Ron Radosh

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June 22nd, 2009 12:58 pm

Where Does Cuba Find its American Spies? Guess?

We have read a lot in the past few weeks about the arrest of Kendall and Gwendolyn Meyers, the American couple who began spying for Cuba in 1978—and were only caught after an FBI sting operation a short time ago. Kendall Meyers used his position as a State Department analyst in State’s intelligence division, it seems, to steal top secret classified material and give it to Cuban intelligence, something he had, in cooperation with his wife, been doing for three decades.

The report in The New York Times summarizes it well: “The strongest argument in support of the government’s case may have been made by the Myerses themselves. In the 40-page complaint they are quoted telling an undercover F.B.I. agent how much they admired Fidel Castro, how they sent secret dispatches to Havana over short-wave radio, dropped packages to handlers in shopping carts at local grocery stores, traveled across Latin America to meet with Cuban agents and used false documents to travel to Havana for an evening with Mr. Castro.”

Like the old time Communists from the espionage cases of the 40’s and 50’s, the Meyerses were ideologically motivated spies, carrying out their work without remuneration, engaging in espionage all for the love of Cuban communism and Fidel Castro. They were, from all accounts, just like other late generation New Leftists, who carried out their enthusiasm one step further than many other activists were willing to do. One colleague of Gwendolyn Meyers put it well: “She was not remarkably different than dozens and dozens of other people that you ran across in the 1970s who were McGovernites that got into politics for reasons other than to make a lot of money.”

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34 Comments

1. David Thomson:

We have a crisis in our country because Jane Fonda was never prosecuted for her assistance to the Communists. She was a outright traitor. This unwillingness to put Fonda on trial showed that our elites are unsure of what are the minimum behavioral standards demanded of an American citizen. This confused mindset carried over to the employment practices of our intelligence agencies and State Department. It was deemed unfair to discriminate against those who hold fairly extreme left-wing views. All three of these people eventually arrested for their betrayal of America put up red flags years ago.

Isn’t it bizarre that prospective employees requiring top secret clearance are investigated thoroughly for just about everything in their earlier life—except for their possible adherence to leftist ideological causes? Please note that I did not include radical right-wing causes. That’s because a radical conservative is almost certainly precluded from sensitive government employment. It seems like only the lefties are give such breaks. Think about it for a minute. What are the chances of getting hired by the CIA if one previously uttered some kind words on behalf of Fidel Castro versus doing likewise for Adolph Hitler?

Jun 22, 2009 - 1:42 pm 2. Seppo:

Mr Radosh, I believe the correct spelling of the accused’s name is Myers rather than Meyers.

Why are the forces of barbarism and nihilism so well represented in our universities and elite foreign policy institutions? Has our society so lost confidence that ugly sympathies with tyrants and oppressors remains unchallenged and fashionable?

Jun 23, 2009 - 6:57 am 3. Pajamas Media » Where Does Cuba Find Its American Spies?:

[...] the entire story here [...]

Jun 23, 2009 - 10:09 am 4. mhr:

Years ago as a young faculty member at a small college, I met a new faculty member, a woman who had come to the US as a refugee from Castro’s Cuba with her husband. I was a liberal Democrat and it was not long before I was lecturing to her about what a great Castro was. With time and a great deal of reading about the truth of Communism, I realize what an idiot I had been. Any political system that treats its citizens the way Castro did and does cannot be justified by mere words including “equality and social justice”. Radosh’s books were among the many that helped me out of the intellectual snake pit I had inhabited.

Jun 23, 2009 - 10:57 am 5. wayne:

Just think….the “Chosen” dirt bag and his spouse and all of their friends, associates, and partners in crime, favorite members of Congress, AND almost the entire staff of every media organization (not called FOX NEWS) are a product of this same ideology.

Wonder where we’re headed? I suspect if things go swimmingly for them in 2010, you’ll see Barry lead a parade for Comrade Fidel, Comrade Hugo and maybe even Comrade Ahmedinajab thru the streets of NYC.

Jun 23, 2009 - 1:04 pm 6. eon:

The old KGB acronym for the standard methods of recruiting foreign nationals as spies was MICE; Money, Ideology, Compromise, Extortion.

Money- They work for you because you pay well.(John Walker)

Ideology- They work for you because they believe in your Cause. (The Cambridge spies, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg)

Compromise- You catch them in an “indiscretion”, and offer to forget about telling anyone if they’ll do this one little thing for you. (Seldom used, as it’s a dangerous gambit- their loyalty might overcome their desire to avoid embarrassment.)

