AND WITH THIS ANYONE  CAN CLAIM FREEDOM FOR THE 5  CUBAN SPIES  IN PRISON ?
OR THESE APOLOGISTS AND PRO-KASTRO ELEMENTS  THINK THEY CAN CHEAT THE WORLD
WHEN THEY CLAIM THOSE SPIES WERE ONLY  SPYING THE CUBAN EXILES...?

"ricardo a gonzalez" <ricardo_gon@msn.com> wrote in message
news:35b7662a.0206152208.341a5bb9@posting.google.com...
> -------------
> Posted on Sun, Jun. 16, 2002
>
> She led two lives -- dutiful analyst, and spy for Cuba
>
> BY TIM JOHNSON  /  tjohnson@herald.com
>
> PARKVILLE, Md. - In a brief e-mail message laden with emotion, the
> mother of Ana Belen Montes -- a top spy for Cuba -- lays bare the
> anguish she feels over her daughter's plight.
>
> ''We do not agree with what Ana did but I still love her very much,''
> Emilia B. Montes wrote to a reporter. ``She was my first born, a very
> good daughter who never gave me any heartaches until now. She is still
> a good, smart and loving person. She had the best intentions, [but]
> just went about it the wrong way.''
>
> Exactly how Ana Montes went the ''wrong way'' is not obvious at first
> glance, a worrisome phenomenon at a time when investigators are
> searching for telltale signs of alienation in order to spot potential
> terrorists.
>
> Indeed, Montes appears to have enjoyed an all-American upbringing. But
> a more probing look reveals the contours of an emotional makeup that
> may have led her to betray her country -- and even her family -- to
> become the most important known spy for Cuba to penetrate the U.S.
> intelligence apparatus.
>
> Meticulous and trim, the 45-year-old Montes seemed the antithesis of a
> rebel. She had climbed a career ladder at the super-secret Defense
> Intelligence Agency, becoming the most senior analyst on Cuba. She
> carefully saved her substantial salary, kept her apartment neat, went
> to the gym almost daily and kept to routine. She refrained from
> gossip, even with her most loyal friends. If anyone seemed safe and
> reliable, it was Ana Montes.
>
> But somewhere along the way, Montes entered a labyrinth of mirrors
> where deceit and reality intermingle. When she emerged, even her own
> family did not recognize her.
>
> ''I'm still flabbergasted,'' her mother said in a brief telephone
> conversation, talking with more than a little reticence. ``We waited
> and waited to find out it wasn't true.''
>
> No such luck. In March, Montes confessed in U.S. District Court to one
> count of conspiracy to commit espionage. She had become a crown jewel
> for the Cuban intelligence service, one of the most effective in the
> world. Experts say she spilled a flood of secrets to her Cuban
> handlers.
>
> ''They wanted everything. They just sucked everything out of her,''
> said one security official knowledgeable about the case. ``[Fidel]
> Castro trades in this kind of information.''
>
> A LIFE OF PERIL
>
> Clandestine activities
>
> belied no-risk demeanor
>
> Close friends were stricken. They discovered that Ana Montes, who
> seemed to shun risk, led a life of enormous peril. She rose at odd
> hours to listen to high-frequency coded messages from Havana. She
> trooped from one pay phone to another to send beeper messages. And she
> disappeared on exotic vacations -- often alone.
>
> ''Her family is devastated, her reputation is ruined, and her money
> and all that is gone,'' said an old friend, who insisted on anonymity.
>
> It is no ordinary family. Montes has a brother who works for the FBI
> in the Atlanta area and a sister who is a translator for the FBI in
> South Florida. The sister helped bring down a large Cuban spy ring,
> the so-called Wasp Network, last year.
>
> Montes is now held in a secret location, where debriefers are
> assessing the damage she caused. The Justice Department says Montes
> began working for Cuban intelligence by 1985. They now know whether
> she was a ''walk-in'' who offered her services, or whether she was
> recruited or blackmailed to work for Havana. But they are not sharing
> what they know.
>
> And they won't reveal it until Montes appears in September for
> sentencing. It is then that a judge will hand her a 25-year term, and
> five additional years of parole, if federal officials attest that she
> has cooperated fully.
>
> NO SIGN OF ENRICHMENT
>
> Motivation seemed to come
>
> from ideology and emotion
>
> By all indications, Montes did not receive a penny for her betrayal.
> She worked for Havana out of ideological conviction, dismay at U.S.
> policy, and perhaps an amalgam of emotions sown in adolescence along
> the leafy streets of this northern Baltimore suburb.
>
> It is here that Montes began to battle most strongly with her father,
> Alberto L. Montes, a Freudian psychoanalyst who dealt sternly with his
> four children and tried to inculcate his conservative values in them.
>
> ''He was a very strict disciplinarian,'' recalled Emilia Montes, who
> later divorced her husband. ``When I was young, people used to say
> that the children of psychiatrists have problems. They clashed. He was
> strong-willed, very much like her.''
