America's Improbable Cuban Spy

UPDATED: 2013 and 2020.

Few women, based on their own merits, have risen as high in the U. S. Government as Ana Belen Montes.
And none have fallen so far from such a lofty pedestal.

      Ana Belen Montes once was the shining star among the analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency with heralded credentials that included her status as the U. S. government's top expert on Cuba. In the above photo that is CIA Director George Tenet presenting Ana with one of her many governmental awards.

      This illustration, prepared for the Washington Post by Andy Potts, encapsulates the amazing saga of Ana Belen Montes -- from the well paid and highly honored heights as America's top Cuban expect to being unveiled as the infamous "Viva Fidel" spy for Cuba. She is now 56-years-old. For over a decade she has been America's most securely imprisoned female, tightly confined in the Lizzie Borden ward of a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas. Convicted of being an incredibly effective Cuban spy for 17 years, Ana will not walk out of that prison until at least July 1, 2023. In the eyes of many, she is a pariah; but to some, she is a heroine.

        Of Puerto Rican descent, Ana Montes was born on a U. S. military base in Germany 56 years ago. Her father Alberto was a highly respected army doctor. They moved often before settling on a nice estate in Towson, Maryland, outside Baltimore. Ana became an outstanding student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. On a UVA study-abroad trip to Spain Ana fell in love with an Argentinian who mocked Ana's American patriotism. He instilled her with regrets about the U. S. support for authoritarian regimes -- namely, dictatorships such as Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Somoza in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile, Mobutu in the Congo, etc. Ana got over her brief romantic fling with the Argentinian but his vivid depictions of U. S. support for brutal dictators stayed with her. In particular, she chafed over the reason the great U. S. democracy preferred brutal dictators to democracies in small or weak countries. Upon her return to the U. S., she studied what the Argentinian had said. Supporting dictators with military and financial aid, she concluded, enabled rich American business-men to share in the rape and robbery of such nations while a democratic government in those countries would have insisted on the lion's share of a nation's resources benefiting its indigenous people, not foreigners. In particular, Ana's Argentinian lover in Spain convinced her that the American CIA that was still trying to assassinate and overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba had earlier helped assassinate democratically elected leaders in nation's like the Congo and Chile to install U.S.-friendly brutal dictators Mobutu and Pinochet. The more she learned about Cuba, the more she loved it. And as she emerged as the U. S. government's Cuban expert, she had unique knowledge of what she perceived as American injustice toward the island. She didn't think Fidel Castro was perfect but believed he was a Cuban patriot who cared about poor Cubans. Thus, she was willing to forfeit her lush American life to prevent a Mafia-aligned Batista-like dictator regaining control of Cuba.

        This photo shows Ana Montes {right} at a party in Spain with her friend Ana Colon during the UVA-sponsored educational trip abroad in 1977. As it turned out, Ana's most lasting remembrance was about being vividly reminded of the U. S. support of vile dictatorships. In April of 2013 Jim Popkin wrote a long essay about Ana for the Washington Post. Ana Colon told Popkin: "Ana Belen used to explain to me the 'atrocities' the U.S.A. government used to do to other countries. She was already so torn. She did not want to be American but was." Imbued with that mindset, Ana Belen Montes, intellectually brilliant, rose quickly through the ranks to become the top United States expect on Cuba and, from that vantage point, for 17 years she was Cuba's most important spy. Ana was never paid a dime or a peso by Cuba for her services. 

       After graduating with high honors at the University of Virginia, Ana lived briefly in Puerto Rico but then enrolled in the Master's Program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. After getting her Masters, Ana began working for the U. S. government, soon embarking on a meteoric rise as an intelligence analyst and America's top Cuban expert. Still embedded with that anti-U. S. indoctrination she received in Spain during her junior year at UVA, by the time she was working for the Reagan-Bush administration Ada adamantly opposed the U. S. support of the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Soon, she had made five trips to Cuba, four on personal trips and one when she stayed at the U. S. Interests Section building in Havana. By then she was an unabashed spy for Cuba, purely a reflection of her strong political views that fervently objected to America's Cuban policy.

           This is Ana Montes in Washington in 1990. When this photo was taken she had been Cuba's top spy as well as the top U. S. Cuban expert for seven years, a dual role that would continue for another decade!

