Tom Diaz

Posts Tagged ‘Walter Kendall Myers’

SPIES LIKE THEM? REALLY “INTELLIGENT” SPIES DOING REALLY DUMB THINGS — PART TWO

In bad manners, Corruption, Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, undercover investigations on November 25, 2009 at 12:51 pm

Convicted Spies Walter Kendall Myers and His Wife Gwendolyn Lived the Good Life of the "Imperialist" Bureaucrat While Selling Out Their Country to Communist Cuba

Walter Kendall Myers spent 30 years as a traitor at high levels in the U.S. Department of State, spying for Cuba.  His wife, Gwendolyn, assisted him.  Both took guilty pleas last week and agreed to cooperate with the government.  Kendall was sentenced to life and Gwendolyn to six and a half to seven years in prison.

The Myers Met and Admired Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro, Whom Gwendolyn Called "The Most Incredible Statesman in a Hundred Years"

This is the second of a two part series quoting from relevant court documents in the Myers case.  In Part One, Fairly Civil described the Myers’s motivation and recruitment by the Cuban intelligence service.  This Part Two covers Kendall Myers’s access, the “trade craft” the Cuban spies used, and how the FBI investigation rolled them up [at least from the point of its contact with them.  There is no doubt a deeper trail, possibly ultimately connected to the Ana Belen Montes case and various cases in South Florida].

KENDALL MYERS’S EMPLOYMENT GAVE HIM ACCESS TO SENSITIVE CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

Kendall Myers held a number of jobs that gave him access over more than 30 years to sensitive classified information:

9. KENDALL MYERS was in the U.S. Army from January 1959 to March 1962, where he completed intensive communications training and served in the Army Security Agency.

11. From in or about August 1977, through in or about March 1979, KENDALL MYERS was employed as a contract instructor at the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI), a training and professional development institute for Department of State employees located in Arlington, Virginia. After living in South Dakota with GWENDOLYN MYERS from in or about 1979 until in or about 1980, KENDALL MYERS returned to Washington, D.C. In or about August 1982, KENDALL MYERS resumed employment as a contract instructor with FSI and held the title of Chairperson for West European Studies. On or about May 9, 1983, KENDALL MYERS applied for a non-contractor, two-year appointment as a Training Instructor and Chairperson for West European Studies at FSI. On or about April 15, 1985, KENDALL MYERS was offered a two-year appointment as a Training Instructor and subsequently, a second two-year appointment as an Education Specialist at FSI, all while serving in a chair capacity in Western European Area Studies. From at least August 1988 to October 1999, KENDALL MYERS, in addition to his FSI duties, performed work on a periodic basis for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR).

12. Starting in approximately October 1999, KENDALL MYERS began working full time at INR as the Acting Director of the External Research Staff. From approximately July 2001 to October 31, 2007, KENDALL MYERS was a Senior Analyst for Europe for INR. INR is responsible for drawing on all-source intelligence to provide value-added independent analysis of events to policy makers at the U.S. Department of State. During his employment at INR in various capacities, KENDALL MYERS specialized in intelligence analysis regarding European matters. He also served as a Special Assistant for Analyst Training and Development during that time frame.

13. On October 31, 2007, KENDALL MYERS retired from the Department of State

KENDALL MYERS REPEATEDLY  VIEWED CLASSIFIED INFORMATION RELATED TO CUBA

67. During the April 30, 2009, meeting [with an FBI undercover agent], when the UCS asked KENDALL MYERS whether he had ever delivered information to CuIS that was classified more than SECRET, KENDALL MYERS responded “Oh yeah. . . Oh, yeah.” KENDALL MYERS stated that the “best way” to take information out from his job was “in your head.” KENDALL MYERS told the UCS that he removed information from the Department of State by memory or by taking notes. GWENDOLYN MYERS added that he kept his notes locked in his office safe.

68. An analysis of KENDALL MYERS’s classified Department of State work computer hard drive reveals that from August 22, 2006, until his retirement on October 31, 2007, KENDALL MYERS, while employed at INR, viewed in excess of 200 sensitive or classified intelligence reports concerning the subject of Cuba. Of these intelligence reports, more that 75 of these reports made no substantive mention of countries within KENDALL MYERS’s area of responsibility as an employee of INR. Of these reports concerning Cuba, the majority were classified and marked SECRET or TOP SECRET.

