Last week, Ana Montes, a former analyst for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, walked out of a Texas high-security prison where she spent 20 years.
The 65-year-old's release made news all over the US because Montes was no ordinary citizen, but a Cuban spy for 17 years, during which she, according to a senior official, was among "the most damaging spies" caught by the US.
Montes was a senior Cuba analyst at the U.S. military's spy arm when she was arrested for spying. According to senior US official, she was recruited by Cuba between 1979 and 1985 while working in the Freedom of Information office at the Justice Department. Her handlers wanted her to move the agency where she could glean information useful for Cuban authorities.
That's how Montes ended up with the Defense Intelligence Agency. Her 'work' was so good that she soon became the top analyst on the Cuban affairs and was even rewarded for her efforts.
Montes continued for 17 years, wherein she would spent nights passing on goverment secrets to the Cuban intelligence. She received regular coded messages from Havana over a short-wave radio as strings of numbers, reported CBS News.
Montes also met her Cuban handles often at Washington DC restaurants and sent coded messages containing top secret information to them via pager.
Over the years, she revealed the identities of the United States' undercover intelligence officers and a mammoth amount of classified material, including secrets so sensitive that couldn't be described publicly. Reports added that Montes also revealed details about the US surveillance of Cuban weapons. Cuba, on its part, sold these information to other American enemies.
Such was her involvement that Michelle Van Cleave, head of U.S. counterintelligence under President George W. Bush, told 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 said. "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."
Interestingly, Montes was not motivated by money, like Robert Hanssen and Aldrich Ames who spied for the Soviet and Russian intelligence services. For Montes, it was ideology. She was outraged by the US support for Nicaragua Contras - a right-wing rebel group which allegedly committed war crimes in the country. Montes was opposed to the Reagan Administration's activities in Latin America.
It was then that she was approached by a fellow student at Johns Hopkins University in 1984. Montes soon met a Cuban intelligence agent and soon decided to work for Cuba to 'help Nicaragua.'
Things went on undetected until the US intelligence officials were tipped off about a Cuban spy in the department. Montes was arrested, and her stoic appearence during the arrests baffled everyone.
Her belief system in her ideology was so intact that she told the US court that she felt "morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it."
Though she has been released, Montes will remain under supervision for five years. Her internet usage will be monitored and she will also be banned from working for the government or contacting foreign agents without permission.
