WASHINGTON — A retired State Department intelligence analyst was sentenced to life in prison and his wife got more than six years Friday for spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years in a screenplay-ready tale of romance and espionage.
Walter Kendall Myers, 73, and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 72, agreed to forfeit $1.7 million in cash and property, including all of Walter Myers’ federal salary over the years. He did not have to give up a 38-foot sailboat he once said they might use in retirement to sail to the communist country.
“If someone despises the American government to the extent that appears to be the case, you can pack your bags and leave,” U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said, “and it doesn’t seem to me you continue to bear the benefits this country manages to provide and seek to undermine it.”
It was a grim ending to the Myerses’ idealistic embrace of the Cuban revolution, with one slight comfort. Handing down punishment for Walter Myers’ guilty plea in November to conspiracy to commit espionage and two counts of wire fraud, Walton endorsed the couple’s request to be incarcerated near each other with easier access to their siblings, children and grandchildren.
The judge’s sentence for Gwen Myers fell halfway between the 72 months to 90 months she had agreed to in her deal with prosecutors for gathering and transmitting national defense information. Her attorneys cited her age, failing health — including a heart attack since her June 2009 arrest — and secondary role in the scheme.
The couple held hands while the sentence was read.
“We did not act out of anger toward the United States or from any thought of anti-Americanism,” Myers said in a 10-minute statement seeking leniency for his wife. “We did not intend to hurt any individual American. Our only objective was to help the Cuban people defend their revolution. We only hoped to forestall conflict” between the countries, he said.
