Kendall Myers

Walter Kendall Myers (April 15, 1937 – March 12, 2026) was a U.S. State Department employee who, with his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, was arrested and indicted on June 4, 2009, on charges of spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years. He was convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. federal court in July 2010.

Background Kendall Myers was born in Washington, D.C., on April 15, 1937. He was the grandson of Gilbert Hovey Grosvenor and great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell. Myers was also related to William Howard Taft through his father. He was educated at Mercersburg Academy, a private preparatory boarding school in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and earned a Ph.D. in European history from Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, D.C. In 1977, he began working for the U.S. State Department as a contract instructor at its Foreign Service Institute, and for 20 years he was a part-time faculty member at SAIS. He said that he was "ashamed" of the treatment of Prime Minister Tony Blair by U.S. President George W. Bush. Then UK MP Denis MacShane responded, "After the Republican defeat in the midterm election, every little rat who feasted during the Bush years is now leaving the ship. I would respect this gentleman, who I have never heard of, if he had had the guts to make any of these points two or five years ago." Authorities said the Myerses were caught by an FBI undercover operation and had been spying for Cuba for "nearly three decades". Myers's arrest was the culmination of a three-year joint FBI/Department of State Diplomatic Security Service investigation. Based on general information provided by the FBI, the Diplomatic Security Service conducted a comprehensive internal investigation that resulted in the identification of Myers as the probable Cuban agent, and ultimately led to his arrest. Other entries reference a comparison of health care in the United States and healthcare in Cuba, and "complacency about the poor" in the United States.

On July 16, 2010, Kendall Myers was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, and Gwendolyn was sentenced to a total of 81 months in prison. Gwendolyn was released in 2015.

Kendall Myers died from cancer in prison, on March 12, 2026, at the age of 88.

Reaction

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered a damage assessment be done to investigate the extent of harm done to U.S. security.

Upon hearing the news of Myers's arrest, Castro stated that the case read like "an espionage comic strip". Castro declined to say whether the Myers couple really had passed secrets to the Cuban government, but added that they deserved praise if they did.