【每日电讯报】Ex-US State official Kendall Myers and wife charged with spying for Cuba

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Ex-US State official Kendall Myers and wife Gwendolyn charged with spying for Cuba
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5456226/Ex-US-State-official-Kendall-Myers-and-wife-Gwendolyn-charged-with-spying-for-Cuba.html

By Toby Harnden in Washington Published: 9:45PM BST 05 Jun 2009


Fidel Castro, whose communist revolution has survived 10 US presidents, had warm words for America's new leader Photo: AP

A former US State Department official and his wife have been charged with spying for communist Cuba for nearly 30 years.

Walter Kendall Myers, formerly a senior official at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research who specialised in European affairs, shot to prominence in 2006 when he branded the American “special relationship” with Britain as “one-sided” and a “myth”. He was pushed into retirement in 2007 amid a storm over his comments.

According to the indictment, Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, were clandestine agents who met President Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader, while travelling in Mexico under false names.

They have also been accused of making several other trips to Latin America to meet Cuban agents. The indictment stated that in his final post at the State Department, Mr Myers, who held a top secret security clearance, viewed more than 200 intelligence reports related to Cuba.

The couple have been charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and with communicating classified information to Cuba.

According to court documents, the two were recruited in 1979 by a Cuban official, who directed Mr Myers to pursue a job at either the State Department or the CIA.

In 2006, Mr Myers - who was a part-time professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, spoke witheringly at an academic forum about relations between the US and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair had got “little or nothing” out of it.

He said: “It has been, from the very beginning, very one-sided. There never really has been a special relationship, or at least not one we’ve noticed.”

Mr Myers said he had “felt a little ashamed and a certain sadness” that Mr Blair had been treated badly. During the Vietnam war, he added, Harold Wilson had been “a great deal more clever than Tony Blair”. Mr Wilson “managed to fool us on Vietnam” and “succeeded by sounding good but doing nothing”.