The High Cost of Treason
Those caught betraying their country lose much more than personal freedom, financial security and esteem.
The photo here shows me shaking hands with Cuban General Carlos Pérez y Pérez on “The Line,” or boundary, of Guantanamo Naval Base and Castro’s Cuba. I was the State Department’s representative at monthly talks, which were congenial and constructive. They were then our only substantive contact with the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. As to the setting, picture the film “A Few Good Men” minus the melodrama.
General Pérez was a gregarious sort, who even joked about fixing me up with his cute young interpreter (at his right), an offer I had to equally jocularly decline, as a married man. But one comment by the general sticks out in my mind to this day. The other part of my Cuba assignment was to fly to Havana, rent a car and travel the island with another U.S. diplomat to monitor the human rights conditions of Cubans who had attempted to flee the island, but were caught at sea by our Coast Guard and returned.
As we shook hands before one of our meetings, I told the general that I had just returned from a lengthy tour of the island and mentioned a couple of the cultural sites I managed to fit in. With a steely stare, General Pérez answered simply, “Sí, lo sé.” “Yes, I know.”
As an American official serving in a police state, I was constantly followed by the secret police and occasionally harassed. But that comment combined with a number of other indicators got my mind working. Were the general and his government privy to more of my official duties than merely receiving reports from their goons on my travels inside Cuba?
And then we nabbed Ana Montes.
True Believers: Angels or Whores?
Arrested 10 days after 9/11, DIA’s senior Cuba analyst Ana Montes was charged with and convicted of spying for Cuba for over 17 years. The official tasked with doing the damage assessment said she was “one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history.” She was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment plus five years’ probation, incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, in a unit reserved for the country’s most dangerous female convicts. She served 20, and was released last month. Her ignominy was compounded by being the daughter of an Army doctor, and sister of an FBI special agent and an FBI analyst. Alienated from her family members, Montes has resettled in her native Puerto Rico. And still unrepentant, in a statement, she denounced U.S. policy toward Cuba.
In her nearly two decades of spying for the Castro’s, Ana Montes acted as a virtual vacuum cleaner of sensitive intelligence, providing a steady stream to Havana in virtual real time, who then sold it to our enemies. A friend of mine who knew her at DIA described Montes as “highly competent, but cool and detached.” I have little doubt that the many classified cables I sent from GTMO and Havana, and my debriefs at the State Department and the White House were fed by Montes to the Cuban spy service. Perhaps that explains the knowing, steely stare by General Pérez.
At 66, Ana Montes actually appears to have aged well. I can see her leading a quiet life and earning a modest income from working in social welfare programs in Puerto Rico. But the personal cost of her betrayal was steep: family rejection, loss of many of the best years of her life behind bars, and sacrificing having a family of her own. Quite a price to pay for the privilege of serving a narcissistic dictator who drove a middle income nation into the ground, leading to one-and-a-half million of its citizens to flee. And she goes down in history as one of the most infamous traitors to her country.
Montes is a rare kind of traitor. Unlike most Americans who sell out their country, Montes did it because she was a True Believer. She spied out of ideology. Two others who also did so and got caught were Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers.
Kendall Myers is a grandson of National Geographic founder Gilbert Grosvenor, great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell and is related to President William Howard Taft. He graduated from Brown University and earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Blood doesn’t get much bluer in the United States. A respected State Department analyst, Kendall Myers and his wife spied for Cuba for nearly 30 years. Arrested in 2009, he is serving life without parole in the federal supermax prison at Florence, Colorado. At 85, he knows he will die in prison. His wife, slapped with an eighty-one-month sentence, was released early due to poor health and died not long after. The court also seized their assets of over $1.7 million. A colleague of mine who had known Kendall told me, “For what it’s worth, aside from his detestable spying, he’s someone I was happy to know.” It seemed that everyone who worked with him liked him. That said, he brought indelible shame to his illustrious family name. And he and his wife traded quality time in their golden years with their children and grandchildren for the opportunity, again, of serving a megalomaniacal tyrant, followed by prison. Such is the cost of treason.
John le Carré said, “Ideologies have no heart of their own. They’re the whores and angels of our striving selves.” True Believers who languish behind bars can only fool themselves as to which they are.
The American Way: Follow the Money
More typical are Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen — driven to betray their country for cold, hard cash.
CIA counterintelligence officer Ames spied for Moscow from 1985 to 1994. The information he provided to the Russians compromised at least a hundred intelligence operations and resulted in the execution of at least ten sources — more than by any other turncoat until Robert Hanssen. His lavish lifestyle gave him away. A mediocrity and underperformer, Ames didn’t exercise discretion with the cash his KGB handlers paid him. At 52, he and his complicit wife were arrested. She got five years. He got life without parole. Their kindergarten-age son had to be placed with another family. The government seized his pension. Now 81, Ames will also die in jail.
