I nostri agenti a Capitol Hill

Tre anni fa era stata arrestata una coppia di origine ispanica, intellettuali, lui docente alla Florida University. Ora è la volta di Walter Kendall Myers e Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers di Washington, lui funzionario e istruttore del Dipartimento di Stato, ora docente alla Johns Hopkins. L'accusa è sempre la stessa: attività spionistiche per conto di Cuba. E identiche sono le modalità operative, Walter e Gwen, 72 e 71 anni, tenevano in casa un radio a onde corte e trasmettevano le loro informazioni in codice Morse, in forma cifrata. Il loro era uno dei tanti segnali che noi appassionati classifichiamo tra le "number stations", le stazioni dei numeri, tutte di chiara origine spionistica o controspionistica. Un metodo vecchio ma incredibilmente ancora in auge per comunicare senza lasciare tracce nella civiltà always online. Le onde corte, intercettabili ma indecifrabili se solo si utilizzano gli accorgimenti giusti, come una cifratura OTP, one time pad, un codice random da utilizzare una volta sola, capace di reggere agli attacchi del più geniale criptoanalista.
Con tutto l'orrore che posso provare davanti ai sistemi repressivi di una dittatura, ai delitti, alle incarcerazioni ordinati da Fidel Castro, non riesco a leggere la cronaca del New York Times dell'arresto dei Myers (o il dettagliatissimo pezzo del Miami Herald, che di spie cubane se ne intende, o ancora l'inchiesta dell'AP tra gli increduli vicini di casa) senza pensare a una storia triste alla Graham Greene. Senza immaginare i due coniugi ormai anziani, pensionati, che per trent'anni raccolgono informazioni "riservate" ma quasi certamente inutili e pletoriche e le trasmettono ai loro fratelli cubani. Che viaggiano per il centro e sud America per mantenere i loro contatti, che nel 1995 incontrano Fidel in persona. Quali vantaggi pensate che abbiano procurato questi trent'anni di informazioni trafugate al regime di Castro, alla guerra di contrapposizione tra l'isoletta dell'utopia degenerata come tante altre in una vita di difficoltà, angherie e senso di oppressione e il colosso geografico, economico e militare da 300 milioni di abitanti pervaso di diffuso benessere (e diseguaglianze tanto deprecabili quanto più il colosso assume atteggiamenti di superiorità morale nei confronti dell'isoletta dittatoriale)? A nulla, sicuramente a nulla. La schiacciante superiorità degli Stati Uniti non è stata scalfita di un atomo, la situazione interna cubana non è migliorata di una virgola. Due spioni di settant'anni arrestati, giovedì scorso, con accuse definite "molto serie", due tranquilli coniugi di Capitol Hill che all'agente federale che li ha incastrati spacciandosi per contatto cubano hanno confessato di sentirsi "svuotati" dopo una vita di clandestinità e tradimento, senza che questo potesse indurli a smettere, in nome dei legami di amicizia che continuavano a provare per Cuba. L'isola dell'utopia degenerata, il loro piccolo paradiso mentale, da raggiungere un giorno in barca a vela. Il verbale del processo di autorizzazione a procedere riporta le parole di Walter Myers all'agente dell'FBI in incognito: "è per sempre, come Fidel, per sempre."

U.S. Charges Couple With Spying for Cuba

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
June 5, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department charged Friday that a former State Department analyst and his wife worked as spies for Cuba for nearly 30 years, using a short-wave radio to pass on secret diplomatic information to their Cuban handlers. Officials said the couple, Walter K. Myers, 72, and Gwendolyn S. Myers, 71, received little in the way of compensation from the Cubans except for the short-wave radio and some travel expenses. Rather, the officials said, the couple appears to have been driven by their strong affinity for Cuba and their bitterness toward “American imperialism.”
“We think they did it because they love Cuba,” said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.
The Myerses, who live in Washington, were arrested on Thursday and charged in a grand jury indictment unsealed Friday with serving as illegal agents of the Cuban government and wire fraud. A defense lawyer declined to comment on the charges.
The case had been under investigation for three years but intensified two months ago, when an undercover agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, posing as a Cuban agent, approached Mr. Myers. That led to a series of meetings in which the Justice Department said that Mr. Myers and his wife made incriminating admissions about their decades-long work for Cuba.
Mr. Myers began working as a contract instructor at the State Department in 1977 and rose to the position of senior analyst with top-secret security clearance, specializing in European affairs. He retired from the department in 2007.
In the indictment, the Justice Department said that Mr. Myers examined some 200 intelligence reports that dealt with Cuba in 2006 and 2007, many of them classified or top-secret reports that were unrelated to his own duties at the State Department.
While some of the material that the government says the Myerses passed on to Cuba apparently related to State Department personnel and internal policy matters, the indictment does not detail the bulk of the material or the sensitivity of it.
David Kris, the assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department, called the Myerses’ activity for Cuba “incredibly serious.” The indictment and the government’s supporting material say the Myerses were recruited as spies during an academic trip to Cuba in 1978.
In a diary entry that the Justice Department said Mr. Myers wrote at the time of the trip, he expressed his passion for Cuba and its Communist revolutionary goals and his distaste for “American imperialism” and the United States’ indifference to medical care, the poor and other basic public needs. “Cuba is so exciting!” he wrote, adding that “the revolution has released enormous potential and liberated the Cuban spirit.”
The government alleged that soon after their return to the United States, the Myerses began using Morse code, encrypted messages and the short-wave radio to pass sensitive diplomatic information to Havana. They met Fidel Castro on a clandestine trip to Cuba in 1995 and made trips over the years to meet Cuban contacts in Trinidad and Tobago, Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Jamaica, the government charged.
It appears from government documents that suspicions among American counterintelligence officials about a possible security leak within the State Department first led the authorities to focus on Mr. Myers two or three years ago.
This April, an undercover agent from the F.B.I., posing as a Cuban official, approached Mr. Myers outside the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, where he taught. The agent said he had instructions to contact him concerning the thawing diplomatic changes in the air between Cuba and the United States. The agent offered Mr. Myers a cigar and wished him a happy birthday.
The agent directed Mr. Myers to search out State Department information about Cuba, and at one in a series of follow-up meetings, Mr. Myers and his wife told the agent that they hoped to “sail home” to Cuba some day on their sailboat, the government said.
The couple also expressed some mixed emotions, saying that they were “burned out” by their clandestine activity yet wanted to continue to help Cubans because of their strong ties. “It’s forever,” the affidavit quoted Mr. Myers as telling the agent. “You know, it’s like Fidel. It’s forever.”