Posted on 10/17/2002 1:21:24 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Prosecutors, who accepted the sentence under a plea agreement, accused Montes of disclosing to Cuba secrets so sensitive they cannot be described publicly. Court records said she provided documents that revealed the identity of four undercover agents, details about U.S. surveillance of Cuban weapons, and information about a December 1996 war games exercise in the Atlantic.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior U.S. intelligence analyst, who confessed to spying for Cuba over 16 years, defiantly rebuked American policies toward Fidel Castro as "cruel and unfair" as she was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison on espionage charges.
Ana Belen Montes, 45, refused to formally apologize for her actions, leaving prosecutors disappointed. Montes worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency as one of the Pentagon's most senior experts on Cuba's military.
"I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it," Montes told the judge, explaining the motivation behind her actions.
"We have displayed intolerance and contempt toward Cuba for most of the last four decades. We have never respected Cuba's right to make its own journey toward its own ideals of equality and justice." she said, reading from a two-page, typed statement.
Prosecutors, who accepted the sentence under a plea agreement, accused Montes of disclosing to Cuba secrets so sensitive they cannot be described publicly. Court records said she provided documents that revealed the identity of four undercover agents, details about U.S. surveillance of Cuban weapons, and information about a December 1996 war games exercise in the Atlantic.
"What we were all looking for is the recognition of the crime, the gravity of what she has done and the harm she has caused a lot of people," said U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard Jr. "She seemed not really to appreciate that."
Montes acknowledged that her actions "may have been morally wrong," but maintained her actions were justified in light of U.S. foreign policies toward Cuba. "I did what I thought right to counter a grave injustice," she said.
Prosecutors believed Montes wasn't motivated by money, since she received only nominal amounts to cover her expenses during her 16 years as a spy. As part of her sentence, Montes, who is single and lived alone, must surrender all her government savings plus interest and any property that investigators could tie to her espionage.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina described Montes' actions as a "betrayal." But he complied with a plea agreement between Montes and prosecutors and sentenced her to 25 years in prison, in exchange for her explaining to investigators how Cuban spies operate.
"If you can't love your country, then at the very least you should do it no wrong," Urbina told Montes, who appeared in court wearing a gray-and-white striped jumpsuit. He wished her "good luck" after sending her to prison.
Montes could be released after 20 years with time off for good behavior, according to her lawyer, Plato Cacheris.
Montes pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit espionage, admitting that she revealed to Cuba the identities of four agents. The four are said to be alive and not in prison, but little more is publicly known about them.
When one arrived in Cuba on an undercover mission in October 1996, "we were waiting for him with open arms," according to a message to Montes from Cuba's intelligence service.
Montes, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was believed to have been recruited by Cuban intelligence when she worked in the Freedom of Information office at the Justice Department between 1979 and 1985. She later moved to the Defense Intelligence Agency where by 1992 she was among the DIA's top analysts on Cuba's military.
The government has not said what led them to suspect Montes. Court records indicate the investigation began around May 2001, shortly after the government broke up a ring of Cuban agents in Miami known as the "Wasp Network." Like the Miami agents, Montes used short wave radio and similar encryption techniques to communicate with Havana, according to an FBI affidavit.
Last year, Montes left some messages from Cuban handlers on her laptop computer. The FBI found the files during a secret search of her apartment in Washington in May 2001. She was arrested Sept. 21, 2001.
Defiant U.S. intelligence analyst sentenced to 25 Years for spying
Wed Oct 16, 5:11 PM ET
By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer
Prosecutors, who accepted the sentence under a plea agreement, accused Montes of disclosing to Cuba secrets so sensitive they cannot be described publicly. Court records said she provided documents that revealed the identity of four undercover agents, details about U.S. surveillance of Cuban weapons, and information about a December 1996 war games exercise in the Atlantic.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A senior U.S. intelligence analyst, who confessed to spying for Cuba over 16 years, defiantly rebuked American policies toward Fidel Castro as "cruel and unfair" as she was sentenced Wednesday to 25 years in prison on espionage charges.
Ana Belen Montes, 45, refused to formally apologize for her actions, leaving prosecutors disappointed. Montes worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency as one of the Pentagon's most senior experts on Cuba's military.
"I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it," Montes told the judge, explaining the motivation behind her actions.
"We have displayed intolerance and contempt toward Cuba for most of the last four decades. We have never respected Cuba's right to make its own journey toward its own ideals of equality and justice." she said, reading from a two-page, typed statement.
Prosecutors, who accepted the sentence under a plea agreement, accused Montes of disclosing to Cuba secrets so sensitive they cannot be described publicly. Court records said she provided documents that revealed the identity of four undercover agents, details about U.S. surveillance of Cuban weapons, and information about a December 1996 war games exercise in the Atlantic.
"What we were all looking for is the recognition of the crime, the gravity of what she has done and the harm she has caused a lot of people," said U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard Jr. "She seemed not really to appreciate that."
Montes acknowledged that her actions "may have been morally wrong," but maintained her actions were justified in light of U.S. foreign policies toward Cuba. "I did what I thought right to counter a grave injustice," she said.
Prosecutors believed Montes wasn't motivated by money, since she received only nominal amounts to cover her expenses during her 16 years as a spy. As part of her sentence, Montes, who is single and lived alone, must surrender all her government savings plus interest and any property that investigators could tie to her espionage.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina described Montes' actions as a "betrayal." But he complied with a plea agreement between Montes and prosecutors and sentenced her to 25 years in prison, in exchange for her explaining to investigators how Cuban spies operate.
