also handed a maximum sentence of 3-years in jail and one year of supervised relief.


(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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