NEWS
Former State Dept. Official, Wife To Plead Guilty To Spy Charges
Paul Courson CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- -- A former State Department employee and his wife, accused of illegally aiding the government of Cuba for nearly 30 years, pleaded guilty Friday to federal charges.
Walter Kendall Myers, 72, pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of wire fraud. He agreed to forfeit $1.7 million related to the two counts of wire fraud and to serve a life prison sentence.
His wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to gather and transmit national defense information. She agreed to serve a sentence of between 6 and 7 1/2 years in prison, less than minimum federal guidelines.
The judge indicated sentencing will take place in about six months. The couple agreed to cooperate with prosecutors as an investigation continues into the espionage. The results of their cooperation will be considered when the judge sentences Gwendolyn Myers. The sentence for Walter Myers is mandatory, his lawyer confirmed.
A personal diary taken last summer from Walter Myers upon his arrest indicated the couple planned to sail to the Caribbean.
A man on a neighboring sailboat had told CNN the day after their arrest that the couple had talked about such a cruise. None of the live-aboards at a marina near Annapolis had any idea the couple could be involved in espionage, the man said.
The Myerses, detained since their arrest, were brought to the courtroom Friday by U.S. marshals. Kendall Myers twice raised an eyebrow, smiled, and acknowledged two of his brothers, his daughter, and his son, who were in the front row of the spectator gallery nearest the defense table.
The relatives were, for the most part, expressionless until the end of the proceeding. His daughter, Amanda, catching sight of her father being taken past a wire-fenced vestibule, waved a kiss from afar.
One the brothers, asked for comment by CNN, declined to identify the group, nor to say anything on behalf of the family. The Myerses defense lawyer identified them only by family relationship.
The Myerses were arrested June 4 after an FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence officer managed to coax them into offering information on U.S. government personnel, authorities said.
In a diary quoted in the federal affidavit released in June, Myers expressed his opinions on the flaws of the United States and the appeal of Cuba. "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 ...," he wrote of the United States.
"Have the Cubans given up their personal freedom to get material security? Nothing I have seen yet suggests that," he wrote. "I can see nothing of value that has been lost by the revolution. The revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit."
In a written statement distributed to reporters by the couple's attorney after the proceeding, Brad Berenson said his clients "understood" they might someday be caught, but they acted "out of conscience and personal commitment."
The lawyer said that they will accept punishment "with grace and dignity."
The indictment said Kendall Myers, known to Cuban intelligence as as Agent 202, and Gwendolyn Myers, known as Agent 123 and Agent E-634, engaged in activities "which spanned nearly three decades."
Conviction on the wire fraud charge would carry a sentence of up to 20 years, illegally acting as an agent of a foreign government would carry a sentence of up to 10 years, and the conspiracy charge would carry a sentence of up to five years.
A Justice Department official previously told CNN that counterespionage agents had gathered information on the couple and set up an April 15 meeting at which an FBI undercover agent convinced the couple he had been contacted by Cuban intelligence and was to ascertain the scope of their activities. They fell for the ruse, the department said.
The court documents say the couple disclosed they had received coded messages via short-wave radio, had met with Cuban agents in Mexico, and had been carefully watching for any sign of U.S. surveillance.
An affidavit released by the court said Kendall Myers had first traveled to Cuba in 1978, and Cuban intelligence then began to develop him as a Cuban agent. Six months later Myers and his wife agreed to work for the Cuban service, it said.
After the April 15 meeting, the Myerses allegedly agreed to provide the undercover agent with information on the April 17-19 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, which U.S. President Barack Obama attended.
Kendall Myers confided to the undercover agent that he had received a "lot of medals" from the Cuban government for his work, and that he and his wife met and spent an evening with Fidel Castro in 1995.
The affidavit quoted Kendall Myers as telling the undercover agent that he typically removed information from the State Department by memory, or by taking notes -- although he did occasionally take some documents home -- and had delivered information which was classified "secret."
Myers retired from the State Department on October 31, 2007. He had viewed more than 200 classified reports on Cuba in his final months, even though he was at the time an analyst working on European issues, the court document said.
The-CNN-Wire/Atlanta
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