Ana Belen Montes was born on February 28,1957 and is a former American senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency in the United States who spied on behalf of the Cuban government for 17 years.
23 Facts About Ana Montes
2.
On September 21,2001, Montes was arrested and subsequently charged with conspiracy to commit espionage for the government of Cuba.
3.
Ana Montes pleaded guilty to spying and in October 2002, was sentenced to a 25-year prison term followed by five years' probation.
4.
Ana Montes was released on January 6,2023, after serving 20 years.
5.
Ana Montes was born in Nuremberg, in what was then West Germany, where her father, Alberto Ana Montes, was posted as a United States Army doctor.
6.
Ana Montes's family originated from the Asturian region in Spain, and her grandparents had immigrated to Puerto Rico.
7.
Ana Montes's sister played a key role in Montes' identification as a Cuban mole.
8.
Ana Montes' former boyfriend, Roger Corneretto, was an intelligence officer specializing in Cuba for the Pentagon.
9.
Ana Montes joined the Defense Intelligence Agency in September 1985 after working for the United States Department of Justice.
10.
In 1992, Montes was selected for the DIA's Exceptional Analyst Program and later traveled to Cuba to study the Cuban military.
11.
Ana Montes's co-workers regarded her as responsible and dependable, and noted her "no-nonsense" attitude.
12.
Prosecutors would later allege that Ana Montes was already working for the Cubans when she joined the DIA in 1985.
13.
Ana Montes had been recruited by Cuban intelligence while she was a university student at Johns Hopkins University in the 1980s.
14.
Ana Montes became known to other students for her strong opinions in support of left-wing Latin American movements like the Sandinista National Liberation Front in Nicaragua.
15.
Ana Montes communicated with the Cuban Intelligence Service through encrypted messages and received her instructions through shortwave encrypted transmissions from Cuba.
16.
In 2007, American DIA counterintelligence official Scott W Carmichael publicly alleged that it was Ana Montes who told Cuban intelligence officers about a clandestine US Army camp in El Salvador.
17.
Carmichael alleged that Ana Montes knew about the existence of the Special Forces camp because she visited it only a few weeks before the camp was attacked in 1987 by Cuban-supported guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.
18.
Carmichael characterized the damage Ana Montes caused to the DIA and other US intelligence agencies as "exceptionally grave," and stated that she compromised a "special access program" that was kept even from him, the lead investigator on her case.
19.
In 2004 a federal indictment alleged that Ana Montes had assistance from another Cuban agent, Marta Rita Velazquez, once a legal officer at the United States Agency for International Development, who was further alleged to have recruited Ana Montes into espionage.
20.
Ana Montes was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation at her office on September 21,2001.
21.
Prosecutors stated that Ana Montes had been privy to classified information about the US military's impending invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and that they did not want her revealing this information to potential enemies.
22.
Ana Montes was incarcerated at FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.
23.
Ana Montes is currently living in Puerto Rico and continues to speak out against the US sanctions against Cuba.