Ana Montes, a former analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. navy’s spy arm, walked free from a federal jail in Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday after greater than 20 years behind bars.
Montes spied for Cuba for 17 years, revealing the identities of the United States’ undercover intelligence officers and its extremely delicate assortment capabilities, till her arrest in 2001. By day, she was the Defense Intelligence Agency’s senior Cuba analyst. At evening, she typed up pages and pages of presidency secrets and techniques that she had memorized, passing them to Cuban intelligence.
Michelle Van Cleave, who was head of U.S. counterintelligence beneath President George W. Bush, informed Congress in 2012 that Montes was “one of the most damaging spies the United States has ever found.”
“She compromised everything — virtually everything — that we knew about Cuba and how we operated in Cuba and against Cuba,” Van Cleave mentioned. “So the Cubans were well aware of everything that we knew about them and could use that to their advantage. In addition, she was able to influence estimates about Cuba in her conversations with colleagues and she also found an opportunity to provide information that she acquired to other powers.”
Her spying came about across the similar time that Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames spied for the Soviet and Russian intelligence providers whereas they labored for the FBI and CIA, respectively. (Both are serving life sentences in jail.) But Montes’ case was considerably completely different. Hanssen and Ames took giant sums of cash for his or her spying and bodily eliminated categorized supplies from their businesses.
Montes was as a substitute motived by ideology. Her resolution to spy was based mostly partly on her hostility towards President Ronald Reagan’s insurance policies on Latin America, particularly U.S. assist of the Nicaragua Contras, in response to a closely redacted report from the Defense Department’s inspector basic.
Montes was recruited by Cuban intelligence in 1984, when she was approached by a fellow scholar on the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University after she expressed her outrage about U.S. actions in Nicaragua. The scholar was an entry agent — somebody who recruits spies — and launched her to a Cuban intelligence official beneath the guise that they wanted Spanish language news articles about Nicaragua translated into English. At dinner in New York City, Montes “unhesitatingly agreed to work through the Cubans to ‘help’ Nicaragua,” the inspector basic’s report mentioned.
She then started her espionage profession with a secret journey to Cuba, the place she obtained coaching from Cuban intelligence. By the top of 1985 she was working on the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency — presumably on the course of the Cubans — the place she had entry to prime secret data.
In the next years, Montes met along with her Cuban handlers each few weeks at eating places round Washington, D.C. She visited pay telephones to ship coded messages to pagers utilized by the Cubans. She obtained her orders from numeric messages transmitted over shortwave radio. She additionally took the chance of touring to Cuba to satisfy with folks there.
As Montes climbed the profession ladder and obtained quite a lot of accolades for her work, the FBI acquired a tip a few U.S. authorities worker who seemed to be spying for the Cubans, main the bureau to finally start investigating Montes, in response to a 2013 Washington Post story.
She was arrested days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults because the Defense Intelligence Agency shifted its focus to Afghanistan and the director didn’t need to threat Montes passing alongside the Pentagon’s struggle plans.
Pete Lapp, one of many FBI brokers who investigated and arrested Montes, mentioned she was stoic throughout her arrest.
“I believe she had planned for that day, if it happened, for 17 years,” Lapp informed CBS News.
The arrest was humiliating for Montes’ household, a few of whom labored for the FBI. In a press release, they mentioned she “committed treason” in opposition to the U.S. and none of them had been conscious of her espionage on the time nor supported her place.
“We continue to disavow what she did and any statements she has made or may make,” the household mentioned forward of her launch.
Lapp, who’s writing a e-book on Montes, declined to say the place she goes after her launch “out of respect for the family.” But he does not anticipate her to place her newfound freedom in jeopardy by making an attempt to get in touch with the Cubans.
“That part of her life is over,” Lapp mentioned. “She’s done what she’s done for them. I can’t imagine her risking her liberty.”