The Miami Herald
Suspected spy for Cuba led a charmed professional life
By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@krwashington.com. Published
Saturday, September 29, 2001
WASHINGTON -- Before her arrest as a spy for Cuba last week, Ana Belen
Montes was rising rapidly into the senior ranks of the U.S. intelligence
community and appeared to have made a direct impact on U.S. policy toward the
island, according to a variety of sources who knew or worked with the
44-year-old defense analyst.
Her job allowed Montes to work with dozens of policymakers and intelligence
analysts. She conducted briefings on Capitol Hill, regularly met with CIA
counterparts, and had access to the Intelink computer network of secret
intelligence reports on a gamut of issues.
Her most recent effort, according to these sources, involved an intelligence
appraisal that attempted to soften a 1999 ground-breaking Pentagon assessment
that declared Cuba no longer a threat to the United States militarily.
The portrait that emerges from talks with colleagues and acquaintances is of
a woman who was often quiet, sometimes prickly and stand-offish in bearing, but
apparently in a position to do considerable harm.
"There has not been what is a called an assessment of damage of what
she might have known and been able to compromise by making it available to the
Cubans,'' said Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate
Intelligence Committee.
"The offense that she committed is a capital offense,'' Graham told The
Herald's editorial board Friday. Graham said several months may elapse before
prosecutors determine if Montes will provide details about the extent of her
alleged espionage to avoid the death penalty.
Other sources believe her role was very harmful. As the highest-level
accused spy for Cuba, Montes did "substantial damage'' to the United
States, and probably knew the identities of U.S. spies in Cuba, one former
intelligence officer said.
In 2000, Montes took part in inter-agency briefings during the seven-month
international saga over the custody of Elián González, the young
castaway from Cuba.
As a senior intelligence analyst on Cuba for the Defense Intelligence
Agency, Montes traveled to Havana, first in 1993 on a CIA-paid leave to study
the Cuban military, again in January 1998 during Pope John Paul II's visit, and
perhaps other times, colleagues say.
One of the mysteries surrounding the case is what drove Montes to commit her
alleged betrayal of the United States. She lived in an apartment -- not beyond
her means -- in a leafy, residential neighborhood of northwest Washington
popular with professionals.
Colleagues offer sharply differing assessments of her ability.
"She was superb,'' said one senior retired intelligence officer.
Another dismissed her as "very weak'' and prone to depression. Laughter was
foreign to her.
"She's certainly not a warm person,'' said Edward Gonzalez, a retired
UCLA professor who knew her.
The daughter of a military psychologist from Puerto Rico, Montes was born in
Germany and educated at top U.S. schools. She spoke English and Spanish
beautifully. She obtained a master's degree from the prestigious School of
Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
NEVER GOT TOO CLOSE
Though she knew many people, she left little wake.
"We're trying to reconstruct who her friends were, and we can't,'' said
Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere Studies at the university. "I
took a look at her transcript and she took two of my classes.'' But Roett said
he only "vaguely'' can recall Montes.
In 1985, Montes got a job as a junior analyst at the Defense Intelligence
Agency, which provides the Pentagon with military and political analysis.
During her first years, Montes worked on issues related to Central America.
"When I was posted to Nicaragua in 1990,'' said a former State
Department diplomat who knows Montes, "she was part of a team of two or
three who came down to brief [President Violeta] Chamorro on the military
apparatus.''
Chamorro, a widow, was struggling to deal with the Sandinista People's Army,
which was commanded by the brother of Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista president
she upset in 1990 elections.
By then, Montes seemed to lead a charmed professional life.
In 1992, Montes was plucked by the CIA along with a handful of intelligence
analysts who were deemed exceptional talents worthy of a year-long sabbatical at
the Center for the Study of Intelligence. After a trip to Cuba, Montes published
a DIA paper in 1993 on the Cuban military's efforts to adopt Western managerial
tactics to cope with the island nation's economic crisis.
