[Spooks] V2A and Defense Analyst Pleads Guilty as Spy

[Dave Payne, Sr.]

The article says that she was using a laptop
computer to decode the numbers she received from
Cuba via shortwave. Looks like we (the US) have
her computer and therefore, the deciphering
program. I assume the Cubans know about this. Has
anyone noticed anything different out of V2a
recently? I've not, but it seems the cubans would
be reacting somehow.





--- William Knowles <wk@c4i.org> wrote:
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50284-2002Mar19.html
> 
> By Neely Tucker
> Washington Post Staff Writer
> Tuesday, March 19, 2002; 1:13 PM 
> 
> The Defense Intelligence Agency's senior
> analyst for Cuban issues 
> pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to
> being a spy for Fidel 
> Castro's government, admitting that she had
> used her highly classified 
> position to steal information for 16 years and
> pass it along to a 
> nation the State Deparment lists as a sponsor
> of international 
> terrorism.
> 
> Working with shortwave radios, encrypted
> transmissions and a pay phone 
> outside the National Zoo, Ana Belen Montes told
> the Cuban government 
> the names of four American "covert intelligence
> officers" working in 
> Cuba; that the U.S. government had tracked down
> the location of 
> various Cuban military installations; and
> informed them of a "special 
> access program related to the national defense
> of the United States," 
> prosecutors said today.
> 
> She spied for the Cuban government from when
> she joined the DIA in 
> 1985 until she was arrested on Sept. 21 of last
> year. She worked as 
> head of the Cuba section since 1992, but did
> not arouse suspicion 
> until the FBI began a counter-intelligence
> investigation of her 12 
> months before her arrest.
> 
> "Montes used her position as an intelligence
> officer and, 
> subsequently, a senior intelligence analyst . .
> . to gather writings, 
> documents, materials and information,
> classified for reasons of 
> national security, for unlawful communication,
> delivery and 
> transmission to the government of Cuba," said
> Ronald Walutes, the 
> assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case,
> reading from the 
> indictment.
> 
> When judge Ricardo M. Urbina asked Montes if
> those charges were 
> correct, she replied, "Those statements are
> true and accurate."
> 
> Montes, 45, an American citizen of Puerto Rican
> descent, will serve a 
> 25-year prison term if she cooperates with FBI
> and other federal 
> investigators during the next six months,
> telling them what she knows 
> of Cuban intelligence activities in the United
> States, according to 
> terms of the plea agreement.
> 
> She officially pleaded guilty to one count of
> conspiracy to commit 
> espionage, a crime that could have carried the
> death penalty.
> 
> Her attorney, Plato Cacheris, said Montes did
> not receive any money 
> for her 15 years of work for the Cuban
> government, but instead was 
> motivated by her personal sense of justice for
> the impoverished island 
> nation.
> 
> "She engaged in these activities because of her
> belief that U.S. 
> policy does not afford Cubans respect,
> tolerance and understanding," 
> said Cacheris, who has represented several
> other high-profile clients 
> accused of espionage. "She was motivated by her
> desire to help the 
> Cuban people and did not receive any
> compensation."
> 
> Cacheris characterized the plea deal and aiding
> the U.S. government as 
> "an attempt to help herself."
> 
> It was unclear today how much damage was done
> by Montes' work. The 
> four agents she identified to the Cuban
> government are "alive and 
> safe," according to U.S. Attorney Roscoe C.
> Howard Jr. Government 
> officers who attended today's sentencing did
> not go beyond that, 
> declining to say if they were aware of Cuba
> passing along the 
> information to hostile countries or
> organizations.
> 
> Montes was born on a military installation in
> Germany. She was a 1979 
> graduate of the University of Virginia, and
> received a master's degree 
> from the Johns Hopkins University School of
> Advanced International 
> Studies in 1988.
> 
> She had joined the DIA, the 7,000-member U.S.
> agency that produces 
> military intelligence about foreign countries,
> in 1985. She was 
> assigned to analyze Cuban information in 1992.
> She lived alone in an 
> apartment in the 3000 block of Macomb Street
> NW, drove her Toyota Echo 
> to work each day at Bolling Air Force Base and
> went undetected until 
> the fall of 2000.
> 
> Then, acting on an undisclosed break in the
> case, FBI agents began 
> tracking her movements. They obtained court
> permission to break into 
> her apartment, copy computer data and slip out
> undetected.
> 
> They found that Montes communicated with Cuba
> by high-frequency, 
> encrypted transmissions that she picked up on a
> shortwave radio. 
> Listening with an earpiece, she would copy down
> a series of numbers, 
> each coming in a set of bursts. She would key
> those numbers into her 
> Toshiba laptop, where a deciphering code given
> to her by Cuban 
> intelligence officers would translate the
> numbers into Spanish 
> language text.
> 
> She often sent information back by using pay
> phones in Northwest 
> Washington and in Bethesda, to transmit similar
> encoded information to 
> an electronic pager number. She paid for the
> long-distance calls by 
> using a pre-paid calling card, preventing the
> numbers she dialed from 
> appearing on an itemized bill.
> 
> "This was a classic case of espionage and
> counter-espionage," said Van 
> A. Harp, director of the FBI's Washington field
> office.
> 
> 
> 
>
*==============================================================*
> "Communications without intelligence is noise; 
> Intelligence
> without communications is irrelevant." Gen
> Alfred. M. Gray, USMC
>
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=====
"God hath spoken to a fish, but never to a beast."
             --- Izaak Walton, "The Compleat Angler."

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