A former State Department official and his wife, Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Steingraber,  were arrested on charges of having served as illegal agents of the Cuban government, for approximately the past 30 years. The couple are accused of having provided classified U.S. information to the Cuban government.
The arrests end a three-year investigation which began before Myer’s retirement from the State Department in 2007. Myers has been under suspicion since 1995.

“This should serve as a warning to any other government official,” said David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

Myers called the United States government “exploiters” who regularly murdered Cuban revolutionary leaders.
“Cuban spies are particularly hard to detect,” a former senior intelligence officer said. “Cuba is content to use midlevel officials who have no access to policy making power, only information.” In 2007 alone, Myers had access to over 200 sensitive documents related to Cuba. Hilary Clinton will investigate what information the couple could possibly have passed on.

In the last fifty years espionage activity has been greatly supplemented by technological advances, especially in the areas of radio signal interception and high-altitude photography. For more than 35 years, spy satellites have circled overhead, around 100 miles above the earth.

Surveillance with high-technology equipment on the ground, or from high-altitude planes and satellites has become an important espionage technique. Travelling at Mach 25, spy satellites pass over every spot on the face of the earth, twice a day, grabbing photos of any particular spot policy makers or military officers wish to look at.

At least five of these billion-dollar high flying ‘birds’ are overhead on any given day, peering through clouds, through darkness and to some extent beneath the ground. ‘Keyhole-class’ ‘visible light’ satellites can distinguish objects as small as 5 to 6 inches, on the ground. Radar-Imaging satellites can distinguish objects at around 3 feet. Infra-red satellites are expert at detecting camouflaged targets.  These satellites can tell a mullah by the length of his beard, or how many people attended a street demonstration.

Then there are the drones which can hover and provide real-time images. The latest revolution in spying on other people or countries, is the capability of the satellites to provide ‘soft copy’ 3-D virtual reality’ animations, or simulations. This allows viewers to take a virtual ‘stroll’ through an area, long before they arrive.

This kind of technology can be used in the case where an agent obtains technical data, but not a photograph, on China’s new F-10. When the Chinese roll out a mock-up of the F-10 and a Keyhole satellite snaps a photo, the analyst can take a look at the imagery and then add in the technical data to create a better, fuller and more compelling view for policymakers and military intelligence officers.

“We have become very good at fusing imagery from visible light and radar imaging satellites with imagery from multispectral satellites, which are unclassified,” says Jeffrey T. Richelson, intelligence historian.
“Multispectral or hyperspectral imagery can be combined with visible light imagery to detect things that each alone can’t detect,” said Richelson.

Serving as an illegal agent of a foreign government carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and conspiracy carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

But the question remains: who is spying on who and for what purpose? A Russian spy satellite will take and sell you photos of your girlfriend’s house – for a price. The arrest of the Myers is almost a joke.

This ticket was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 5:41 am and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this ticket through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “The Spies Are Everywhere”

1. dropjack.com Says:
   June 7th, 2009 at 9:06 pm

   The Spies Are Everywhere…

   And you thought with the close of the Cold War jailing spies was a thing of the past. The Bad News is that Castro has been listening all the time….

2. The Spies Are Everywhere Says:
   June 8th, 2009 at 4:13 am

   [...] here to see the original: The Spies Are Everywhere Share and [...]

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