"I found her study useful,'' said Gonzalez, who has co-authored reports
for the Pentagon on U.S.-Cuba policy. "It shed light on an aspect of the
Cuban military that I didn't know about.''
Some of her former colleagues are shocked to learn she may have been a
turncoat.
"It's a huge puzzle,'' says a former senior CIA officer who had
frequent contact with her. "She was considered a very well-respected
analyst. She had a superb record. There was no agenda that she was pushing.''
Unlike the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency does not require its
analysts to undergo regular polygraph tests to ensure they remain loyal, several
sources said.
In its criminal complaint, the FBI said it believes Montes betrayed a U.S.
intelligence officer working in Cuba. Intelligence sources said no harm befell
the U.S. officer. The complaint also said Montes may have begun spying for
Havana in 1996.
If so, said Richard Nuccio, a White House advisor on Cuba at the time,
Montes would have been positioned to pass detailed analysis to Havana of U.S.
military capabilities following the Cuban shootdown in February 1996 of two
small aircraft belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue exile group.
At the time, the White House asked the Pentagon to review scenarios that
included the bombing of Cuban runways, and other possible U.S. military action.
"Going through that review would have been very useful to a Cuban
spy,'' Nuccio said.
BROAD ACCESS
Montes had a security clearance that allowed her broad access to documents
from several intelligence agencies, not only DIA, and not only on Cuba, although
that remained her focus. She attended sessions of Georgetown University's Cuba
Study Group, a regular gathering of 70 or so scholars, intelligence analysts and
others involved professionally on issues related to Cuba.
"I don't recall her ever expressing an opinion in that study group, and
asking questions only once or twice,'' said Wayne S. Smith, a former U.S.
diplomat in Cuba and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy. While
Cuba has made no public pronouncement about Montes' arrest, Smith said Cuban
diplomats in Washington privately justified running spies like her in the United
States.
"One of the Cubans at the Interest Section was saying the other day,
'You have people you run [as spies] in Cuba. We have to know what your plans
are. We have to know what kind of operations you are running against us,' ''
Smith said in an interview.
After her trip to Cuba in early 1998, Montes helped the Pentagon settle on a
reassessment concluding that Cuba was too weak after the fall of the Soviet
Union to present a military threat to the United States.
Montes' conclusion in the reassessment was toughened up at the Pentagon.
"The original version was much softer,'' said a source on a Capitol
Hill intelligence committee.
Montes regularly briefed officers at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami,
which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, two
sources said.
Cuban migration spiked this year, U.S. says
By Wilfredo Cancio Isla. El Nuevo Herald. Published
Saturday, September 29, 2001
The 2,352 Cubans who arrived illegally in South Florida during fiscal year
2001 constitute the largest number of migrants from the island in one year since
the 1994 rafter exodus, the Border Patrol said Friday.
Although the fiscal year ends Sunday, it is unlikely that the number will
grow substantially in the next several hours, Border Patrol sources said,
because of the stormy weather and the "terrorist crisis'' that practically
halted all smuggling operations after Sept. 11, the day of the World Trade
Center attacks.
In fiscal year 2000, the number of illegal immigrants from Cuba was 1,820.
In 1999, the number of illegal migrants reached 2,254.
Cuban migration traditionally has been heavy in August and September.
One hundred and seven people arrived over the Sept. 1 weekend this year.
The latest recorded arrival occurred Sept. 7, when the Border Patrol picked
up 34 Cubans who arrived in the Keys in two groups.
"Since then we haven't detected any smuggling activity in the area,''
said Border Patrol spokesman Norbert Gómez.
The U.S. Coast Guard has intercepted only nine Cubans at sea since Sept. 11:
four on that day, four on Sept. 14, and one on Sept. 19.
The number of Cubans intercepted during fiscal year 2001 is 777, the lowest
in the past four years, the Coast Guard said.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald |