July 2009

 

Once Labeled An AIPAC Spy, Larry Franklin Tells His Story

Former Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin recently quit his job cleaning the restrooms at his local church in West Virginia. He still keeps his weekend job, mopping the floors at a nearby Roy Rogers restaurant. In recent years, Franklin also has gained experience in parking cars, digging trenches and cleaning cesspools. In between, he has been searching for a publisher for his book — a manual for saving America from the Iranian threat.

On June 30, Franklin marked the fifth anniversary of his meeting with FBI agents, in which he first learned he was a suspect in what would later be known as “the AIPAC case,” referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Along with Franklin, two of the Washington lobby’s senior officials were charged with violating the seldom used federal Espionage Act of 1917.

Although charges against the two other key players, former lobbyists Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, were ultimately dropped in May, Franklin pleaded guilty early on as part of a plea agreement and is preparing to serve his reduced sentence of 100 hours of community service and 10 months in a halfway house.

Franklin’s narrative of his ordeal, which started off with him being described on national news as the “Israeli mole” in the Pentagon, reflects a mixture of naiveté, frustration with government bureaucracy and a deep belief that his views must be heard, even if it meant breaking the rules. In retrospect, it was a practice in humility for the devout Catholic military analyst.

. . . . Bound until recently by a plea agreement that barred him from speaking to the press, Franklin has refrained until now from telling his side of the story. But in the Washington office of his attorney, Plato Cacheris, Franklin seemed eager to share his experience. Cacheris, who took on Franklin’s case pro bono, intervened time and again to warn his client against revealing information that is either classified or under a seal imposed by the court. Franklin was quick to agree, calling Cacheris his “angel” who saved him from prison.

In exchange for his cooperation with federal prosecutors, Franklin was initially sentenced to 12.5 years in prison as part of his plea agreement. But before entering his plea in 2005, he was approached by two people who suggested he fake his suicide and disappear to avoid testifying in court. At the request of the FBI, to which he immediately reported the encounter, Franklin had several follow-up conversations on the phone with one of them. “I thought I was in a movie,” Franklin said of the episode. Details of the event are still under court seal, and Franklin declined to identify the individuals who approached him or to offer further details.    (Forward, 2 Jul 09)

 

'Israeli spy' arrests grip Lebanon

Lebanese authorities claim to have cracked a web of spy rings set up by Israel to infiltrate the country's south.

In recent weeks nearly 40 people have been arrested on suspicion of espionage or collaboration with Israel, among them former army officers and police.  Lebanon considers itself to be at war with Israel, yet many of its citizens are coerced into spying - a crime that can earn the death penalty.  Army officers came in the dead of night to arrest Ziad al Homsi, one of the most high-profile suspects captured so far by Lebanese forces.  His arrest has shocked his small town, not just because he is a former mayor, but he has an impressive past fighting against Israel for the Lebanese.   In 1969 he was photographed with Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat.  So loyal was al Homsi to the Arab cause, his family cannot accept he is an Israeli agent.

"He spent a lot of time, years out of the town, fighting and protecting the country. He killed them [the Israelis]. How can he be a spy for them?" al Homsi's daughter Salwa al Homsi said.  (ABC, 2 Jul 09)

 

Prosecutor: Myeres Alleged Cuba spies have motivation, means to escape

Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn - accused of spying for Cuba for nearly three decades - gave no sign of a secret life, friends and co-workers say.  New court documents, however, show their apartment may have held an intriguing clue. In addition to a shortwave radio found by the couple's bed and the previously disclosed sailing guide to Cuban waters, investigators said they found a copy of "The Spy's Bedside Book," the spy lore anthology compiled in 1957 by Hugh Greene and his brother Graham, a former British intelligence officer and the author of "Our Man in Havana," a spoof of the intelligence business.

. . . . The latest disclosure - which provides more details on how the federal government thinks that the couple operated as a husband-and-wife spy team - comes as federal prosecutors argue against releasing the Myerses from jail until trial.  "The Myers are clandestine Cuban agents who have contemplated escape from the United States in the past," Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Michael Harvey wrote in a court filing, sections of which were censored. "They continue to contemplate it."  The Myerses, who pleaded not guilty last month to charges of conspiracy, wire fraud and acting as illegal agents of Cuba, argue for house arrest under electronic surveillance. Harvey, however, suggests that the couple - who used fake names and documents to travel to Cuba in the past, he said - has "significant means to finance their escape."  "Now, face(d) with an indictment that seeks their imprisonment for the rest of their lives . . . the defendants have a very strong motivation to flee to Cuba, the country that they call 'home,'" he wrote, adding that if they escaped to Cuba or its equivalent of an embassy in Washington, "they will be gone for good" because the U.S. doesn't have an extradition treaty or diplomatic relations with Cuba.

As for their offer to post a bond, Harvey writes that "for the Myers, it has never been about the money."

. . . . He argued that the couple, during four hotel meetings with an undercover FBI source, "admitted to essentially every material fact the government will need to prove them guilty of the charges they now face."

He provided greater detail on how Kendall Myers, 72, a former State Department employee with a Top-Secret clearance, disclosed U.S. information. According to the court record, Myers told the FBI that he typically memorized information or took notes on documents and put his notes in his office safe. Sometimes, he removed classified documents and brought them home. Gwendolyn Myers, 71, would then "process the documents page-by-page" and Kendall Myers would return them to the State Department the next day.

Harvey noted that the couple agreed to give the undercover agent their "views and opinions" about various Obama administration officials responsible for Cuba and Latin America policy and agreed to be trained to use e-mail and an encryption device to decode e-mails.  (McClatchy, 1 Jul 09)

 

 

 

June 2009

 

US government outlines opposition to alleged Cuban spies Myeres appeal of detention accuses

Buried away on page 16 of the United States government’s document outlining its opposition to an appeal of the detention order imposed on Kendall Myers, the former State Department analyst, and his wife Gwen Myers, is another example of their reading material.

As well as finding (as previously revealed) a sailing guide for Cuban waters, a travel guide for Cuba and On Becoming Cuban by Louis Perez, the FBI apparently also discovered a copy of The Spy’s Bedside Book in the Myers’ apartment in DC’s Westchester building.

The Spy’s Bedside Book is an anthology compiled by Graham Greene and his brother Hugh

. . . . Books are occasionally used as evidence against suspects accused of subversion. In 2003, possession of my own “Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh” was cited as evidence against a Real IRA suspect who was subsequently convicted.

Such evidence, while not proving any offence, might make it harder for a defendant to profess complete ignorance of how subversive activities are conducted.  Another interesting detail in the court document is the US government’s mention of a previous criminal conviction of Kendall Myers: 

While the government is still researching the matter, it appears that, at least, Kendall Myers has a prior criminal record. Kendall Myers was convicted in December 1976 of negligent homicide in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Under the federal sentencing guidelines, that conviction will count towards his criminal history score as it was imposed within 10 years of the defendant’s commencement of the instant criminal conduct on behalf of CuIS. See U.S.S.G.§ 4A1.2(e)(2).  I believe the date of the conviction is incorrect. In fact, it was in March 1977 that Myers was convicted of the “negligent homicide” of a girl of 16 he had killed in a November 1975 car accident.  The previous conviction is significant because it increases the range of the sentence Kendall Myers faces – and, therefore, also the possible leverage over him in terms of a plea deal.  According to the government’s calculations, this is between 15 years, 8 months and 19 years, seven months. In comparison, Gwen Myers faces between 14 years and 17 years, six months.  In another indication of a hardball approach, the court document also states that the government would probably seek more than the normal guideline sentence. Note also the mention of “any post-trial conviction” - the message being that the Myers should seek a deal because going to trial and losing would in all likelihood result in a much heftier sentence:  Given the gravity of their offenses, the government would likely be seeking sentences in excess of these advisory guideline ranges following any post-trial conviction of the defendants.  (Telegraph, 30 Jun 09)

 

Gheorghe Popescu denies being Romanian spy

Former Tottenham Hotspur football star Gheorghe Popescu has denied a newspaper report that he was an informer of the feared Communist secret police in Romania in the 1980s.  Popescu says he signed a document promising to "defend the national interests" during the regime of late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. He says that was common practice for players in Romanian teams that entered international competitions.   Romanian newspaper the Daily Adevarul claimed Popescu had been an informant from 1986 to 1989, the year communism was toppled. It is said he provided information to the feared Securitate.   Popescu called the report "a big lie." He denied informing on teammates or anyone else at a news conference on Monday.   The footballer admits that he was approached to work for the secret police but refused added: "My conscience is clear."  (Telegraph, 29 Jun 09)

 

Australian Spy Jean-Philippe Wispelaere coming home

A Melbourne man jailed in the United States for espionage offences that severely embarrassed the Howard government is to be quietly brought home by the Rudd Government to serve the remainder of his sentence in Victoria.  Jean-Philippe Wispelaere, a former junior employee with the Defense Intelligence Organization, was sentenced to 15 years' jail in 2001 after he was convicted over a plot to sell 700 pages of stolen classified US defense documents.   The former Wesley College student, now 38, has been lobbying the Australian Government for several years, arguing he should serve the rest of his sentence in Victoria.   He has spent more than 10 years in jail in Georgia.   His father, Claude Wispelaere, said his son had been abandoned by the Howard government. . . . Wispelaere stole the documents while working as a junior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Organization in Canberra in 1999.  He planned to sell the documents to an unknown country.   He is believed to have spent much of his time in jail learning Spanish and has been visited by Quakers.     (Herald Sun, 29 Jun 09)

 

Capture of 'spies' hits Israel

The roundup of around 40 alleged Israeli agents in Lebanon in recent weeks has in all probability been a serious blow for Israeli intelligence at a time when its longtime adversary, Hezbollah, is bracing for another onslaught by the Jewish state.  Both sides are nervous -- Israel because valuable eyes and ears inside Lebanon have been lost, Hezbollah because the existence of these cells, some of them set up 25 years ago, was an immense security failure on its part and will mean it will have to do a lot of housecleaning and reorganizing.  All this means is that two of the Middle East's most ferocious adversaries, whose intelligence war over the years has been one of the most heated in the region, have both been badly damaged and want to hit back.

The turmoil in Iran and the emergence of a hard-line, right-wing government in Israel under hawkish Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu fuel this unease and sense of vulnerability on both sides. And in the volatile Middle East, those are usually portents of trouble.  With one cell after another being rolled up, the Israelis will no doubt have told whatever other intelligence assets they may have in Lebanon to lie low.  (UPI, 26 Jun 09)

 

Hanging of Indian 'spy' upheld

Pakistan's Supreme Court has upheld the hanging of an Indian man convicted for spying and carrying out bomb attacks.  The court dismissed Sarabjit Singh's petition to review the death sentence awarded by a court in 1991.

The court gave its verdict after Singh's lawyer failed to appear.  Singh, lodged in Lahore jail, was due to have been executed last May.  His hanging was put off after PM Yousuf Raza Gilani intervened in the case.

Singh says he is a poor farmer and victim of mistaken identity who strayed drunk from his border village into Pakistan. He was convicted in 1991.  Last year, President Pervez Musharraf rejected Singh's mercy petition and signed his death warrant.  Pakistani officials say Sarabjit Singh is actually Manjit Singh who was arrested while trying to slip back into India. (BBC, 25 Jun 09)

 

Top judge sent clear message for traitors through Daniel James case

Offenses of treachery must be met with severe deterrent prison sentences to provide protection for members of the armed forces who risk their lives for the country, the Lord Chief Justice said today.  Lord Judge, sitting in the Court of Appeal in London, sent out a clear message as he announced the reasons for dismissing a sentence appeal on 11 June in the case of an army corporal who was jailed for ten years for spying for Iran.   Daniel James, who was the personal interpreter to Britain's top general in Afghanistan and had access to the highest echelons of the NATO mission in Kabul, was caught red-handed betraying his country in a series of coded emails.  In written reasons handed down in court today explaining why the appeal was rejected, Lord Judge said that the sentence of 10 years imposed in November last year on James, now 46, of Cliff Road, Brighton, was "not manifestly excessive".  Lord Judge stressed: "The court has a duty to those members of the armed forces risking life and health and safety through loyal service to the interests of this country to provide such protection as can be provided in the fortunately very rare cases indeed of possible treachery from those working alongside them and who are treated as trusted colleagues."  The sentence imposed on James "properly reflected the deterrent element which necessarily must govern every sentencing decision in cases of treachery".   James was found guilty at the Old Bailey of a single count of communicating information useful to an enemy.  The charge, under the Official Secrets Act, related to emails he sent to Colonel Mohammad Hossein Heydari, military attaché at the Iranian embassy in Kabul . . . . Lord Judge said: "The element of intended betrayal of serving colleagues makes this a very serious offense indeed."   He added: "Fortunately, cases like these are very rare.  "When they do occur there must be no doubt that even if the information disclosed is not proved to have caused any actual damage, and was brought to a halt before any such damage may have occurred, the deterrent element in the sentence is absolutely fundamental."   (Independent, 25 Jun 09)

 

Sweden charges an ethnic Uyghur Babu Mehsut, a Swedish national, with spying for China.

Authorities in Sweden have charged an ethnic Uyghur with spying for China and have reportedly expelled a Chinese diplomat from Stockholm, Uyghur and Chinese exile sources said.  "The court has allowed to me disclose the name of the suspect. I want to let the Uyghur community know that the suspect is Babur Mehsut," Swedish Uyghur Association president Mahinur Hasanova said.  Swedish national and Stockholm resident Babur Mehsut, 61, was detained by Swedish Security Police (Säpo) on June 4 on espionage charges.   An initial hearing to establish formal charges at the Stockholm district court was postponed for two weeks until July 2, "due to the complex nature of the case,” Mahinur said.  Born in the northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou to a Uyghur father and an ethnic minority Hui Muslim mother, Babur later moved to Hotan in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), now China’s northwestern most province. He entered Sweden as a political refugee in the late 1990s and became a Swedish citizen in 2002.  The chief prosecutor in the case, Tomas Lindstrand, told local media Babur was suspected on reasonable grounds of unlawful espionage from January 2008-June 2009, with activities both in Sweden and overseas.  (RFA, 24 Jun 09)

 

Trial date set for seven jailed Baha’is in Iran

Seven Iranian members of the banned Baha’i faith charged with “espionage for Israel” and other crimes are scheduled to be tried on 11 July, the Baha’i World News Service said on Wednesday.  The five men and two women, who have been held for over a year without formal charges or access to their attorneys, will stand trial at Branch 28 of the Revolution Court.  News of the trial date was conveyed only orally to their family members by authorities at Tehran’s Evin Prison, where they are being held, said the report.  Official Iranian news reports have said that the seven individuals – members of a national Baha’i coordinating committee – will be tried on charges of “espionage for Israel, insulting religious sanctities and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.”  The charge of “espionage for Israel” is punishable by death.  (Washington TV, 24 Jun 09)

 

Cuba's spy program deeply rooted in U.S.

