Ana Montes

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Ana Montes, 2009

Ana Belén Montes (born February 28, 1957 ) is a former analyst for the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and a spy for the Cuban intelligence service DI . She worked as DIA's lead analyst specifically on Cuba, but also on operations in Central and South America in general. She is considered to be a man of conviction and was not paid for her espionage work.

Life

Ana Belén Montes was born as the daughter of the United States Army psychiatrist Alberto Montes on a US military base in the Federal Republic of Germany. Her father was stationed in Nuremberg. Her family has roots in Asturias and her grandparents emigrated from Puerto Rico . Her family later lived in Topeka, Kansas and Towson, Maryland. There she graduated from high school in 1975 and received a degree in foreign policy from the University of Virginia in 1979. In 1988 she completed her Masters at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

In 1985 she became a "Junior Analyst" at the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). From then on, Mentes analyzed the situation in Nicaragua and Cuba at the DIA headquarters in Washington, DC . From 1992 she was sent several times for secret assignments to represent the interests of the USA in Havana. a. 1998 to observe the visit of Pope John Paul II . Ana Belén was promoted to senior DIA analyst for Cuba, giving her access to all relevant data on the island. She was valued for her excellent expertise and was soon called "The Queen of Cuba" by colleagues. As a department head, she became a member of the “Cuba Working Group”, an AG made up of leading analysts from DIA, CIA, representatives of the State Department and the White House. The group met regularly for briefings.

Montes did not take classified documents home or copied them, but instead memorized the important details. At home she typed the most important data and names into her Toshiba laptop and copied them onto encrypted floppy disks, which she then passed on to Cuban contacts. The handover modalities were communicated to them by radio agent. The CI sent sequences of numbers on a shortwave frequency, which Montes recorded using a world receiver and decrypted using a decoding program on her computer.

According to the FBI, a DIA colleague reported to his superiors in 1996 that Montes was under the influence of a Cuban service. The supervisor then questioned her and Montes denied the allegations. When the supervisor learned in 2000 that the FBI had evidence of a Cuban spy in Washington, DC , he contacted the investigators, according to the FBI. The FBI referred to them as "BLUE WREN". DIA counter-espionage agents observed that she kept using payphones after work. They found Montes calling pagers' numbers. When Ana Montes was on a business trip, the investigators searched her apartment, found a shortwave radio and evidence of the crypto floppy disks. However, it was unclear with whom Montes communicated.

Disguised as janitors, FBI technical team members searched Montes handbag and found a small slip of paper with a handwritten cipher on it. The CI used a further development of the free PGP technology as the actual encryption method for data transmission .

After the attacks of September 11, 2001 and in anticipation of the Iraq war, the services decided to arrest Ana Montes now. Montes was arrested on September 21, 2001 on charges of espionage for Cuba. In March 2002, Ana Belen Montes confessed to collecting information for Cuba for 16 years. FBI investigators found a hidden decryption program on their laptop, as well as sequences of numbers that they knew had recently been broadcast by shortwave from Cuba. Montes made a partial confession in court. In October 2002, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Ana Belén Montes sits with prisoner no. 25037-016 in the Psychiatric Department of the "Federal Medical Center" (FMC) Carswell , which is part of the complex of the US Naval Base Fort Worth in Texas . She is in solitary confinement and is only allowed to have contact with her next of kin. Until his death only her father came to visit; the rest of her family broke away from her because of her commitment to Cuba.

Motifs

Ana Belén Montes did not accept anything in return for sharing information with the DI for 16 years . Some observers describe her as a staunch socialist in the Cuban sense. In court she said she spied because she felt that the US foreign policy towards Cuba was "unfair and cruel".

literature

  • Scott Carmichael (2009): True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy ISBN 978-1-59114-107-5 .

swell

  1. ↑ Jürgen Heiser: Freedom for Ana Belén Montes! In: young world . December 8, 2015 ( jungewelt.de [accessed August 7, 2017]).
  2. ↑ a b SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg, Germany: SPIONAGE: Hunt for the number transmitter - DER SPIEGEL 49/2002. Retrieved August 7, 2017 .
  3. ^ Ana Montes: Cuban Spy. Retrieved August 7, 2017 (American English).
  4. ↑ a b The secret of the Cuban top agent: What's on Ana's note? Retrieved August 7, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Pablo de Llano: Sin perdón para la espía de Cuba . In: EL PAÍS . March 7, 2017 ( elpais.com [accessed August 7, 2017]).
  6. ↑ Jürgen Heiser: Freedom for Ana Belén Montes! In: young world . December 8, 2015 ( jungewelt.de [accessed August 7, 2017]).
personal data
SURNAME Montes, Ana
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Belén Montes, Ana (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American analyst for the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and spy for the Cuban intelligence service DI
DATE OF BIRTH February 28, 1957