Ana Belén Montes led a double life for years: during the day she worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency of the United States (DIA), in the Pentagon, and at night she passed information to the Castro regime that she had memorized. through coded messages.
The Queen of Cuba
, as she was nicknamed, was released from a Texas jail on Saturday where she served a 20-year sentence, but is still considered the most damaging spy the US government has ever had.
Undated image from a 2005 US Department of Defense report, in which Ana Belén Montes receives a certificate of national intelligence distinction from George Tenet, who was the CIA's Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). .US Department of Defense / Reuters
The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, she was born in 1957 in West Germany, where her father worked as a medic for the US Army.
Graduated in International Relations from the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University, she joined the DIA in 1985, where she became the leading analyst on Cuba.
But by then he was already spying for Cuban intelligence.
Officials at the time believed she was recruited when she worked in the Justice Department's Freedom of Information office from 1979 to 1985.
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“He worked for almost 17 years for the military intelligence agency.
But she was a spy for Havana all the time, she was probably the greatest spy that Cuba has ever recruited, ”Jim Popkin, author of the book
Code Name Blue Wren
, who reviews the clandestine life of Havana, told Telemundo News.
mountains.
Montes, 65, managed to evade the trust of his superiors and his closest circle, including his sister Lucy and three other relatives who worked for the FBI.
US authorities became suspicious of her behavior in 1996, but she was not arrested until 10 days after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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“He had the keys to all the secrets that had been and would have been in the United States,” former FBI agent Manny Gómez explained to Noticias Telemundo.
Montes pleaded guilty to espionage and acknowledged revealing to Cuban authorities the identities of four undercover US agents, a crime for which she faced a possible death sentence if convicted.
But she was finally sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2002 after reaching an agreement with the Federal Prosecutor's Office, which argued that the agents who were exposed suffered no harm.
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Prosecutors also accused Montes of revealing to Cuba secrets so sensitive that they cannot be disclosed publicly.
Court records indicate that he provided documents revealing details about US surveillance of Cuban weapons.
Montes has never shown regret throughout all these years.
"I owe no loyalty to the United States, nor to Cuba, nor to the Castro brothers, not even to God," he once said.
He now has five years of probation left to serve.
With information from
The Associated Press