EXPLANATION OF TERMS RELATED TO THE MYERS’S “SPYCRAFT”

The affidavit explains a number of the terms that come up in its discussion of evidence about the Myers’s spying activity:

22. I have further learned based on my experience and training that CuIS employs “handlers” in the United States, i.e., persons who maintain some type of personal contact with agents located in the United States. Handlers receive reporting or information from agents, produce tradecraft and communication tools for agents, and sometimes direct and control agent activities based on instructions the handler has received from CuIS. Handlers could be “legals,” that is, persons with diplomatic immunity whose affiliation with Cuba is known. Also CuIS employs “illegals” as handlers, that is, persons whose affiliation to the Government of Cuba is not publicly disclosed, whose intelligence function is clandestine, and who possess no diplomatic immunity.

23. I have further learned based on my experience and training that a dead drop is a location used to pass items secretly between an agent and his or her handler, or between intelligence officers, without requiring them to meet. The location of the drop is agreed inadvance and it typically involves the use of common everyday items to which most people would not give a second glance such as a loose brick in a wall, a library book, a hole in a tree, under a boulder, etc.

24. I have further learned based on my experience and training that a brush pass, pass or hand-to-hand are terms used to mean a pre-arranged momentary encounter between an agent and his or her handler, or between intelligence officers, wherein written messages, instructions, or other items (e.g., a computer thumb drive or a brief case) are quickly and surreptitiously passed between them as they cross paths. Such encounters may occur in public such as on a busy street or on the subway.

25. I have further learned based on my experience and training that a personal contact, contact, or meet are terms used to mean a face-to-face contact between an agent and his or her handler wherein operational training and details can be discussed.

26. I have further learned based on my experience and training that a parole is a password or recognition phrase used between an agent and his or her handler, or between intelligence officers, to identify each other.

27. I have further learned based on my experience and training that CuIS sometimes employs husband and wife “paired” agents to achieve its intelligence goals in the United States. Such CuIS husband and wife “paired” agents were revealed in the investigation of the Miami network of CuIS agents in the case entitled United States v. Gerardo Hernandez, et al., Cr. No. 98-721-CR-Lenard, and of Carlos Alvarez and Elsa Alvarez in the case of United States v. Alvarez,  05-20943-CR-Moore, both arising in the Southern District of Florida.

28. I have further learned based on my experience and training that CuIS employs multiple code names for its agents to safeguard and protect their identities. CuIS also provides false identity and travel documents for its agents to facilitate clandestine travel and to facilitate flight from the United States in case of detection.

SHORT WAVE RADIO

The affidavit describes the use of shortwave radio as a hallmark of Cuban intelligence operations in the United States:

34. Based on my knowledge and familiarity with the communication methodologies of CuIS, I am aware that, during the time frame described herein, CuIS often communicated with its clandestine agents operating in the United States by broadcasting encrypted radio messages from Cuba on certain high frequencies – that is, shortwave radio frequencies. Under this method, CuIS would broadcast a series of numbers on a particular short-wave frequency. The clandestine agent in the United States, monitoring the frequency on a shortwave radio, could decode the seemingly random series of numbers by using a decryption program provided by CuIS. The series of numbers would then be decoded into cognizable text for use by the agent. Once decoded, the text of the message could provide the agent with tasking for intelligence gathering, instructions about operational activities, including communication plans and meets with CuIS handlers. Similarly, CuIS would broadcast similar messages to its handlers.

35. This shortwave radio communication method was employed by some of the defendants convicted of espionage on behalf of Cuba in the previously mentioned Hernandez case in the Southern District of Florida, as well as by Ana Belen Montes and Carlos and Elsa Alvarez.

36. I have further learned that CuIS broadcasts such encrypted shortwave radio messages in Morse Code or by a voice reading a series of numbers.

THE FBI’S INTERCEPTION OF SHORT WAVE MESSAGES AND THEIR LINKS TO THE MYERS

44. The FBI collects high frequency messages from CuIS in Cuba to Cuban officers and their agents abroad, to include illegal agents operating within the United States. Among other high frequency messages broadcast by CuIS that the FBI has collected, I am aware that the FBI has identified messages that it has determined were broadcast to a handler of KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS, hereinafter, co-conspirator “C.”

