Cuban spy gets life sentence, wife 81 months
By LESLEY CLARK
lclark@MiamiHerald.com
WASHINGTON -- A confessed spy for Cuba was sentenced to life in prison
and his wife to 81 months after telling a judge Friday that their
``overriding objective'' for 30 years of passing secrets to Cuba ``was
to help the Cuban people defend their revolution.''
A stern U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton loped off just nine months
of the maximum sentence Gwendolyn Myers could have faced under a plea
agreement and told former State Department worker Walter Kendall Myers
he deserved life in prison for betraying his country.
``If you believed in the revolution, you should have defected,'' Walton
said, adding that he saw ``no sense of remorse'' from Myers, who
addressed the court for the first time, telling the judge why the couple
spied for Cuba and how they saw a ``silver lining'' in prison: They've
stopped smoking and are tutoring inmates.
Walter Myers -- a former State Department employee with top-secret
clearance -- had agreed to the life sentence without parole and to
cooperate with the federal government in a deal that offered his wife a
much lighter sentence than the 20 years she might have faced at trial.
Prosecutors had sought up to 90 months for Gwendolyn Myers, 72,
portraying her as ``more than just the wife of a spy,'' saying she was
an active participant with a code name supplied by the Cuban
intelligence agency.
``She and Kendall Myers were a team, a spy team,'' said Assistant U.S.
Attorney G. Michael Harvey.
Walter Myers, 73, told the judge that he and his wife were motivated not
by ``anger at the United States or a feeling of anti-Americanism,'' but
in support of the Cuban revolution.
``Our overriding objection was to help the Cuban people defend their
revolution and forestall conflict between the two countries,'' Myers
said. Both he and his wife, he said, ``share the same love and
solidarity with the Cuban people.
``We share the ideals and dreams of the Cuban revolution,'' he said.
``We are equally committed to helping the struggling people of the world.''
But Walton said he was ``perplexed'' at how Myers could say he was
helping the Cuban people by giving ``highly classified'' material to the
Cuban government.
``The Cuban people felt threatened by the U.S. and they have good
reason,'' Myers replied, charging that the United States has ``pursued
regime change,'' invaded and ``trained persons to carry out hostile acts.''
``From a Cuban perspective, there is a great deal to fear from the
U.S.,'' Myers said, adding that he hoped to ``alleviate some of those
fears'' by ``assessing the nature of the threat to Cuba.''
But prosecutors portrayed Myers as a son of privilege -- he is a
great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell -- who toyed with revolution as
a way of spicing up his life.
Harvey noted that Myers, after being contacted last year by an FBI agent
posing as a Cuban agent, cajoled Gwendolyn Myers into coming out of
retirement to spy once more.
``He said, `I was actually thinking it would be fun to get back into
it,' '' Harvey said. ``That's what he said, what fun. He sold out the
United States because he thought it would be thrilling and he should pay
the price for his treachery.''
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/16/1733627/cuban-spy-gets-life-sentence-wife.html
No comments:
Post a Comment