Inside the double lifetime for spy ana montes, ‘the queen of Cuba’

Reliable, punctual and a sticker for details, Ann Montes seemed like a model employee.

As a senior analyst with the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from 1985 to 2001, specialized in Cuba, Montes acquired so much expertise about the country that she became known in the intelligence community as “the queen of Cuba.”

Montes was dedicated to his job and led a seemingly silent life, drove every morning in his Toyota to joint base Anacostia-Bolling on the Potomac River and returned every night to his stylish apartment with two bedrooms in northwestern Washington, DC

But she hid something. Unaware of their colleagues and her employer, three nights a week Montes drew a shortwave radio from a wardrobe in his apartment and received encrypted instructions from the Cuban intelligence service, according to FBI.

After secret orders, she memorized every day three key -classified information from the United States, told former FBI agent Peter Lapp, who helped arrest Montes, told 60 minutes.

Back in her apartment at night “she would write them up or write them up and then every two or three weeks, she would meet personally at lunch, wide daylight, two to three hours,” said Lapp, author of 2023 Bestselling Book, Queen of Cuba, an FBI agent’s insider account for the spy avoided discovery for 17 years.

Her double life as Cuba’s top spy ended September 21, 2001, ten days after the terrorist attacks on September 11, when the FBI arrested Montes, then 44, and another American citizen, after a year -long investigation.

Although her arrest had nothing to do with the terrible events on 9/11, it had “everything to do with protecting the country at a time when national security was of the utmost importance,” FBI said.

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Her arrest came shortly before she would have been able to access classified details about the US planned invasion of Afghanistan, according to the FBI.

Sentenced in 2002 after invoking herself guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, she was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. Released in 2023 she moved to Puerto Rico.

Become a spy

In addition to being replaced for expenses, Montes did not accept any money to share classified information with Cuba, says FBI.

Monte’s motivation for spy was “pure ideology”, according to the FBI.

During his time at the research school at Johns Hopkins University, Montes became known for being pronounced against US policy in Central America, Lapp said.

In 1984, while working on a clerk job at the Ministry of Justice, Montes was recruited by Cuban “officials” who thought she would be “sympathetic against their cause” to gather information for Cuba, according to FBI.

Strategically, she applied for a job at Dia, which gathered intelligence for Pentagon. “When she started working there in 1985, she was a completely recruited spy,” according to the FBI.

A country – and family – betrayed

Montes year’s espionage had destructive consequences, experts say.

“Intelligence officials call her one of the most harmful spy in American history,” Jim Popkin, author of the book Code Name Blue Wren: The true story of US’s most dangerous female spy and sister she betrayedtold BBC.

Montes acknowledged that they revealed the identity of four US Undercover intelligence officials working in Cuba, according to the FBI.

Montes also told his managers about a “Super Secretive Stealth-satellite operated by the US government,” Popkin said.

Ironically, her brother and sister both work for the FBI.

“Ana really not only betrayed our country and the government but the Montes family,” Lapp told NBC 6 South Florida.