Ana Montes, a US citizen convicted of spying for Cuba, has been released from US federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, according to online records from the Federal Bureau of Prison, the federal agency responsible for those incarcerated.
Cuba recruited Montes for espionage in the 1980s, and she was employed by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency as an analyst from 1985 to 2001. She was eventually promoted to lead Cuba analyst for the US Department of Intelligence (DIA).
The FBI and DIA began investigating her in the fall of 2000, but in response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, she was given access to plans for US attacks against Afghanistan and the Taliban.
On September 21, 2001, Montes was arrested in Washington and charged with conspiracy to provide defense information to Cuba.
In early 2002, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to espionage. The judge who sentenced Montes ordered that she be supervised on release from prison for five years.
Regarding Montes’ release, Florida Senator Marco Rubio criticized Montes for betraying the United States and aiding Cuba’s communist regime.
“Americans should remember Ana Belén Montes for who she really is, despite serving time in prison. If we forget the story of this spy, it will certainly be repeated”, said Rubio in a statement released on Saturday (7).
How the Queen of Cuba was recruited
Ana Montes, now 65, was known as the Queen of Cuba, an American who for more than a decade and a half handed over so many US military secrets to Havana that experts say the US may never know the full extent of the damage.
In 1984, Montes was working as a clerk at the Department of Justice in Washington and studying for a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University.
She often found herself criticizing President Ronald Reagan’s support for rebels fighting pro-Communist regimes in Central America.
“She felt that the United States had no right to impose its will on other countries,” said FBI Special Agent Pete Lapp, the man who ended up leading the investigation against Montes and eventually arresting her.
Her anger at US foreign policy has complicated her relationships and drawn the attention of Cubans, who have induced her to turn her back on friends, family and her own country.
Someone at Johns Hopkins noticed Montes’s passionate views on Cuba, and soon she was introduced to recruiters and agreed to help the Cuban cause.
At about the same time, Montes applied for a job at the Intelligence Agency, where employees handle US military secrets on a daily basis. When she started there in 1985, the FBI says she was already a fully recruited Cuban spy.
how was she caught
One night in 1996, Montes was called in to consult at the Pentagon during an ongoing international incident, but she broke protocol by not remaining on duty until discharged. This raised suspicions.
Four years later, DIA counterintelligence officer Scott Carmichael heard that the FBI was looking for a mole – an unidentified spy within the DIA working for Cuba.
The suspect had traveled to the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba at a specific time. When he looked up a list of DIA officials who visited Guantánamo during those dates, a familiar name popped up: Ana Montes.
“The moment I saw her name, I knew it,” Carmichael said.
Afterwards, Carmichael and FBI agent Lapp teamed up to prove that the Queen of Cuba from the DIA was indeed a spy.
Thanks to “very sensitive” intelligence, the unidentified DIA mole was known to have purchased a specific make and model of computer at a specific time in 1996 from an unknown store in Alexandria, Virginia.
Lapp was able to find the original store record linking that computer to Montes, confirming his beliefs.
Source: CNN Brasil
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