How an American couple came to be spies for Cuba

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.

US academics targeted for spying

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.

Myers and his wife first visited Cuba on “unofficial personal travel for academic purposes” at the invitation of an official with the Cuban Mission to the United States in New York City. Six months later, they were visited by a Cuban agent [“co-conspirator A”] in South Dakota and recruited as clandestine agents. Myers was urged to find a job at either the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency.

They returned to Washington. After failing to get a job as an analyst at the CIA, Myers(“Agent 202”) resumed employment with the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute. Gwendolyn (“Agent 123 and Agent E-634”) worked at a branch of the Riggs National Bank. She was never granted a security clearance.

Shortwave radio and Morse code

Together, over nearly 30 years, they communicated with the Cuban Intelligence Service by picking up encrypted radio messages in Morse code on a shortwave radio. In 1985, Kendall Myers received a top secret security clearance, upgraded in 1999, that gave him daily access to classified information through computer databases until his retirement in October 2007.

In January 1995, they traveled to Cuba via Mexico and met with Fidel Castro. They spoke through interpreters, according to court documents. Over the years, they had secret meetings with Cuban “handlers and representatives” in Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, and Argentina.

A birthday cigar

But the agent who met Kendall Myers outside his office at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies on April 15 this year did not work for Cuban Intelligence. Instead. He was working undercover for the FBI, posing as a Cuban agent and assigned to determine the nature and scope of the Myers’ clandestine activities. The agent told Kendall Myers that he had “instructions to contact him” to get information, because of the “change that is taking place in Cuba and the new administration.” He congratulated Kendall on his birthday and offered him a cigar.

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