Castro questions spy arrest

Published 10:29 pm Saturday, June 6, 2009

HAVANA — Fidel Castro called the case of two Americans accused of spying for Cuba “strange” Saturday and questioned whether the timing of their arrests was politically motivated.

In an essay on state television, the former Cuban leader noted that the retired Washington couple were taken into custody just 24 hours after the Organization of American States voted to lift a decades-old suspension of Cuba’s membership in that group.

Though the U.S. ultimately supported the OAS vote Wednesday, the administration of President Barack Obama initially wanted to see more democratic reforms on the communist island before Cuba was readmitted.

Castro called the OAS vote “a defeat for United States diplomacy.”

Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn, were arrested Thursday in Washington after a three-year investigation that began before Myers’ retirement from the State Department in 2007.

The U.S. government said they had been spying for Havana for 30 years, recruited by Cuba after a 1978 trip there. Myers received his orders by Morse code, and he and his wife usually hand-delivered intelligence, sometimes by exchanging carts in a grocery store, according to court documents.

Myers had been under suspicion since 1995 and FBI investigation since 2006.

If the couple had been watched that long, “why were they not arrested before?” Castro asked.