Chris Simmons, a former lieutenant colonel in U.S. counterintelligence, insists that there are dozens of spies in the service of Cuba within the government of the United States and in the nation's universities.  He made that assertion in connection with the recent arrest of Walter Kendall Myers, a former high-ranking State Department official, and his wife, Gwendolyn. Myers spied for Cuba for three decades, and his motivation (like his wife's) was of an ideological nature. He sympathized with the Cuban dictatorship and felt an enormous contempt for his country's economic system and political conduct. . . . There is not a single important U.S. institution that has not somehow been infiltrated, directly or indirectly, by the Cuban G-2. It was Simmons who dug up ''mole'' Ana Belén Montes, a high-ranking Pentagon official who later was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment for spying for Havana.  The interesting thing about the Myers case is not that he was a spy for Cuba recruited in the State Department but that the Cubans ''planted'' him in that agency.  Three decades ago, they asked him to return to State, from which he had separated, for the purpose of passing to Cuba secret information about any topic that might have strategic value and could be utilized by, sold to or swapped with countries such as the Soviet Union or Iran. . . . The United States is not the only objective of the Cuban G-2. In the 1990s, the Cuban services ''turned around'' the then-chief of Spanish intelligence for Latin America, a pleasant lieutenant colonel in the army. He was found out and separated discreetly from his agency.  Then the Cubans scored an even more valuable coup. They wooed a Spanish deputy to the European Community, a socialist, and turned him into a docile and efficient agent of influence, utilizing the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, one of the most effective branches of Cuban intelligence.  Not even the Catholic Church has escaped the skill of the Cuban spies. In the 1960s, they dropped into it the Rev. Manolo Ortega, an educated and charismatic man in whom ''the apparatus'' saw a future bishop ''and, who knows, maybe a pope,'' as the agents fantasized when they spoke of the priest they had implanted in the bosom of the religious organization.   (Miami Herald, 23 Jun 09)

 

Where Does Cuba Find its American Spies?

. . . . Like the old time Communists from the espionage cases of the 40’s and 50’s, the Meyerses were ideologically motivated spies, carrying out their work without remuneration, engaging in espionage all for the love of Cuban communism and Fidel Castro. They were, from all accounts, just like other late generation New Leftists, who carried out their enthusiasm one step further than many other activists were willing to do.

. . . . We do not as yet know what the Meyers actually passed to Cuba, but from all accounts, his work at the State Department gave him access to top secret data from our different intelligence agencies, some of which the Cubans might well have passed on to other of our enemies.  Nevertheless,  they probably did less harm that Ana Belen Montes, who was senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and at the same time Castro’s top spy in our country.  Montes too acted for ideological reasons, and viewed herself as an opponent of America’s “imperialist” foreign policy in the United States, who was in a good position to help Cuba stand in the way of American hegemony in the Western Hemisphere.  Few commentators have noted a great irony, that only was reported on by the Miami Herald. It refers to the question of how the Castro brothers and their cronies in Cuban intelligence recruit their spies in the United States. One former Pentagon expert believes that Cuba has over 250 agents currently at work here, despite the end of the Cold War and a very new international situation. That number, Chris Simmons thinks, includes six to nine within our government, and over a dozen in academia.  Kendall Meyers himself was an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins’ prestigious SAIS, the same school that Montes got her degree from in 1988, and from which she was spotted by Cuban intelligence and recruited.  The point emphasized by the Herald is this: “Cuban intelligence focuses its trolling for potential American spies on the four Washington-area universities whose international studies programs regularly  send their graduates to key positions throughout the U.S. government- Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, American and the University of Virginia.” As one American counter-intelligence officer put it, “The Cubans fish in a small pond.”  Think of the advantage for Cuban intelligence. Their future spies get their expertise and knowledge from American universities, where they specialize on Latin America and other areas of the world. We give them the training, and they then put them to work .  . . . And why should it be surprising to find that Cuban intelligence seeks its agents at our universities? Look through the papers and positions taken by so many members of the academic Latin American scholars’ organization, and you will find the usual politically correct left-wing leaning panels. How many of them belong to an organization that started in the 60s and still exists- The North American Congress on Latin America- and that devotes itself to the romance of Cuba and revolution throughout the region? Read their regular publication and you will not be surprised that Cuban intelligence sees scholars with this point of view as good picking for their agents.  After all, they are merely repeating the pattern used by the KGB through the years as documented in Spies, the new revelatory book by Haynes, Klehr and Vassiliev.  (Pajamas Media, 22 Jun 09)

 

Former Soviet spy  Konstantin Preobrazhensky warns Americans about Russian New Trojan Horse and KGB collaborators
The Frontpage Magazine Interview's latest guest has been Konstantin Preobrazhensky, a former KGB agent who became one of its harshest critics. He is the author of seven books about the KGB and Japan. His new book is KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent.  Preobrazhensky graduated from the Institute of Asia and Africa of the Moscow University in 1976. Before that he was an intern at the Tokai University in Japan. His father, the Deputy Commander of the KGB Border Guard Troops, "pushed" him into KGB intelligence, considering it was the most privileged and well-paid job in the USSR.  Preobrazhensky’s work in Tokyo as a spy from 1980-85 was successful. He was covered as a correspondent of the TASS news agency. While in the KGB, he published a couple of books on Japan. In Tokyo, Preobrazhensky was spying on China and recruited a Chinese scholar there.  However, Japanese counterintelligence learned about it somehow and caught him in 1985. The KGB forcibly returned the agent to Russia and accused him solely of this scandal, though nobody knew the real reason.   Preobrazhensky says he began to write a book of revelations about the KGB from his first day of serving there. The Spy Who Loved Japan was first published in Tokyo in 1994, soon after he left the KGB in 1991. He became a security columnist at the Moscow Times newspaper. Finally his anti-KGB activities forced Preobrazhensky to run away from Russia after Putin came to power. Preobrazhensky went to the United States on a private visit and asked for political asylum. In his new book he tells among other things how the KGB managed to put Russian Americans under its control by merging the Russian Orthodox Church abroad with the Kremlin-controlled Moscow Patriarchate. Preobrazhensky marks that a lot of American leftists were recruited by the KGB in the Soviet period. There are still many KGB collaborators working for the Russian in the US.  Preobrazhensky stresses that Russia’s influence in the United States is very strong. The Russian mechanism of misinformation and manipulation includes the utilization of some American think-tanks and political scientists, he notes.   (Axis Globe, 22 Jun 09)

 

Did love of Cuba drive U.S. couple to spy for Castro?

Kendall Myers was a bookish history professor hailing from elite Washington society. Gwendolyn Steingraber was an alternative energy advocate doing solar energy workshops for the Public Utility Commission in South Dakota . . . . The evidence so far — diary entries, taped statements and intercepted conversations — appears to leave little doubt about the couple's guilt. Instead, discussion of the case has focused on what motivated the Myerses, neither of whom was known to speak Spanish and rarely, if ever, displayed any interest in Latin America.  From court documents and public records, what emerges is a picture of a very private couple who hid a fervent admiration for Fidel Castro, as well as deep disdain for the U.S. political system . . . . The couple began passing along information over a shortwave radio and by exchanging shopping carts with Cuban handlers in grocery stores, according to court documents. Later they switched to encrypted e-mails sent from Internet cafes.  They also met Cuban officials in other countries, including Brazil, Ecuador, Jamaica and Mexico. Yet, during those years, they almost never indicated any interest in the island, according to friends and colleagues . . . . Not until 2006 did the FBI begin to suspect the State Department had a spy in its midst.  By then the couple had begun to wind down their spying activities, according to documents. They bought a yacht and went sailing on weekends.  In November 2006, Myers made a rare slip. In what he thought was an off-the-record gathering at Johns Hopkins, he criticized U.S. treatment of its close ally Britain. His remarks created an uproar in the British press, and Myers was summoned by his superiors to explain the remarks. A year later, age 70, he quietly retired . . . .  Two covert searches of the Myerses' Washington apartment and their sailboat by the FBI in 2008 turned up incriminating evidence, including Myers' 1978 Cuba diary, as well as a sailing guide for Cuban waters and a book titled On Becoming Cuban. The FBI also found a shortwave radio identical to one used by another Cuban spy, Ana Belen Montes, busted a few years earlier at the Pentagon and sentenced to 25 years in jail . . . . But it wasn't until early this year that the FBI decided to dupe Myers into revealing himself. On April 15, an undercover FBI agent approached Myers in the street before class. Pretending to be from Cuban intelligence, the agent offered Myers a cigar, with birthday greetings from one of his old Cuban handlers.  Over the course of three meetings at Washington hotels - all recorded by the FBI - the coupled opened up, describing their entire spying career in detail.  Asked if he had supplied information that was more than "top secret," Myers replied: "Oh yeah . . . oh yeah." During his last 15 months at the State Department he downloaded more than 200 classified documents related to Cuba, according to the FBI.  Myers and his wife told the undercover agent they were "burned out" after so many years. Myers asked to be considered as "a reserve army - ready when we're needed."  "It was our life," he said. "You know, it's like Fidel . . .  it's forever."  (St. Petersburg Times, 22 Jun 09)

 

Myers Couple  - suspected Cuban agents seem to be naive romantics, a world away from other moles

. . . . America has produced a rich crop of spy cases over the 15-odd years I've been a correspondent here. There was Aldrich Ames, the CIA counter-intelligence officer and mole who sent at least 10 US agents to their deaths, as well as Harold James Nicholson, a fast-rising CIA station chief, and the FBI special agent and computer expert Robert Hanssen, said by some to have been even more damaging than Ames and who was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2001.  Usually American spies are in it for the money. True, Hanssen seems to have felt his talents were insufficiently appreciated by his employers and took up espionage in part to prove his point. But he was also well remunerated for his pains. As for Ames, who received $2.7m (£1.6m) from Moscow before his arrest, he was the best-paid spy in all history. Nicholson didn't do too badly by the Russians either – he even sent his son to Russia to discuss "pension" arrangements after completing a 23-year jail term somewhere around 2020.  But the Myerses, on the basis of the known evidence, were different. For one thing they are in their 70s. For another, they allegedly spied not for Russia, or even for Israel (for which the former US navy analyst Jonathan Pollard is serving a life sentence), but for Cuba. The methods they used in an espionage career that lasted almost 30 years were relatively primitive – most notably a shortwave radio and the exchange of shopping trolleys with Cuban agents in a Giant supermarket in affluent north-west Washington . . . . The Myerses, it is claimed, took no reward other than the grateful thanks of Havana, the cost of their equipment, and the belief they were doing the right thing. According to evidence presented at a bail hearing early this month, they had marked in their calendar a yacht trip to the Caribbean later this year, with no date of return. For prosecutors, that journey sounded all too like a final departure to the country they now considered "home".  If anything, the Myerses come across as naive romantics, utterly different from the greedy, often drunken Ames. A better parallel might be our own ideological spies of yesteryear. Like Philby, Maclean, Burgess and Blunt, Kendall Myers was a product of the establishment. If he crossed over, it was not for financial gain but from a belief, however misguided, that the other side was better.  The Myerses, of course, do not seem to have been in the league of the Cambridge spies. Indeed, they are not facing charges of espionage, but the lesser offences of conspiracy, wire fraud, and being agents of a foreign government – to which they have pleaded not guilty. For now they must be presumed innocent. But the bail hearing judge has already declared that "to put it bluntly, the case against them seems insuperable".  (Independent, 21 Jun 09)

 

Putin's Spies in America

KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent by Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, a former KGB agent who became one of the KGB's harshest critics. He is the author of seven books about the KGB and Japan. His new book is KGB/FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent

. . . . FP: The American media and literary culture ignored your book. How come?

Preobrazhensky: My book was ignored. Only a few religious writers have reviewed it as it is devoted to the KGB penetration of America through the Russian Orthodox Church. It tells how the KGB managed to put Russian Americans under its control by merging the Russian Orthodox Church abroad with the Kremlin-controlled Moscow Patriarchate.  That is why the laymen journalists probably did not want to cover such a delicate topic. How is possible to speak about the Church as a tool of espionage? It would not be "politically correct." So political correctness has helped Putin to keep his espionage in America secret. Moreover, it is helping him facilitate it. Putin knows very well about American political correctness and about the fact that American counter-intelligence is not eligible to monitor clergymen. The KGB is doing it in Russia very aggressively in spite of the fact that Church and State are separate there too.  So we have a situation that Putin is openly spying in the U.S. and Americans are afraid of writing about it. This idiotic paradox is a symbol of current American-Russian relations. They bring profit only to Russia.

Just recently, the wall of silence about my book was finally broken. My book was reviewed by Professor Clare Lopez: Professor Clare Lopez has come to a conclusion which is very important for me: "For those who think the Cold War ended in 1991, this book will have you thinking again. Konstantin Preobrazhensky wants Americans to wake up to the ongoing agenda of the Russian regime, which he says under the rule of Vladimir Putin and the KGB has reverted to the intelligence-dominated repressive state of the 20th century."  (FrontPage, 21 Jun 09)

 

Book Review of Konstantin Preobrazhensky's FSB's New Trojan Horse: Americans of Russian Descent   (Clare Lopez CI Centre Professor, 10 Jun 09)

 

Spy Klaus Fuchs leaked secrets 'like sieve'

. . . . According to local historian Colin Barber, Klaus Fuchs was "leaking like a sieve" during his time at the Rhydymwyn Valley Works near Mold in the 1940s.  The site, now a nature reserve, is said to have made 40,000 chemical weapons shells weekly during World War II.  Members of the public can explore the plant at an open day on Sunday.  Mr Barber's believes his research into the base, which was originally set up to make chemical weapons, proves conclusively that Fuchs was supplying the Soviets with classified information.  Fuchs, a scientist, left Nazi-ruled Germany because he was a communist and came to Britain in the 1930s. He earned his PhD in Physics at the University of Bristol and in 1942 was granted British citizenship and even signed the Official Secrets Act.  At Rhydymwyn, he worked for over a year on highly sensitive research into the manufacture of weapons-grade uranium, all the time passing those secrets to the Soviets, the historian claims.  After leaving Wales in 1943, Fuchs went to the United States to work on the Manhattan Project that ultimately led to the Hiroshima atom bomb.  But in 1950 he confessed that he had spied for the Soviet Union and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.   (BBC, 21 Jun 09)

 

Lebanese authorities arrest 3 on suspicion of spying for Israel

Lebanese authorities arrested three men early Saturday for allegedly being part of a spying ring for Israel, security officials said, in the latest episode in the long-running espionage war between the two countries.  Agents grabbed the three - two Lebanese and a Palestinian - from their homes in southern Lebanon during a raid early Saturday, security officials said.  Authorities are searching for a fourth suspect, the officials added, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.  The Israeli government could not be reached for comment on the Jewish Sabbath.  The arrests were based on information extracted from a retired Lebanese general arrested earlier this week, also for allegedly spying for Israel.  The general, his wife and his nephew, who is a government security agent, were charged this week with espionage.  According to military prosecutor Saqr Saqr, the three arrested Saturday were providing information to Israel about Lebanese and Syrian military and civilian installations.  (AP, 20 Jun 09)

 

Julius and Ethel Rosenbergs were executed as spies in 1953

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. Julius was a member and eventually a leader in the Young Communist League (YCL). Ethel, two years older than Julius, was also a member of YCL, meeting her future husband there in 1936. The couple married in 1939, the same year Julius graduated from City College of New York with an electrical engineering degree. Julius joined the Army Signal Corps in 1940 and worked with radar equipment. Ethel was an actress and singer and also worked as a secretary.   Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were not the only spies arrested. They were the only ones executed. David Greenglass, Ethel's brother, was sentenced to 15 years and served 10. Harry Gold served 15 years and Morton Sobell served 11 years and 9 months. Klaus Fuchs, also a member of the group but residing in England, served 9 years of his 14 year sentence. The people involved had relayed information to Soviet Russia. They were accused of sending information to the enemy regarding the building of atomic bombs. The Rosenbergs' trial began on March 6, 1951 and they were convicted on March 29. Sentencing took place on April 5 . . . . According to Alexandre Feklisov, the Rosenbergs' handler, Julius was recruited by the KGB on Labor Day 1942 by spymaster Semyon Semenov. The ringleader was recalled to Moscow in 1944 and Feklisov took over the role.   Feklisov said he was given thousands of documents supplied by Julius Rosenberg. Classified reports, including a complete design of a proximity fuse, were passed to the Soviets. A complete drawing of a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star and secrets from Los Alamos filtered through to Russia. The couple was suspected of passing on vital information about the atomic bomb and US readiness for an atomic confrontation.  (Examiner, 19 Jun 09)