Extortion- You have something on them that could send them to jail, or worse, and you sink your claws in deep. (The potential for something like this is why the Profumo scandal rocked the British government a generation ago.)

In the modern world, especially here in the U.S., it’s pretty hard to offer most professional-level types in government enough money to “turn” them. By the same token,in the modern moral climate, it’s almost impossible to embarrass somebody sufficiently to get them declared persona non grata. (At worst, they’ll end up on “Dr. Phil” instead of “Oprah”.)

That only leaves Ideology- somebody who will work for you because they see themselves, and you, as being on a grand and glorious crusade to “make the world right”- or at least change the social order sufficiently enough that you, and they, end up calling the shots.

And as stated, for the remaining disciples of Marx, Lenin, et al., the hothouse “progressive” political environment of the modern Ivy League universities, where Left is always Right, offers a fertile hunting ground.

clear ether

eon

Jun 23, 2009 - 1:43 pm 7. EdGi:

The Cambridge crowd, the Myers, the Weathermen,the Khymer Rouge, all were “upper” “ruling” class sociopaths killing their parents and their class. None were dissuaded by the horrific crimes of their cause, which they all clearly knew about, and, in fact, were inspired by the violense against those they hated. All of the spies sent into our government as spys would have easily been dinged with polygraphs instead of BIs because the BI only shows they “look right”, “one of us”. Worse, we costantly make excuses for their vicious, violent and totally sociopathic hatred by rueing that they can’t be bad, they “look right” from the right families and right schools. Amazing, for a country like ours that believes in equality, that we continue to see thugs as a privilaged upper class.

Jun 23, 2009 - 2:18 pm 8. Cybergeezer:

There’s more than you can count in Hialeah, Florida; And counting.

Jun 23, 2009 - 2:22 pm 9. Matt:

David,

the US has been corrupted in more ways than one. the history of Post-WW2 America is largely the story of our being corrupted by our own power and greed. There was a time when America was motivated by spreading democracy and keeping the seas open but at some point this ended (the glory days of American democratic authenticity would roughly be 1800-1880). The crimes our country committed in Vietnam dwarf (it’s too small a word) any and all that were committed by the left in opposition.

Matt

Jun 23, 2009 - 3:30 pm 10. sheesh:

Where? Hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

Jun 23, 2009 - 6:59 pm 11. Ole Sarge:

David Thompson,

Only in the mind of the left, hitler is conservative, facism and hitler were socialist, I am Conservative and do not follow any form of socialist ideology.

As to fonda, hayden and so on, our failure to deal with all these traitors has slowly but surely brought us to today. Enjoy.

Jun 23, 2009 - 7:21 pm 12. Chileno:

Speaking to Cuban friends of mine, including some who were physicians on the island, you realize how miserable and repressed life can be under the Castros. They’ve managed to turn Cuba iinto an island prison, where hope is hard to come by.

It’s always been a mystery to me how the Left despises Right-wing dictators like Pinochet, yet apologizes for even more ruthless dictators like Castro.

The Left correctly points out the thousands that have died under right-wing repression throughout the world, yet fails to mention the millions that have died under left-wing governments, through imprisonment, repression, or man-made famines, like the ones in China, the Soviet Union, and North Korea.

Jun 23, 2009 - 8:36 pm 13. George Bruce:

Joe McCarthy continues to be right, time after time after time.

Jun 23, 2009 - 8:59 pm 14. James:

DAVID THOMPSON: Jane Fonda? What of real players, like Alger Hiss, who came long before Hanoi Jane and did much more harm? There’s something inhertently wrong with many people. I really believe that many, many people are just plain stupid or emotionally stunted to the point that they don’t have the ability to overcome emotion with rational thought. When someone can idolize a guy like Fidel Castro in today’s age, it shows an unbelieveable immaturity, intellectual laziness, or just idiocy. Who was it who said “they’ll love you as you point the gun at them”, or something to that effect?

Jun 23, 2009 - 9:44 pm 15. vivo:

Smart countries have spies.

Beats all the bloggers, gossipers, yellow media, parrots and paranoids.

Jun 24, 2009 - 2:53 am 16. Caestal:

Nice troll, vivo….

