Today's WaPo has a front-page story that details what may be one of the most damaging cases of spying in recent memory. A longtime State Department official with Top Secret clearance and his wife were charged yesterday with spying for Cuba.
The couple, Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, were charged with conspiring to act as illegal agents and to communicate classified information to the Cuban government. They pleaded not guilty and were ordered held in jail pending further court proceedings.
The government has evidence that suggests Myers and his wife began spying for Cuba in 1979. Myers worked at the State Department from 1977 to 2007, except for a short break in 1979. He eventually rose to a high-level position at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
Myers' blood couldn't be bluer. He's the grandson of Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor and the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell. According to WaPo, Myers was fingered as a target when he visited Cuba in 1978 and expressed revulsion at supposed "murders" of Communist leaders by the United States. Over the years, they communicated with Havana by way of shortwave radio, shopping carts and later encrypted emails from cybercafes. They even met with Fidel Castro in 1995 on a secret trip to Cuba.
Myers was extremely loyal to Cuba--his diary is peppered with fawning statements about the country and its leaders. He was also very careful not to take any documents, instead using notes or relying on memory. Apparently the information he passed on was pretty sensitive stuff--they received a lot of medals from the Cuban government.
The government finally got on him in 2007, but had suspected there was a Cuban spy in the State Department around 2006 or so. It finally dropped the hammer on him two months ago, when an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban spy managed to finagle a meeting with Myers. At the meeting, Myers apparently spilled the beans about how he met with his handlers.
If I'm reading WaPo's sidebar right, Myers might be the second-highest ranking American official ever fingered as a spy for Cuba. Given his level of access, the potential for damage could be on the level of Aldrich Ames. The question is just how he managed to stay under the radar for parts of four presidencies.
CNN has the indictment here.