Bad Month For Spies: Cuban Spy Gets Life Without Parole, Wife Gets 6 ½ Years

July 16, 2010 WASHINGTON — -- The 30-year spy game of a State Department analyst and his wife who served as agents of Cuba's intelligence service ended Friday with a life sentence for Kendall Myers and 6 ½ years behind bars for Gwendolyn Myers. The elderly pair were so unrepentant about their crimes that the judge cited their lack of remorse in hitting Kendall with a term that ensures he'll die in prison.

Myers and his wife, now in their early 70s, led a double life, graying grandparents who were also committed supporters of the Cuban revolution who passed sensitive US intelligence information to the Castro regime for three decades. The Northwest D.C. residents used a Sony shortwave radio and shopping cart switches at a Giant supermarket on Wisconsin Avenue to pass information to their Cuban handlers.

Last November Kendall Myers, known as "Agent 202" to his handlers, pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage; his wife, "Agent 123," pled guilty to conspiracy to transmit national defense information.

During sentencing Friday, Kendall Myers told US District Court Judge Reggie Walton that both he and his wife were inspired by their love of the Cuban people and the revolution. "We acted as we did because of our ideals and beliefs. We did not act out of anger … or out of any anti-Americanism," Myers said.

"Our overriding objective was to help the Cuban people defend their revolution," Myers told Walton. "We share the ideals of the Cuban revolution."

Judge Walton said he was perplexed at how providing classified information to the Cuban intelligence service helped the Cuban people.

"The Cuban people feel threatened by the United States -- it has invaded and carried out acts hostile to Cuba," Myers said. "Part of our motivation was to alleviate those fears -- to help protect Cuba, to warn Cuba."

Cuban agents recruited Kendall Myers a year after he started working at the State Department as a full time employee in 1978, but he did not begin spying until 1981. Investigators said his Cuban handlers wanted Myers to move to the CIA, but Myers remained at State.