State Dept. Retiree, Wife Accused of Spying for Cuba for Decades

In late 1978, he traveled to Cuba after receiving an invitation from an official at the Cuban mission in New York. His guide in the communist country was an unidentified Cuban intelligence official, the FBI said in court papers.

In a diary obtained by the bureau, Myers wrote that he toured a museum and got a "lump in my throat" after learning about the "systematic and regular murdering of revolutionary leaders" by the United States, the FBI said.

"Cuba is so exciting!" he wrote in the diary.

About six months later, while Myers and his wife were living in South Dakota and he was no longer a State Department employee, the Cuban mission official visited them, and they agreed to become spies, the court papers allege. They were given code names for their correspondence and radio traffic with Cuba: Myers became "202" and his wife became "123."

They returned to Washington, and Myers resumed working at the State Department. He and his wife felt that joining the CIA would be too dangerous, the FBI said.

He later obtained a top-secret clearance and a high-level job at the department's sensitive bureau of intelligence and research before retiring in 2007. Two months ago, an undercover FBI agent approached Myers outside Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, where he has been a part-time faculty member for 20 years. He told Myers he had been sent by an unnamed Cuban intelligence officer to get some information.

It was Myers's birthday, and the agent gave him a cigar, the court papers say. Later, Myers and his wife met the agent at a downtown hotel.

During the lengthy meeting and two others that month, Myers and his wife told the agent that they had been working for Cuba for years and that they had communicated using a shortwave radio given to them by the Cuban government, the court papers allege. The couple also changed shopping carts in a grocery store as a way to pass information. More recently, they sent encrypted e-mails to their handlers from cybercafes, according to the documents.

They had met regularly over the years with Cuban officials in third countries and made a secret trip, using fake names, to the Caribbean nation in 1995. They even spent an evening that year with Cuba's then-president, Fidel Castro, they told the agent. They received "lots of medals" from the Cuban government, apparently for passing along secret information, the court papers allege.

"Fidel is wonderful, just wonderful," Myers told the agent, according to the affidavit.

Myers said he removed information from the State Department by memory or by taking notes. "I was always pretty careful," he told the agent, according to the court papers. "I didn't usually take documents out."

FBI officials said they reviewed Myers's computer hard drive and found more than 200 sensitive or classified intelligence reports concerning Cuba. They said they also intercepted e-mails between the couple and a Cuban agent, "Peter Herrera," urging them to come to Mexico to pick up some "art pieces."

The Myerses wrote back, saying they were "delighted to hear from you and learn that your art gallery is open for us," the affidavit said.

The charges come as the Obama administration is reaching out to Cuba, lifting restrictions on visits there by Cuban Americans and offering to hold talks on immigration and regular mail service. However, the U.S. government says it will not lift the 47-year-old economic embargo until the island undertakes democratic reforms. Cuba's spy service is regarded as one of the best in the world, according to former U.S. intelligence officials.

Research editor Alice Crites and staff researchers Madonna Lebling, Meg Smith and Julie Tate contributed to this report.