In the captivating saga of U.S.-Cuban history from Columbus to Castro and beyond, the name Ana Belen Montes looms large in the most massive pantheon of intrigues and misunderstandings. {The above graphic is from the Washington Post and Andy Potts}.
Today -- December 23rd-2022, two days before Christmas -- the Top Cuban Headline in the United States comes from the Miami Herald and it is, not surprisingly, another blistering and scathing assault on...Ana Belen Montes.
This is the scathing denunciation of Ana Belen Montes today -- Dec. 23rd-2022 -- headlined by the Miami Herald. Powerful Cubans in Miami, of course, are alarmed that Ana Belen Montes is about to be freed after spending the last two decades in a U. S. federal prison.
The above 3 paragraphs show how the Miami Herald today begins to explain the latest news in the Ana Belen Montes saga: "Cuba's top spy in the United States will be freed from prison on Jan. 8 after serving just 20 years in a federal prison in Texas. She is said to be coming to Miami.........!!!!"
Of course, there have always been many people who believe that Ana Belen Montes should never have served the last 20 years in a United States federal prison.
A graduate of the University of Virginia and Johns Hopkins University, Ana Belen Montes quickly zoomed up in the higher echelons of the U. S. Defense Department as the USA's top expert regarding Cuba.
As the U. S. government's top expert regarding Cuba, Ana Belen Montes won numerous citations and awards from the CIA and the Defense Department.
But on 09-21-2001, as shown above, Ana Belen Montes was arrested by the FBI and charged with being the most notorious Cuban spy in the history of the United States. She, of course, was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in a federal U. S. prison. On the day she was sentenced Ana Belen Montes famously stated that she would never regret having done what she did to help innocent Cubans in Cuba from being brutalized by the United States. Twenty years later...as she is about to be released from prison...Ana Belen Montes will say the same thing.
At her trial it is still important to know exactly what Ana Belen Montes told the judge right after she was sentenced. That aspect of her life is not often reported but, as quoted below by Elio Delgado Legon, you can read correctly every word of her statement. As you see below, she started by saying: "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 toward 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." That was the first paragraph of her statement and the other six paragraphs of what she read and said to the judge is also correctly listed below.
"I hope for a U. S. policy that is based instead on neighborly love, a policy that recognizes that Cuba, like any nation, wants to be treated with dignity and not with contempt." As you can see in the third paragraph from the bottom above, the above quotation and sentence in pink was included in the long speech Ana Belen Montes made before the judge right after he sentenced her to 25 years in a federal U. S. prison.
Born on February 28th, 1957, Ana Belen Montes rose to become the top U. S. Cuban expert for the Defense Intelligence Agency and at the job for 17 years she was convicted in 2001 as being a Cuban spy. But even her accusers acknowledge she didn't do it for money {Cuba did not pay her} but to assuage her "conscious" for what she considered to be an egregious Cuban policy by the United States that she told the judge is "cruel and unfair." And for that belief, she has spent the past twenty years in a federal prison in Texas. It remains to be seen what she will do after she is released on January 8th, 2023.
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