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When Ana Belén Montes was arrested as a Cuban spy 10 days after Sept. 11, 2001, the people who knew her best couldn’t believe it. One college friend said such treachery didn’t seem true to Ana’s character. During their time at the University of Virginia, the pal wrote in a newspaper op-ed, “The only secret she ever gave us was her mother’s luscious flan recipe.” But not only was Montes a Cuban spy, she was “one of the most damaging spies in US history,” author Jim Popkin writes in “Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America’s Most Famous...

<p>Ana Belen Montes, a former high-ranking Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, was released from prison Friday after more than 20 years behind bars at a federal prison in Texas.</p><p>Montes, 65, was released early after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit espionage as part of a plea deal in 2002.</p>

Notwithstanding former President Jimmy Carter's recent statement to the contrary, Undersecretary of State John Bolton's remarks about Cuba's biological weapons capabilities underscore lingering concerns with the rogue island only 90 miles from the United States. Bolton, on May 6, told an audience at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation that the U.S. is suspicious about Cuban biomedical laboratories and their ability to transfer biological weapons technology to Iraq, Syria and Libya, all countries that Cuban President Fidel Castro visited last year. Bolton also made remarks, which may be interpreted as a clear signal of hardening State Department policy toward Cuba, faulting...

Ana Montes, who is regarded as "one of the most damaging spies," has been released from a prison in Texas. Montes, now 65, worked for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, as the top analyst on Cuba during the Cold War. Washington knew her as the "Queen of Cuba" for her insights into Fidel Castro's communist regime.

Last week a Department of State retiree and his wife were arrested and charged with spying for Cuba for thirty years. In this article I will sort out what we know, don't know and need to explore about this matter. Walter Kendall Myers, Jr .and his wife Gwendolyn Steingarber Myers

Queen of Cuba Dethroned by: Malcolm A. Kline, January 04, 2008 The world is too much with us late and soon, as William Wordsworth pointed out, and so, from the Cold War to the War on Terror, are communist spies. Such operatives are not, as most professors would have us believe, a figment of our imagination. “There are lots of people who have committed espionage,” says Scott W. Carmichael, author of True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba’s Master Spy. “The numbers are staggering.” Carmichael spoke at the Heritage Foundation last month. “If you opened full...

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Scott W. Carmichael, the senior security and counterintelligence investigator for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). He served as the lead case agent for the DIA on the Ana Montes espionage investigation. He has been investigating attempts by foreign intelligence services to penetrate DIA operations worldwide for nearly twenty years. Prior to that he was a Chinese-Mandarin linguist in the U.S. Navy and a special agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. His contributions toward the successful resolution of national security matters have earned Carmichael the DIA Civilian Expeditionary Medal and Award for Meritorious Civilian Service,...

~~~snip~~~ The successful investigation and capture of one of U.S. intelligence's prized employees was pushed deep inside the pages of newspapers -- if it appeared at all -- due to 9/11. The lapse in intelligence that led to those attacks overshadowed a rare instance when a mole was successfully outed. ~~~snip~~~ True Believer shows that catching spies within our own intelligence structure is a painstaking process. Carmichael, as much as he is able (given that agencies like DIA just can't let certain information out), walks readers through each step of evidence gathering and case development, while illustrating the challenges in...

The Bush administration continues to be worried that Fidel Castro's communist regime is developing biological weapons, according to U.S. Undersecretary of State for arms control and nuclear proliferation John Bolton. Geostrategy-Direct, the global intelligence news service, reports while intelligence on the biological program is uneven, Bolton said last week "there is additional intelligence information that strengthens my belief that Cuba's BW effort must be carefully monitored." Bolton said Ana Montes, a Cuban penetration agent inside the Defense Intelligence Agency, drafted a 1998 intelligence analysis that played down the threat from Cuba. "Additionally, Montes' espionage materially strengthened Cuba's denial and deception...