45. The messages sent to co-conspirator “C” contain many references to standard CuIS tradecraft, including mentions of passes, visual signals, personal contacts, dead drops, counter-surveillance techniques, danger signals, clandestine communication techniques and plans, coded messages, and code names referring to KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS.

46. Further, the message sent to co-conspirator “C” make multiple references to Cuba.

THE FBI UNDERCOVER OPERATION TAKES THE MYERS DOWN

39. On or about April 15, 2009, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated an undercover operation. The purpose of the undercover operation was to convince KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS that they had been contacted by a bona fide Cuban intelligence officer and, in the course of their ensuing discussion and relationship, ascertain the scope, nature, and substance of KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS’s clandestine activities on behalf of CuIS.

40. During the afternoon of April 15, 2009, an undercover source of the FBI (“UCS”) approached KENDALL MYERS in front of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (“SAIS”) on Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C. The UCS told KENDALL MYERS that a named CuIS intelligence officer (hereinafter co-conspirator “D”) “sent me to contact you.” The UCS continued that he did not want to “bother” KENDALL MYERS or take “too much” of his time, but that he had “instructions to contact” him and “to get some information . . . and [KENDALL MYERS’s] opinion” because of the “change that is taking place in Cuba and the new administration.” The UCS said that co-conspirator “D” sends “his regards,” offered KENDALL MYERS a cigar, and congratulated him on his birthday.  KENDALL MYERS agreed to meet the UCS later that evening at a nearby hotel, after KENDALL MYERS was done teaching a class at SAIS. KENDALL MYERS volunteered that his wife, GWENDOLYN MYERS, could join them. The UCS agreed.

EXCERPTS FROM THINGS THE MYERS SAID DURING THEIR MEETING WITH THE FBI UCS

• KENDALL MYERS stated that “it’s an honor for us” to meet the UCS. KENDALL MYERS further stated that “we’ve been a little nervous . . . and . . . I think you should tell them that . . . we’ve been nervous because, because we didn’t want to hurt them . . . We were worried . . . .”

• KENDALL MYERS refused the UCS’s offer of a drink of Scotch while he was answering questions in response to the UCS’s tasking of the previous day, noting, “no, no, that’s okay . . . while I work, you know.”

• GWENDOLYN MYERS recalled, and both her and KENDALL MYERS agreed to use in future meetings with the UCS, a parole (or pass phrase) that KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS had used previously.

• Near the conclusion of the meeting, KENDALL MYERS asked the UCS to “send special greetings . . . and hugs . . . to everybody . . . and to all of our friends.”

KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS then listed individuals they believe were located in Cuba, including “two very old friends,” co-conspirator “A” and co-conspirator “B.”

• KENDALL MYERS acknowledged working with CuIS for 30 years.

• KENDALL MYERS stated that CuIS asked him to work at either the Department of State or the Central Intelligence Agency. GWENDOLYN MYERS stated that they both preferred the Department of State because KENDALL MYERS is “not a very good liar.” KENDALL MYERS continued “you had to be a good liar to pass [the polygraph at CIA].”

• KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS agreed that the most secure way to transmit information to illegal agents was “hand-to-hand.” GWENDOLYN MYERS stated that this was because “you can always back off if you want. . . and the person we were meeting would understand.”

• KENDALL MYERS remarked that he “didn’t like dead drops . . . because you lose control of it.”

• GWENDOLYN MYERS further stated that her favorite way of passing information involved the changing of shopping carts in a grocery store because it was “easy enough to do.” She further stated that she “wouldn’t do it now. Now they have cameras, but they didn’t then.”

• KENDALL MYERS stated that his least favorite method for transmitting information “is that goddamn telephone system. . . . We wouldn’t do it.”  GWENDOLYN MYERS stated “we did it once, never again, we threw it away.”

• KENDALL MYERS further stated that he believed that the “telephone system” was responsible for Ana Montes’s detection and apprehension.

• KENDALL MYERS stated that the “best way” to take information out from his job was “in your head.”

• KENDALL MYERS told the UCS that he removed information from the Department of State by memory or by taking notes. GWENDOLYN MYERS added that he kept his notes locked in his office safe.

