A year ago I first wrote about Ana Belen Montes, the Defense Intelligence Agency
analyst who had been charged with spying for Cuba. A few months back I mentioned that
she had pleaded guilty to espionage. The latest word in this drama is that Montes was
sentenced to 25 years in prison.
On October 16th, Montes appeared in U.S. District Court and accepted the
sentence as part of a plea agreement on one charge of conspiracy to commit espionage.
The charge could be a capital offense, but prosecutors agreed to the plea agreement in
March when Montes agreed to tell investigators everything about her spying activities.
She spend six months telling everything she knew. U.S. Attorney Rosco C. Howard Jr.
stated that Montes had cooperated fully with federal investigators from several different
agencies, but no details of what she had revealed were released.
Montes was moved not by greed, as in the Aldrich Ames case, but was motivated
by political feelings. She never received any payment except for expenses. Montes was
sympathetic to Cuba and opposed the U.S. government's policy toward it. She told U.S.
District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina that she obeyed her conscience rather than the law,
and that she believes the U.S.'s policy toward Cuba is cruel and unfair. She also stated
that she felt morally obligated to help Cuba defend itself from the U.S.'s policies.
However, Urbina, who is of Puerto Rican heritage as is Montes, stated that "if you can't
love your country, you should at least do it no harm." He appeared to be unimpressed by
Montes' motivation.
U.S. attorney Ronald L. Walutes Jr. was also less than impressed. He filed papers
to the court which stated that Montes is "the ultimate hypocrite" who "consciously and
deliberately chose to join forces with those who would compromise the national security
of this country. She secretly and without remorse systematically compromised classified
information relating to the national defense of the entire country. She comes before this
court and makes no apology for her deceit and betrayal."
Montes worked for the DIA since 1985 and became the head of the agency's Cuba
section in 1992. It's unknown exactly how long she had been spying for Cuba, but the
FBI's investigation may have gone back to 1997. Montes was arrested a week after the
Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Montes listened to the "Atencion" V2 station to receive her instructions. She
entered the 5F groups into a laptop computer that had the decoding program installed to
give her plaintext messages. The messages were recovered from her hard drive. Montes
replied to her handlers by calling pager numbers from pay phones and punching in coded
messages using the touch tone keys. Information passed to Cuban intelligence included
the names of at least four U.S. covert officers inside Cuba, classified photos and
documents, and the fact that the U.S. was monitoring several Cuban military installations.
At least Montes may go to prison with a somewhat clean conscience, knowing that
nobody perished due to her spying. Luckily, she did not cause the deaths of the four
intelligence agents she named, unlike Aldrich Ames. The numerous agents Ames turned
over either were killed or disappeared without a trace. And also unlike Ames, Montes
didn't do it for greed but for personal political motivation. But whether or not it was
worth it is something only Ana Belen Montes can answer for herself. At least she's got the
next 25 years to consider it.