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Ana Montes

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Ana Montes
Born
Ana Belén Montes

(1957-02-28) February 28, 1957 (age 67)
Nuremberg, West Germany
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Virginia
Johns Hopkins University
OccupationIntelligence analyst
Criminal statusReleased
Conviction(s)Conspiracy to commit espionage (18 U.S.C. § 794)
Criminal penalty25 years imprisonment
Imprisoned atFMC Carswell

Ana Belén Montes (born February 28, 1957) is a former American senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency in the United States who spied on behalf of the Cuban government for 17 years.[1]

Montes was arrested on September 21, 2001, and she subsequently was charged with conspiracy to commit espionage for the government of Cuba. Montes pleaded guilty to spying and, in October 2002, was sentenced to a 25-year prison term to be followed by five-years' probation.[2][3] She was released on January 6, 2023, after having served behind bars for 20 years.[4]

Early life and career

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Montes was born in Nuremberg, West Germany, where her father, Alberto Montes, was posted as a U.S. Army doctor.[3] Her family originated from the Asturian region of Spain, and her grandparents immigrated to Puerto Rico.[5] The family later lived in Topeka, Kansas, and then Towson, Maryland, where she graduated from Loch Raven High School in 1975. In 1979, she earned a degree in foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, and she completed a master's degree at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in 1988.[3]

Montes's brother and sister, Tito and Lucy, became Federal Bureau of Investigation employees.[3] Tito was an FBI special agent,[3] and Lucy was a longtime FBI language analyst and translator.[3][1] Ana Montes's former boyfriend, Roger Corneretto, was an intelligence officer specializing in Cuba for the Pentagon.[3]

Ana Montes receiving a Certificate of Distinction from CIA director George Tenet, 1997

Montes joined the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in September 1985 after having worked for the United States Department of Justice. Her first assignment was at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, where she worked as an intelligence research specialist. In 1992, Montes was selected for the DIA's Exceptional Analyst Program, and she later traveled to Cuba to study the Cuban military.[3]

Prior to her arrest, she lived in a two-bedroom co-op apartment in the Cleveland Park neighborhood of Washington, D.C.[3]

Montes advanced rapidly through the ranks at the DIA and became its most senior Cuban analyst.[6] Her co-workers regarded her as responsible and dependable, and they noted her "no-nonsense" attitude. Prosecutors later would allege that Montes already was working for the Cubans when she joined the DIA in 1985.[3]

Espionage

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Montes was recruited by Cuban intelligence while she was a university student at Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s. She became known to other students for her strong opinions in support of left-wing Latin American movements like the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua. A Cuban agent eventually approached her. After recruiting her, the Cuban Intelligence Service groomed her to pursue employment with the Defense Intelligence Agency.[7][3]

In their charging documents, federal prosecutors stated:[3]

Montes communicated with the Cuban Intelligence Service through encrypted messages and received her instructions through shortwave encrypted transmissions from Cuba. In addition, Montes communicated by coded numeric pager messages with the Cuban Intelligence Service by public telephones located in the District of Columbia and Maryland. The codes included 'I received message' or 'danger.'

The prosecutors further stated that all of the information was on water-soluble paper that could be destroyed rapidly.

During the course of the investigation against her, it was determined that Montes passed a considerable amount of classified information to the Cuban Intelligence Directorate, including the identities of four U.S. spies in Cuba. In 2007, American DIA counterintelligence official Scott W. Carmichael publicly alleged that it was Ana Montes who told Cuban intelligence officers about a clandestine U.S. Army camp in El Salvador.[7][8] Carmichael alleged that Montes knew about the existence of the Special Forces camp because she visited it only a few weeks before the camp was attacked in 1987 by Cuban-supported guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).[8]

Carmichael, who led the DIA investigation of Montes, named her as being directly responsible for the death of Green Beret Sergeant Gregory A. Fronius, who was killed at El Paraíso, El Salvador, on March 31, 1987, during the FMLN attack.[8] Carmichael characterized the damage that Montes caused to the DIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies as "exceptionally grave," and stated that she compromised a "special-access program" that was kept secret even from him, the lead investigator on her case.[7]

Encryption/decryption "cheat sheet" used by Montes

Carmichael further alleged that, unlike many in the U.S. intelligence community, he believed that Montes's penetration of the DIA was not the exception, but the rule, and that the Cuban intelligence services had multiple spies and moles within U.S. intelligence agencies.[8]

In 2004, a federal indictment alleged that Montes was assisted by another Cuban agent, Marta Rita Velázquez, who was a legal officer at the United States Agency for International Development and was further alleged to have recruited Montes into espionage. The federal indictment was unsealed in April 2013. Velázquez has been outside the United States since 2002, apparently in Sweden, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States for spy cases.[9]

