Ever hear of the Cuban Five, readers?
"Retired US analyst is sentenced to life in prison for spying for Cuba" by Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post | July 17, 2010
WASHINGTON — A retired State Department intelligence analyst was sentenced to life in prison and his wife got more than six years yesterday for spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years in a screenplay-ready tale of romance and espionage.
That's what I'm reading, isn't it? Fiction.
See: The Boston Sunday Globe Writes a Russian Spy Story
I've already read enough of their stories.
Walter Kendall Myers, 73, and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 72, agreed to forfeit $1.7 million in cash and property, including all of Walter Myers’s federal salary over the years. He did not have to give up a 38-foot sailboat he once said they might use in retirement to sail to the communist country.
“For nearly 30 years, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers committed one of the worst crimes a citizen can perpetrate against his or her own country — espionage on behalf of a long-standing foreign adversary,’’ Ronald Machen, US attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a brief urging the judge against leniency.
What about a "friend?"
Related: Israeli spy ring
One-Day Wonder: The Spy Who Loved Israel
Slow Saturday Special: Zionist Spies Set Free
Yeah, somehow THOSE SPY STORIES are SHORT!
The Myerses felt no remorse, motivated by communist sympathies and a “rose-colored picture’’ of Cuba, Machen said.
As opposed to Zionist sympathies?
“Kendall Myers was born into this world with every conceivable advantage,’’ Machen wrote, describing the son of a heart surgeon, grandson of the National Geographic Society’s head, and great-grandson of inventor Alexander Graham Bell as a child of privilege. Machen added, “Kendall Myers could have been anything he wanted to be. He chose to be a Cuban spy.’’
It was a grim ending to the Myerses’ idealistic embrace of the Cuban revolution, with one slight comfort. Handing down punishment for Walter Myers’s guilty plea in November to conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of wire fraud, Walton endorsed the couple’s request to be incarcerated near each other with easier access to their siblings, children, and grandchildren.
“If someone despises the American government to the extent that appears to be the case, you can pack your bags and leave,’’ US District Judge Reggie Walton said. “And it doesn’t seem to me you continue to bear the benefits this country manages to provide and seek to undermine it.’’
Israel is waiting for you.
In their behalf, the Myerses presented statements from relatives, colleagues, and friends describing them as kind and deeply idealistic....
Myers, an Ivy League-educated Europe specialist who made his home in Washington’s diplomat-friendly precincts, began working for the State Department as a contract instructor in 1977 before joining full time in 1985 and becoming a senior analyst with a top-secret clearance in the department’s sensitive bureau of intelligence and research.
Starting in 1978, however, Myers visited Cuba for two weeks and was soon recruited by a Cuban intelligence agent.
Over the next three decades, the couple would communicate with their Cuban handlers via shortwave radio, exchanging shopping carts in a grocery store and sending encrypted e-mails from Internet cafes. Traveling overseas, they met clandestine Cuban operatives in Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica, Italy, and Cuba via Mexico.
Tipped off to the presence of a Cuban spy in 2006, US investigators by April 2009 tracked down Myers outside Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, where he was a part-time faculty member.
The State Department has not publicly assessed the damage done by Myers to the US government.--more--"
Related: The Other Side of the Gulf
Updates:
"Harvard rescinds degree it gave to spy
Harvard University has revoked a degree in public administration it gave to a man who turned out to be a Russian spy living under a stolen Canadian identity. Andrey Bezrukov, who went by the name of Donald Heathfield while in the United States, was one of 10 Russian agents arrested June 27 and deported as part of a spy swap with Moscow. Harvard spokesman Doug Gavel said yesterday that the John F. Kennedy School of Government stripped Bezrukov of the degree for violating its policy on misrepresentation in his application (AP)."
I doubt he will need it anyway, what with him living in Russia now.
A scientist who works at a Marlborough biofuel company has been indicted in Indiana on 12 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets to benefit a foreign government or instrumentality and five counts of interstate and foreign transportation of stolen property, according to documents unsealed yesterday in US District Court in Boston. Kexue Huang, 45, of Westborough has been jailed without bail since FBI agents arrested him Tuesday. It is unclear what secrets Huang, who previously lived in Indiana, is accused of stealing and for whom, because the indictment against him remains under seal. Huang has been employed by Qteros Inc. in Marlborough for about a year, according to a company spokeswoman. She said the Indiana indictment is not related to his work at Qteros.
--source--"
