The US government on Friday accused a former State Department official and his wife of spying for Cuba for the past 30 years.

A statement from the Justice Department said that Walter Kendall Myers, 72, and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, 71, both living in Washington D.C., were charged with conspiracy to act as Cuban government agents and to pass classified information to the Cuban government.

They are also charged with wire fraud and with acting as illegal agents of the Cuban government.

Federal agents arrested the couple on Thursday.

According to the indictment, Walter Myers obtained top-secret security clearance from the State Department in 1985 and kept it until his retirement in 2007.

The indictment also claims that, while staying in a small house in Cuba in or about January 1995, the couple met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro and talked to him through an interpreter.

(Xinhua News Agency June 6, 2009)