Before her arrest as a spy for Cuba last week, Ana Belen
Montes was rising rapidly into the senior ranks of the U.S. intelligence
community and appeared to have made a direct impact on U.S. policy toward
the island, according to a variety of sources who knew or worked with the
44-year-old defense analyst.
Her job allowed Montes to work with dozens of policymakers and intelligence
analysts. She conducted briefings on Capitol Hill, regularly met with CIA
counterparts, and had access to the Intelink computer network of secret
intelligence reports on a gamut of issues.
Her most recent effort, according to these sources, involved an intelligence
appraisal that attempted to soften a 1999 ground-breaking Pentagon
assessment that declared Cuba no longer a threat to the United States
militarily.
The portrait that emerges from talks with colleagues and acquaintances is of
a woman who was often quiet, sometimes prickly and stand-offish in bearing,
but apparently in a position to do considerable harm.
``There has not been what is a called an assessment of damage of what she
might have known and been able to compromise by making it available to the
Cubans,'' said Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate
Intelligence Committee.
``The offense that she committed is a capital offense,'' Graham told The
Herald's editorial board Friday. Graham said several months may elapse
before prosecutors determine if Montes will provide details about the extent
of her alleged espionage to avoid the death penalty.
Other sources believe her role was very harmful. As the highest-level
accused spy for Cuba, Montes did ``substantial damage'' to the United
States, and probably knew the identities of U.S. spies in Cuba, one former
intelligence officer said.
Another said her arrest shows that Cuba's foreign intelligence apparatus is
``very sophisticated and very aggressive.''
In 2000, Montes took part in inter-agency briefings during the seven-month
international saga over the custody of Elián González, the young castaway
from Cuba.
As a senior intelligence analyst on Cuba for the Defense Intelligence
Agency, Montes traveled to Havana, first in 1993 on a CIA-paid leave to
study the Cuban military, again in January 1998 during Pope John Paul II's
visit, and perhaps other times, colleagues say.
One of the mysteries surrounding the case is what drove Montes to commit her
alleged betrayal of the United States. She lived in an apartment -- not
beyond her means -- in a leafy, residential neighborhood of northwest
Washington popular with professionals.
Colleagues offer sharply differing assessments of her ability.
``She was superb,'' said one senior retired intelligence officer. Another
dismissed her as ``very weak'' and prone to depression. Laughter was foreign
to her.
``She's certainly not a warm person,'' said Edward Gonzalez, a retired UCLA
professor who knew her. ``She is not a happy person. She was always
scowling.''
The daughter of a military psychologist from Puerto Rico, Montes was born in
Germany and educated at top schools in the United States. She spoke English
and Spanish beautifully. She obtained a master's degree from the prestigious
School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
NEVER GOT TOO CLOSE
Though she knew many people, she left little wake.
``We're trying to reconstruct who her friends were, and we can't,'' said
Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere Studies at the university. ``I
took a look at her transcript and she took two of my classes.'' Even so,
Roett said he only ``vaguely'' can recall Montes.
In 1985, Montes got a job as a junior analyst at the Defense Intelligence
Agency, which provides the Pentagon with military and political analysis. A
supervisor there at the time, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described
Montes as introverted.
``She was very private. She never attended parties. When we had office
parties, she might show up for only a little while.'' he said.
During her first years, Montes worked on issues related to Central America.
``When I was posted to Nicaragua in 1990,'' said a former State Department
diplomat who knows Montes, ``she was part of a team of two or three who came
down to brief [President Violeta] Chamorro on the military apparatus.''
Chamorro, a widow, was struggling to deal with the Sandinista People's Army,
which was commanded by the brother of Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista
president she upset in 1990 elections.
By then, Montes seemed to lead a charmed professional life.
In 1992, Montes was plucked by the CIA along with a handful of intelligence
analysts who were deemed exceptional talents worthy of a year-long
sabbatical at the Center for the Study of Intelligence. After a trip to
Cuba, Montes published a DIA paper in 1993 on the Cuban military's efforts
to adopt Western managerial tactics to cope with the island nation's
economic crisis.
``I found her study useful,'' said Gonzalez, who has co-authored reports for
the Pentagon on U.S.-Cuba policy. ``It shed light on an aspect of the Cuban
military that I didn't know about.''
Some of her former colleagues are shocked to learn she may have been a
turncoat.
``It's a huge puzzle,'' says a former senior CIA officer who had frequent
contact with her. ``She was considered a very well-respected analyst. She
had a superb record. There was no agenda that she was pushing.'' He paused a
moment and repeated: ``She was superb. I hope you can find her motivation
[for her alleged betrayal] because I'd like to know what it is.''
Unlike the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency does not require its
analysts to undergo regular polygraph tests to ensure they remain loyal,
several sources said.
In its criminal complaint, the FBI said it believes Montes betrayed a U.S.
intelligence officer working in Cuba. Intelligence sources said no harm
befell the U.S. officer. The complaint also said Montes may have begun
spying for Havana in 1996.
If so, said Richard Nuccio, a White House advisor on Cuba at the time,
Montes would have been positioned to pass detailed analysis to Havana of
U.S. military capabilities following the Cuban shootdown in February 1996 of
two small aircraft belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue exile group.
At the time, the White House asked the Pentagon to review scenarios that
included the bombing of Cuban runways, and other possible U.S. military
action.
``Going through that review would have been very useful to a Cuban spy,''
Nuccio said.
BROAD ACCESS
Montes had a security clearance that allowed her broad access to documents
from several intelligence agencies, not only DIA, and not only on Cuba,
although that remained her focus. She attended sessions of Georgetown
University's Cuba Study Group, a regular gathering of 70 or so scholars,
intelligence analysts and others involved professionally on issues related
to Cuba.
``I don't recall her ever expressing an opinion in that study group, and
asking questions only once or twice,'' said Wayne S. Smith, a former U.S.
diplomat in Cuba and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.
While Cuba has made no public pronouncement about Montes' arrest, Smith said
Cuban diplomats in Washington privately justified running spies like her in
the United States.
``One of the Cubans at the Interest Section was saying the other day, `You
have people you run [as spies] in Cuba. We have to know what your plans are.
We have to know what kind of operations you are running against us,' ''
Smith said in an interview.
After her trip to Cuba in early 1998, Montes helped the Pentagon settle on a
reassessment concluding that Cuba was too weak after the fall of the Soviet
Union to present a military threat to the United States.
Montes' conclusion in the reassessment was toughened up at the Pentagon.
``The original version was much softer,'' said a source on a Capitol Hill
intelligence committee.
Montes regularly briefed officers at the U.S. Southern Command in Miami,
which oversees military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, two
sources said.