>
> Dr. Montes, who was born in Puerto Rico in 1928, went to medical
> school in upstate New York, then joined the Army in 1956, going first
> to West Germany, where Ana was born, then moving with his family to
> Topeka, Kan., for seven years. He specialized in adult psychiatry at
> the respected Menninger Clinic.
>
> By the time the Montes family moved to the Baltimore suburbs in 1967,
> the father had quit the Army and the family appeared to live the
> American Dream. Dr. Montes earned a large income in private practice,
> the family lived on a cul-de-sac in an upper middle-class
> neighborhood, and the children attended top-notch public schools.
>
> ''Dr. Montes was a good psychiatrist, very well regarded in the
> community,'' said a fellow psychiatrist, Jaime Lievano, who still
> lives in Baltimore. ``He had specific training in Freudian analysis.''
>
> The family clung to its Puerto Rican roots, even as Ana Montes and her
> younger sister and two younger brothers stood out at the local Loch
> Raven High School for their Hispanic heritage.
>
> ''Look at the faces,'' Principal G. Keith Harmeyer said as he flipped
> through the school yearbook for 1975, when Ana Montes graduated. Only
> two other students had Hispanic surnames.
>
> Next to her senior photo, Ana Montes noted that her favorite things
> were ``summer, beaches, soccer, Stevie W., P.R., chocolate chip
> cookies, having a good time with fun people.''
>
> While Dr. Montes kept his psychiatric practice at a local clinic, his
> wife developed her own career as an investigator for a federal
> employment anti-discrimination office, and grew active in Hispanic
> community affairs.
>
> It is there that Emilia Montes had a serious run-in with Cuban exiles.
>
> ''The Cubans and I had our encounters. They don't fight clean,'' she
> said, speaking with a candor that appears to be part of her feisty
> nature.
>
> A SPAT WITH EXILES
>
> Mother was involved
>
> in immigrant activism
>
> Even today, Hispanic community activists remember the spat in the
> mid-1970s, when Emilia Montes led a federation of Hispanic immigrants
> from all over Latin America in a quest for a slot in a Showcase of
> Nations city festival. A rival group of well-connected Cuban exiles
> said that it should win the slot.
>
> ``Emilia Montes said, `This is not true. The Cubans don't represent
> everybody. We've got more than just Cubans around here, said Javier
> Bustamante, a fellow activist.
>
> ''They had a knock-down, drag-out fight,'' added Bustamante, who is
> from Spain.
>
> Backed by the umbrella Federation of Hispanic Organizations, and
> speaking on her local radio program, Emilia Montes succeeded in
> defeating the Cuban exile group.
>
> ''She was out for the little guy,'' recalled Jose Ruiz, who is a city
> liaison with the Hispanic community. Chuckling, he added: ``She was a
> character. She had her moments.''
>
> By 1977, when Ana Montes had left the family home and was attending
> the University of Virginia, the parents fell into an acrimonious
> divorce and custody battle for the two youngest children, Alberto M.
> and Juan Carlos.
>
> The court awarded Mrs. Montes custody of the two sons, the family home
> and a 1974 Plymouth, and a small alimony.
>
> If Ana Montes ever mended her troubled relationship with her father,
> it wasn't readily apparent.
>
> ''At one point, she actually wrote him a letter trying to make peace
> with her past,'' recalled a friend of Ana's from her time at the
> University of Virginia. ``He wrote back. He was totally
> unapologetic.''
>
> Dr. Montes eventually remarried, rejoined the Army and moved to the
> Hawaiian island of Oahu. He retired from the Army in 1995 with the
> rank of colonel, divorced his second wife and moved to South Florida,
> where he died of a heart attack two years ago.
>
> Ana Montes graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a
> degree in foreign affairs. She moved to Washington, D.C., where she
> enrolled in 1982 in a two-year master's degree program at the School
> of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She
> focused on Latin America. Her degree was not awarded until 1988.
>
> While she was studying, Montes got a clerical job at the Department of
> Justice that required a security clearance. She moved to the Defense
> Intelligence Agency as a junior analyst, focusing on Nicaragua, in
> September 1985.
>
> By then, she already was a spy for Cuba.
>
> How the Cuban intelligence service enlisted Montes is the subject of
> endless speculation among Cuba watchers. Some say it was a romance.
> Others say it was blackmail. Still others, including her lawyer and
> her mother, say it was sympathy for a small nation in the shadow of a
> colossus.
>
> ''She felt sorry for the Cubans,'' Emilia Montes said of her daughter.
> ``It wasn't Castro. It was seeing them living in misery. She was very
> young and idealistic.''
>
> Wherever the truth, Ana Montes rubbed elbows with scores of people
> inside and outside the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill and at the State
> Department, taking part in and eventually leading briefings on Cuba.
> Colleagues and acquaintances describe her as no-nonsense.
>
> ''She was an unusual person,'' said an official who knew her casually
> and like many of her acquaintances declined to speak for attribution.
