(CNN) - A former U.S. federal employee helped recruit Cuban spies, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.
A grand jury indictment alleges that Marta Rita Velazquez, 55, a former legal officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, received orders from the Cuban Intelligence Service, helped pass documents about U.S. defense to Havana and helped a spy for Cuba obtain a position in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
"Beginning in or about 1983, Velazquez conspired with others to transmit to the Cuban government and its agents documents and information relating to the U.S. national defense, with the intent that they would be used to the injury of the United States and to the advantage of the Cuban government," the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement announcing that the indictment had been unsealed.