"If you can't love your country, then at the very least you should do it no wrong," Urbina told Montes, who appeared in court wearing a gray-and-white striped jumpsuit. He wished her "good luck" after sending her to prison.
Montes could be released after 20 years with time off for good behavior, according to her lawyer, Plato Cacheris.
Montes pleaded guilty in March to conspiracy to commit espionage, admitting that she revealed to Cuba the identities of four agents. The four are said to be alive and not in prison, but little more is publicly known about them.
When one arrived in Cuba on an undercover mission in October 1996, "we were waiting for him with open arms," according to a message to Montes from Cuba's intelligence service.
Montes, who is of Puerto Rican descent, was believed to have been recruited by Cuban intelligence when she worked in the Freedom of Information office at the Justice Department between 1979 and 1985. She later moved to the Defense Intelligence Agency where by 1992 she was among the DIA's top analysts on Cuba's military.
The government has not said what led them to suspect Montes. Court records indicate the investigation began around May 2001, shortly after the government broke up a ring of Cuban agents in Miami known as the "Wasp Network." Like the Miami agents, Montes used short wave radio and similar encryption techniques to communicate with Havana, according to an FBI affidavit.
Last year, Montes left some messages from Cuban handlers on her laptop computer. The FBI found the files during a secret search of her apartment in Washington in May 2001. She was arrested Sept. 21, 2001.
[Full Text] WASHINGTON -- A few days after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack, Ana Belen Montes, a top Defense Department intelligence analyst, sent an e-mail note to an old friend saying she was all right and had not known anyone who died at the Pentagon.
"I could see the Pentagon burning from my office," she wrote. "Nonetheless, it pales next to the World Trade Center. Dark days ahead. So much hate and self-righteousness."
The days darkened especially quickly for Montes. A week after she signed off, sending love to her friend's family, federal agents surprised her at work and charged her with spying for Cuba. She is the highest-ranking official ever accused of espionage at the Defense Intelligence Agency, which, as a sister agency to the CIA, handles analysis for the Pentagon.
The arrest, on Sept. 21, left her friends and colleagues at a loss to explain what might have motivated her to risk everything, should the charges prove true. Friends described Montes, who is 44 and single, as a loyal companion, doting aunt, and an avid traveler. She had no evident money problems, and was apparently content dating a man who either was in the military or did business at the Pentagon, they said.
She was warm and funny, friends said, and seemed apolitical, even back in college. Her remark about "self-righteousness" was as ideologically pointed as she had ever been, said Lisa Huber, who had attended the University of Virginia with Montes and received the e-mail message.
"I can't picture her being involved in something like this," said Huber, a Louisville, Ky., resident who has seen Montes at least twice a year since their college days. "It goes against everything I know about her. She has a lot of integrity."
Montes, who had been the DIA's top intelligence analyst for Cuba since 1992, left a different impression among colleagues. She came off as rather severe, they said; at meetings, she sat rigidly in her chair and rarely spoke. Some associates viewed her as struggling to advance in a culture dominated by men.
"She was a very strange person, very standoffish, extraordinarily shy," said a U.S. diplomat.
But professionally, Montes seemed above reproach. She spoke fluent Spanish because of her Puerto Rican heritage, and in 1990 she was tapped to brief Nicaragua's new president, Violeta Chamorro, about the Cuban-backed Sandinista military.
In 1992 or 1993, she pulled off what seemed to be an intelligence coup. She traveled to Cuba and interviewed Cuban generals about economic reforms on the island. In 1998, she played an important role in drafting a widely cited analysis that found that Cuba's much diminished military posed no strategic threat to the United States. As recently as the week before last, she briefed top Pentagon policy-makers on Cuba.
According to the FBI affidavit, Montes, who had a high-level security clearance, spied for Cuba for at least five years, and possibly longer. She identified at least one U.S. undercover agent to the Cubans, disclosed a top-secret intelligence-gathering program and reported on U.S. training in the Caribbean, the FBI said.
Current and former U.S. officials say she was in a position to tell have told Havana virtually everything the intelligence community knew about Cuba's military and might even have disclosed U.S. contingency plans for taking the island by force.
"I would think, if damage was done, it would be about what she learned about the U.S., how it was militarily prepared vis-a-vis Cuba," said Richard Nuccio, who was President Bill Clinton's special adviser on Cuba. [End]
What makes the govt. think that she's telling the truth regarding how the spies operate? It makes you wonder if other spies have been rounded up.
One more thing, I still have not as of yet seen a photo of this wench.
I know. There was a sketch of her arraignment but I don't expect that is still available.
Hopefully we can oppose people like Christopher Dodd and open the doors to Castro's slave island aka "the workers' paradise."
I am somewhat disappointed that the US doesn't hang traitors.
He appeared to be referring to the U.S.-led military campaign last year which toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and pressure by the United States and Britain on the United Nations to authorize military force against Iraq if it does not comply with demands to allow inspections for weapons of mass destruction. Chavez, whose left-wing government has proposed land redistribution reforms, blamed neo-liberal, free market policies for the "murderous hurricane of inequality which is the scourge of the world." "Our continent (South America) has received one of the largest injections of neo-liberalism, injections of poison," he said. ***
No kidding. This is the spy who wrote the official U.S. report stating Cuba and Castro posed no threat to the U.S. She'd been under survelliance since May 2001 and was arrested shortly after 9-11.
Click Here (PDF doc)
Bump!
NOW KHADAFY CLOSING IN ON NUKE CAPABILITY: SHARON LIBYA'S Colonel Moammar Khadafy has been secretly developing nuclear-weapons capability and may acquire it before Iraq.
But it only names two countries: Iraq and Libya. Does anyone know which country was number three?
No. China maybe?
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