Anyways, while I might not *entirely* disagree with the premise of the article, it seems to me that if you want a spy who is in the government, you usually *have* to recruit them before they are actually in the government, and you need them to be in a position where they are likely to get those goverenment jobs after they have been recruited. The logical place would be at colleges and universities, where people are young enough to not have their careers already started, old enough to make a decision that will last for years and educated enough to actually get a high-level job in the gov’t. You aren’t going to have much luck going to the local vo-tech unless you want people to spy on the motor pool…

Jun 24, 2009 - 3:20 am 17. Thomas L......:

Freedom to be a traitor. What a country! Hanoi Jane Fonda, John “I’m a war criminal” Kerry and Billy Ayers et al are not only free from being prosecuted, they are allowed to prosper. If Charlie Manson had have thrown more leftist politics in with his insanity, he’d be a free man and teaching in Chicago. What’s that I hear Pete Seeger singing? If I Had a Hammer (and a Sickle)?

Jun 24, 2009 - 6:03 am 18. Harry:

Speaking of Alger Hiss: we have yet to turn over the rock of the 40’s and 50’s and all the fellow travelers who worked for Moscow and, because of Mcarthyism, escaped punishment.

In the 60’s they fed the so-called “Winter-Soldiers” of John Kerry, and in the 80’s they colluded with Sandinista’s and coordinated media strategy between Managua and Capitol Hill.

We need a truth commission indeed. A commission to expose what really happened.

Jun 24, 2009 - 6:30 am 19. James:

VIVO: There are thousands of people rotting in Cuban prisons because they dared SPEAK against Fidel. They SPOKE Vivo. The average Cuban family has difficulty FEEDING itself because the Fidel government controls all means of farming production and have run the economy into the ground. They cannot adequately FEED themselves Vivo. And unlike most bloggers who personally know nothing about conditions in Cuba, I am intimately familiar with what has been going on there for 50 years. Their vaunted “healthcare system”….in shambles. The government can barely provide basic medications. The point is that it is a corrupt system set up for the few powerful at the top. It’s a human disaster. And that’s the point of the article….who in their right, adult thinking, rational mind would not only condone the commie regime, but actively work for it….not for pay, but out of ideology? Do you Vivo? Would you Vivo?

Jun 24, 2009 - 6:55 am 20. David Thomson:

“Jane Fonda? What of real players, like Alger Hiss”

The legal system did deal with Alger Hiss—although in an imperfect manner. He was ultimately convicted of perjury. Jane Fonda, on the other hand, was never even indicted for publicly helping the Communists in Vietnam. The Nixon administration was too impotent to carry our many of its responsibilities. Our country desperately needed to hold a national debate concerning Fonda’s activities. The legal system could also have clarified it a bit more precisely where the line between First Amendment dissent and outright betrayal begins and ends.

Jun 24, 2009 - 9:01 am 21. Dr. Bukk:

David Thompson, James, I think that Nixon giving Jane Fonda a pass, as well as John Kerry (negotiating with the enemy while still serving in the military) stems from the GOP trying to stem the “mean-spirited” appellation and to avoid creating martyrs for the left.

More recently, Dan Rather, Mary Mapes and the fellow who dummied up the records of Bush’s military record should be tried for attempting to influence a presidential election by means of fraud.

Jun 24, 2009 - 9:14 am 22. Alex Bensky:

David, one reason Jane Fonda wasn’t prosecuted is because she did not commit treason in the legal sense. The United States was not technically at war with North Vietnam. Moral treason, sure, but one of the many, many reasons I’m no longer a liberal is that I don’t believe in prosecuting people for their opinions–noxious and stupid though they may be.

I met Jane Fonda once, sort of. Back when I was in law school at the University of Michigan she came to deliver a speech on campus and our law school student government paid her five hundred bucks to come speak to us.

At one point a questioner used the expression “free world” and Ms. Fonda interrupted him. The United States she said, was the most racist, arrogant country on earth (most racist–how about South Africa? and most arrogant–how about France?).

So, someone else asked, what was her definition of a free country? She replied, “North Korea.” One of the students jumped up and shouted, “We paid five hundred dollars to hear that?” and was asked to leave. I am proud to tell you I was that student.

By the way, I was roundly booed by the rest of the audience, which is one reason among several that letters from the law school asking for money go directly into the trash.

I don’t have any response for Matt. I follow Michael Barone’s suggestion: when discussing Vietnam, if the other person doesn’t agree that it would have been better if we’d won, don’t pursue the conversation. I was, as I say, in college, graduate school, and law school during the war and at least I don’t have a million boat people and a couple of million Cambodians on my conscience.

Jun 24, 2009 - 9:27 am 23. David Thomson:

“David, one reason Jane Fonda wasn’t prosecuted is because she did not commit treason in the legal sense.”

