The Forgotten Spy: Ana Belen Montes

Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen offers a piece in The Hill on Ana Belen Montes, a Defense Intelligence Agency employee who spied for Castro's Cuba.

In the 12 months since President Obama publicly announced his normalization effort with the communist Castro regime, the White House should have learned two painful lessons. First, the Castro brothers have not and will not change their oppressive ways. Second, the regime’s role as “intelligence trafficker to the world” ensures it will continue seeking opportunities to undermine U.S. national security.

The Cuban military and intelligence service will use this rapprochement as a pretext to expand Cuba’s espionage efforts within our borders.

One year ago, as a concession to the Castro regime, Obama made the grave mistake of releasing the last three of five incarcerated Cuban spies known as the “Cuban Five.” These five Cuban intelligence agents were arrested by federal authorities in 1998 and subsequently convicted on several counts, including failing to register as a foreign agents, using false identities, and conspiracy to commit espionage. The network’s leader, Gerardo Hernandez, was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for his involvement in the shoot down of two U.S. search and rescue aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, which led to the murder of three U.S. citizens and one U.S. legal permanent resident.

Cuban Military Intelligence officer Hernandez, head of the espionage ring known as the Wasp Network, was convicted in 2001. Soon thereafter, the Cubans aggressively aided the San Francisco-based National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. 

Now, the Cuban regime and their sympathizers are taking similar actions on behalf of Ana Belen Montes. Press reports suggest Washington and Havana are thinking about another spy trade, but this time for Montes, the highest-ranking American ever convicted of spying for Fidel Castro in our history.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/263476-the-forgotten-spy-ana-belen-montes

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of Scott W. Carmichael's book on Montes via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/my-philadelphia-review-of-scott-w.html

FBI: Cuban Intelligence Aggressively Recruiting Leftist American Academics As Spies, Influence Agents

Veteran national security reporter Bill Gertz offers a piece at the Washington Free Beacon on the FBI's report on Cuban intelligence recruitment of leftist American academics.

Cuba’s communist-led intelligence services are aggressively recruiting leftist American academics and university professors as spies and influence agents, according to an internal FBI report published this week.

Cuban intelligence services “have perfected the work of placing agents, that includes aggressively targeting U.S. universities under the assumption that a percentage of students will eventually move on to positions within the U.S. government that can provide access to information of use to the [Cuban intelligence service],” the five-page unclassified FBI report says. It notes that the Cubans “devote a significant amount of resources to targeting and exploiting U.S. academia.”

“Academia has been and remains a key target of foreign intelligence services, including the [Cuban intelligence service],” the report concludes.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/fbi-cuban-intelligence-aggressively-recruiting-leftist-american-academics-as-spies-influence-agents/

You can also read about Cuban intelligence's successful recruitment of a spy in my Philadelphia Inquirer review of True Believer: Inside the Investigation and capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy via the below link:

http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2013/08/my-philadelphia-review-of-scott-w.html

New Revelations About Cuban Spy Ana Montes

Brian Latell, author of Castro's Secrets: Cuban Intelligence, the CIA, and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, offers new revelations about convicted Cuban spy Ava Montes in a piece for the Miami Herald.

For 16 years, Ana Belen Montes spied for Cuba from increasingly responsible positions at the Defense Intelligence Agency. If Havana has ever run a higher level or more valuable mole inside the American defense establishment, that has never been revealed.

When she was arrested in late September 2001, Montes was about the equivalent in rank of a colonel. She had access to sensitive compartmented intelligence. Strangely, for one so openly enamored of Fidel Castro, her superiors considered her one of the best Cuba analysts anywhere in government.
Despite the importance of her case, some of the most tantalizing questions about her spying have never been publicly answered.

Could the calamity of her treason have been avoided? What was learned about Cuban intelligence tradecraft? How was she discovered? And, of enduring concern, did she work with other American spies thus far undetected or not prosecuted?
    
Thanks to researcher Jeffrey Richelson and the National Security Archive, new light has finally been shed on the Montes case. Because of their efforts, a 180 page study completed by the Department of Defense Inspector General in 2005 has recently been declassified. It is heavily redacted; many pages, including the CIA’s extensive comments, blacked out. Yet, a quantity of surprising new details are now on the public record.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/02/4267428/new-revelations-about-cuban-spy.html

You can also read my Philadelphia Inquirer review of Scott Carmichael's book on Montes, called True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of  Ana Montes,Cuba's Master Spy via the below links:

 http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/TrueBSpyReview1JPG.jpg

http://home.comcast.net/~pauldavisoncrime/pwpimages/TrueBSpyReview2JPG.jpg 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/08/02/4267428/new-revelations-about-cuban-spy.html#storylink=cpy