 

Klaus Fuchs: Wartime espionage in the heart of Flintshire

. . . . (Local historian) Colin Barber says his research has shown one of the 20th century's most notorious Soviet agents leaked atomic weapons research from the top-secret munitions factory at Rhydymwyn.  Nuclear scientist and Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs was 'leaking like a sieve' during his time at the village's Valley Works, says Colin.  He believes his research into the base, which was originally set up to make chemical weapons, proves conclusively that Fuchs was supplying the Soviets with classified information . . . . "They are also providing an essential service for Flintshire and for Wales in ensuring that these priceless memories of the war effort on the Home Front are preserved for future generations."   Fuchs, a German-Jewish scientist, fled persecution by the Nazis and came to Britain in the 1930s.  He earned his PhD in Physics at the University of Bristol and in 1942, despite having been interned, was granted British citizenship and even signed the Official Secrets Act.  At Rhydymwyn he worked for a year on highly sensitive research into the manufacture of weapons-grade uranium, all the time passing those secrets to the Soviets.   After leaving Wales in 1943, Fuchs went to the USA to work on the Manhattan Project which ultimately led to the Hiroshima atomic bomb.  (Chester Chronicle, 19 Jun 09) 

 

Myers Couple’s Capital Ties Said to Veil Spying for Cuba

She was twice divorced and fresh out of South Dakota when she fell for his worldly sophistication. He came from one of this city’s most privileged families, and admired her work helping ordinary people.  Together, Gwendolyn and Kendall Myers set out to give the second half of their lives new meaning. At first, disillusioned with the pace of change in Washington, the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, who at the time was a State Department contract employee, and the housewife turned political activist moved to South Dakota, where they embraced a counterculture lifestyle, even growing marijuana in the basement. They marched for legalized abortion, promoted solar energy, and repaired relations with six children from previous marriages . . . . the government says the real reason for the Myerses’ 1980 return (to Washington DC) was to spy for Cuba. In a complaint that reads in parts like a novel, federal prosecutors allege that Mr. Myers, now 72, used his top-secret clearance as a State Department analyst to steal classified information from government files for nearly three decades, and that Ms. Myers, 71, who worked as a bank clerk, helped pass the information to Cuban handlers. They were arrested earlier this month and are being held without bail.  The strongest argument in support of the government’s case may have been made by the Myerses themselves. In the 40-page complaint they are quoted telling an undercover F.B.I. agent how much they admired Fidel Castro, how they sent secret dispatches to Havana over short-wave radio, dropped packages to handlers in shopping carts at local grocery stores, traveled across Latin America to meet with Cuban agents and used false documents to travel to Havana for an evening with Mr. Castro. . . . according to the statements cited in the complaint, which one federal magistrate said made the case against the couple “insuperable,” the couple felt disdain for America’s foreign policy - Mr. Myers’s diary described watching the television news as a “radicalizing experience” - and a romanticized view of Cuba’s Communist government.  And, just months after Mr. Myers’s retirement supposedly ended the scheme, they hinted that spying provided adventure to what seemed to have otherwise been a relatively mundane life. “We really have missed you,” Mr. Myers said in April to the undercover F.B.I. agent who was posing as a Cuban intelligence official. “You, speaking collectively, have been a really important part of our lives, and we have felt incomplete.”  (New York Times, 19 Jun 09)

 

Lawyers plead ex-spy Li Yuzhou's case

The Lawyers Council of Thailand has pleaded with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees not to cancel the refugee status of a former Chinese spy being held in Bangkok.  Li Yuzhou, 33, yesterday signed an appeal to the UNHCR after the agency cancelled the refugee status it granted him and his family in September 2005.  Mr Li fled from China to Thailand in 2002 to escape persecution after he and his girlfriend, now his wife, exposed the Chinese government's spying on students over the internet.  After arriving in Thailand, the couple applied for refugee status but did not get it until 2005. During that time, they remained in Thailand illegally after over-staying their visas.  On Oct 20, 2008, the UNHCR informed him his refugee status had been cancelled because of his alleged criminal activities in Thailand including a bomb scare at the Chinese embassy a month earlier that led to his arrest.  The charge has since been dropped.  The UN agency said his status was also being revoked because his activities as a spy in China were responsible for getting people into trouble with Chinese authorities. The UNHCR said Mr Li's spying had led to many students being charged with subversion of state power and imprisoned.  (Bangkok Post, 19 Jun 09)

 

Cuban Spy Case: Myers' Retirement Account Will be Frozen

Government prosecutors in USA v. Myers – involving an American couple accused of spying for the Cuban government -- requested without opposition to freeze a retirement account owned by the defendants, 72-year-old Walter Kendall Myers and 71-year-old Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers.   The request on Wednesday comes after defense attorneys tried to gain the Myerses' release from detention at Washington's Correctional Treatment Facility, a medium security 1,200-person lockup next to the District of Columbia jail that houses women, jail overflows, a medical infirmary and other inmates in special programs.  Defense attorneys have suggested home confinement where the couple could see their four children, proposing that their clients only be allowed to leave for meetings related to the case, and that they post as bond their Northwest Washington apartment, their boat and $250,000 to discourage flight. Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola agreed with prosecutors that the Myerses should stay in jail because they were a flight risk, and U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton did not overturn that ruling today.  Judge Walton is unlikely to release the Myerses from detention at least until another status hearing set for the end of July.  Today the Myerses requested joint-representation by law firm Sidley Austin, LLP although Judge Walton warned it could be against their interest to have joint-representation for several reasons. . . . Also today, both parties agreed to an extension of 45 days for the trial to begin, with the defendants waiving their rights to a speedy trial.

 

Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers, alleged spies for Cuba, remain united

The curious case of Kendall Myers, the former State Department analyst accusing of spying for Cuba, and his wife Gwendolyn, who faces the same charges, looks set to last many months.  I was in court today to see the couple, dressed in blue prison garb, waive their right to a trial within 90 days of their arrest and confirm that they wish to be represented by the same set of lawyers. This indicates that any prosecution hopes that one of them might testify against the other have come to naught - for now at least.  Myers, 72, seemed more confident and cheerful than he did at his last appearance, smiling occasionally and answering the judge with such phrases as "I believe it is in our interests to have joint representation" and "It is my desire" rather than a simple yes or no.

. . . . Both sides agreed that the case was a complex one that would issues arising under CIPA and FISA, including defense motions for discovery of classified documents. The prosecution sought to freeze a "rollover retirement account", which the US government wants the Myers to forfeit. There was no objection from the defense. Judge Reggie Walton, who presided over the Lewis "Scooter" Libby case, is considering a fresh defense application for the Myers to be released. The two defendants are currently being held in separate cells at the Correctional Treatment Facility, an annex to the DC Jail in south-east Washington. In the motion, the defense argued that the couple should be released on bail into the custody of Mrs. Myers's son Brad Trebilcock, who was in court. Conditions could include, the defense suggested, the surrendering of their passports and their agreement to stay 20 miles away from their Malo 37 yacht in Galesville, Maryland and to not visit the Cuban Interests Section in downtown Washington. . . . Judge Walton set the next court hearing for 1.30pm on Friday July 24th.  (Telegraph, 18 Jun 09)

 

Cuban spies' shortwave radios go undetected

A retired State Department officer and his wife who are accused of spying for Cuba appear to have avoided capture for 30 years because their communications with the Caribbean island were too low-tech to be detected by sophisticated U.S. monitors.  Longtime State Department intelligence researcher Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn, 71, were arrested this month after a weeks-long sting operation in which they told an FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence officer that they received orders from Cuba's intelligence services over shortwave radio, according to a Justice Department affidavit.   U.S. intelligence spends little time combing the shortwave bands for secret, nefarious transmissions, said James Lewis, director and senior fellow for the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington . . . . Shortwave radio is a remnant of an era that existed before the Internet and satellite communications, including the sophisticated eavesdropping equipment of the National Security Agency.  But Chris Simmons, a former Cuba analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), said Cuban intelligence still likes to use shortwave to communicate with its agents in the United States.  Former DIA senior analyst Ana Montes, arrested in September 2001 and convicted of spying on behalf of the Cuban government, also received her orders in shortwave communiques. So did Jennifer Miles, who in the 1960s was the last State Department official before Mr. Myers to be arrested on charges of spying for Cuba . . . . The Justice Department affidavit said Cuban intelligence appears to have sent the Myerses an unknown number of messages since the late 1970s, using simple number-to-letter codes . . . . Even if U.S. authorities detect a transmission and determine that it is a coded message from a foreign intelligence unit, they do not know for whom the message is intended, Mr. Simmons said.  "When an intelligence agent broadcasts from Havana, the footprint it puts down on the earth is hundreds of miles across," he said. "And so from an investigative standpoint, it's impossible to find out who it went to."  (Washington Times, 18 Jun 09)

 

Alleged spy couple planned to sail 'home' to Cuba

Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, looked oddly out of place in their blue prison jumpsuits standing before a federal judge here on Wednesday.  White-haired and wearing glasses, they might blend more easily with fellow senior citizens in retirement.  Instead, both are facing trial on charges that they spied for Cuba for 30-years. . . . The couple's court appearance Wednesday came as part of routine trial preparation. They have entered not guilty pleas and have agreed to mount a joint defense rather than hiring separate defense lawyers.  In his first significant motion, defense lawyer Thomas Green is asking US District Judge Reggie Walton to release his clients on a bond. The judge said he'd consider the request.

Last week a magistrate judge ordered the couple held without bond pending their trial.  Mr. Green said Mr. and Mrs. Myers could be subject to electronic monitoring and be ordered to stay 20 miles away from their yacht and at least 20 miles away from the Cuban Interests Section, Cuba's diplomatic representation in Washington housed in the Swiss embassy.  In ordering their continued detention, the magistrate judge said the government's case "seems at this point insuperable."  (Christian Science Monitor, 18 Jun 09)

 

Their men in higher Ed - Working the nexus between government and professoriate

he arrest of Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, demonstrates the extent to which the Cuban Intelligence Service has penetrated and manipulated American academic institutions.

. . . . Mr. Myers received his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. The same institution in 1988 awarded a master's degree to Ana Belen Montes, the key Pentagon intelligence analyst on Cuba, who in 2002 pleaded guilty to working for Cuban intelligence and received a 25-year prison sentence. According to Cuban intelligence defectors, Cuban intelligence has targeted American colleges and universities for nearly half a century.  The FBI debriefed Cuba's DGI Capt. Jesus Perez Mendez after his defection in 1983. In a publicly available transcript, Mr. Perez Mendez identifies U.S. university professors and administrators known to be "activists" in pro-Castro groups. Mr. Perez Mendez revealed that, in reality, they were Cuban agents working under the supervision of Jesus Arboleya Cervera, a DGI officer and diplomat in the Cuban Mission to the United Nations in New York City. (Washington Times, 18 Jun 09)

 

Ukraine to expel 19 Russians for espionage - security chief

All officers from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) stationed with the Russian Black Sea Fleet must leave Ukraine after December 13, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, has said in an interview with the BBC Ukrainian Service.   He said that the Russian side had been officially informed of this.

Nalyvaichenko said that there were currently 19 FSB officers at the Russian Black Sea Fleet engaged in intelligence activities.  He said that all functions of the officers, as stipulated by Ukranian law, including maintaining the safety of Russian sailors, have been handed over to SBU military intelligence units in Sevastopol and Simferopol.  Nalyvaichenko told Russian newspaper Nezavizimaya Gazeta earlier that Ukraine could protect the Russian Black Sea Fleet while on on Ukranian territory itself.  He also said that the SBU and the FSB were reliable partners.  (MosNews, 17 Jun 09)

 

Lebanon military launches spy tribunal

Lebanon launches a military tribunal to probe charges against suspected Israeli agents as the country continues tracking down spy networks.  The Military Court led by Judge Rashid Mazhar initiated on Tuesday the investigations of Lebanese Army colonels Mansur Diab and Shahid Toumiyeh, a Press TV correspondent reported.
Military prosecutor Saqr Saqr earlier charged the two, who were arrested last month, with providing Israel with information about military and security positions, as well as civilian locations and aiding Israeli forces in the summer of 2006.  One of the two colonels was also charged with possessing unlicensed weapons and hand grenades, while the other was charged with illegally entering Israel.  Lebanon has arrested at least 60 people for spying and 100 others on suspicions of espionage.  The arrests came after some 25 Israeli spy networks were discovered.  (Press TV, 17 Jun 09)

 

Judge resets Mancao arraignment to June 30

Manila judge on Wednesday reset to June 30 the arraignment of former police Senior Superintendent Cezar Mancao II on the Dacer-Corbito case.  Radio dzBB's Carlo Mateo reported that Mancao's camp lodged a motion for postponement asking for time to study the case, which Judge Myra Fernandez accommodated.  Mancao arrived at the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch 18 past 10 a.m., amid tight security provided by the National Bureau of Investigation.  Lawyers of the other accused in the Dacer-Corbito case questioned anew what they called the "special treatment" Mancao had been getting at the NBI . . . .But Mancao has offered to be a state witness and has linked then Philippine National Police (PNP) chief and now Sen. Panfilo Lacson and former President Joseph Estrada to the murders. Both Estrada and Lacson denied the allegations.  Also charged with him before the Manila RTC were Sr. Supt. Michael Ray B. Aquino, Chief Supt. Teofilo Viña, SPO2 Allan Cadenillo Villanueva, SPO4 Marino Soberano, SPO3 Mauro Torres, SPO3 Jose Escalante, Crisostomo M. Purificacion, Digo de Pedro, Renato Malabanan, Jovencio Malabanan, Margarito Cueno, Rommel Rollan, Chief Insp. Vicente Arnado, Insp. Roberto Langcauon, SPO4 Benjamin Taladlua, SPO1 Rolando Lacasandile, SPO1 Mario Sarmiento, SPO1 William Reed, PO2 Thomas J. Sarmiento, Jr., and SPO1 Ruperto A. Nemenio.  Aquino is in a United States jail on espionage charges, while Viňa, who was earlier implicated by some of the accused as the one who masterminded the abduction-slayings, was killed by still unknown gunmen sometime in 2001.  (GMA, 17 Jun 09)

 

China ramps up pressure to have spy Li Yuzhou sent home

China is continuing to pressure the government to extradite confessed spy and dissident Li Yuzhou who was accused of planting a fake bomb at the Chinese embassy last September, diplomatic sources say.  Beijing has repeatedly asked Thailand to finalise the case so Mr Li could be sent back to China, the sources said.