> ``She could be very warm and engaging on a personal level. She was
> kind of witty. She had a very sharp mind. But when you're discussing
> work or in a work environment, she could be very aloof and dogmatic.''
>
> PRESSURE TO MARRY
>
> Boyfriend was employed
>
> by U.S. Southern Command
>
> Montes dated occasionally, and like many daughters of Hispanic mothers
> came under pressure to find a partner and head to the altar.
>
> 'Her mom was on her all the time: `Why aren't you married?' ''
> recalled the old friend.
>
> Montes did, in fact, have a boyfriend in recent times -- Roger
> Corneretto, a civilian employee in Miami of the U.S. Southern Command,
> which oversees U.S. military operations in the hemisphere, including
> Cuba.
>
> ''She was going to get married,'' said Lilian Laszlo, a Baltimore
> resident and close friend of Emilia Montes.
>
> Corneretto was transferred to the Joint Chiefs of Staff office in the
> Pentagon after Montes' arrest last year, shocked and grieving at the
> discovery of his girlfriend's double life.
>
> Corneretto declined to talk with The Herald.
>
> Montes is known to have traveled to New York City regularly, as well
> as to have taken overseas vacations alone to places like the Dominican
> Republic, where she may have received Cuban training to master the
> coded radio messages and computer decoding software that her espionage
> demanded.
>
> How U.S. counterintelligence agents got onto Montes is not clear.
>
> A former Cuban Interior Ministry cryptographer, Jose Cohen, who now
> lives in exile in South Florida, said he believes U.S.
> counterintelligence engineered a huge feat by cracking an encrypted
> Cuban message, perhaps to Montes.
>
> ''It is easier to win the lottery three times over than to break these
> codes,'' Cohen said.
>
> APARTMENT SEARCHED
>
> FBI reportedly found
>
> evidence on computer
>
> Whatever the tip-off, FBI agents 13 months ago searched Montes'
> apartment and surreptitiously copied the hard drive of her Toshiba
> laptop computer, recovering 11 pages of text between her and Cuban
> intelligence agents, court documents say. Montes' failure to fully
> erase the material appeared to be an act of carelessness unusual for
> her.
>
> The Justice Department says Montes had turned over photos, documents
> and abundant classified material to Cuba. It says she revealed the
> identity of four undercover U.S. agents, handed over information about
> U.S. military games, and provided assessments to Cuba taken from the
> most top-secret internal files of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
>
> Montes, with a top-level clearance, had access to the Intelink
> computer network that connects about 60 federal intelligence, defense
> and civilian agencies involved in intelligence gathering and
> assessment.
>
> ''She had access to basically everything,'' the security official
> said. ``You're talking about programs that cost millions of dollars to
> develop. And she could get anything.''
>
> As she funneled secrets, Montes also molded debate about Cuba on
> Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon and the State Department. In 1998,
> she was a principal drafter of a Pentagon paper that concluded that
> Cuba no longer represented a military threat to the United States.
>
> In 1999, Montes was a principal briefer on an inter-agency
> war-game-like exercise about Cuba that may have required her to review
> U.S. military capabilities toward Cuba should turmoil erupt on the
> island, one U.S. official said.
>
> Montes became a ''vociferous'' advocate of a controversial proposal to
> allow active U.S. military personnel into Cuba to develop relations
> with officers of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, the official
> said. Critics feared that such a plan would expose U.S. military
> personnel to possible recruitment or compromise by Cuban intelligence.
>
> Normally, with a spy like Montes in their sights, FBI agents would
> shadow her for months, even years, with the intention of identifying
> her handlers and bringing down an entire network.
>
> But nine days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the agents swooped in
> to arrest Montes, fearing that she represented an overriding security
> risk.
>
> To this day, the Montes arrest has not generated the publicity of
> other major spy cases, such as the 1994 arrest of Aldrich Ames, a CIA
> employee whose betrayal of his country may have cost the lives of nine
> U.S. moles in the Soviet Union, and the early 2001 arrest of Robert
> Hanssen, a veteran FBI counterintelligence officer who earned $1.4
> million as an agent for Russia.
>
> Some think Montes ranks in the league of major turncoats.
>
> ''You could make the case that the potential for damage was more
> severe than with either Hanssen or Ames,'' an official said. ``She
> could have told them what, where and when [eventual U.S. military
> action would occur], and it would cost a hell of a lot of lives.''
>
> As it is, some of the victims are alive and suffering silently.
>
> Montes' brothers and sisters declined to speak about her.
>
> ''I'll be happy to talk to you sometime down the road, but not right
> now,'' said Juan Carlos Montes, the youngest sibling at 40, who
> operates a restaurant in South Florida.
>
> ''I still have sleepless nights,'' Montes' mother said. ``Your
> precious child in handcuffs in a jail. I can't bear it.''
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
> Herald staff writer Juan O. Tamayo and researcher Elisabeth Donovan
> contributed to this report.
>
>
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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> http://www.miami.com