‘Extremely lethal’ double agent Ana Montes who spied for Cuba released after 20 years in prison | US news

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A former US defense intelligence analyst who became a Cold War-era double agent and spied for Cuba has been released from prison.

The website of the Federal Bureau of Prisons shows that 65-year-old Ana Montes has been released after 20 years from a quarter-century sentence.

During her work as an analyst, she admitted to revealing the identities of four American secret agents to the Cuban authorities – revealing some secrets too sensitive to describe publicly.

Court records also said she provided documents that revealed details about US surveillance of Cuban arms.

The 65-year-old has spent nearly two decades spying for Cuba.

She was arrested in September 2001 and pleaded guilty a year later to conspiracy to commit espionage.

She was prolific and effective in providing harmful intelligence to Cubans, who he suspected of selling that information to other enemies of the United States, said Chris Simmons, a former CIA interrogator who helped investigate Montes.

“Historically, a lot of spies have given up information, but they have repeatedly tried to kill Americans in combat,” Simmons was quoted by NBC as saying.

“A very fatal woman, a very dangerous woman.”

PHOTO: Montes receives a Certificate of Excellence in National Intelligence from George Tenet, at the time Director of Central Intelligence for the CIA

Officials said at the time that Montes was believed to have been recruited by Cuban intelligence when she was working in the Justice Department’s Office of Freedom of Information between 1979 and 1985, and told to seek employment at an agency that provided information more useful to Cuba. .

encrypted secret messages

So she moved to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1985, and was considered a top analyst in the Cuban military—she was even rewarded for her work.

During this time, prosecutors said, Montes received regular encrypted messages from Havana over short-wave radio as strings of numbers, which she would type on a laptop computer equipped with a decoder to translate them into text.

When sentencing, Montes argued that she obeyed her conscience and that US policy toward Cuba was cruel and unfair. “I felt morally obligated to help Al Jazeera defend itself from our efforts to impose our values ​​and political system on it,” she said.

Under President Joe Biden, the United States has eased some sanctions on Cuba but maintained a Cold War-era embargo on the island and tightened restrictions on illegal immigrants, reaching record levels amid skyrocketing inflation and drug shortages.

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