The latest call was made to Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya by his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi when they met in Beijing last week, the sources said.  The government was considering China's request, but Mr Li's refugee status meant Bangkok had to wait for a decision by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Bangkok-based Chinese diplomats who requested anonymity said.  Mr Li told the Bangkok Post that collaboration between Thai and Chinese authorities led to his being framed as a terrorist for planting the fake bomb. "They [China] want me because I know too much about them," he said. "I did not want to work as a spy anymore therefore I fled to Thailand. They might think it's treason but I haven't done anything wrong."  (Bangkok Post, 17 Jun 09)

 

Spy accusations still haunt anchor Fang Jing

It remains uncertain when Fang Jing, a star CCTV anchorwoman rumored to be involved in a spy scandal, will return to her regular work, although she said Tuesday she "is ready to head back to the screen". . . . But the one-time anchorwoman for the prime-time military program Defense Watch said Tuesday that no CCTV program has contacted her for regular programming in the coming days . . . . Neither CCTV nor Fang has explained the exact reason for her absence from the screen since March. Defense Watch said Fang quit for "health reasons".

Fang, a Beijing native who has been working for the mainland's official television network China Central Television since 1993, was last week rumored to have been under investigation for leaking mainland intelligence.  A Yi, an ex-CCTV anchor who now teaches at Peking University, revealed on his blog last Tuesday that Fang "applied to host the military weekly program for the purpose of collecting military intelligence for outside sources after hosting prime time news features and news bulletins on the network."  But A Yi said "sorry" to Fang Jing on his blog on Saturday and on Sunday declared Fang has returned to hosting and removed the accusations from his blog.  (China Daily, 17 Jun 09)

 

Accused Cuban spies Kendall and Gwen Myers seek house arrest

A retired couple accused of spying for Cuba say they're willing to put up their house and sailboat for bond if a federal judge will let them serve house arrest. Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers say they're also prepared to be ordered to stay away from Cuba's equivalent of an embassy if U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton grants their request. The couple is due back in court Wednesday to ask Walton to let them be released into the custody of Gwendolyn Myers' son.  A federal magistrate last week sided with U.S. prosecutors and ordered the couple jailed. The couple's lawyer will argue before Walton that 'a combination of conditions can be set that will reasonably assure the Myers' appearance in this case.''.  . . .  U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola last week declared the couple a flight risk, suggesting they could flee to Cuba or its Cuban Interests Section in Washington. . . . Facciola said last week that he feared the Myerses live too close to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington to be apprehended if they decide to flee there. The couple says in court documents they could be ordered to stay away from the building or serve house arrest “at least 20 miles from the Cuban Interests Section.”  They would also agree to stay at least 20 miles from their sailboat in Annapolis and to surrender “all maps or other navigational equipment related to Cuba's navigable waters.”  In a search of the Myerses home, investigators say they found an entry on their calendar for a sailing trip to the Caribbean in November. They also found sailing charts for Cuban waters, a travel guide to Cuba and a book titled On Becoming Cuban.  (Miami Herald, 17 Jun 09)

 

Myers Couple accused of spying for Cuba seek release

Attorneys for a couple accused of spying for Cuba for three decades are asking a judge to let them out of jail.

Lawyers for Walter Kendall Myers and wife, Gwendolyn, want the judge to order them confined at home. They are to make that argument in federal court Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton.

The lawyers say the couple would pay for electronic monitoring and Gwendolyn Myers' son would ensure that someone is with them 24 hours a day. They also would stay away from the Cuba Interests Section in Washington, as well as their sailboat, and turn over their maps of Cuban waters.

Prosecutors have said the couple planned to sail away to Cuba.  (AP, 17 Jun 09)

 

Chewing Gum Wrapper Sized Mini Spy Camera

Spying gadgets are getting smaller and interesting, such as can be seen in this Chewing Gum Wrapper Sized Mini Spy Camera. This thin small gadget can record both audio and video and has some amazing features such as micro SD card slot with up to 8 GB memory.  Chewing Gum Wrapper Sized Spy camera can record with a digital resolution of 640×480 in AVI format. One can use it on a sly for all kinds of spying and even surveillance. In fact it can be hidden right inside chewing gum wrapper itself. This is real thin geeky spy camera and it comes just for $56 each. One can order whole sale and get discount too.  Geeky spies can also try Spy Camera Hidden in a Cap or Spy Cam Tie.  (Walyou, 16 Jun 09)

 

Myers’ Cuba spy case shows flaws in US counterspy efforts, just like other recent spy cases

. . . . A weekend ago, the Washington Post reported that the FBI had arrested longtime State Department employee, Walter Kendall Myers, along with his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, on charges of spying for Cuba.  According to the charges, Cuban intelligence recruited Mr. Myers back in the seventies while he was working as a contract instructor at the Foreign Services Institute, which is State Department’s training arm.   Mr. Myers then joined the State Department as a government employee. He worked his way up to a senior position in State’s Intelligence and Research Bureau, where he had access to Top Secret intelligence information.  He fed his Cuban handlers secrets for two decades, and even boasted to an undercover FBI agent that he and his wife once dined with Fidel Castro.   Meanwhile, the American Thinker’s Clarice Feldman and Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein reported that Mrs. Myers very likely had access to secrets of her own—though not as a government employee. She worked in the IT department of Riggs Bank, a now-defunct Washington DC bank that has long been reputed to be CIA’s “Spook Bank.”   Mrs. Myers’ access there would have afforded her a view into spy agency financial activity—undoubtedly of interest of Mr. Myers’ Cuban handlers.  So maybe the real culprit in the Myers spy case might never have even had a clearance or subjected to investigative scrutiny. . . . If the allegations prove correct, Myers spied for twenty years without getting caught. During that time, he was likely to have been subjected to between six and ten background investigations, possibly including polygraph interviews. Myers and his wife also reportedly traveled overseas—secretly, of course—to meet with Cuban handlers and even Castro himself. The investigation into Myers and subsequent arrest took place after his retirement. . . . For Myers’ Cuban handlers, standard U.S. government security practices, such as security clearances, periodic reinvestigations, and requirements like reporting foreign travel and foreign contacts, were little more than speed bumps.  These tired old security practices didn’t stop Myers. Or his notorious predecessors, either, such as Robert Hansen, the FBI agent who spied for Russia for decades, or Aldrich Ames, the CIA officer who also spied for Russia for nearly a decade. Most experts agree that there are very likely active moles selling American secrets right now—despite clearances, classification markings, polygraphs, safes, and controlled entry to government buildings.  Will the intelligence community ever learn that its security is out of step with reality?  (Examiner, 16 Jun 09)

 

Lebanon charges 2 colonels with spying for Israel

Two Lebanese army colonels have been charged with spying for Israel as the country continues a campaign against Israeli spy networks.   Military prosecutor Saqr Saqr charged the two, who were arrested last month, with providing Israel with information about military and security positions, as well as civilian locations and aiding Israeli forces, a court official said.  One of the two colonels was also charged with possessing unlicensed weapons and hand grenades, while the other was charged with illegally entering Israel, the official added.  Lebanon has so far charged at least 60 suspects for spying and has arrested almost 100 others on suspicion of espionage since it launched a major crackdown on spy networks  (Press TV, 16 Jun 09)

 

Sweden catches a spy

Sweden’s security police (Sapo) have arrested a Swedish citizen in Stockholm in connection with spying on refugees arriving in Sweden from an unnamed country. Sapo had been watching the suspect for quite a while before finally arresting him last week, though the agency refused to divulge any further information due to confidentiality agreements.  The Local reports that ‘refugee espionage’ is a surprisingly widespread criminal activity in Sweden. Sapo confirms that numerous countries use major resources to track and gather information about dissidents who flee their countries and seek asylum in Sweden. Since the spying is considered a danger to national security, it is a very serious crime in Sweden.  However, it is difficult to try suspects for this type of crime since it is never officially reported by anyone and the cases are virtually impossible to investigate. Prosecutor Tomas Lindstrom told the TT news agency: “The crime is predicated on the involvement of a foreign power and mostly, though not always, the people in charge are very good at what they do. They take every possible precaution and I think I’d go as far as to say that they are considerably more careful than many people involved in more traditional serious crime.” (ICE, 14 Jun 09)

 

Pentagon Official Fondren Charged With Spying For China

A Defense Department official gave U.S. secrets to the Chinese for four years, according to a federal grand jury indictment.  Federal prosecutors say James Wilbur Fondren Jr., the deputy director, Washington Liaison Office, of U.S. Pacific Command, gave classified and unclassified information to Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Taiwan. Kuo had close ties with a top Chinese official, and the FBI says Fondren, 62, knew of this relationship, yet continued to provide the information from November 2004 to Feb. 11, 2008.

Fondren faces up to 60 years in prison if convicted on all the charges against him.

The FBI said in a press release that Fondren provided the information to Kuo under the guise of a consulting service in which Kuo's business was the only client. Fondren would incorporate the information into "opinion pieces" he sold to Kuo, according to the indictment. He also provided what the FBI describes as sensitive, but unclassified Defense Department publications to Kuo.  The FBI also says Fondren had more than 40 e-mail communications between March 1999 and November 2000 with the Chinese official.  Fondren is also being charged with lying to investigators. The FBI says that he told investigators the information he gave Kuo came from press reports and from his experience. He said he never took classified information home, and that he never gave Kuo draft copy of an unclassified document on military strategy.  (All Headline News, 14 Jun 09)

 

'Ordinary' life to accused spy Gwen Myers - Woman's odd journey baffles those who knew her in S.D.

She grew up across the prairies of Iowa, attended high school in Yankton, became a teen mother and then a housewife raising four children in relative anonymity in Aberdeen.  . . . . Which is why the news that Gwendolyn Steingraber Trebilcock Myers now is charged with spying for Cuba has sent shock waves rippling across South Dakota and beyond.  Last week in Washington, D.C., the 71-year-old Myers and her 72-year-old husband, Walter Kendall Myers, were arrested on charges of spying for Cuba since practically the day they left South Dakota 30 years ago.. . . . There's even a claim by the Myerses, investigators say, that they spent an evening with then-President Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1995. All of which seems dumfounding to South Dakotans who knew her either by her maiden name, Gwen Steingraber, or as Gwen Trebilcock.  . . . . Chuck Trebilcock said his ex-wife attended high school in Yankton with Tom Brokaw, the former anchor for NBC Nightly News. Brokaw did not respond to a request to talk about his acquaintance with Gwen Steingraber. . . . . Chuck Trebilcock, to whom Gwen Steingraber was married for almost 18 years, has been questioned by FBI investigators, as have his children, he said. He had little to offer them, Trebilcock said, having been divorced from her since May 1973.. . . . Trebilcock did say that his former wife was born in Sioux City, Iowa, and lived in numerous Iowa communities before her family moved to Yankton when she was in high school. . . . According to divorce records, the Trebilcocks' union ended May 17, 1973. She took back her maiden name, Steingraber, and lived with the children in the family house for the next year. In June 1974, she moved to Denver, where she married again, this time to a man records indicate was named Robert Gereaux, in a union that was short-lived.  By January 1976, Steingraber had moved to Arlington, Va., with her two youngest children and presumably went back to work for Abourezk.   (Argus Leader, 14 Jun 09)

 

The curious case of alleged Cuban spy Kendall Myers

Retired State Department employee Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, told friends they had summer plans to take their 37-foot yacht north last weekend, up the picturesque coastline to New England.

Instead, the couple waits in a federal jail for trial, charged with 30 years of spying on the United States for the country's longtime antagonist, the communist regime of Cuba.

. . . . The FBI alleges long-standing ties to Cuba, saying in an affidavit that the pair agreed to spy after a Cuban diplomat from the country's mission to the United Nations visited them in South Dakota in 1979 or 1980. He had earlier invited Kendall Myers to visit the island, and Myers did so in 1978, praising the Cuban revolution in a diary the FBI uncovered.  (Miami Herald, 14 Jun 09)

 

China Central TV Host Fang Jing Denies Spying Allegations

Veteran China Central Television (CCTV) anchorwoman Fang Jing has denied allegations that she was arrested for spying, saying it's merely groundless hearsay and she may respond by legal means.  During a telephone interview with Southern Metropolis Daily published on Friday, the 38-year-old host of CCTV's military program Defense Watch said she couldn't understand why A Yi, a former CCTV host she had never spoken to before, had made the allegations in his blog.   She said she would explore every avenue in a bid to clear her name and may take legal means to make A Yi accountable for his remarks.  A similar statement was also published Thursday night on a blog under the name "CCTV Fang Jing", which was opened on the Chinese internet portal "sina.com.cn" on the same day.  During the telephone interview, Fang Jing admitted she had not been at work recently, but she insisted that it was for family and health reasons. Asked when she would resume hosting her program on CCTV, she said she didn't have a current timetable.   (CRI, 12 Jun 09)

 

DOD official James Fondren indicted for giving secrets to China

A Pentagon official initially accused of unknowingly supplying secrets to China had actually been aware for some time that he was dealing with an agent for Beijing, according to a new indictment issued Thursday.

Initial charges last month against James W. Fondren Jr. suggested that he was sucked into a "false flag" operation - that is, he disclosed secrets to an agent he thought worked for Taiwan who was actually working for China.  Thursday's indictment, though, said he had been aware for roughly a decade that the agent had deep ties to the regime in Beijing. At times, Fondren even bypassed his handler and directly gave information to the Chinese government, according to the indictment.  Fondren, 62, who held top secret clearances as deputy director of the Washington liaison office for U.S. Pacific Command, last month became the second Pentagon official charged with giving classified documents to Tai Shen Kuo. Kuo, a New Orleans furniture salesman, pleaded guilty to spying for Beijing and was sentenced last year to nearly 16 years in prison.  The indictment Thursday from a grand jury for U.S. District Court in Alexandria reveals new details about the relationship between Fondren and Kuo.  Specifically, according to the indictment, Fondren wrote an e-mail in 1998 stating that Kuo was using "opinion papers" provided by Fondren to ingratiate himself with the Chinese government. The papers dealt primarily with U.S.-Taiwanese military relations.  In 1999, Kuo and Fondren traveled together to China and met with two government officials there, according to the indictment. Fondren and one of those officials subsequently exchanged e-mails in which Fondren promised to obtain reports on missile defense for the Chinese official.

The indictment states that Fondren and the unidentified Chinese official exchanged more than 40 e-mails between 1999 and 2000.  Between June 1998 and January 2000, Kuo paid nearly $8,000 to Fondren while Fondren operated a consulting service called Strategy Inc. Kuo was Fondren's only client.  After Fondren left the private sector and resumed employment at the Defense Department, he worked through Kuo, and the indictment states that Kuo did indeed try to mislead Fondren into thinking that Kuo was working for Taiwan. Kuo is a Taiwan native and naturalized U.S. citizen.  Fondren's lawyer, Asa Hutchinson, said his client denies the allegations.  "Mr. Fondren intends to vigorously contest the allegations in this indictment and we will particularly contest any allegations that he was an operative for the People's Republic of China or any other foreign government," Hutchinson said in a phone interview.  Taiwanese officials have previously said that the disclosures resulting from Kuo's espionage caused some damage but did not compromise key technology.    (AP, 11 Jun 09)

 

Pentagon official James Fondren indicted in spying case

A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted a Pentagon official on espionage charges, alleging he passed classified information to China.  James Wilbur Fondren Jr. was indicted on one count of conspiracy to pass along classified information and act as a spy, four counts of unlawfully transmitting classified information to a foreign government and three counts of making false statements to the FBI, the Justice Department said in a news release Thursday.