Legal scholars Henry Mark and Erika Holzer strongly disagree. They are the authors of Aid and Comfort: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam. They believe she would have been convicted of treason in a court of law. Here is a link to Mr. Holzer’s website:

http://www.henrymarkholzer.com/introduction.html

Jun 24, 2009 - 11:48 am 24. Bohemond:

Alex,

Although Hanoi Jane may just miss treason proper given the legal gray area of the Vietnam Police Action (funny- my Dad thought it was a war. For the silly reason he was getting shot at). But she nonetheless committed several other Federal crimes, including inciting US service personnel to mutiny. Not prosecuting her was an epic fail, and probably did facilitate the Gramscian Long March Through the Institutions.

The difference between HJ and Hiss (and many others) was that, howerver little tangible harm HJ may have done, she was absolutely open and unrepentant in her support of the enemy. Hiss and Philby etc etc ad nauseam *pretended* they wern’yt working fro the other side. Jane revelled in it- like Hayden and Ayers and on and on and on.

What mystifies me is how a poster of Hitler is (rightly) “hate speech”, but a Che Guevara poster is “chic.” WTF?

Jun 24, 2009 - 1:28 pm 25. Avitar:

The level of spying and operations by Cuban agent provocateurs in the United States is breath taking to contemplate.

It was bad when they were using American university students/draft dodgers in 1972 to filter $22 million of drug smuggler money into the election that year. Now that would be a footnote in the ongoing operations. Now through the ACORN network they are going to write our census.

Jun 24, 2009 - 2:07 pm 26. Duane Phinney:

The State Department has been a nest of spies for years. They hate the Country that pays them.
Blames America for all that is wrong in the world. They are ultra-leftists and just love dictators.

Jun 24, 2009 - 2:11 pm 27. myth buster:

It doesn’t matter if we have declared war on them or not. If the enemy is fighting a war against us, you have made war against the United States, Treason by definition, if you assist them in battle or propaganda.

Jun 24, 2009 - 8:27 pm 28. Confused in Virginia:

The question that first comes to mind, and forgive me if I sound ignorant, I am asking this question with an honest desire to learn. Of course, the only things that I know are what has been reported in the MSM, so you can guess how ignorant I am about this issue.

Why is it that people like Robert Hanssen, who was caught, confessed, was tried and found guilty of being a spy, not executed? Why are people like that put in maximum security, only being allowed outside for one hour a day, costing the taxpayers a lot more than the bullet it would take to erradicate this problem? Why do these people have more rights than those afforded to the countless people that were killed (executed) because of their actions?

Sorry, I realize now that it’s more than one question, but I would really like to understand. I would appreciate any thoughts that you might have on this issue.

Jun 24, 2009 - 10:18 pm 29. vivo:

13. James:

I was strictly referring about spies from any country: U.S. spies, British spies, French spies, Chinese spies, etc.

Jun 25, 2009 - 5:03 am 30. tom:

250 Cuban spies? Wow. just think how many AIPAC must have here spying for Israel…

Jun 25, 2009 - 5:16 am 31. homero:

comment 15 Alex

good for you …

..if the leftist love these dictatorships and hate the USA why don’t they go and live there and stop complaining. those same stupid leftists don’t even realize if it wasn’t for their american passport or celebrity status their heads would be adorning a stick. these would be the first people to go to rehabilitation camps once their usefulness was over.

Jun 25, 2009 - 5:29 am 32. Dave Surls:

“David, one reason Jane Fonda wasn’t prosecuted is because she did not commit treason in the legal sense.”

I opposed the Vietnam War, and would do so again now, and I say Jane Fonda was a stone cold traitor, who provided aid and comfort to and adhered to the enemies of the United States.

Being against United States participation in the Vietnam War is one thing, trying to help the commies win is a whole different thing.

Jun 25, 2009 - 6:41 pm 33. Oldguy:

George Bruce:
Exactly so! You must be older, like me. Very few people know nothing of the Senator from Wisconsin other than he was a bad guy. With Ann Coulter (among others) who have written honestly about him, people are learning about him and how the MSM and Academia had such control of public opinion, and still does to this day.

Jun 26, 2009 - 9:24 am 34. Govt Watch: Health Care, Cap-and-Trade, Millennium Development Goals « Lighthouse Patriot Journal:

[...] This Year’s Recession, Just Wait for Cap and Trade … Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced draft legislation of a cap and trade bill with slightly more stringent [...]

Oct 6, 2009 - 3:50 am