• KENDALL MYERS stated that “I was always pretty careful. I, I didn’t usually take documents out.”

• KENDALL MYERS stated that he and GWENDOLYN MYERS had bookends that were used as a concealment device at their home.

• In response to a question asking whether he had ever delivered information to CuIS that was classified more than SECRET, KENDALL MYERS replied “Oh, yeah. . . Oh, yeah.”

• KENDALL MYERS stated “I have great admiration for [Cuban spy] Ana Montes. She’s a hero. . . But she took too many chances. . . in my opinion. . . . She wasn’t paranoid enough.”

• KENDALL MYERS stated “Fidel is wonderful, just wonderful.” GWENDOLYN MYERS continued: “He’s . . . the most . . . incredible statesman in . . . a hundred years for goodness sakes.”

• GWENDOLYN MYERS informed the UCS that KENDALL MYERS would be a good teacher at a School of Intelligence in Cuba, adding, “so when can we come?” KENDALL MYERS agreed “that I could see doing. . . [t]hat I would like to do.”

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SPIES LIKE THEM? REALLY “INTELLIGENT” SPIES DOING REALLY DUMB THINGS — PART ONE

In Corruption, Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, undercover investigations on November 24, 2009 at 3:28 pm

Traitors: Walter Kendall Myers ("Agent 202") and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers ("Agent 123" and "Agent E-634")

“When I heard they were arrested, I felt like they had arrested Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”

Neighbor at marina where the Myers kept their 37-foot yacht.

We have also seen that espionage is not simply a relic of the Cold War. Earlier this year, a retired State Department employee and his wife were charged with engaging in a long running conspiracy with the Cuban intelligence service to furnish highly sensitive classified information through coded communications and clandestine meetings. Most recently, a scientist who had access to classified information relating to satellites and Department of Defense programs, was charged with attempted espionage after he gave some of that information to an undercover FBI agent posing as a foreign intelligence officer.

Written Testimony by Attorney General Eric Holder to Senate Judiciary Committee, Washington, D.C., Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Two days after Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week about — among other things — the Justice Department’s vigilance in hunting down spies, the traitorous husband and wife team he mentioned in the above quote pleaded guilty before a federal judge in Washington.

Former State Department official Walter Kendall Myers copped to a life term in prison on a revised three-count criminal information.  His wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, will serve between six and seven and a half years in prison on a single count.

Court documents in the Myers case (and the more recent case of Stewart David Nozette, the DOD scientist Holder mentioned) describe a variety of methods used by the FBI to reel in suspected spies and would-be spies.  One method used in both cases:  send an undercover “source” to make contact with the suspects, turn on the recorders, and let the fish reel themselves in.

This two part series quotes from relevant court documents in the Myers case.  In this Part One, Fairly Civil describes the Myers’s motivation and recruitment by the Cuban intelligence service.  Part Two covers the “trade craft” the Cuban spies used, and how the investigation rolled them up.

THE MYERS’ IDEOLOGICAL MOTIVATION – CONTEMPT FOR “NORTH AMERICA”

The Myers are representative of a particularly reprehensible class – people who grow up in privileged status, become “intellectuals” contemptuous of the “imperialist” United States, betray their country … and yet continue not merely to enjoy, but to indulge themselves to excess in, its riches.   The Washington Post summarized Myer’s pedigree thusly (“A Slow Burn Becomes a Raging Fire: Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Alleged Spying for Cuba,” June 7, 2009.):

Myers, who goes by Kendall, grew up in Washington, the eldest of five children. His father, Walter, was a renowned heart surgeon; his mother, Carol, was the daughter of Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the longtime former president of the National Geographic Society, and was the granddaughter of inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Myers went to prep school at Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania and graduated from Brown University. He went on to get a doctorate in European history from the Johns Hopkins SAIS.

What did Kendall Myers glean from this patrician background and elitist education?

According to an affidavit filed in the case, one thing he said to the FBI undercover agent about the United States was that “the trouble with this country, there’s just too many North Americans.” He also told the agent regarding the possibility of travel restrictions to Cuba being lifted, “You don’t want all those Americans … believe me, those North Americans, you don’t want them.”