       Ana's sister Lucy Montes {above} is an agent for the FBI! Ana's last serious boyfriend, Roger Corneretto, is a senior intelligence officer for Southcom, the military installation in Florida where the initial suspicion about Ana surfaced! Eight years younger, he admits he was once smitten with Ana's intelligence and looks. In his article for the Washington Post, Jim Popkin revealed that Lucy wrote Ana a letter that said: "Why did you do what you did? Because it made you feel powerful. Yes, Ana, you wanted to feel powerful. You're no altruist, it wasn't the 'greater good' you were concerned for, it was yourself. You needed power over people. You are a coward. You betrayed your family, you betrayed all your friends. Everyone who loves you was betrayed by you. You betrayed your co-workers and your employer, and you betrayed your nation. You worked for an evil megalomaniac who shares or sells our secrets to our enemies." But Lucy Montes told Jim Popkin she will be waiting for Ana when she gets out of prison on July 1, 2023. "There's nothing acceptable about what she did," Lucy said. "On the other hand, I don't feel I can turn my back on her because she's my sister."

        As for Ana Belen Montes, except for finally getting caught, she still has no regrets about what she did. Her movements and contacts are closely confined and monitored. But Jim Popkin and the Washington Post had access to a letter Ana wrote from her Texas prison to a nephew. In the letter she said her spying for Cuba was justified "because the United States has done some terribly cruel and unfair things to Cuba." She closed that letter to her teenage nephew with this sentence: "I don't owe allegiance to the U. S. or to Cuba or to Obama or to the Castro brothers or even to God." One thing that is clear regarding Ana Belen Montes is this: She is a quintessential person of conscience although a hard person to psychoanalyze. Perhaps, indeed, she lost her moral compass but for over a decade now, despite her harsh sentence, not once has she expressed any regret for what she did. Still available on many Websites is the heartfelt statement she very calmly read in the federal courtroom on October 15, 2002 right after she received, with no hope of a pardon, a 25-year prison sentence. Here is that statement word-for-word in its entirety:
         "An Italian proverb perhaps best describes the fundamental truth I believe in: 'All the world is one country.' In such a 'world country,' the principle of loving one's neighbor as much as oneself seems, to me, to be the essential guide to harmonious relations between all of our 'nation-neighborhoods.' This principle urges tolerances and understanding for the different ways of others. It asks that we treat other nations the way we wish to be treated -- with respect and compassion. It is a principle that, tragically, I believe we have never applied to Cuba.
     "Your honor, I engaged in the activity that brought me before you because I obeyed my conscience rather than the law. I believe our government's policy towards Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly unneighborly, and I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it. We have displayed intolerance and contempt towards Cuba for most of the last four decades. We have never respected Cuba's right to make its own journey towards its own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand why we must continue to dictate how the Cubans should select their leaders, who their leaders cannot be, and what laws are appropriate in their land. Why can't we let Cuba pursue its own internal journey, as the United States has been doing for over two centuries.
       "My way of responding to our Cuba policy may have been morally wrong. Perhaps Cuba's right to exist free of political and economic coercion did not justify giving the island classified information to help it defend itself. I can only say that I did what I thought right to counter a gave injustice.
         "My greatest desire is to see amicable relations emerge between the United States and Cuba. I hope my case in some way will encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and to work with Havana in a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding. Today we see more clearly than ever that intolerance and hatred -- by individuals or governments -- spread only pain and suffering. I hope for neighborly love, a policy that recognizes that Cuba, like any nation, wants to be treated with dignity and not with contempt. Such a policy would bring our government back in harmony with the compassion and generosity of the American people. It would allow Cubans and Americans to learn from and share with each other. It would enable Cuba to drop its defensive measures and experiment more easily with changes. And it would permit the two neighbors to work together and with other nations to promote tolerance and cooperation in our one 'world-country', in our only 'world-homeland.'" 

"I can only say that I did what I thought right to counter a grave injustice."

"My greatest desire is to see amicable relations emerge between the United States and Cuba."

     There is no doubt that the U. S. support of the Mafia in Cuba during the brutal Batista dictatorship in the 1950s greatly affected Ana Belen Montes, reshaping her life and the lives of many others similar to her.

