Ana Belen Montes; From Cuba With Love

If you read quite a bit about real-life spy cases, then certainly you've heard of Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, and the Rosenbergs.

If you are really, really a real-world spy buff, then names like John Anthony Walker, Klaus Fuchs, Larry Wu-Tai-Chin, Clyde Lee Conrad, and Earl Edwin Pitts might ring a bell.

But who has heard of Ana Belen Montes? Although I'm supposedly an intelligence expert I'm embarrassed to say I hadn't heard of her until a new book about her case was discussed on Frontpagemagazine. Apparently, not many other people have either. A google search on here case brought me a few links but almost no major media outlets or publications. Part of the reason might be that she was arrested in 20 September 2001, and of course, the media were still saturated with the news of 9/11.

Ana Montes had a Top Secret clearance and worked at the highest levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency, while all the time she was passing on classified material to Cuban intelligence from 1985 to 2001. Read the article, it's well worth it, or better yet, buy the book.

Aside from the incredible damage this woman did in compromising the United State's security for 15 years, the other very disturbing aspect is that unlike the other spies mentioned above, she was a true idealist; she was never paid anything for her services.

Not a cent. So how did the Cubans recruit her? Easy. They just asked her to do it. In the 1980s, it somehow came to their attention that she was a fairly typical left-leaning woman of the day; she opposed Reagan's policies in Central America, and the Cuban embargo. So on a hunch, they simply approached her, asked her to spy for them, and she agreed.

I guess what's scary about this is how many people I know personally who also disliked Reagan, his foreign policies, and have a highly naïve and view of real life Cuba (filmmaker Michael Moore comes to mind). Now granted, most of them don't work in high level sensitive intelligence positions, but quite a few do, and you can't use someone's personal politics to deny them a security clearance (otherwise Ana would have lost hers).

Another thing that's a little out of whack: she only got 25 years, and may be eligible for parole eventually. This is even though she still believes she did nothing wrong. (Compare this to Jonathan Pollard, who got life without the possibility of parole, and he was spying for Israel, essentially an ally of the United States).

In a statement in court, Ms. Montes said:

"My greatest desire is to see amicable relations emerge between the United States and Cuba. I hope my case in some way will encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and to work with Havana in a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding...it would permit the two neighbors to work together and with other nations to promote tolerance and cooperation in our one `world-country,' in our only 'world-homeland.'"

I have a couple questions:

1) You are going to bring this about by giving Cuba military aid? How?
2) Since the US is a democracy, don't you think that Cuba is the one that needs to change it's policy - like the policy of having a dictator for life?

To those that think this is no big deal, because Cuba is just a small, weak island, and no military threat to us, consider: if war had broken out with Cuba, we could have really paid for it, thanks to this vile woman. The Cuban military would have known exactly where and when such an attack would take place. This is the single biggest reason why the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion failed (even more so than the lack of airpower). Moreover, there is just no way to know how much of this information Cuba passed on to other enemies of the United States.

For any intelligence service, getting a mole like Ms Montes right in your enemy's house is like winning the lottery; there is just no substitute.

I'll end this with a quote from the Sci-fi classic Dune:

[Baron Harkonnen]: I will have Arrakis back for myself! He who controls the Spice controls the universe and what Piter did not tell you is we have control of someone who is very close, very close, to Duke Leto! This person, this traitor, will be worth more to us than ten legions of Sardaukar!

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