Here are more relevant passages of Kendall’s loathing from the affidavit, filed last June (“Affidavit in Support of Criminal Complaint and Arrest Warrant,” United States v. Walter Kendall Myers, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Docket No. 1:09-cr-00150-RBW, filed June 4, 2009):

30 … The investigation has revealed a diary, written by KENDALL MYERS, of his 1978 trip to Cuba.  In his account of his trip, KENDALL MYERS expresses a strong affinity towards Cuba and its revolutionary goals, and a negative sentiment toward “American imperialism.”  Notably, KENDALL MYERS states:

Cuba is so exciting!  I have become so bitter these past few months.
 Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience.  The abuses of our system, the lack of decent medical system, the oil companies and their
 undisguised indifference to public needs, the complacency about the poor, 
the utter inability of those who are oppressed to recognize their own 
condition. . . .  Have the Cubans given up their personal freedom to get
 material security?  Nothing I have seen yet suggests that  . . . . I can see nothing of value that has been lost by the revolution. . .

[T]he revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit.
. . . .
Everything one hears about Fidel suggests that he is a brilliant and
 charismatic leader.  He exudes the sense of seriousness and
 purposefulness that gives the Cuban socialist system its unique character.
 The revolution is moral without being moralistic.  Fidel has lifted the 
Cuban people out of the degrading and oppressive conditions which
 characterized pre-revolutionary Cuba.  He has helped the Cubans to save
 their own souls.  He is certainly one of the great political leaders of our
 time. . .

Going through the [Museum of the Revolution in Havana] was a sobering 
experience.   Facing step by step the historic interventions of the U.S. in to [sic] Cuban affairs, including the systematic and regular murdering of
 revolutionary leaders left me with a lump in my throat. . . .

They don’t
 need to try very hard to make the point that we have been the exploiters. Batista was only one of the long list of murderous figures that we thrust upon them in the name of stability and freedom . . .

There may have been some abuses under the present regime, life may be more complicated by rationing, etc., but no one can make me believe that Cuba would have been better off if we have defeated the revolution.  The idea is obscene.

Cuban Spy and Castro Enthusiast Kendall Myers and His Wife Apparently Forced Themselves To Enjoy Life Aboard This Decadent Yacht -- A Product of the Imperialist Capitalist System They Effected to Deplore

Walter Kendall Myers’s ecstatic declaration that “no one can make me believe that Cuba would have been better off if we had defeated the revolution” falls precisely into the category of a certain type of (usually academic) intellectual willing to endure the suffering of other less-enlightened persons – without depriving themselves of the comforts of the parlor life.  Content that “life may be more complicated” under Fidel Castro’s communist regime, Walter Kendall Myers and his wife continued to roll like rich puppies in the American imperialistic good life.  “Communism may suck,” people like Kendall Myers pontificate to the impoverished subjects of the Cuban regime, “But that’s just a sacrifice you’ll have to make.  Wish we were there.”

For all the Myers’s intellectual posturing, among the items that they will forfeit to satisfy the $1,735,054 judgment against them – representing the salary paid to him over years by the State Department – is a 37-foot sailing yacht.  Sale prices for boats of equivalent length are currently listed in Maryland from the mid-thirty thousand dollars for older boats (1970s) to just south of $200,000 for newer models.  Such boats are simply another one of the luxuries that the people of Cuba will just have to do without in the Myers’s precious pseudo-Marxist world.

THE MYERS’ RECRUITMENT

Background on Cuban intelligence activities against the United States. The June affidavit describes in general terms the relevant background of Cuba’s intelligence operations against the United States:

20. … the Cuban Intelligence Service (CuIS) is a general term encompassing numerous Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence entities.  A primary such entity is the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), formerly known as the Directorate of General Intelligence (DGI).  It is charged with gathering worldwide intelligence information of interest to Cuba and its allies.  The United States was, and continues to be, a principal target for Cuba’s intelligence gathering.

21.  … CuIS has a well-established program aimed at spotting and assessing persons within the United States academic community who may be suitable for recruitment to serve a variety of roles on behalf of Cuba’s interests.   The most important of these roles is that of agent – that is, a person who is not an officially recognized employee of CuIS but who is aware that he or she is working for the service and is willing to engage in clandestine operational activity, including intelligence gathering, at the direction, and on behalf, of  CuIS.   An agent-in-place is a recruited agent who occupies a position or job in which he or she has authorized access to intelligence information of value to CuIS, including classified information. One such agent was Ana Belen Montes, who was a senior intelligence analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency prior to her arrest and conviction for espionage on behalf of CuIS in March 2002 before this Court in the case of United States v. Ana Belen Montes.  (See a brief discussion of the Ana Belen Montes case in the Fairly Civil post here.)

