Ana Montes, a Cuban spy who gave up American secrets for 17 years while working for the Defense Intelligence Agency, was released from prison Friday.
Montes, 65, served more than 21 years of her 25-year sentence. She did her time at FMC Carswell, a women’s prison in Fort Worth, Texas.
Montes was arrested in September 2001, just 10 days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. By that time, her bosses were already suspicious of her, and they didn’t want to risk her leaking the plans for the invasion of Afghanistan.
Potentially facing the death penalty, Montes cut a deal with federal prosecutors in which she agreed in March 2002 to plead guilty to conspiring to commit espionage. In exchange, she received a 25-year sentence.
Montes started her government career in 1979 at the Justice Department’s Office of Privacy and Information Appeals, handling FOIA requests.
In 1984, she was approached with an offer to secretly work for the Cuban government. She took the deal on Dec. 16, 1984, according to a book by investigative reporter Jim Popkin.
The Cubans asked Montes to get a job better suited for spying, so she applied to the Defense Intelligence Agency and was hired in 1985. From there, she worked her way up the ladder, eventually becoming an analyst.
All the while, she betrayed her colleagues and sent secrets to Cuba.
“She freely shared the identities of hundreds of Americans working on Cuban intelligence matters around the globe,” Popkin writes in “Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America’s Most Dangerous Female Spy – and the Sister She Betrayed.”
“She revealed the existence of a stealth satellite so costly and highly classified that U.S. government officials still won’t utter its name.”
Montes’ younger sister worked for the FBI as a translator. Popkin also writes that Montes’ leaks to Cuba led to the death of an American Green Beret in Nicaragua, though the federal government did not cite that claim when she was prosecuted.
Montes didn’t receive hefty payments from Cuba for her work, Popkin writes. She did it for love of country — just not her own.
“I believe our country’s policy toward Cuba is cruel and unfair,” she said at her trial. “I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself.”
Although Montes left little evidence, to the point that the CIA actually gave her a “Certificate of Distinction” award in 1997.
But she aroused suspicion, and FBI agents began tailing her. One of those agents, Pete Lapp, said that after the feds arrested Montes, she appeared unsurprised.
“I believe she had planned for that day, if it happened, for 17 years,” Lapp told CBS News.
