Dependable, punctual and a stickler for details, Ann Montes seemed like a model employee.
As a senior analyst with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1985 to 2001, specializing in Cuba, Montes acquired so much expertise about the country that she became known in the intelligence community as the “Queen of Cuba.”
Dedicated to her job, Montes led a seemingly quiet life, driving each morning in her Toyota to Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling on the Potomac River and returning each night to her tidy two-bedroom apartment in Northwest Washington, D.C.
But she was hiding something. Unbeknownst to her colleagues and her employer, three nights a week Montes pulled a short-wave radio out of a closet in her apartment and received encrypted instructions from the Cuban Intelligence Service, according to the FBI.
Following clandestine orders, each day she memorized three key classified pieces of information from the U.S., former FBI Agent Peter Lapp, who helped arrest Montes, told 60 Minutes.
Back in her apartment at night, she “would write them up or type them up and then every two or three weeks, she would meet in person at lunch, broad daylight, two to three hours,” said Lapp, author of the 2023 bestselling book, Queen of Cuba, An FBI Agent’s Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years.
Her double life as Cuba’s top spy came to an end on Sept. 21, 2001, ten days after the 9/11 terror attacks, when the FBI arrested Montes, then 44, and another American citizen, after a year-long investigation.
Though her arrest had nothing to do with the horrific events of 9/11, it “had everything to do with protecting the country at a time when national security was of paramount importance,” the FBI said.
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Her arrest came just before she would have gained access to classified details about America’s planned invasion of Afghanistan, according to the FBI.
Convicted in 2002 after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit espionage, she was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. Released in 2023, she moved to Puerto Rico.
Becoming a Spy
Except for being reimbursed for expenses, Montes accepted no money for sharing classified information with Cuba, the FBI said.
Montes’ motivation for spying was “pure ideology,” according to the FBI.
During her time in graduate school at Johns Hopkins University, Montes became known for being outspoken against U.S. policies in Central America, Lapp said.
In 1984, while working at a clerical job at the Department of Justice, Montes was recruited by Cuban “officials” who thought she would be “sympathetic to their cause,” to gather information for Cuba, according to the FBI.
Strategically, she applied for a job at DIA, which gathered intelligence for the Pentagon. “By the time she started work there in 1985, she was a fully recruited spy,” according to the FBI.
A Country — and Family — Betrayed
Montes’ years of espionage had destructive consequences, experts say.
“Intelligence officials call her one of the most damaging spies in American history,” Jim Popkin, author of the book Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story Of America’s Most Dangerous Female Spy and the Sister She Betrayed, told the BBC.
Montes acknowledged revealing the identities of four American undercover intelligence officers working in Cuba, according to the FBI.
Montes also told her handlers about a “super-secretive stealth satellite that the U.S. government operated,” said Popkin.
Ironically, her brother and sister both work for the FBI.
“Ana really betrayed not just our country and the government but the Montes family,” Lapp told NBC 6 South Florida.
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