The answer to this problem is obvious but forbidden. Don't hire Liberals to these kind of positions. Almost all of our spy cases in State have come from this mistake.
Same spy story, different characters
June 7, 3:37 PM ·
This week's arrest of a former State Department employee and his wife on espionage charges reaffirms three basic rules of the spy game, as practiced against the United States.
First, it remains shockingly easy for hostile intelligence services to recruit Americans to betray their own country. Walter Kendall Myers, who is accused of passing secrets to Cuba, was recruited by Castro's intelligence agents in the late 1970s, with minimal persuasion. He apparently held a strong affinity with the Cuban regime, spying (in large measure) for ideological reasons.
Secondly, as evidenced by the length of Myers' alleged espionage career, it is possible for an American turncoat to ply their treasonous trade for years, even decades. According to court papers, the long-time State Department official was first "developed" as an agent in 1978, during a visit to Cuba. After that--and at the urging of his Cuban handlers--Myers sought a job with the State Department, where he would remain a mole for almost 30 years. During that time, it is assumed that Mr. Myers passed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of classified documents to the Cuban intelligence service.
Thirdly, it is painfully obvious that our counter-intelligence programs remain inadequate for that critical task. It is unclear how Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Myers (who is also facing indictment for espionage) first appeared on the FBI radar. But the operation to ascertain their espionage activities didn't begin until last April, two years after Myers retired from the State Department, and four decades after he became a Cuban agent. There are reasons to believe that U.S. officials may have learned about Myers from a recent Cuban defector. Without that tip, it is possible that the former State Department official (and his spy work) might have gone undetected.
In some respects, the Myers case resembles that of another, high-level Cuban mole, Ana Montes. Before being exposed as a Castro spy in 2001, Ms. Montes was the senior intelligence analyst on Cuba for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Montes, who won awards for her work from senior intel officials, spent more than 15 years at DIA, rising steadily through the ranks. As the agency's ranking Cuban analyst, Montes provided a veritable treasure-trove of intel information to Havana, giving the Castro brothers broad insight into what we knew--and didn't know--about their regime.
Ms. Montes also shares something else with Mr. and Mrs. Myers. She was also motivated by ideology. In a statement she read at her sentencing in 2002, Montes was unrepentant, delivering a five-minute diatribe on U.S. policies against Cuba. She claimed the American policies against the country were"cruel" and "unfair." Montes said she felt "morally obligated" to defend Cuba, countering the "greater injustice" of U.S. actions toward that country. In her only moment of public contrition, Montes said it was "probably morally wrong" to pass classified information to the Castro regime.
But Ana Montes did more than expose American secrets; many believe that her betrayal resulted in the death of at least one U.S. soldier. According to Scott Carmichael, the DIA counter-intelligence agent who helped expose Montes, information from the Cuban mole was passed to guerillas in El Salvador. The insurgents later attacked a Salvadoran military camp, resulting in the death of a Green Beret advisor, Sergeant Gregory Fronius.
Government investigators calculate that Ana Montes caused "grave damage" to the nation's security. Not only did she pass along reams of classified information, she also impacted U.S. policies toward Cuban. As DIA's ranking analyst on Cuba, Montes was well-positioned to influence studies and analyses that down-played the military and intelligence threats from Castro's government.
So far, there has been no comparable assessment on the damage inflicted by Kendell and Gwendolyn Myers. But a government media release states the Mr. Myers was granted a Top Secret security clearance in 1985, In 1999, his clearance was upgraded to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (SCI), giving him access to some of the nation's most sensitive secrets.
Kendall Myers' access to classified was facilitated by a job change within the State Department bureaucracy. In addition to his duties at the Foreign Service Institute, Mr. Myers began working periodically for the department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). In his last posting at the State Department, Myers' worked as a senior European analyst for INR; by one estimate, Myers may have passed more than 200 classified assessments to Cuban intelligence officers during his final years of government service.
As for Mrs. Myers, she never worked for the federal government, and never held a security clearance. However, she shared her husband's enthusiasm for the Cuban regime and willingly passed classified data to their handlers. An FBI affidavit describes how Gwendolyn Myers "exchanged" grocery store shopping carts with Cuban intelligence agents, leaving behind the latest information collected by Mr. Myers. She also participated in an April meeting with than undercover FBI agent, when the Myers' disclosed their espionage activities.
A senior administration official tells the Washington Post that the State Department knew it had a Cuban spy in its ranks three years ago. Since then, counter-intelligence officials worked to narrow the list of potential suspects, until it arrived at Kendall Myers.
While the Justice Department was quick to praise the "joint" investigation conducted by the FBI and the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security, there will be inevitable questions about how another Cuban spy remained undetected for so long. Myers was considered such a promising prospect that a Cuban agent visited him in South Dakota 30 years ago--a period when communist bloc officials in the U.S. were routinely followed when travels took them away from postings in New York or Washington, D.C.
But the FBI clearly missed that contact, and State Department security officials ignored Myers' frequent travels to foreign countries, where he met with Cuban handlers. And, supervisors at State blithely accepted Mr. Myers' excuses for his frequent overseas excursions, despite the fact that he was not a member of the Diplomatic Service.
In fairness, Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers represent the espionage threat that is most difficult to detect. Motivated solely by ideology, there were none of the "lifestyle" tipoffs associated with such other high-profile cases as John Walker, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. Those individuals, convicted of spying for the former Soviet Union, collected large sums of cash from their handlers and lived well above their means before being caught.
Unfortunately, our counter-intelligence system remains ill-equipped at catching spies in both categories. Security officials typically concentrate on personnel who report (or exhibit) financial problems, rather than looking at individuals who make expensive purchases (Rick Ames paid cash for a new Jaguar and a house just before he was captured), or enjoy an existence seemingly beyond that of a military member or civil service employee. John Walker, a retired Navy warrant officer, owned his own aircraft and Robert Hanssen sent all of his children to expensive private schools.
The Myers case also suggests that our security system (still) underestimates the hostile intelligence threat posed by smaller nations. Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers represent the second and third long-term assets that Cuba has recruited in the U.S. As with Ana Montes, the payoff that Havana received from the Myers was enormous. Now, as the intelligence community attempts to calculate the damage from the latest spy scandal, we can only wonder: how many additional Cuban agents are still at work in our government?
Norfolk Military Affairs Examiner: Same spy story, different characters (7 June 2009)
examiner.com |
