A Slow Burn Becomes a Raging Fire- Disdain for U.S. Policies May Have Led to Alleged Spying for Cuba

Washington Post ^ | June 7, 2009 | Mary Beth Sheridan and Del Quentin Wilber

[La Lydia]

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.

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....

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....

[La Lydia]

Although these individuals began spying for Cuba under the Carter administration, and kept it up through Reagan, GHW Bush and Clinton, IT IS George W. BUSH'S FAULT. Talk about Bush Derangement Syndrome. What rubbish. They were classic limousine liberal elitists. How wonderful Cuba is! How much better than the United States it is.

[livius]

Everything I hear about Fidel suggests that he is a brilliant and charismatic leader," Myers wrote, according to the documents

Not to mention those things about slaughtering his political enemies and turning Cuba into an impoverished Third World Country cum concentration camp. But heck, we all have a few flaws, don't we?

[Citizen Tom Paine]

To those who admire the Cuban Communist revolution and Che and Fidel look up the meaning of “death warrants”.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Well that explains it. I knew there had to be a reason for people by the thousands risking their lives in leaky homemade boats trying to leave Amerikkka and somehow get to Cuban utopian paradise.

[Flintlock]

Weird, yet typical leftist BS concerning the Commies in general and Cuba specifically.
So, boys and girls, how many OTHERS are out there?
How many more will our POTUSDhimmi appoint?
Just asking.

[Juan Medén]

More evidence that lefties are totalitarian at heart.

[Stosh]

Thanks for pointing out the timeline on this episode - far be it from the lefties in the media to do anything as fundamental.

Since we probably won’t be able to fry their sorry asses, these jerks should be kept in a cell with a taped version of Armando Valderes’s book “Against All Hope” playing 24/7 until they die.

[freeangel]

Hang ‘em both and get it over with. Until people see that consequences of treason are awful, it will become more popular an activity.(Just look at many in congress)

[Gay State Conservative]

By spying for Cuba they were,in fact,spying for every enemy this country has.If it were up to me I’d eliminate them...with extreme prejudice.

[expatguy]

It is a slow DEEP burn... a lot deeper than many realize.

[IrishCatholic]

bookmark.

[Madame Dufarge]

Gwendolyn Myers would later tell an undercover FBI agent, posing as a Cuban operative, that her husband chose State because he was not "a very good liar." The CIA required regular polygraph tests, Myers said.

In the best Alger Hiss tradition.

Why on earth are State Department employees not required to take regular polygraphs?

[CaptainMorgantown]

"I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience," he wrote in his diary in 1978

Well, the hawkish policies of the Carter administration were a radicalizing experience for everyone. Carter took weeks to gut our military and intelligence agencies. He took months to undermine our closest ally in the Middle East and hand Iran over to terrorist (oops, extremist) anti-American Islamists. And it was years before that treaty got around to handing the Panama Canal to that authentic Latin American man of the people Manuel Noriega. I don't even want to talk about the strongly worded letters Carter wrote to Breschnyev when the USSR crushed the Solidarity Movement in Poland and invaded Afghanistan - how insulting to our comrades!

Yep, those right-wing Carter years would have prompted any right thinking American to hop on the treason bandwagon. Problem solved. No need to consider the possibility that the State Department is riddled with leftists sympathetic to our enemies.

//sarc

[johniegrad]

Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience.............Everything I hear about Fidel suggests that he is a brilliant and charismatic leaderIn 1978, Myers visited Cuba for two weeks, authorities said............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."

This man was in a responsible position with access to high level security information yet everything he knew about Cuba was limited to the MSM, hearsay, and a two week visit under the watchful eye of the Cuban government including a propaganda visit to a revolutionary museum.

Is the death penalty applicable in this case?

[Charlemagne on the Fox]

Classic example of BDS—”we were all appalled by the Bush years.” The man had been a traitor for THREE DECADES and the “justification” cited is George W. Bush! Utter derangement!

[STONEWALLS]

“The son of privilege fell in love with the communist revolution,...”

...this is an absolute classic line...it’s the intellectuals that are the most dangerous...people who have had it easy, and don’t know what to do with their guilt feelings.

[angkor]

>>> everything he knew about Cuba was limited to the MSM, hearsay, and a two week visit <<<<

Whatever he was passing along from 1976 to 2006 would also have been funneled to the friends of Cuba. Such as the Soviet Union, Libya, China, etc.

[centurion316]

This guy’s problem was that he was born too late. Where was an America hater to turn in the age of Ronald Reagan and even John F. Kennedy? He had to go abroad and find Fidel. If he were just starting out today, he could worship Obama as do the rest of the State Department neo-Marxists. Life is not fair.

[GladesGuru]

With his Momma’s milk - and here’s the smoking gun on that line.

“..his mother, Carol, was the daughter of Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the longtime former president of the National Geographic Society..”.

Ever noticed the hard core enviro-socialist stench in Nat. Geo. issues?

A girl in my middle school class was named Bell, and she was related to THAT bell. Matter of fact, they had a home at the same beach where my family rented a home for a few weeks every summer.

Unfortunately, I can’t remember what Beth thought about politics, if anything at all at that age.

Why the children of the affluent become prone to socialism has always been a matter of wonder to me, especially considering what happens to such people under socialism.

But, such socialism amongst the wealthy is a matte of record. Google “Fabians”, for example.

[angkor]

The clearances he had were not trivial and provided access to other information that is even less “not trivial.”