The US intelligence agencies, already under severe criticism for their failure
to predict last week's attacks, suffered further embarrassment yesterday
when the FBI arrested a senior US defence department intelligence analyst
and charged her with giving classified information to Cuba for the past five
years.
Ana Belen Montes, 44, a specialist in Cuban affairs, who has worked at the
defence intelligence agency (DIA) since 1985, faces the death penalty or
life imprisonment if convicted of spying for the Communist state.
The FBI searched Ms Montes' apartment, office, car and her safe-deposit
box at a local bank and trawled computer hard drives for deleted data.
Agents allegedly recovered one message from the Cuban intelligence
service, thanking Ms Montes for exposing an undercover US agent to them.
"We told you how tremendously useful the information you gave us from the
meetings resulted, and how we were waiting for him with open arms," the
message is said to have read.
The incident comes at a particularly sensitive time for the US intelligence
community, whose operational effectiveness has come under unflattering
scrutiny.
Even though the Cuban government was in no way implicated in the
attacks, allegations that a spy for one of the nation's fiercest enemies has
been in their midst for more than a decade will add to calls for a shake-up
s.
In a criminal complaint filed to a federal court in Washington, the FBI said
Ms Montes, 44, had transmitted sensitive defence information.
Ms Montes is also accused of using encrypted codes to liaise with Cuban
intelligence agents via radio, a method employed by five other people
convicted in Miami in June of spying for Cuba.
It is alleged that she passed and received computer disks containing
encrypted messages and used public pay phones to send classified
information to pagers.
The FBI affadavit also said that she participated in a 1996 military war
games exercise carried out by the US Atlantic Command in order to provide
information to the Cubans.
One partially recovered message deals with "a particular special access
programme related to the national defence of the United States", which is
so sensitive that it could not be publicly revealed in the court documents,
the document said.
The DIA, which is based in south-east Washington, provides analyses of
foreign countries' military capabilities and troop strengths for Pentagon
planners.
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