Arrest

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Montes was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at her office on September 21, 2001. Prosecutors stated that Montes was privy to classified information about the U.S. military's impending invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 and that they did not want her revealing this information to potential enemies.[3]

In 2002, Montes pleaded guilty to the charge that could have carried the death penalty but was sentenced to 25 years in prison in October of the same year after accepting a plea agreement with the U.S. government.[3] At the sentencing hearing, Montes described U.S. policy towards Cuba as cruel and unfair and said "I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it".[10][11] After pleading guilty, Montes told CIA debriefers that she desired to protect Cuba from the United States and that she believed that "all the world is one country."[1] In a 2013 letter from prison to a friend, Montes wrote that "I believe that the morality of espionage is relative. The activity always betrays someone, and some observers will think that it is justified and others not, in every case."[1]

Incarceration

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FMC Carswell, where Montes was incarcerated

Montes was incarcerated at FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.[3] FMC Carswell is listed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a facility located in the northeast corner of the Naval Air Station, Joint Reserve Base, Fort Worth, which provides specialized medical and mental health services to female offenders.

Montes is listed as FMC Register #25037-016. She was released on January 6, 2023.[12] Having been released, she will be monitored, including her internet usage, for five years. Montes will not be allowed to contact "foreign agents" or work for the U.S. government "without permission".[13]

She is currently living in Puerto Rico and continues to speak out against U.S. sanctions against Cuba.[14]

See also

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Further reading

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ana Montes.
  • Popkin, Jim (January 3, 2023). Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy—and the Sister She Betrayed. Harlequin. ISBN 978-0-3697-3423-5.[15]
  • Carmichael, Scott (October 1, 2009). True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-61251-253-2.
  • "FBI 100 The Case of the Cuban Spy". Federal Bureau of Investigation.
  • Marquis, Christopher (October 20, 2001). "U.S. Restricts Cuban Diplomats in Capital After Spy Charges". The New York Times. Retrieved January 27, 2014.
  • Undersecretary of State John Bolton, CBS News interview, May 11, 2002
  • Manuel, Cereijo. "Ana Belen Montes: The chronicle of an American Spy for the Cuban Government". LatinAmericanStudies.org.
  • "Statement by Ana Belen Montes, who received 25-year sentence for spying for Cuba". Miami Herald. October 16, 2002 – via LatinAmericanStudies.org.

References

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  1. ^ a b c d Popkin, Jim (December 22, 2014). "Two double agents, a prison swap and the code from outer space: did this spy-v-spy duel save US-Cuban relations". The Guardian.
  2. ^ "An Unrepentant Montes Sentenced to 25 Years". cicentre.com. The Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies. October 16, 2002. Archived from the original on August 7, 2007.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Popkin, Jim (April 18, 2013). "Ana Montes did much harm spying for Cuba. Chances are, you haven't heard of her". Washington Post Magazine. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
  4. ^ "Cuba spy Ana Belen Montes released after 20 years behind bars". Reuters. January 7, 2023. Retrieved January 7, 2023.
  5. ^ Iglesias, María José (April 28, 2013). "Ana Montes, la asturiana que espió para Fidel". La Nueva España (in Spanish). Retrieved August 7, 2016.
  6. ^ "Ana Montes: Cuban Spy". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retrieved January 24, 2018.
  7. ^ a b c Carmichael, Scott (March 3, 2007). True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59-114100-6.
  8. ^ a b c d Gertz, Bill (March 14, 2007). "DIA official warns about Cuban spies". The Washington Times. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
  9. ^ "Charge in Cuban spy case unsealed, accusing ex-State Dept. officer of conspiracy". The Washington Post. Associated Press. April 25, 2013. Archived from the original on April 26, 2013.
  10. ^ "Cuba spy Ana Belen Montes released after 20 years behind bars". Reuters. January 7, 2023. Retrieved September 10, 2023.
  11. ^ Latell, Brian (August 2, 2014). "New revelations about Cuban spy Ana Montes". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on April 19, 2015. Retrieved August 7, 2016.
  12. ^ "Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator". Federal Bureau of Prisons. United States Department of Justice. Retrieved April 18, 2020. BOP Register Number: 25037-016
  13. ^ Murphy, Matt (January 8, 2023). "Ana Montes: Top spy freed in US after more than 20 years". BBC. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
  14. ^ Bailey, Chelsea "Ana Montes: How Cuban spy used incredible memory to betray US" BBC News (Jan. 11, 2023) (accessed Jan. 11, 2023)
  15. ^ "Transcript: Jim Popkin, Author "Code Name Blue Wren"". Washington Post. Retrieved January 15, 2023.


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