Attorney for alleged Russian spy claims she posed in KGB uniform for fun

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - The shocking allegations read like something out of a novel: Federal authorities alleged this week that an unassuming Hawaii couple have actually been operating as Russian spies for years.

But an attorney for the woman says the claims are simply untrue.

Walter Glenn Primose and Gwynn Darle Morrison remain in federal custody as they await a bond hearing.

Morrison’s attorney, Megan Kau, said her client is “shocked” about what she’s being accused of.

“She has nothing to do with Russia,” Kau said, after a meeting with Morrison Wednesday.

Morrison and her husband were arrested last week following a raid of their Kapolei home. Kau said the government’s motion to have the couple held without bail “vaguely accuses my client of being a Russian spy.”

That’s in part because of pictures of them wearing a jacket of the KGB.

Kau claims the jacket wasn’t theirs.

“She tried on a uniform that was at a friend’s house one time and they took pictures,” Kau said. “She was born and raised in the United States and she wants the world to know that she is not a spy.”

Kau added that the pictures appear to show both Morrison and Primrose wearing the same jacket.

Kau also said Morrison didn’t know why the friend had the jacket.

The KGB was the intelligence agency of the former Soviet Union and during the 1980s ― when the picture was taken ― it would have been unusual for someone to have an authentic one.

The couple are charged with lying to get passports, identity theft and conspiracy to harm the United States.

Both allegedly stole the identities of dead children in the 1980s while they lived in Texas.

The government is trying to have them both held without bond, something Kau called unreasonable given they have no criminal past and the allegations are for non-violent crimes.

Primrose retired from the Coast Guard after 22 years and worked for the U.S. Department of Defense as a contractor with a security clearance.

Tom Simon, a retired FBI agent, has called the allegations against the two “staggering.”

“I can only imagine that internal investigators at the Coast Guard are scrubbing every single record that the defendant ever accessed to do an internal threat assessment. They need to understand what, if anything, is in the hands of the adversaries,” said Simon, of Simon Investigations.

He added Hawaii has seen it’s share of suspected spies.

And he wouldn’t be surprised if the government didn’t call the couple a security threat to keep them in custody.

A detention hearing is set for next Tuesday.

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