Investor's Business Daily
National Security: Amid all the neighborly talk about new U.S. efforts
to engage Cuba, the arrest of a State Department official as a Cuban spy
ought to be a wake-up call about the intentions of the Castro dictatorship.
Last Friday, federal agents arrested Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his
wife Gwendolyn, 71, as unregistered Cuban agents. The Feds said the pair
had been spying for Cuba since 1979 and, like other agents in service to
the Castro regime, didn't do it for money, but out of sympathy for
communism and a loathing of the United States.
For that, they stole not only U.S. secrets to benefit the regime, but
probably non-Cuba-related secrets too, given the secrets the Castros
hand to American enemies such as Iran. Myers also was in a position to
undermine U.S. diplomats working at the U.S. Interests Section in
Havana. Worse still, he could have influenced U.S. policy against our
own interests.
That's a heavy price to pay for the U.S. opening to Cuba that made
Myers' recruitment possible. He wormed his way into the State Department
after a legal trip to Cuba in 1978 made possible by Jimmy Carter, the
president who thought Americans had an "inordinate fear of communism."
The Obama administration is contemplating a similar opening now. It goes
hand in hand with talk of lifting the Cuban trade embargo and the
already-lifted restrictions on travel and telecommunications. Taken
together, all these will be new opportunities for more harm by the
Castro brothers.
Contrary to conventional thinking, the Castros aren't interested in
academic exchanges, telecommunications or travel, despite their calls
for it. They consider us an enemy they want to neutralize by any means
necessary. So they use the weak man's method -- covert influence. For
them, travel, telecommunications and academic exchanges make it easier
to recruit agents. Fact is, Cuba is a police state and does one and only
one thing well: spy.
Pretending to be a mendicant republic that poses no threat to the U.S.,
the Cubans have a clever scheme. Unlike other spy services, they recruit
only ideologically motivated agents like Myers. That enables its agents
to skirt security screening to some extent. Most of the scrutiny is
designed to find vulnerabilities, such as financial problems that make a
prospective spy more willing to take cash.
Ideological motives are harder to judge. In fact, security men are
discouraged from considering an applicant's politics, though it's the
only quality Cuba looks for. So, the Castroites succeed where other
countries that spy on us fail.
It's also interesting that Myers climbed into the State Department's
Bureau of Intelligence and Research from a low level, avoiding polygraph
tests and building up a reservoir of goodwill with fellow employees over
years to ensure he could advance with less screening.
This roughly parallels how Defense Intelligence Agency analyst Ana
Montes, another damaging Cuban agent convicted in 2002, moved up in her
organization.
Myers' breach wouldn't have been as easy if it weren't for a political
atmosphere that enabled him to essentially hide in plain sight. His
anti-Americanism raised no eyebrows because it was consistent with the
thinking in his social circle and at Johns Hopkins University, where he
taught U.S.-U.K. relations. "We were all appalled by the Bush years,"
one of his neighbors told the Washington Post.
A red flag went up in 2006, when Toby Harnden, Washington editor of the
Telegraph of London, reported remarks Myers made at a public event on
U.S.-U.K. relations at Johns Hopkins. Myers directly undercut the
alliance, no doubt pleasing both Cuba and Iran, by saying he hoped the
U.K. would break from the U.S. and move closer to Europe. That may be
standard palaver in academia, but coming from a State Department
official, it was shocking.
The statement also may have been an intentional bid to sow dissent among
allies at a time when the Castro regime was trying to get Europe to drop
the sanctions it had placed on Cuba for human rights violations.
As we talk of "turning a new page" with Cuba, this spy case reminds us
that the Castro regime still doesn't wish us well, that it's really
interested is undercutting the U.S., planting agents and trying to
influence policy to our detriment.
As the Obama administration prepares to open up, it's certain that the
Castroite agents are plotting their next recruitments now.
Spy Case Keeps Cuba In Perspective - Yahoo! News (9 June 2009)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20090608/bs_ibd_ibd/20090608issues01
No comments:
Post a Comment