The indictment alleged that from November 2004 to February 2008 Fondren, a Pentagon employee with top secret clearance, provided classified Defense Department documents and other information to Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Taiwan. Fondren has been on administrative leave with pay since mid-February 2008. He surrendered to federal agents May 13 after being charged, the Justice Department said. Fondren knew that Kuo had a relationship with an official of the People's Republic of China, the indictment said. Fondren and the Chinese official exchanged more than 40 e-mails between March 1999 and November 2000, the indictment said. Fondren allegedly provided classified information to the Chinese official through Kuo by incorporating the information into "opinion papers" he sold to Kuo, Justice Department officials said.  (UPI, 11 Jun 09)

 

Ex-Pentagon official Fondren indicted in China spy case

A federal grand jury indicted a former Pentagon official who had a "top secret" security clearance on charges of spying for China and lying to cover up his actions, the Justice Department has said. Retired air force Lieutenant Colonel James Wilbur Fondren, a deputy director of the US Pacific Command's Washington Liaison Office, was arrested in mid-May and charged with conspiracy to pass classified information to an agent of China. The charges announced Thursday include one count of conspiracy to communicate classified information to a foreign government agent and act as an illegal foreign agent; four counts of unlawfully communicating classified information to a foreign government agent; and three counts of lying to FBI agents. If convicted on all charges, Fondren, 62, faces up to 60 years in prison, the Justice Department said in a statement. According to the indictment, Fondren gave classified Pentagon documents and other information to Tai Shen Kuo, a naturalized US citizen from Taiwan, during a period from around November 2004 to February 2008.  "Fondren was aware that Kuo had maintained a close relationship with an official of the People?s Republic of China (PRC), to whom Kuo introduced Fondren during a trip the two took to the PRC in March 1999," reads the statement.  "As Kuo well knew, this individual was an official of the PRC government. Fondren and the PRC official exchanged more than 40 email messages between March 1999 and November 2000."  Fondren allegedly "provided classified information through Kuo, under the guise of consulting services, using a business that had Kuo as its sole customer. Fondren would incorporate this information into 'opinion papers' that he sold to Kuo."  When Federal Bureau of Investigations agents interviewed Fondren, the indictment alleges, the retired colonel "falsely represented" that the opinion papers were based on media report and from his experience.  Fondren falsely said he had never taken any classified information home and denied that he had given Kuo a draft copy of an unclassified document on military strategy, the indictment alleged.  The US government accuses China of mounting an aggressive operation to prise open its secrets, and President Barack Obama is weighing an overhaul of cyber-security after several reports of computer hacking originating in China.  (AFP, 11 Jun 09)

 

Defense Department Official James Fondren Indicted on Espionage, False Statement Charges  (DOJ Press Release, 11 June 2009)

 

How MI6 link of traitor George Blake was covered-up by Government

The Cold War spy and traitor George Blake, whose betrayal of secret intelligence to the KGB led to the execution of 40 British agents, was at the heart of a confidential Government appeal to newspaper editors in 1961, according to an official history of the D-Notice system published today.  The D-Notice arrangement in which a senior retired military figure provides guidance to newspapers and broadcasters on stories that might damage national security - launched in 1912 and still in existence today - swung into action when Blake was about to go on trial charged with espionage.  Rear Admiral Sir George Thomson, D-Notice Secretary at the time, wrote a private and confidential letter on May 1 1961 in which he told selected editors that Blake was an MI6 intelligence officer, but he asked them not to reveal this piece of information. Naming MI6 officers was and is banned under the D-Notice rules even, apparently, when a member of the service is secretly working for a hostile foreign intelligence agency, such as the KGB. . . . On May 4 1961, The Times, according to the paper’s archives, reported that “Blake, British Government official and self-confessed spy and agent for Russia” was sentenced to 42 years in prison. There was a reference to his having served as vice-consul in Seoul in 1950 but there was no mention of MI6.  The official history reveals that the following day, May 5, Reuters informed Admiral Thomson that a West German newspaper was carrying a story that Blake had given information to the Soviets which had enabled them to arrest six agents working for Britain behind the Iron Curtain. “Thomson (and no doubt MI6) felt it likely this leak had originated from the Soviets in an attempt to gain information. After consulting a few in the media, he asked editors not to publish information from foreign sources that ‘tended to confirm what they have been asked to conceal’,” Admiral Wilkinson writes. . . . Sir Dick White who was then Chief, or ‘C’, of MI6, is quoted in the official history as saying: “So long as it is merely a question of a few foreign newspapers playing a British story, international repercussions are not likely to be great. Once the British press is unleashed, with all the domestic repercussions and furor that this entails, the international repercussions immediately become very much greater.”  Blake’s treachery had been exposed by a Polish defector in 1959 who informed the CIA that he was a spy for the Soviets whose information had led to the death of “at least 40 agents in Warsaw Pact countries”.  Blake escaped from Wormwood Scrubs in 1966 and turned up in Moscow where he has lived for 43 years.

In 2007, he was awarded the Order of Friendship on his 85th birthday by Vladimir Putin, then Russian President.  (Times Online, 11 Jun 09)

 

Times Archive, 1961: 42 years for man who spied for Russia

 

Israeli spying sisters arrested in Lebanon

Lebanese internal security forces arrested two Israeli sisters at Beirut’s international airport as they tried to leave the country after one of them voted in Sunday’s parliamentary election, a Hezbollah-affiliated website and TV station reported late Wednesday.  Sisters Josephine Moussa, 67, and Georgette, 69, entered Lebanon with Lebanese passports shortly before the hotly contested parliamentary elections but they reportedly lived in Israel and held Israeli passports, according to the media reports. Josephine was also said to possess an American passport.   The American embassy told Al Arabiya it had no information about the incident and did not know whether Josephine had contacted the embassy.  According to Hezbollah’s Al Manar satellite TV station, Georgette reportedly admitted to voting in a Beirut district in the elections that saw the pro-Western March 14 alliance retain its hold on the majority. After a preliminary investigation, a Lebanese Military Court judge ordered that the sisters be transferred to the Lebanese Internal Security's intelligence branch.   (Al Arabiya, 11 Jun 09)

 

Army interpreter Daniel James loses spy appeal

An Army corporal who was the personal interpreter to Britain's top general in Afghanistan has lost an appeal against his 10-year sentence for spying.  Iranian-born Daniel James, 45, from Brighton, was found guilty last November of spying for Iran.  He had sent coded messages to an Iranian military attache in Kabul.

Rejecting James's case, the Lord Chief Justice said the Court of Appeal had reached "a clear conclusion" and the reasons for it would be given later.  Lives at risk - The Territorial Army soldier was working for the head of multi-national forces in Afghanistan, General David Richards, when he was arrested in 2006.

He was caught just two months after making contact with Colonel Mohammad Hossein Heydari, an Iranian military assistant based at Tehran's embassy in Kabul.  At the time of his arrest, James had level one security clearance and intimate knowledge of Gen Richards' daily schedule.  James denied being a spy, but senior intelligence officers believed that if he had not been arrested his actions could ultimately have cost the lives of UK soldiers and even endangered the security of Britain itself.  In one of his coded e-mails, he told the colonel: "I am at your service."  (BBC, 11 Jun 09)

 

No Bail For Myers Couple Accused of Spying - Judge Notes Trip on their Calendar

A magistrate judge denied bail yesterday to a retired State Department analyst and his wife who are accused of spying for Cuba, saying that there is a "very strong" case against them and that the couple would be tempted to flee.  The judge also noted that Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn, 71, had marked on their calendar a yacht trip to the Caribbean in November with no return date, indicating a possible escape plan.

. . . . when contacted this spring by an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence officer, the Myerses spoke openly about their activities, in three sessions that prosecutors said yesterday were surreptitiously recorded on videotape.  "We really have missed you," Kendall Myers told the agent at one meeting, according to prosecution documents. "And you, speaking collectively, have been a really important part of our lives, and we have felt incomplete. I mean, we really love your country."   Prosecutors said yesterday that, in the last 15 months he was employed at State, Myers had secreted on his computer more than 200 classified intelligence documents related to Cuba.  The State Department and intelligence community are assessing any damage. Although Myers was not thought to have had the names of U.S. agents in Cuba, he did have access to databases with information from the CIA, the National Security Agency, the military and U.S. embassies, former colleagues said.  According to federal sentencing guidelines, the couple could spend 14 to 17 years in prison if convicted.  Facciola, the magistrate judge, noted that the evidence presented by prosecutors included shortwave messages to Cuban agents that mentioned the Myerses' code names, as well as the discovery in their home of a shortwave radio similar to those used by convicted Cuban spies.  Prosecutors said the couple had nautical charts for Cuba and had talked about taking off in their yacht to settle down in the land they called "home." The couple could face more charges as the investigation unfolds  (Washington Post, 11 Jun 09)

 

Cuba Has Friends in High Places

On June 4, 2009, Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, were arrested by the FBI and charged with spying for the government of Cuba. According to court documents filed in the case, the Myers allegedly were recruited by the Cuban intelligence service in 1979 and worked for them as agents until 2007.

. . . . In view of the Myers’ case, the Montes case and other cases, like that involving Carlos and Elsa Alvarez, the Cubans clearly prefer to use agents who are ideologically motivated.  Lessons - In addition to the Cuban preference for ideologically motivated agents, perhaps one of the greatest lessons that can be taken from the Myers’ case is simply a reminder that espionage did not end with the conclusion of the Cold War. According to the FBI complaint, a Cuban intelligence officer attempted to contact the Myers as recently as March 2009.

This case also shows that the Cuban intelligence service is very patient and is willing to wait for the agents it recruits to move into sensitive positions within the U.S. government. It took several years for Myers to get situated in a job with access to highly classified information. The Myers investigation also shows that the Cuban agents are not always obviously people working on Cuban issues — Myers was a European affairs specialist. There is also a possibility that the Cubans sold or traded intelligence they gained from Myers pertaining to Europe to their Soviet (and later Russian) friends. (Strafor, 11 Jun 09)

 

Fox Video: DC Spy Myers Suspects Analysis

With more about the Myers’ case, potential damage to U.S. security, and spies in general is Peter Earnest, founding executive director of the International Spy Museum and a 35 year veteran of the central intelligence agency.  (My Fox, 10 Jun 09)

 

 

Accused Myers Cuban spy couple ordered held in jail

former U.S. State Department official and his wife, accused of spying for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years, were ordered Wednesday to be kept in jail until their trial.  U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola agreed with a Justice Department prosecutor that Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn Myers, 71, should remain in jail.  Prosecutor Michael Harvey said that if freed, the couple posed a flight risk and could go to Cuba or the Cuban interest section in Washington, D.C., and that the U.S. government would have no authority to retrieve them.  "They are plainly a serious flight risk," he said.  The couple has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and to communicate classified information to Cuba. They have been in jail since their arrest by FBI agents Thursday.   (Reuters, 10 Jun 09)

 

Accused Cuba spy Kendall Myers ‘sought to be US envoy to Northern Ireland'

Kendall Myers, 72, who appeared in federal court in Washington on Wednesday charged with spying for Havana for nearly 30 years, had a fascination with Northern Ireland.  The Daily Telegraph has established that as well as seeking the envoy's post, which carried the rank of ambassador, Mr Myers travelled to the British Isles and met British and Irish officials, senior Northern Ireland politicians and intelligence officers.  In 2006, he called on David Trimble, the former Ulster Unionist Party leader and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, in Lurgan and visited Irish military intelligence officers in Dublin.  Mr. Myers was a senior analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research until he retired in 2007 and was also a part-time university academic. Known as an anglophile, he specialized in Western Europe and particularly focused on Britain and Northern Ireland.  American intelligence officials believe that Cuba acts as a conduit for secrets, receiving them from its agents and selling or trading them with countries such as China, Russia and possibly even Iran and North Korea.  Mr. Myers had a security clearance above Top Secret.  "Anything this guy could have found from his European responsibilities he might have funneled to the Cubans for them to sell off," said John Bolton, a former top State Department official in the Bush administration. "It's entirely possible.". . . .  The IRA's ties to Cuba were highlighted in 2001 when three of its members were arrested in Bogota on suspicion of training FARC narco-terrorists in the Columbia jungle. One of them, Niall Connolly, was a resident of Havana who had acted as Sinn Fein's representative in Cuba.  Three years ago, Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political wing, met President Fidel Castro in Cuba. The FBI believes that Mr Myers and his wife Gwendolyn, 71, who is also accused of spying and appeared in court with her husband, met Mr Castro in Cuba in 1995.  Mr Myers, who retired a year early in 2007, drew public attention in 2006 when he mocked the "special relationship" between Britain and the US as a "one-sided" affair in which we "typically ignore them".

 (Telegraph, 10 Jun 09)

 

Kendall Myers US man accused of spying for Cuba allegedly admired British Cold War Spies

A former American official accused of spying for Cuba admired a team of British cold war spies and believed they acted in what they thought were Europe's best interests, according to one of his former students.  Former US state department employee and university instructor Walter Myers, who along with his wife Gwendolyn is charged with spying for the communist island nation for three decades, appeared in court in Washington today and was ordered jailed, pending trial. . . . As an instructor in British politics at Johns Hopkins, he told students he believed that Kim Philby, Donald MacLean and Guy Burgess, members of the Cambridge Five spy ring that passed British intelligence to the Soviet government in the 1950s, had been driven by a desire to keep peace in Europe, according to Tom Murray, a Seattle management consultant who took a class with Myers in 1992.  Burgess and MacLean were exposed in 1951 and escaped to Moscow, but Philby, one of the cold war's most successful spies, stayed undercover until 1963, when he too fled to Russia.  Murray, who described his experience as Myers' student on thedailybeast.com website, said Myers also admired Neville Chamberlain, and once told the class his favorite novel was Rudyard Kipling's Kim, the tale of espionage in 19th century British colonial India.  (Guardian, 10 Jun 09)

 

Sterling Heights man Najib Shemami sentenced after spying for Iraq

A Sterling Heights man who pleaded guilty to spying for the Iraqi government was sentenced Tuesday to 46 months in prison . . . . U.S District Court Judge Nancy Edmunds agreed with the recommendation, saying Tuesday that Shemami's activity created the "terrible potential to undermine the security of the United States."

