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September 23, 2001
Spy
Betrayed Agents to Cuba, Officials Say
The
New York Times via Dow Jones
Publication
Date: Sunday September 23, 2001 National Desk; Section 1A; Page 32,
Column 1 c. 2001 New York Times Company By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS
WASHINGTON,
Sept. 22 -- The Pentagon's top intelligence analyst for Cuba, accused of
spying for the Havana government, identified American agents to Cuban
officials and revealed details about a top secret intelligence gathering
system, government officials said today.
The
analyst, Ana Belen Montes of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was
charged on Friday with providing secret information to Cuba for at least
five years.
One
indication of the level of trust that Ms. Montes enjoyed in Washington
was a trip to Cuba she took in 1998 with two senior aides to Senator
Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina, a fierce foe of President
Fidel Castro of Cuba. Mr. Helms was chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee at that time.
Ms.
Montes is the highest American official accused of spying for Cuba. The
case could go far in explaining how efforts by the United States to
penetrate Cuba's tightly controlled society were thwarted in the last
decade.
Ms.
Montes, the chief Cuba analyst since 1992, was in a position to know
''90 percent of what we're doing in Cuba on an intelligence front and
everything we know about Cuba,'' said an official who follows Cuba.
''It's the crown jewels, if you will.''
Among
those secrets was an intelligence-gathering operation known as a
''special access program'' that was so secret that the F.B.I. withheld
its details in the criminal complaint. In a message that the F.B.I.
partly recovered from her home computer, Ms. Montes said she and one
colleague were ''the only ones in my office who know about the
program,'' the complaint said.
Ms.
Montes also informed the Havana government when undercover American
intelligence agents visited Cuba, compromising their contacts on the
island, officials said.
Ms.
Montes, who is 44 and single, was a fixture in foreign policy circles
related to Cuba. Born at an American military base in Nuremberg,
Germany, she graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 and
received a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies in 1988, the complaint said. In 1985, she was
hired by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which provides Pentagon
planners with information about foreign countries.
In
1990, Ms. Montes was one of several military intelligence officials who
briefed Violeta Chamorro, then the new president of Nicaragua, about the
activities and assets of the Cuban-backed Sandinista military, one
participant in the briefing said.
Ms.
Montes communicated with Cuban intelligence officials through coded
computer and telephone contacts, the complaint said. She received
instructions in numeric signals by short-wave radio broadcasts, it said.
The
F.B.I. began watching her in May and built its case against her largely
from materials retrieved from her home computer.
Appearing
before a United States magistrate in Washington on Friday, Ms. Montes
entered no plea. She is being held without bond.
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