Poor Housing Stock is One of the "Wonderful" Conditions Kendall Myers Was Happy for Cubans to Endure

Myers recruited after a 1978 trip to Cuba. Kendall Myers visited Cuba in 1978, during which trip Cuban intelligence apparently spotted him as an easy mark.  (It would be no surprise if one learned that the Cuban agency read Kendall’s diary, quoted above, while he was out touring, watching the socialist proletariat laboring according to its means in idyllic sugar cane fields.)  According to the affidavit:

29. … in December 1978, KENDALL MYERS traveled on “unofficial personal travel for academic purposes” to Cuba for approximately two weeks.  Two other Department of State employees traveled during the same time frame. KENDALL MYERS indicated in Department of State documents that his travel was predicated on an invitation from a Cuban government official (hereinafter, co-conspirator “A”) after co-conspirator “A” had given a presentation at the FSI. … co-conspirator “A” served at the Cuban Mission to the United States … in New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s.  KENDALL MYERS’s guide in Cuba, was an official with Cuba’s Foreign Service Institute (hereinafter, co-conspirator “B”).   Based on all of the evidence collected during this investigation, I conclude that KENDALL MYERS’s trip to Cuba in 1978 provided the CuIS with the opportunity to assess and or develop KENDALL MYERS as a Cuban agent.

31. The FBI’s investigation has revealed that approximately six months after returning from Cuba, KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS were visited by co-conspirator“ A” in South Dakota, where KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS were living at the time. During that trip, KENDALL MYERS and GWENDOLYN MYERS were recruited by co-conspirator “A” and they agreed to serve as clandestine agents of the Republic of Cuba. Thereafter, CuIS directed KENDALL MYERS to pursue a job at either the Department of State or the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Myers’s “wonderful” soiree with Comandante Fidel. According to the criminal information (to the charges of which Kendall Myers pleaded guilty), “In or about January 1995 … [the Myers] … traveled to Cuba via Mexico under false names for the purpose of meeting with their … handlers. [W]hile staying in a small house in Cuba …[they] were visited by Fidel Castro.  Fidel Castro spent the evening with them and spoke through an interpreter.”  (“Violation,” United States v. Walter Kendall Myers, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Docket No. 1:09-cr-00150-RBW, filed Nov. 20, 2009.)

The June affidavit recounts what the Myers told the FBI undercover about that meeting:

43. … KENDALL MYERS stated that the “best one was meeting Fidel. . . Oh, that was wonderful.”

THE POTENTIAL DAMAGE

Gwendolyn Myers did not work for the government.  She took a job in a bank.  But, consistent with a known pattern of Cuban intelligence operating in the United States, she was an active member of the husband and wife spy team.

On the other hand, Kendall wormed his duplicitous way into high positions in the State Department where he had and used access to potentially extremely damaging information, including so-called “sources and methods” of intelligence gathering.

A U.S. Department of Justice Press Release (November 20, 2009) summarizes Kendall Myers’s career, beginning with the period shortly before he was recruited by the Cuban intelligence service:

Kendall Myers began working at the State Department in 1977 as a contract instructor at the Department’s Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington, Va. After living briefly with Gwendolyn in South Dakota, he returned to Washington, D.C., and resumed employment as an instructor with FSI. From 1988 to 1999, in addition to his FSI duties, he performed work for the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). He later worked full-time at the INR and, from July 2001 until his retirement in October 2007, was a senior intelligence analyst for Europe in INR where he specialized on European matters and had daily access to classified information through computer databases and otherwise. He received a Top Secret security clearance in 1985 and, in 1999, his clearance was upgraded to Top Secret / SCI.

In Part Two of this post, Fairly Civil will provide excerpts from court documents describing how the Myers family spy team operated and how the FBI rolled them up after thirty years of betraying their country.

Mutual Admirer: On Learning of the Myers's Arrest, Fidel Castro Said, "I can't help but admire their disinterested and courageous conduct on behalf of Cuba."

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