       Moreover, it is abundantly clear that, after the Cuban Revolution overthrew the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in January of 1959, Ana Belen Montes was appalled that the Batistiano-Mafioso leaders -- Fulgencio Batista, Meyer Lansky, Santo Trafficante Jr., etc., and their tons of money looted from Cuba -- fled to their waiting homes and bank accounts in South Florida and, with Miami as their new hub, immediately began horrific assaults on Cuba in an effort to recapture their lucrative criminal paradise on the nearby island. Beyond doubt, the fact that Ana Belen Montes believed the U. S. government was "morally wrong" to have supported the Batista-Mafia dictatorship -- first in Havana and then in Miami -- put Ana on an amazing trajectory or career path that found her, at one and the same time, the U. S. government's top Cuban expert and Cuba's top spy in the United States! The best Hollywood fiction writers could not have come up with that scenario! Yet, it should also be noted that Ana Belen Montes was not the first nor will she be the last beautiful, talented, and conscionable American woman who has and/or who will sacrifice their careers and/or their lives to try to correct what they earnestly deem to be America's "morally wrong" Cuban policy.

       Lisa Howard {above} died "mysteriously" on July 4th, 1965. Americans today can Google the details and decide for themselves but most keen observers believe Lisa was murdered. Why? Lisa was a Hollywood actress with four solid movies to her credit before she also starred in recurring and lucrative television Soap Opera roles. But she wanted to be a newscaster. So she quit acting and became a reporter for the then top-rated Mutual Radio Network. She was soon hired by ABC-TV where she became the first national female anchor on "The News Hour With Lisa Howard." In that capacity she came to despise America's treatment of Cuba, believing the U. S. was supporting the Miami Mafia against Cuba the way it had aided the Havana Mafia against the Cuban people. With unrelenting zealotry, Lisa Howard worked tirelessly to bring about normal relations between the U. S. and Cuba. And of all the people who have tried since 1959, Lisa Howard came the closest to achieving that goal. By November of 1963 Lisa had persuaded President John Kennedy to normalize relations with Cuba. Kennedy told his top aides that would be his top priority...once he returned to Washington from a southern trip. That trip took the President to Dallas where, on Nov. 22-1963, he was assassinated. Lisa Howard was devastated but she continued her quest to get the U. S. to normalize relations with Cuba. However, she did not trust certain elements she believed responsible for targeting not only Cuba but also Kennedy, who was blamed by the CIA and Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs disaster in April of 1961. Lisa also believed the same exile and CIA elements were aware of what Kennedy had informed his aides. And Lisa felt that elements within the Mafia, the CIA and the new Lyndon Johnson presidency were culpable in both targeting Kennedy and supporting the Mafia designs on Cuba. President Johnson himself persuaded ABC-TV to fire Lisa Howard. Then on the 4th of July in 1965 she died "mysteriously." No one has ever been charged nor was her death ever seriously investigated.

        Ronnie Moffitt {above} was a beautiful 25-year-old American patriot when she was murdered on Sept. 21st, 1976 by a car bomb within two blocks of the White House in Washington, D. C. She was working for Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, who was driving the car and also killed. They did not deserve their fate.

       The Moffitt-Letelier murders and countless others around the world were attributed to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet {above}. He had begun a long stint as Chile's dictator after a U. S. - backed coup -- attributed by history and the U. S. National Archives to Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger -- bloodily overturned the democratically elected Chilean government that Orlando Letelier had worked for. It is known that Cuban exiles -- expertly trained as bomb experts beginning in 1959 at Fort Benning, Georgia -- were often utilized by Pinochet and were involved in the Moffitt-Letelier bombing according to FBI reports.

Movies and books call Pinochet's 17-year reign of terror "The Condor Years," referring to a buzzard to depict the murderous 17-year-old of Chile's U.S.-backed dictator Pinochet.

          On October 6, 1976 -- just days after Ronnie Moffitt and Orlando Letelier were murdered by the car-bombing in Washington -- this Cuban civilian airplane, Cubana Flight 455, was blown out of the sky near the Barbados killing all 73 on board, including two dozen Cuban teenage athletes. The U. S. FBI, as indicated by the poster above, well knew that Cubans like Virgilia Paz planted the car-bomb that killed Ronnie Moffitt and Orlando Letelier within sound of the White House AND a plethora of research points to long-time Cuban exile terrorist/"freedom fighters" Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch as the masterminds of the Cubana Flight 455 bombing. Such Counter Revolutionary Cubans had ties to the U. S. government.