Edmunds said Shemami provided intelligence to the Iraqi Intelligence Service as a price to run a smuggling business, in which he exported nuts and other things to the United States for his Detroit party store and brought gifts, medicine and money into Iraq from expatriates.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said Shemami traveled to Iraq multiple times in 2002 and 2003 to report to the Iraqi Intelligence Service about U.S. and Turkish military activities and to supply information about Iraqi natives living in the United States.  An indictment says Shemami told Iraqi officials in January 2003 about the U.S. military expanding in Turkey.  (Detroit Free Press, 10 Jun 09)

 

Mich. man who spied for Iraq gets nearly 4 years

A man described by the Saddam Hussein regime as "our good cooperating source" was sentenced Tuesday to nearly four years in prison for supplying information to Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.  U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds rejected Najib Shemami's claim that he acted under duress from the Iraqi government.   There is no dispute that he told Iraqi authorities about the activities of expatriates in the United States. He also reported on U.S. military movements in Turkey before the invasion, describing the location of 200 tanks as well as tents for refugees.  Shemami, 62, of Sterling Heights, was a frequent traveler from 1996 through 2002, smuggling money, medicine and clothing into Iraq. The judge agreed with prosecutors who said being an informant was his "cost of doing business."  "I apologize to the court," said Shemami, a native of Iraq who moved to the United States in 1970 and owned a liquor store. "I swear to God I didn't mean no harm. I was scared. ... I was so scared."  But that didn't make sense to Edmunds, who ordered a 46-month prison sentence.  Shemami continued to meet with the Iraqi Intelligence Service in 2002 even after being interviewed by the FBI.   (AP, 9 Jun 09)

 

Englebert (Bertie) Broda - The spy who started the Cold War

For ten years a Soviet spy codenamed “Eric” fed Britain’s nuclear secrets to Moscow, paving the way for the Cold War. The KGB treasured him as its “main source” of atomic intelligence; MI5 suspected him, trailed him, opened his letters and monitored his every move. But he was never caught.  Today, 70 years later, with the opening of MI5 and KGB files, “Eric” can finally be identified as Engelbert (Bertie) Broda, a brilliant Austrian scientist who evaded Britain’s spy-catchers for a decade while working as a Soviet mole in the heart of the wartime nuclear research program.  The amazing story of Bertie Broda reads like a John le Carré novel: it is a tale of espionage and counter-espionage, elaborate spycraft, love and deception. But, above all, it is the story of a double-life, filling in one of the last pieces in the complex jigsaw of Cold War espionage. Broda was the KGB’s prize spy: from the Cavendish Laboratories at the University of Cambridge, he provided Soviet spy chiefs with a stream of Britain’s nuclear secrets, including the blueprint for the early nuclear reactor used in the US Manhattan Project. Agent “Eric’s” secrets enabled the Soviet Union to catch up in the race to build the bomb and set the stage for the nuclear standoff that followed. The most remarkable thing about the scientist-spy was his ability to evade detection: he died in 1983, a celebrated professor of science at the University of Vienna. . . . The Security Service (MI5) began to take an interest in the young Austrian from the moment he set foot in this country. Indeed, his MI5 file contains a clipping from The Times of 1931, describing the murder of a communist spy in Vienna: in the dead man’s flat, Austrian police found a cache of incriminating espionage documents; young Broda was identified as the courier. . . . ‘Eric’ reports that in their field of work, the Americans were significantly ahead,” noted “Glan”. “During the conversation, nothing was called by its proper name, but ‘Eric’ knows who it is he agreed to work for.” When “Glan” offered to pay Broda for information, he took offence. His motives, he said, were ideological, not mercenary. “Eric is completely selfless in his work with us,” said “Glan”.  What Broda did not know was that MI5, increasingly suspicious of him, had managed to recruit its own spy within the Austrian communist circle. The identity of this informant, codenamed “Kaspar”, has never been revealed, but he was a close confidant of Tudor Hart and Broda.  In December 1943, “Kaspar” reported to MI5: “Although I have no definite proof, I have always suspected Broda of being engaged in industrial espionage. In view of the intimate relations existing between Edith Tudor Hart and Broda, it must be assumed that she is well informed of her lover’s activities.”. . . . Broda’s information included the blueprint for one of the American Manhattan Project’s early nuclear reactors. The package, crowed the KGB, contains “all the necessary information to build a plant and [it] is exceptionally valuable”. When a colleague at the Cambridge laboratory went to Canada, Broda was left with “his personal key to the library containing reports on Enormous”. The KGB made a copy. Moscow now had the key to Britain’s atomic safe.  (Times Online, 10 Jun 09)

 

Lebanon: 10 Lebanese charged with spying for Israel

Ten Lebanese were charged with spying for Israel, bringing to 68 the number of persons prosecuted in this case, said Wednesday a judicial source.  The ten people were charged with “collaboration with the Israeli enemy in return for financial sums,” said the source.   According to the charges, six of the defendants were charged with “providing information on areas and civilian, military and political figures in the Hezbollah in order to facilitate attacks on the enemy.”  Some were also assigned, at the request of Israel, “to monitor the place of residence of the head of the Lebanese Forces (Christian) Samir Geagea, to provide information on his travels and visits made by Saad Hariri, the Sunni leader of the majority coalition in parliament.  Among the 68 people indicted for spying for Israel, 40 were detained, including 37 Lebanese, two Palestinians and an Egyptian. The 28 others are still wanted by the authorities.  (Ennahar, 9 Jun 09)

 

Recruited to undermine America

U.S. universities are important recruiting grounds for foreign spies, according to a former intelligence operative who has defected to the United States, and issued a report giving a rare glimpse into the intelligence operations of one of America’s most determined espionage foes.  Jose Cohen Valdes was a Cuban intelligence officer employed in several areas of information acquisition and analysis in Havana, and has documented his nation’s penetration of U.S. universities in a report which has yet to be translated into English. Jose Cohen’s original report can be accessed online. The recent arrest of former State Department official Walter Kendall and his wife, Gwendolyn, on charges of spying for Cuba for the past 30 years gives further immediacy to Jose Cohen’s report. The intended purpose of the spy recruits is not only to gather information, but to become agents of influence - individuals who can shape U.S. policy to assist a foreign nation and work against the best interests of the United States. . . . Havana has been tied to virtually every major terrorist organization, from Hamas to Colombia’s FARC communist guerrilla army.  Havana is close to nuclear-tipped North Korea and the neo-Marxist regime of Hugo Chavez.  China and Russia consider Cuba a valuable ally. . . . The Cubans learned the value and techniques of penetrating U.S. universities from Soviet intelligence services, Jose Cohen stated. The Soviets would have been excellent instructors in recruiting agents from prestigious schools, since they had decades of experience.  One of the Soviets most notable successes came in the 1930s when the NKVD (a predecessor of the KGB) recruited four young Cambridge students.  A fifth individual who studied at Cambridge was later recruited by the Soviet espionage, and worked with the other four.  Taken collectively, they were known the “Cambridge Spy Ring.”   (Canada Free Press/ Toby Westerman, 9 Jun 09)

 

My Professor, The Spy

From admiring lectures about Soviet double agent Kim Philby to coffee at my school’s Alger Hiss Café, hints abounded that my professor, accused Cuban spy Walter Kendall Myers, might be a Communist spook. But neither I, nor his old boss—Paul Wolfowitz—took notice. . . . As his student in the Spring of 1992, I remember his woolen sweaters and an umbrella, and perhaps even a shepherd's hat. None of those physical images square with what the government now says is the truth: while teaching me British politics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Kendall Myers was also a spy for Fidel Castro.  These new accusations probably shouldn't have shocked me as much as they did. Looking for some insight into a man I thought was as establishment as they come—his great-grandfather was telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell—I dug through my parents basement for my class notes, and came across lectures that in retrospect contained chilling information: Myers expressed high regard for the notorious Kim Philby and two other Brits—Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess—who became Soviet double agents during the Cold War.According to my notes, Myers suggested that they were called by their sense of duty to "save" Europe (rather than the British Empire), and that U.S. and U.K. policies "turned them into" spies. . . . Myers favored the underdog, according to my notes. Besides his admiration for Soviet double agents, he was a Neville Chamberlain man. While he compared Winston Churchill to the liberals' bogeyman of the early 1990s, Jesse Helms, Chamberlain was "savvy, knowledgeable" and "faced the situation as best he could," despite the obviously flawed outcome. . . . In any event, the transcripts from the charges levied by the government at Professor Myers suggest that he did not always view his students as a group worthy of partnership anyway, stating that he declined a request from his handlers to involve his students since he didn't "trust any of" us.  In the end, I can't blame myself too much for not putting the clues together. The intellectual center of the neo-conservative movement—including Professor Eliot Cohen, who like Myers shared a State Department role while at SAIS, and Professor Michael Mandelbaum, who recently made a case for the role of America as world hegemon - realistically had much greater access to Myers than I did. And Myers' boss, the school’s dean, shortly after I left was someone who surely knows a lot more about faulty intelligence than I do: Paul Wolfowitz.  (Daily Beast/Tom Murray, 9 Jun 09)

 

Curious case of Cuban espionage

. . . . Kendall Myers, a former State Department intelligence analyst, and his wife, a former analyst with the Defense Intelligence Bureau, have been accused in a federal court in Washington of spying for 30 years, no less, for Cuba's Castro regime. The case, a government spokesman says, is "incredibly serious."  The secrets they passed to Havana appear, according to the government, to have been mainly economic, but a broad damage assessment is underway. If U.S. intelligence methods or the names of U.S. agents were put into play and Cuba retailed or traded them to others, the damage could be severe. . . . The government says it was ideology that moved the two, a combination of disgust with what they saw as U.S. imperial thuggery abroad and dawning idealism in Cuba's revolutionary 26th of July Movement.  It was possible in 1959 and for two or three years after to be hopeful for the revolution that overthrew the Cuban government of Fulgencia Baptista, a stinker who beat down his own people and partnered with the American mob.  But by 1977 when the Myerses are said to have started spying, the Castro regime had already executed thousands of political dissidents. The regime would soon start sending its own people to die as Russian proxies in an Angolan civil war of no natural interest to Cuba.  And Cuba had become a Soviet charity case. Yes, yes, the U.S. trade embargo that began in 1962 contributed to the rolling economic failure, but as in the Soviet Union it was the dead weight of Marxism that really bore it down. It is hard to see how any amount of economic spying in Washington was ever going to matter.   Yet the U.S. government says the Myerses soldiered on even as communism failed as a model everywhere. (China still claims it but only as titular cover for a political oligarchy that buys off its population with de facto capitalism.)  For their trouble, the couple was rewarded with medals they could never take, or dare show. That, and a secret two-hour meeting with Fidel himself.  (Winnipeg Free Press, 9 Jun 09)

 

'Neighbors Shocked' Over Retirees' Kendall and Gwen Myers’ Alleged Spying for Cuba

. . . . The couple allegedly had a secret meeting with Fidel Castro himself in January 1995 -- a "wonderful" meeting with an "incredible statesman," they allegedly said -- and traveled to Cuba or met with Cuban agents in other countries.  After the Justice Department announced the charges, Castro wrote a column in which he called the case "ridiculous" and said he had no recollection of the meeting.  "What surprised me for anything is it was for Cuba, which is kind of a third-rate or fourth-rate deadbeat country," remarked a neighbor out walking his dog. "You know, if it was for the Russians or the Chinese, or the Hezbollah or something it'd be different.". . . . But the Myers' neighborhood is no stranger to espionage intrigue during the Cold War and beyond, due to its proximity to the former Soviet and now Russian embassy, which is less than a half mile away from the suspected spies' apartment.  During the 1980s, Victor Cherkashin, who worked as the KGB's counterintelligence chief in Washington, oversaw two of the most damaging spies ever to develop within in the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community: the CIA's Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen of the FBI.   Cherkashin recruited both, meeting with Ames at Chadwick's restaurant in Georgetown, where the CIA mole turned over a list of names of Russians spying for the United States.  Hanssen revealed to the KGB that the FBI and National Security Agency had built secret tunnels underneath the embassy to conduct electronic surveillance of the complex.  Both Ames and Hanssen are serving out life sentences in federal prison. Cherkashin returned to Moscow in 1986 and retired from the KGB five years later; he detailed his activities in his 2005 book "Spy Handler."  More recently, freelance journalist Joshua Kucera penned an account of meeting with a Russian diplomat in which the official asked him to write positive stories about the country in exchange for money.  The meeting, Kucera said, took place over fajitas and enchiladas at Cactus Cantina, a restaurant that, like the Russian embassy, lies within a half-mile radius of the Myers' home.  Additionally, Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard met his handler in the Dumbarton Oaks section of Washington, an area known for its gardens and historic homes and situated between the Myers' neighborhood and historic Georgetown. . . . As for Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers, court documents lay out their alleged means of communicating with Cuban officials: A Sony shortwave radio, which investigators said they recovered from the Myers' apartment. The presence of a shortwave radio is a recurring theme in Cuban spy cases, such as those of former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Ana Belen Montes and husband-and-wife spy team Carlos and Elsa Alvarez, who worked at Florida International University.   uthorities arrested Montes in 2001 and the Alvarezes in 2005; in both cases the spies had used a shortwave radio which they used to receive encoded messages similar to the allegations against the Myers. . . . The Myers allegedly used spy tradecraft in addition to the shortwave radio, such as shopping cart switches at grocery stores, the use of encoded emails to a man known as "Peter Herrera," who posed as a Mexican art dealer, use of water-soluble paper for note taking and "bookends that were used as a concealment device at their home," the affidavit states.  (ABC, 9 Jun 09)

 

Gwen Myers charged with helping Cuba worked for PUC and also served as aide to S.D. senator

A woman charged along with her husband with spying for Cuba the past three decades worked at one time for South Dakota's Public Utilities Commission and as an aide to then-Sen. James Abourezk.

Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, and her husband, Walter Kendall Myers, 72, were arrested last week in Washington, D.C., and charged with conspiring to act as illegal agents and to communicate classified information to the Cuban government. . . . For PUC officials who worked with Gwendolyn Steingraber when she was the agency's deputy director for fixed utilities from early 1979 to December 1980, the news was stunning. . . . Stofferahn and Rislov said Steingraber handled consumer affairs and complaints in the PUC and spent a lot of time traveling the state, showing people how to build solar collectors at commission-sponsored workshops. . . . "As I recall, he (Kendall Myers) didn't work anywhere there in Pierre. In fact, I believe he was working on a book about Britain Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain."  Court papers say that before the two left Pierre, an official from the Cuban United Nations mission in New York visited them in South Dakota, and they agreed to become spies. They were given code names for their correspondence and radio traffic with Cuba. Myers became "202," and his wife became "123."  (Argus Leader, 9 Jun 09)

 

Najib Shemami - Mich. Man described as Iraq spy will get sentence

Federal prosecutors are recommending nearly four years in prison for a suburban Detroit man accused of spying for Iraq.  Najib (Na-JEEB') Shemami (sh-MA'-me) pleaded guilty in January to aiding Iraq without approval from the U.S. government. He'll get his sentence Tuesday.  The government says Shemami traveled to Iraq to report on U.S. and Turkish military activities and to supply information about Iraqi natives living in the United States.

The investigation against the Sterling Heights man began with documents obtained after the U.S. invasion in 2003.  (WLNS TV6, 9 Jun 09)

 

Praise from Castro for couple who 'passed on US secrets for 30 years'

He is said to have been the subject of some cartoonish plots over the years, from poisoned ice cream, mines disguised as sea shells and, of course, exploding cigars, but even Fidel Castro says that the story of an elderly American couple accused of spying for Cuba for three decades reads like "an espionage comic strip".

The retired Communist leader declined over the weekend to say whether Walter Kendall Myers, 72, a US intelligence official, and his 71-year-old wife Gwendolyn really had passed secrets to his regime, but he said they deserved praise if they did.  "I can't help but admire their disinterested and courageous conduct on behalf of Cuba," he wrote in a web column published three days after the couple's sensational arrest.   "Those who in one form or another have helped to protect the Cuban people from the terrorist plans and assassination plots organized by various US administrations have done so at the initiative of their own conscience and are deserving, in my judgment, of all the honors in the world.". . . . The couple are alleged to have received encrypted radio messages in Morse code on a short-wave radio, and passed copies of documents to Cuban agents in public locations like supermarkets. The indictment alleged that Mr. Myers sometimes took documents from the State Department home and hid them in books. His top secret security clearance, given in 1985 and upgraded in 1999, gave him daily access to classified information until his retirement in October 2007.  As an adjunct professor of Johns Hopkins University, Mr. Myers could also have passed on details of students likely to end up working for the CIA.  He was a professor of international relations, particularly of British politics, and a critic of Tony Blair's government. In the final months of his State Department career, he caused an international storm by claiming there was no "special relationship" between Britain and the US and that he felt "ashamed" of the way Tony Blair had been treated, winning nothing in return for his support for the war in Iraq. . . . The couple is due in court for a bail hearing on Wednesday. They have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy, fraud and being agents of a foreign government.   (Independent, 8 Jun 09)

 

Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Myers Alleged Spying for Cuba

. . . . Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. "We were all appalled by the Bush years," one said.

