Socialist Sandals

Former U.S. official, wife admit to 30 years of spying for Cuba. A former State Dept official and his wife admitted in federal court Friday that they spied for Cuba over the past three decades, receiving coded instructions over a shortwave radio and passing along information to intelligence operatives in "dead drops" and "hand-to-hand" passes.

Walter K. Myers, 72, pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit espionage and wire fraud. His wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, pleaded guilty to conspiring to gather and transmit national defense information.

Assistant U.S. Attorney G. Michael Harvey said in court that Walter Myers was working in the State Department's Foreign Service Institute in 1978 when he went on a two-week trip to Cuba. He had been invited by a Cuban government official, an intelligence operative, who wanted to assess whether Myers would make a good spy, Harvey said. In a diary of the trip, court papers show, Myers called Cuban leader Fidel Castro "brilliant and charismatic."

Under the plea deal, the couple agreed to forfeit $1.7 million, the total of Myers's salary over the years, in cash and property to the U.S. government. That includes a prized 37-foot Malo sailboat. Sounds like a good plea deal for the Myers.

I guess none dare call it treason anymore, it's wire fraud.

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. ... One key question to be answered will be whether the Cubans were using Myers to produce information for other countries, such as Russia, Venezuela, Iran or China. I wonder how much Fidel received reselling the information ...

Prosecutors said in the year prior to his 2007 retirement, Myers downloaded the crown jewels on Cuba - 200 "sensitive or classified intelligence reports." "He had access to everything on the computers," the flabbergasted U.S. official told the Daily News, adding that the scope of what he passed to Cuba's spy service is unknown." ... Myers boasted to an FBI operative posing as a new Cuban handler that he had gotten "lots of medals" from the Communist regime."

Your tax dollars at work, and now federal pension dollars. Somewhere in Hollywood a wannabe artist must be scripting a sympathetic docudrama as we speak. Maybe Michael Moore can show how the Myers helped the "cause" of freedom and justice everywhere.

Some say the bulk of information Myers passed to Cuba was US classified economic data. Apparently someone somewhere made good use of that ...

The Myers spent a lifetime enjoying the benefits of American capitalism - money, luxuries, prestige - yet their loyalty is for "lots of medals" from a despotic island dictator where the majority are unemployed/underemployed and living in shanties. Those freedom and justice folks won't be satisified until the whole world is wearing their sandals ... although you know, with the right ribbon and a couple of grommets ... I might be able to make a buck ...