       It is known that Ana Belen Montes, now  a LONG-TIME federal U. S. prisoner, even as she was a top U. S.-government expert on Cuba she became appalled as she learned about U.S.-approved terrorism by Cuban extremists against totally innocent Cubans........

           such as the two dozen teenage Cuban athletes who were among the 73 murdered aboard Cubana Flight 455.

            Now isolated in her prison cell, it is known that Ana Belen Montes still thinks about those teenage athletes.

     Many Americans who have wanted Ana Belen Montes to be freed believe she was convicted at the insistence of Cuban Counter Revolutionary forces aligned with powerful Republican operatives dedicated to regaining control of Cuba as during the 1950s prior to the Cuban Revolution that ousted the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba in 1959. The Ana Belen Montes saga reminds many people of other dark edges to America's obsession with Cuba...such as the death of famed ABC-TV News Lisa Howard and even the death of famed newspaper columnist Dorothy Kilgallen.

         The lady diligently working over this Underwood typewriter is Dorothy Kilgallen. In the 1950s and 1960s she was one of the most celebrated and best known columnist/celebrities in America. She was a regular panelist on the top-rated television show "What's My Line?" She died "mysteriously" on November 8th, 1965, just a few months after Lisa Howard's "mysterious" death. Many researchers believe that they, and others like them, were murdered because they "knew too much" about delicate things such as...Cuban exiles, the CIA, and the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, just before her "mysterious" death Dorothy Kilgallen had appeared on national television flaunting a manuscript for a book that was soon to be published, a book that she said would "blow the lid" off the Kennedy assassination, etc.  When her "mysteriously dead body" was discovered in her bed, the only thing missing from the room and her luxurious apartment was...THE MANUSCRIPT. A few days later a rich New York socialite, and the only other person believed to have worked with Dorothy on the manuscript, also turned up mysteriously dead.

        Before her untimely death in 1965 Dorothy Kilgallen probably had close relationships with more famous people than anyone in America. In the photo above taken in 1960, that's Dorothy with her friend Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn herself died famously and "mysteriously" on August 5, 1962 and, many believe, it was because of her known threat to "spill the beans" about certain politicians like several Kennedy associates and certain Cuban-related mobsters like Sam Giancana and Carlos Marcello. Some respected journalists, as your research would confirm, believe that Marilyn, who was once President Kennedy's lover, had turned over to Dorothy some material that shed light on both Kennedy's assassination and Cuban-exile involvement in "significant and nefarious things," material that Dorothy Kilgallen supposedly had included, among many other things, in her manuscript that quite famously never got published. 

        In other words, "The Mafia in Havana" that the U. S. government supported in the 1950s was "A Caribbean Mob Story" that should not have been transported to Miami and Washington after the overthrow of the Batista-Mafia dictatorship in Cuba in January of 1959. In Cuba and in the U. S. the Cuban Mafia and their associates have benefited enormously, including since 1959 while trying desperately to recapture the island, which I believe will finally happen within the next five years. In the meantime, the synergy between the Mafia and the U. S. government, with Cuba caught smack dab in the middle, has devoured a lot of talented and beautiful American women including Lisa Howard, Ronnie Moffitt, Ana Belen Montes, etc.

      When the Mafia ruled Havana in the 1950s, this ad featuring "Havana Hunnies" flashing cigars and straddling an out-sized cigar enticed flocks of tourists to the island. At the moment Cuba is the only place in the world Americans cannot freely travel. But I believe, after six decades, that will change within the next five years when ads like this one will be back in vogue to herald the end of the Cuban Revolution.

Fidel Castro, the famous {some say "infamous"} anti-Mafia rebel, was a powerful young man in 1959.

He died at age 90 in 2016 but Fidel still reigns over Cuba.

          Super-Revolutionary Heroine Celia Sanchez's prophecy first uttered in 1959 amazingly and eerily turned out to be true. So permit me to repeated it:

"The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives."

        Celia, a chain-smoker, died on Jan. 11-1980; Fidel, a famous former smoke, died Oct. 25, 2016, and long after both Celia and Fidel died the Batistianos {still headquartered in the Little Havana section of Miami} have stilled not recaptured Cuba despite being...UH...powerfully supported by the most powerful and richest nation in the whole world.

**************************