What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades.   "I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience," he wrote in his diary in 1978, referring to what he described as greedy U.S. oil companies, inadequate health care and "the utter complacency of the oppressed" in America. On a trip to Cuba, federal law enforcement officials said in legal filings, Myers found a new inspiration: the communist revolution.  Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn, 71, pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of conspiracy, being agents of a foreign government and wire fraud. Their arrest left friends and former colleagues slack-jawed, unable to square the man depicted in the indictment with the witty intellectual with a prep-school background they knew. The Myerses never talked about Cuba or gave any hint of subversive activities, acquaintances said . . . . James Cason, who headed the U.S. interests section in Cuba from 2002 to 2005, said the case is serious because Myers had one of the highest clearances. "If you can get someone into the intelligence bureau, you can have access to everyone's intelligence, not only ours but of allies. The question is, what did they [Cuba] do with it?" he said. "Did it stay with them, or was it given to other countries, as well?"  But an official who previously worked in the bureau said the case is probably not as damaging as that of Aldrich Ames, the CIA counterintelligence chief who passed along extensive information about U.S. intelligence operations to Russia. Myers would not have had access to the names of U.S. spies in Cuba, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. . . . He got a taste of spying while serving in the U.S. Army from 1959 through 1962, according to friends. Fluent in Czech, he was stationed in Germany, where he monitored broadcasts from what was then known as Czechoslovakia, which was under communist rule. He went on to teach at the SAIS and in 1977 became a contract instructor at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute.  During those years, his life was rocked by tragedy and difficulties, friends said. Late one November night in 1975, Myers was driving a car that slammed into a 16-year-old girl in Northwest Washington, near his childhood home, killing her. Myers felt terrible about the crash, friends said. His marriage to his first wife, Maureen Walsh, ended in divorce in 1977. They have a son and daughter, Myers's only children. . . . In 1978, Myers visited Cuba for two weeks, authorities said. He told his supervisors that he had been invited there for an academic trip by the country's United Nations mission. But his guide while on the island was a Cuban intelligence officer, authorities said.  The son of privilege fell in love with the communist revolution, according to diary entries released in court. "Everything I hear about Fidel suggests that he is a brilliant and charismatic leader," Myers wrote, according to the documents. The diary entries record his impressions of a visit to a museum, where Myers learned about "the historic interventions of the U.S. into Cuban affairs, including the systematic and regular murdering of revolutionary leaders." It "left me with a lump in my throat," he wrote. The following year, Myers moved to South Dakota, apparently to teach, friends said. He lived with a woman who would soon become his second wife, Gwendolyn Trebilcock, a legislative aide for then-Sen. John Abourezk (D) in her home town of Aberdeen. . . . In November 2006, Kendall Myers's frustration with U.S. policy boiled over. In what he apparently thought was an off-the-record gathering at Johns Hopkins, he assailed the Bush administration's treatment of one of its closest allies, Britain. "We typically ignore them and take no notice. . . . It's a sad business," Myers told the audience. The British press reported it. . . . Despite what the couple described as their paranoia about detection, court documents reveal that they readily opened up to an FBI undercover agent who approached Kendall Myers on Massachusetts Avenue NW in April. The agent told Myers that a Cuban intelligence agent had sent him. They went on to meet another three times, along with Myers's wife.  The couple told the agent they eventually wanted to sail to Cuba, according to the court documents.  (Washington Post, 8 Jun 09)

 

Fidel-ity: Three Decades of the Myers Spy Ring

Last week a Department of State retiree and his wife were arrested and charged with spying for Cuba for thirty years. In this article I will sort out what we know, don't know and need to explore about this matter...(American Thinker, 8 Jun 09)

 

Former communist prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova seeks her sentence interruption

Former Czech Communist prosecutor Ludmila Brozova-Polednova, 87, who was given six years for assisting in a judicial murder of democratic politician Milada Horakova, today asked for interrupting her service of the prison sentence, her lawyer Vladimir Kovar has told CTK.  He said the Prison Service did not meet the conditions for the care of ill prisoners.  Brozova-Polednova, who was a prosecutor in the political trial in which democratic politician Milada Horakova, along with another three people, was sentenced to death on the basis of fabricated charges in 1950, has been serving her sentence in the prison in Svetla nad Sazavou, east Bohemia, since late-March. She is the oldest prisoner in the facility. . . .Brozova-Polednova originally wanted her sentence to be postponed over serious health troubles, but a court rejected her request.  She is almost blind and suffers from other health problems as well, but according to an expert opinion she is able to serve the prison sentence under certain conditions. The Prison Service promised to guarantee these special conditions for the convicted woman. . . . Brozova-Polednova was sent to prison for six years last September by the Prague High Court that lowered the original eight-year sentence.  (Ceske Noviny, 8 Jun 09)

 

Lebanon arrests 2 brothers for spying

Lebanese security forces have arrested two brothers on suspicion of spying for Israel amid anti-espionage campaign in the country.  The brothers were arrested Sunday in Rmeich village of the Nabatiye Governorate in southern Lebanon, Xinhua reported.   They are said to be relatives of a retired senior police officer named Emaad Al-Alam, who was arrested on April 10 over accusations of leading a spying network for Israel.  According to the Lebanese police, computers, equipment and documents of their communication with Israel were found in their house.  (Press TV, 7 Jun 09)

 

AIPAC Defamation Lawsuit threatens to Pierce Veil of Secrecy

Steven J. Rosen's defamation suit against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) saw its first court appearance today.  Rosen and fellow employee Keith Weissman were criminally indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act in 2005 for allegedly obtaining classified US national defense information.  The US Department of Justice dropped the espionage case in May of 2009, citing adverse pretrial rulings by presiding Judge T.S. Ellis.  Rosen filed the civil lawsuit in March of 2009 alleging his former employer both libeled and slandered him in the news media.  AIPAC fired Rosen and Weissman in 2005.  AIPAC's spokesman told the New York Times in April of 2005 that Rosen's actions differed from "the conduct that AIPAC expects from its employees."  On July 7, 2005 the spokesperson told the New Yorker that "Rosen [and his colleagues] were dismissed because they engaged in conduct that was not part of their jobs and because this conduct did not comport with the standards that AIPAC expects and requires of its employees."  Rosen's lawsuit seeks $21 million in damages for such statements that were "knowingly false and defamatory and issued in reckless disregard for the harm to Mr. Rosen." 

Shortly before today's hearing commenced, Rosen's legal counsel David H. Shapiro gruffly advised AIPAC's attorney Thomas L. McCalley that he would be seeking "serious discovery" on Rosen's behalf.  McCalley took it in stride, agreeing to work productively and only "fight about" core issues.  McCalley, a veteran of employee/employer litigation, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on May 13, 2009.  He asserted that Rosen failed to show how "factual allegations" could be considered in any way defamatory.  McCalley also took Rosen to task for filing his suit outside the one year statute of limitations for defamation as well as suing AIPAC board members.   Persons serving as voluntary nonprofit board members in the District of Columbia are immune from civil liability except in the case of "willful misconduct."  (Op Ed News, 7 Jun 09)

 

Spies target Switzerland

Thanks to its status as a financial centre, Switzerland is seeing a sharp rise in spying activities amid the global economic crisis, the Swiss intelligence service told AFP.  "We have seen a general interest for financial information," Juerg Buehler, who heads the service, part of the defence ministry, said in an interview.

"This trend is reinforced with the financial crisis and competition between financial centres," notably through cyber-attacks by hackers looking to penetrate banks' networks, he said.  Swiss authorities said they had to ban 21 foreigners holding diplomatic status in 2008 from entering the country, compared to eight in 2007. In 2006, only two were blocked.  In its annual report, the internal information service said: "Foreign intelligence services continue to engage in all forms of espionage activities in Switzerland.  Most spies infiltrate Switzerland posing as diplomats or journalists, said the department.  (News24, 7 Jun 09)

Supermarket trollies - tools of trade for Castro's 'spies'

For three decades, an upper-middle class couple allegedly spied on America for Cuba, using the unlikeliest of tools to communicate with their handlers: supermarket trolleys.  But last week a former US State Department official and his wife were charged with spying for Fidel Castro's communist regime after an FBI sting operation that was launched with the help of a Havana cigar.  Walter Kendall Myers, a great grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, is a scion of one of Washington's most storied families. The 72-year-old was a State Department analyst who had top-secret security clearance.   His wife, Gwendolyn S Myers, 71, worked for the now defunct Riggs Bank. Known as the CIA's favorite bank, it was also used by most foreign embassies in Washington.  The well-heeled pair were supplied with a short-wave radio to pass secret information to their Cuban handlers, according to court documents. The indictment alleges that they spent years sending encrypted Morse code messages from their flat in Washington's expensive diplomatic quarter. More recently they are said to have communicated with Havana by email from internet cafes. . . . Three of their children from previous relationships who attended the court said they were "shocked", but declined further comment.  Apparently known as "Agent 202" to his handlers, Mr. Myers rubbed the corner of his white moustache while flicking through his 36-page indictment. Mrs. Myers, who was alternatively called "Agent 123" and "Agent E-634", sat with her back ramrod straight, but was unable to read the charges because she had left her glasses at home. . . . When an FBI source first approached Mr. Myers, posing as a Cuban official, he said he was seeking his opinions "because of the change that is taking place in Cuba and the new administration". The couple appear to have taken the bait and met the FBI several times, though they are reported to have said that they were now retired and "don't want to go back into the regular stuff".  In subsequent meetings the FBI learnt that the couple had travelled secretly to Mexico to meet with Cuban contacts shortly after Montes was arrested in 2001. In 1995 they made a secret trip to Cuba, using false names, and said they had spent an evening with Mr. Castro. (Sunday Telegraph, 7 Jun 09)

 

Accused spy Walter Myer's lecture raised flags

Nearly three years before he and his wife were arrested on charges of spying for Cuba, Walter Kendall Myers raised the ire of his superiors at the State Department after delivering a lecture that criticized U.S. foreign policy.

Mr. Myers, who was a high-ranking State Department analyst and part-time professor at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the time, told a gathering at the university in 2006 that the relationship between the U.S. and Great Britain was "totally one-sided."  According to published reports, Mr. Myers said the U.S. stance toward Great Britain, one of its closest allies, is to "typically ignore them and take no notice - it's a sad business."  The State Department reacted angrily, calling Mr. Myers "just plain wrong" and ordering him to a meeting with his superiors. Similar criticisms of U.S. foreign policy are found in Mr. Myers' writings about Cuba in a diary the FBI said it recently seized. The writings praise former Cuban President Fidel Castro and blast U.S. involvement with the island country as violent imperialism. . . . In an essay read by a newscaster on state television, Mr. Castro noted that the retired Washington couple were taken into custody just 24 hours after the Organization of American States voted to lift a decades-old suspension of Cuba's membership in that group.  Though the U.S. ultimately supported the OAS vote Wednesday, the administration of President Obama initially wanted to see more democratic reforms on the communist island before Cuba was readmitted. Mr. Castro called the OAS vote "a defeat for United States diplomacy."  Mr. Myers first fell under State Department suspicion about the time he delivered the lecture about Great Britain. No evidence released so far suggests Mr. Myers' lecture had anything to do with suspicions he was a spy. . . . Mr. Myers made a useful spy for the Cubans for several reasons.  The first, he said, was Mr. Myers' access to classified information. Authorities say Mr. Myers, who rose to the position of a European analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research during his 30 years at the State Department, would memorize classified documents and rewrite them later to avoid detection.  Mr. Myers also taught at the Foreign Service Institute, which is the federal government's training center for officials sent overseas. Mr. Simmons suggested such a posting could have allowed Mr. Myers to disclose the names of U.S. foreign agents and possibly compile a list of those who might be sympathetic to Cuba.   (Washington Times, 7 Jun 09)

 

Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Alleged Spying for Cuba

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. "We were all appalled by the Bush years," one said.

What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades. "I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience," he wrote in his diary in 1978, referring to what he described as greedy U.S. oil companies, inadequate health care and "the utter complacency of the oppressed" in America. On a trip to Cuba, federal law enforcement officials said in legal filings, Myers found a new inspiration: the communist revolution....(Washington Post, 7 Jun 09)

 

Accused spy's lecture raised flags

Nearly three years before he and his wife were arrested on charges of spying for Cuba, Walter Kendall Myers raised the ire of his superiors at the State Department after delivering a lecture that criticized U.S. foreign policy. Mr. Myers, who was a high-ranking State Department analyst and part-time professor at Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the time, told a gathering at the university in 2006 that the relationship between the U.S. and Great Britain was "totally one-sided." According to published reports, Mr. Myers said the U.S. stance toward Great Britain, one of its closest allies, is to "typically ignore them and take no notice - it's a sad business." The State Department reacted angrily, calling Mr. Myers "just plain wrong" and ordering him to a meeting with his superiors. Similar criticisms of U.S. foreign policy are found in Mr. Myers' writings about Cuba in a diary the FBI said it recently seized. The writings praise former Cuban President Fidel Castro and blast U.S. involvement with the island country as violent imperialism. Authorities now say Mr. Myers, 72, and his wife, 71-year-old Gwendolyn Myers, were driven to spy for Cuba for three decades by ideology and not profit......(Washington Times, 7 Jun 09)

 

Fidel Castro's 'spies' used supermarket trolleys as tools of trade

For three decades, an upper-middle class couple allegedly spied on America for Cuba, using the unlikeliest of tools to communicate with their handlers: supermarket trolleys.......The well-heeled pair were supplied with a short-wave radio to pass secret diplomatic information to their Cuban handlers, according to court documents. The indictment alleges that they spent years sending encrypted Morse code messages from their flat in Washington's expensive diplomatic quarter - just a few hundred yards from the British Embassy. More recently they are sadi to have communicated with Havana by email from internet cafés. But their favorite way to pass information to their contacts was to swop shopping trolleys in their favorite supermarkets, the FBI claims, with Mrs Myers boasting that it was "easy enough to do". The use of trolleys instead of more traditional "dead drop" techniques favoured by spies to send and receive messages is likely to earn the Washington couple a unique place in the annals of espionage....(Daily Telegraph, 7 Jun 09)

 

Elders Accused of Spying for Cuba

A retired couple in their seventies, the man a former US State Dept. employee, were accused in a Federal Court this week of passing on secrets to Cuba for several decades. The announcement came on the heels of Latin America and the Caribbean pushing through a resolution at the Organization of American States (OAS) that rescinded the hemispheric body’s suspension order on Cuba, in effect since 1962. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro reacted to the news on Saturday writing: “It’s truly strange” that if Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn were under surveillance of the FBI “why weren’t they arrested earlier?” Castro doubted that the couple, facing up to 35 years in prison, would get a fair trial. He said that if the accusations were true, “I would admire their brave and selfless conduct towards Cuba,” victim of countless terrorist attacks, assassination attempts and sabotage of its economy. The convalescing leader turned newspaper columnist also noted that the case against the Myers developed after Obama took office and comes at a time “when Cuba and the US are making contact on important issues of mutual concern.”.......(Havana Times, 7 Jun 09)

 

Fidel Castro: Cuba spy case involving American couple 'ridiculous'