The Department of Justice described FBI special agent Robert Hanssen’s 22 years of spying for Moscow as “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history.” In return for more than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds, the counterintelligence officer gave the Russians some of the nation’s most prized secrets, including the identities of three KGB officers who spied for the U.S., details about American nuclear programs and a super-secret operation to dig a tunnel under the Soviet Embassy for eavesdropping. Among the most damaging secrets passed by Hanssen was the identity of a high-ranking mole in the Kremlin.
The FBI and DOJ wanted to pursue the death penalty against Hanssen given the enormous damage he did to national security and lives lost. To avoid this fate, Hanssen pled guilty to 14 counts of espionage and one of conspiracy to commit espionage and agreed to divulge what he knows to the government. He is serving 15 consecutive life sentences without parole at ADX Florence, Colorado in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
Hanssen’s wife was left to raise their six children and scrape by on a teacher’s salary plus part of Hanssen’s government pension granted her by the court. To avoid shame, the children reportedly have changed their surnames. Robert Hanssen, 78, forfeited being a father and grandfather. As he wallows in solitary for decades, he, too, knows he will die behind bars.
Also motivated by a quick buck, nuclear submarine engineer Jonathan Toebbe and his wife Diana, a teacher at an exclusive DC-area private school, were convicted last November of trying to sell top secret information on nuclear subs to an unidentified foreign power. Their sentences: 19 years for Jonathan, 21 for Diana. Both stem from a long line of distinguished military officers. In their mid-40s, the couple will miss out on raising their two teenage kids, who have been placed in the care of relatives in California. By the time of their release, the Toebbe’s will be in their mid-60s, in time perhaps to see their grandchildren, yet broke, disgraced and likely too old to find desirable work.
They Came from Nowhere: The Case of Russian Sleeper Agents
The deep damage to families is confined to neither Americans nor traitors. Among 10 Russian sleeper agents, or “illegals,” rounded up by the FBI in 2010, were Andrey Bezrukov, alias Donald Heathfield, and Yelena Vavilova, alias Tracey Lee Ann Foley. Their two sons, Alexander and Timothy, were aged 16 and 20 at the time. The boys, born in Canada, had no inkling as to their parents’ true identity. The family’s life as the “Foley’s” was a monstrous lie.
After the parents were deported back to Russia in a spy swap, the sons wanted to return to Canada. They did, but the Canadian government revoked their Canadian citizenship. After a hard-fought legal battle, the boys’ citizenship was restored. But they had to accept their legal Russian names — Alexander and Timofei Vavilov — rather than retain the bogus cover name “Foley.” Their legal complications and connection to foreign espionage hindered their prospects for higher education and landing careers in their chosen fields. While the boys have reconciled with their parents, they choose to call Canada their home, asserting they have zero Russian identity. Their parents will never be allowed to visit their estranged sons in North America, much less share much of the cultural and linguistic touchstones of their heritage with them. One can imagine that the sons’ trust in their parents will likely also always be lacking. Quite a cost for the chance to live a lie and play-act as “Americans” for years and really show nothing for it.
G-Man Charles McGonigal: Tinker, Tailor, Traitor, Spy?
The list of jailed, disgraced and bankrupted turncoats goes on and on. Government officials with treason in their heart and who think they’re smarter than, as a former FBI special agent told me, “a highly-trained FBI counterintelligence team,” will always be there.
Which now gets us to Charles McGonigal.
Last month, retired FBI special agent Charles McGonigal was charged with money laundering, making false statements to the FBI, violating U.S. sanctions against Russia, and collaborating with sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. He was additionally indicted for allegedly accepting payments of more than $225,000 from an ex-Albanian intelligence officer while still employed by the FBI.
So far, McGonigal has not been charged with espionage, but the investigation is still ongoing. There is much speculation in the media as to whether McGonigal, in league with Trump cronies — including Rudy Giuliani, Russian actors and corrupt pro-Trump senior FBI special agents in New York may have helped steer the 2016 election to Trump by smearing Hillary Clinton and covering up Trump’s incriminating ties with Russian intelligence and criminal circles.
McGonigal has pled his innocence and he, of course, is not guilty until proven otherwise. But, if convicted, he will be the most senior FBI official to suffer this fate. And should some of the worst allegations be confirmed, he will rival Robert Hanssen as greatest FBI turncoat.
McGonigal, 54, has a wife and two college-age children. He carried on a year-long affair with another woman, who told a Business Insider reporter that he often showed up with sacks of cash and showered her with luxury gifts and travel. Charles McGonigal led a double life. On top of the shame he has already brought on his family, there may be much, much more yet to be exposed. If a lengthy prison sentence ensues, his abject moral collapse will be complete. And should Uncle Sam sequester his pension and financial assets, who will foot the college costs?
“Treason is very much a matter of habit,” le Carré’s character George Smiley decided. And the cost can be steep indeed.
The opinions and characterizations in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent official positions of the U.S. government.