Ana Belen Montes was released from federal prison Friday night after serving over 21 years. A partial summary of the harm she did.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.-George Santayana

 

Earlier version taken from CubaBrief.

Ana Belen Montes, the Pentagon's top analyst for Cuba who was arrested on September 21, 2001 for spying for the Castro regime for 17 years was released Friday night (January 6, 2023) from the Federal Medical Center (FMC) - Carswell, in Forth Worth, Texas where she was being held. Montes was in federal prison for over 21 years. 

It is important to set the record straight, and revisit the damage that she did to U.S. national security, and her successful campaign as an agent of influence to downplay the threat Cuba poses to the United States, and other democracies in the region.

For example the information she passed to Havana, in 1987 it is believed got 65 U.S. allied Salvadoran soldiers in Central America killed, and at least one American.

Montes regularly briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and the State Department downplaying Cuban military capabilities, and providing their feedback to the Castro regime's Intelligence Directorate (DI). 

Her actions during the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown on February 24, 1996, and the influence operation she conducted to direct blame away from Castro, and onto the victims, first drew the attention of investigators.

Ten years after joining the DIA, Ana Belen Montes received the National Intelligence Certificate of Distinction from Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet on February 21, 1997. 

Another example, a few months after being recognized by the CIA director, she drafted a Pentagon report in 1997 stating Cuba had a “limited capacity” to harm the United States that Fidel Castro described as “an objective report by serious people.”

Montes managed to be selected as a team leader to analyze the effectiveness of U.S. air force bombing in Afghanistan after the September 11th attacks in 2001. Officials, rightly feared, that with Havana's long history of selling secrets to enemies of the United States that if Montes obtained the Pentagon’s war plans for Afghanistan, that the Castro regime would pass it on to the Taliban, and this sped up her arrest.

The full extent of the damage that she did to the United States remains mostly classified as can be seen in the highly redacted damage assessment prepared by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Defense published on June 16, 2005.

At a congressional hearing in 2012, the woman charged with the damage assessment testified Montes was "one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history." "Former National Counterintelligence Executive Michelle Van Cleave told Congress that Montes 'compromised all Cuban-focused collection programs' used to eavesdrop on high-ranking Cubans, and it 'is also likely that the information she passed contributed to the death and injury of American and pro-American forces in Latin America,'” reported Jim Popkin in The Washington Post in 2013.

One of the most damaging spies in US history, Ana Montes was released from prison on Friday. For 17 years, she quietly shared intel w Cuba, who very likely shared it w Russia. Insights from retired FBI agent @petelapp, who led operations to break into her home to gather evidence. pic.twitter.com/HkwFJOqE4X

— Sasha Ingber (@SashaIngber) January 7, 2023

Retired FBI agent Peter Lapp, who led the covert operation against Montes, found the "most damaging non-human intelligence she provided to the Cubans"  was information about "a U.S. secret satellite program" that was so sensitive "that prosecutors were banned from using it had the case gone to trial."  Information was not related to Cuba, but investigators believe that Fidel Castro passed it on to other regime's hostile to the United States.

Montes with her Cuban handlers conducted an influence operation so effective that even after her arrest, the misleading analysis she provided continued to be repeated by policymakers. Her claim that Cuba posed no threat to the United States continued to circulate in government a decade after her arrest, and was used as the basis to request that President Obama remove Cuba from the list of state terror sponsors in 2013. 

"The damage done by Ana Belen Montes to both U.S. National Security and in the formulation of U.S. Foreign policy cannot be underestimated, nor the reality that she was not alone in infiltrating the U.S. government to work for a foreign power. American allies and friends and at least one American soldier were killed by the treachery committed by this foreign agent. Furthermore, the disinformation provided by her DI handlers that she inserted in U.S. government reports continued to have an impact on policy long after she went to prison," observed Ambassador Otto J. Reich, currently president of the Center for a Free Cuba and former Assistant Secretary of State and member of the National Security Council staff.

The belief that the Castro regime is harmless does not make it true.  Montes whitewashed the dictatorship's six decade record of terrorism and sponsoring terrorism (including on U.S. soil), the brutality visited upon Cubans, the role in spreading repression in Nicaragua and Venezuela, and the Castro brothers role in carrying out genocide in Ethiopia. Nevertheless, this and much more points to the ongoing threat of the Castro regime that Montes minimized.

Yes, Ana Belen Montes did great harm and we should be vigilant to the ongoing threat by the Castro regime's spies, but the priority of free Cubans remains the freedom of Cuba, more immediately the freeing of over 1,000 Cuban prisoners of conscience, like Maykel Castillo Perez, so that they can be reunited with their families.