Our new column at Examiner.com looks at the nation’s newest spy scandal, involving retired State Department official Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn. Both are accused of passing classified information to Cuba for decades.
If the outline sounds familiar, it should. Eight years ago, the FBI arrested Ana Montes, the senior Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, on similar charges. Ms. Montes eventually entered a guilty plea on espionage charges and is now serving a lengthy prison sentence.
In both cases, Cuban intelligence was able to identify willing recruits (both the Kendalls and Ms. Montes were motivated by ideology, not financial gain), encourage their entry into government service, and utilize them as long-term espionage assets. Ana Montes was a Cuban agent throughout her DIA career; ditto for Kendall Myers, who worked at the State Department for almost 30 years.
Ms. Montes’ betrayal caused exceptionally grave damage to our national security. The impact of the Myers’ scandal is still being calculated. We can only wonder if other Cuban moles remain buried in our diplomatic and intelligence bureaucracies.
And here’s the scary part: it took counter-intelligence agents 15 years to catch up with Ana Montes, and Myers was arrested two years after his retirement. Clearly, our spy catching operation remains woefully deficient.
