She is accused of having, for many years, delivered the greatest secrets of the United States to Cuba, in the midst of the Cold War. After 20 years behind bars in a prison in Texas, the American Ana Montes was released this Sunday, January 8, announced the American prison agency.
Ana Montes, a US citizen convicted of spying for Cuba, has been released from US federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, according to Federal Bureau of Prison online records.
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 the DIA’s top Cuban analyst.
The FBI and DIA began investigating her in the fall of 2000, but in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, she gained access to plans for US attacks on Afghanistan and the Taliban.
On September 21, 2001, Montes was arrested in Washington, DC, 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 monitored upon her release from prison for five years.
Regarding Montes’ release, Florida Senator Marco Rubio criticized Montes for betraying the United States and aiding the Communist regime in Cuba.
“Americans should remember Ana Belén Montes for who she really is, despite the fact that she served her time in prison. If we forget the story of this spy, it will surely repeat itself,” Rubio said in a statement released Saturday.
Ana Montes, now 65, was known as the Queen of Cuba, an American who for more than a decade and a half gave so many American military secrets to Havana that experts say the United States United may never know the extent of the damage.
Ana Montes, now 65, was known as the Queen of Cuba, an American who for more than a decade and a half gave so many American military secrets to Havana that experts say the United States United may never know the extent of the damage.
History of Montes
By 1984, Montes was working a clerical job at the Washington Department of Justice and studying for a master’s degree at Johns Hopkins University.
She often found herself railing against 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 ultimately led the investigation against Montes. , and finally stopped her.
Her anger at U.S. foreign policy complicated her relationships and caught the attention of Cubans who prompted her to turn her back on her friends, family and her own country.
Someone at Johns Hopkins noticed Montes’ passionate views on Cuba and soon she was introduced to recruiters and agreed to help the Cuban cause.
Montes Applied For a Job
Around the same time, Montes applied for a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency, where workers handle US military secrets daily. When she started there in 1985, the FBI says she was already a fully recruited Cuban spy.
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 she was fired. This raised suspicions.
Four years later, DIA Counterintelligence Officer Scott Carmichael learned that the FBI was looking for a mole – an unidentified spy inside the DIA who worked for Cuba. The suspect had gone to the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, at a specific time. When he looked at a list of DIA employees who visited Gitmo on those dates, a familiar name came up – Ana Montes.
“As soon as I saw his name, I knew,” Carmichael said.
After that, Carmichael and FBI Agent Lapp teamed up to prove the DIA’s Queen of Cuba was really a spy.
Through “highly sensitive” intelligence, the unidentified DIA mole was known to have purchased a specific make, 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 recording that linked this computer to Montes, confirming their beliefs.
This article is originally published on camerounactuonline.com