The former Cuban president opined on the case in his online column, Reflections by Comrade Fidel, a forum he uses to give his opinion of world events.   ''Don't you all find the whole story about Cuban espionage quite ridiculous?'' he asked. Castro didn't confirm or deny that the two were spies, but said he couldn't remember meeting them. The Myerses told investigators they met with Castro around New Year's Day in 1995, traveling through Mexico under the names of Jorge and Elizabeth. They said they met Castro in a small house where they were staying and that he spent the entire evening, about four hours, talking with them through an interpreter. Castro wrote that he had ``met during that time with thousands of Americans for various motives, individually or in groups, on occasion with several hundreds of them [. . .] so I could hardly remember details of a meeting with two people.'' He pointed out that the Myerses say they got ''lots of medals'' from the government of Cuba, but that news reports suggest they weren't paid.......He also comments on a diary kept by Gwendolyn -- though investigators quoted from a diary that Kendall Myers kept during his first trip to Cuba in 1978 in which he writes that Castro is "certainly one of the great political leaders of our time.'' ''If all of this were true,'' Castro wrote. ''I could not but admire [the] selfless and courageous behavior towards Cuba.'' ....(Miami Herald, 7 Jun 09)

 

Cuban spies very difficult to find

Hunting spies is difficult, but Cuban spies are notoriously hard to detect, former senior intelligence officials said a day after an American husband and wife were indicted on charges of spying for Cuba. Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn of Washington were arrested Thursday after a three-year investigation that began before Myers' retirement from the State Department in 2007. They had been spying for Havana for 30 years, according to the U.S. government.  Investigations like this typically take years to come together because they usually turn on small pieces of information, and Cuban spies often leave few traces. Cuban intelligence specializes in recruiting "true believers" rather than agents who are out to make money, these officals said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.  Myers appears to be one of the true believers. He praised Castro in a personal journal he wrote in 1978 as a "brilliant and charismatic leader" who is "one of the great political leaders of our time." And he called the United States government "exploiters" who regularly murdered Cuban revolutionary leaders.  Politically motivated spies don't leave a money trail or engage in conspicuous consumption that might attract attention, a common way spies are first identified. The former officials said the Cuban intelligence service is willing to wait years, even decades, for a recruit to work him or herself into a useful position. Cuba is content to have midlevel officials who have access to information but no policymaking power. For these reasons, Cuban agents are notoriously difficult to detect unless a pattern of unusual inquiries eventually attracts attention, they said.  According to court documents, Myers had been put on a watch list by his State Department boss in 1995, meaning he was under suspicion. The FBI investigation didn't start until 2006, after his boss raised fresh suspicions when he returned from a trip to China.....(AP, 6 Jun 09)

 

Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers were recruited from academia by Fidel Castro's intelligence service - one of the best in the world

.......Kendall Myers first traveled to Cuba in December 1978. He was 41 years old, a contract instructor at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and, by his own account, a disillusioned man – driven to spy, not by a desire for money or other personal gain but by a changing attitude about the United States and its communist neighbor.  “I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience,” he wrote in a diary entry from the trip released in court documents Friday. “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.”  By contrast, Cuba was “so exciting!” he wrote. “The revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit.” Walking past exhibits in the Museum of the Revolution in Havana “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,” he wrote.   The Cuban Intelligence Service has a well-established program aimed at “spotting and assessing persons within the United States academic community who may be suitable for recruitment,” according to an FBI affidavit. The recruitment of Myers and other recent Cuban agents fit that pattern......(Christian Science Monitor, 6 Jun 09)

 

Prominent Cases Of Spying for Cuba

June 2001 Mariano Faget, 54, an acting deputy director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service in Miami, was sentenced to five years in prison. He was convicted of revealing secrets to a business partner with connections to Cuba.  December 2001 Five Cuban immigrants were sentenced in Miami to prison terms ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment after being convicted of acting as unregistered foreign agents and conspiring to commit crimes against the United States. Three were also convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. They were among 10 Cuban immigrants accused of infiltrating militant Cuban exile groups in Miami. Some were also accused of seeking U.S. military intelligence.  October 2002 Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst of Cuban affairs for the Defense Intelligence Agency, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. She was accused of passing top-secret files to Cuban intelligence officers from 1992 to 2001.   (Washington Post, 6 Jun 09)

 

Former U.S. State official, wife, face Cuba spy charges

A former U.S. State Department official and his wife have been arrested for spying for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years, the Justice Department said on Friday.  Walter Myers, 72, and his wife Gwendolyn Myers, 71, were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and with communicating classified information to the Cuban government, the Justice Department said.  They were also charged with wire fraud and acting as an illegal agent.  (Reuters, 5 Jun 09)

 

Couple indicted on charges of spying for Cuba

A retired State Department worker with top secret security clearance and his wife have been indicted on charges of spying for Cuba. The indictment handed down by the attorney general's office in Washington says Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, have been clandestine agents for Cuba for 30 years.

The indictment says the pair met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1995, traveling through Mexico under false names. They allegedly made several other trips to Latin America and the Caribbean to meet with Cuban agents. Kendall Myers worked at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute, where he specialized in European matters, before retiring in 2007. The indictment says in his last year of employment, Kendall Myers viewed more than 200 intelligence reports related to Cuba.  (AP, 5 Jun 09)

 

Ex State Department official Walter Kendall Myers and wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers charged as Cuban spies

A former State Department official with a top secret security clearance and his wife have been arrested on charges of serving as spies for the Cuban government for nearly 30 years, the Justice Department said Friday.

The couple is also charged with conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to Havana. According to a criminal complaint unsealed today in Washington, Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and to communicate classified information to the Cuban government. They're also charged with acting as an illegal agent of the Cuban government and with wire fraud.  Justice officials said the couple, both Washington, D.C., residents, were arrested Thursday by the FBI and made their initial appearances Friday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  "The clandestine activity alleged in the charging documents, which spanned nearly three decades, is incredibly serious and should serve as a warning to any others in the U.S. government who would betray America's trust by serving as illegal agents of a foreign government,'' said David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security.  The Justice Department alleges the relationship began as early as December 1978 and was operational until earlier this year. A press release says that the FBI alleges that in meetings with an FBI source, "the Myers allegedly agreed to provide information on the April 17-19, 2009 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as to use specified code words, signals and encryption programs to transmit information via email during future interactions with the source."  (McClatchy, 5 Jun 09)

 

Retired State Department official and wife indicted on charges of spying for Cuba

A retired State Department worker with top secret security clearance and his wife have been indicted on charges of spying for Cuba over the past three decades.  The indictment unsealed Friday in Washington says Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, have been clandestine agents for Cuba since 1979. The pair were arrested Thursday.  The indictment says the couple met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Cuba in 1995, traveling through Mexico under false names. They allegedly made several other trips to Latin America and the Caribbean to meet with Cuban agents.  Kendall Myers, 72, worked at the State Department. Early in his career, he specialized in European issues at the agency's Foreign Service Institute. In 2007, he retired from department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.    The indictment says in his last year of employment, Kendall Myers viewed more than 200 intelligence reports related to Cuba.  The government said that Gwendolyn Myers revealed to investigators that her favorite places to pass information were Washington-area grocery stores.

Kendall Myers was known by the Cubans as Agent 202 and his wife went by both Agent 123 and Agent E-634, according to the indictment.  The two were charged with conspiracy to act as illegal agents of the Cuban government and to communicate classified information to the Cuban government. Each is also charged with acting as an illegal agent of the Cuban government and with wire fraud.  The indictment says the couple own a shortwave radio, which they used to broadcast encrypted messages to the Cuban Intelligence Service using Morse code. In recent years, the documents say, they communicated through e-mail using a false name.  An undercover FBI agent approached them in April, pretending to be a Cuban spy. Court documents say the couple fell for the ruse and began meeting with the undercover agent at Washington hotels.  (AP, 5 Jun 09)

 

Authorities release UNIFIL workers arrested on suspicion of espionage

Two Lebanese employees of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were released after their arrest for allegedly spying for Israel, UNIFIL said on Thursday.  UNIFIL spokesperson Yasmina Bouziane said the Lebanese authorities notified UNIFIL about two separate arrests of Lebanese UNIFIL employees, on May 26, 2009, for allegedly spying for Israel.  She said the first employee was released on May 31, 2009, and the second on June 3, 2009, adding that they are back to their jobs after preliminary investigations. "UNIFIL is assisting the Lebanese authorities in their investigations, per the agreement between Lebanon and the UN on the situation of UNIFIL."  Meanwhile, UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon Michael Williams said he discussed with Premier Fouad Siniora Thursday the upcoming report on the implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701, as well as spy networks.  Williams said the two officials discussed the cluster-bomb maps that Israel handed to UNIFIL and the issue of recently uncovered Israeli spy networks "which the UN is following closely."  Lebanon has formally complained to the UN about the alleged spying, which it says is a breach of a Security Council resolution that halted the 34-day conflict.  On Wednesday, the army intelligence arrested a man identified as Ali Mallah from the southern village of Ain Qana on suspicion of spying for Israel.  Lebanon's chief of police said Tuesday he expected more arrests in an investigation into spying for Israel that has already led to some 35 people being detained. "We have not completed the mission," Achraf Rifi said. "We have files that are still being prepared for arrests."  (Daily Star, 5 Jun 09)

 

Lebanon dismantles 25 Israeli spy cells

Amid an ongoing crackdown on active espionage networks in Lebanon, Israeli cells are being dismantled one after the other throughout the country.  Citing senior army sources, Lebanese daily An-Nahar reported Friday that 25 Israeli spy cells have been uncovered this year.  Ten more people were charged with espionage activities on Friday, four of which are already in custody while the other six remain at large.  The sources said the army also arrested a three-member spy network last week in the country. According to the sources the network might have been "the most dangerous" spy cell with "highly developed security techniques".
Two others were also arrested on suspicion of spying in the southern town of Ain Qana earlier this week.
So far, Lebanon has charged at least 55 people for spying and has arrested almost 100 others on suspicion of espionage since it launched a major crackdown on spy networks almost two months ago.  (Press TV, 5 Jun 09)

 

No word on fate of U.S. reporters held in N. Korea

North Korea remained silent today about the fate of two U.S. journalists who were supposed to go on trial a day earlier on charges that they entered the country illegally and engaged in "hostile acts," accusations that could draw a 10-year sentence in a labor camp. Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore's California-based Current TV, were arrested March 17 near the North Korean border while on a reporting trip to China.  Their trial began in the communist country's highest court at a time of mounting tensions on the Korean peninsula after the government's May 25 nuclear test.  As the United Nations and the United States discussed how to punish the government for its nuclear defiance, there were fears the women could become political pawns in the standoff with North Korea.  Analyst Choi Eun-suk, a professor of North Korean law at Kyungnam University in Masan, South Korea, said the court could convict the women, and the government could use them as bargaining chips.  (AP, 5 Jun 09)

 

Pak claims to have arrested Indian 'spy'

Pakistani authorities have claimed to have arrested an Indian "spy," staying in Lahore without a passport.

The alleged spy was identified as Baram Khan, the son of Jooray Khan of Barmer city in Rajasthan by the Pakistani police.   He was arrested while living in the walled quarters of Lahore without a passport, said Superintendent of Police Omar Virk of the Crime Investigation Agency.  "Khan, during his interrogation, confessed that he had crossed the border in Rahim Yar Khan district in February 2009 and reached Lahore. He was staying at an inn in the disguise of a mentally deranged person,"   (Indian Express, 4 Jun 09)

 

Wine and Espionage – Peter Sichel Story

On Sunday at 4 p.m. Peter Sichel, who lives in Amagansett and New York City, will speak of his experiences as a member of a German-Jewish family of wine merchants fleeing wartime Europe and as an officer in the O.S.S. and the C.I.A. The talk, at the Jewish Center of the Hamptons in East Hampton . . .

. . . . Mr. Sichel volunteered for the Army and at first became a medic. Then he went into a specialized Army training program at the University of Utah, where he was recruited by the Office of Strategic Services, the agency begun in June 1942 that collected and analyzed intelligence for the American government. Mr. Sichel was sent to Algiers, whence he was part of the invasion of Southern France in August 1944 as a second lieutenant in the O.S.S.  From France he recruited German prisoners of war and sent them back to Germany as spies. “Most of them were highly motivated to finish the war,” he said. “Out of 26 missions, we only lost 3,” he added.  After the war, Mr. Sichel ended up with the O.S.S. in Berlin and joined the C.I.A., which replaced the O.S.S. He worked from 1945 to 1948 there as number two and then was promoted to chief of base, at which post he served until 1952. From 1952 to ’56, he worked in Washington, D.C., and was chief of station in Hong Kong from 1956 to ’59, when he resigned and took over the family wine business, which, he said, “turned out to be a great deal of fun, working with a wonderful product and wonderful people.”  (East Hampton Star, 4 Jun 09)

 

Man arrested on suspicion of spying on refugees in Sweden

A Swedish man was detained Thursday on suspicion of spying on refugees in Sweden, the security police said.

Details of the case were sealed, the police said in a statement, citing legislation aimed at shielding Sweden's relations with foreign countries.  The man has been under suspicion for some time and was suspected of espionage and gathering information about foreign nationals which is a criminal offence, the police said.

The government has been briefed about the case and viewed it seriously, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt told broadcaster TV4 news.  Sources cited by TV4 news suggested that the suspect was Chinese- born and was now a Swedish national, who had spied on Chinese dissidents in Sweden.   (DPA, 4 Jun 09)

 

Former KGB agent Mikhail Lennikov takes sanctuary at Vancouver church

A former KGB agent threatened with deportation Wednesday morning has taken sanctuary in a Vancouver, B.C., church.   Former Soviet translator Mikhail Lennikov moved to Canada 11 years ago with his wife Irina and their now 17-year-old son Dmitri.  This year, Lennikov's past caught up with him. Having worked as a KGB contractor in the 1980s, Canadian immigration rules require special permission from the Minister of Public Safety for Lennikov to remain in Canada.  So far, that permission has not been granted.  Lennikov was scheduled to be deported at 2:00 a.m. Wednesday, but he has now taken refuge at the First Lutheran Church in East Vancouver.   (CTV, 3 Jun 09)

 

New Yorker killed in Ethiopia in 2003 revealed as CIA spy

CIA clandestine operative Gregg Wenzel's official cover was lifted Monday, when it was revealed that the New Yorker killed in 2003 was a spy - not a diplomat, as claimed.  Wenzel, 33, was an operations officer who died in Ethiopia. He had been listed as a U.S. foreign service officer. The cause of death was said to be a random traffic accident. The actual circumstances remain murky, Wenzel's father said.  "My son wanted to make a difference, and he did," Mitch Wenzel told the Daily News after his son was honored at CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters. "He wanted to give back by joining the Clandestine Service."  Wenzel and a still-anonymous operative killed last year became the 89th and 90th gold stars engraved on the Memorial Wall in the lobby of the agency.  The elder Wenzel wrote letters to ex-President George W. Bush every year asking for his son to be publicly acknowledged as a CIA hero.  The beefy lawyer - who was born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx and upstate Monroe - was a distinguished public defender before joining the CIA in 2000.  He graduated training in the first class after the 9/11 attacks. "Gregg stood out as a leader" with a huge intellect, sense of humor and "great penchant for fun," CIA Director Leon Panetta said at a ceremony Monday.   (New York Daily, 2 Jun 09)

 

 

Previous Espionage News