The high-ranking American intelligence agent who was captured, convicted, and sentenced to 25 years in prison for spying for Cuba’s Castro dictatorship has been released early. Ana Belen Montes was released on Friday with 5 years still left on her sentence.
Ana Belen Montes, one of the highest-ranking U.S. officials ever proven to have spied for Cuba, has been released from prison early, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed Friday, after she spent more than two decades behind bars.
Montes, 65, had in 2002 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage after she was accused of using her leading position as a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) official to leak information, including identities of some U.S. spies, to Havana.
Aged 45, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Investigators say Montes’ espionage, which included revealing the names of U.S. spies to Cuban intelligence, led to the murder of an American soldier. That alone should have earned her a life sentence with no possibility of parole. But not only did Montes receive a relatively short 25-year sentence, she has been released early.
Nonetheless, the death of an American soldier in Central America is only the tip of the iceberg that is Montes’ evil doings. Her spying for an enemy nation did severe harm to U.S. national security and provided Cuba’s murderous dictatorship with a wealth of intelligence it could use itself to damage the U.S. as well as sell to other enemies of America.
Via the Center for a FREE Cuba:
It is important to recall the damage that she did to U.S. national security, and her successful campaign as an agent of influence to downplay the threat Cuba poses to the United States, and other democracies in the region.
For example the information she passed to Havana, in 1987 it is believed got 65 U.S. allied Salvadoran soldiers in Central America killed, and at least one American.
Montes regularly briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Council, and the State Department downplaying Cuban military capabilities, and providing their feedback to the Castro regime’s Intelligence Directorate (DI).
Her actions during the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown on February 24, 1996, and the influence operation she conducted to direct blame away from Castro, and onto the victims, first drew the attention of investigators.
Another example, she drafted a Pentagon report in 1997 stating Cuba had a “limited capacity” to harm the United States that Fidel Castro described as “an objective report by serious people.”
Montes managed to be selected as a team leader to analyze the effectiveness of U.S. air force bombing in Afghanistan after the September 11th attacks in 2001. Officials, rightly feared, that with Havana’s long history of selling secrets to enemies of the United States that if Montes obtained the Pentagon’s war plans for Afghanistan, that the Castro regime would pass it on to the Taliban, and this sped up her arrest.
As a traitor and an evil person who purposely sought the death of Americans, Ana Belen Montes should have never been given the opportunity to enjoy another day of her life living in freedom. Unfortunately, justice fell short.
As I’ve said, her only virtue is that she was an alien being, meaning not Cuban. And yes, she obviously got a much lighter punishment than she deserved. But, as usual, the people behind such decisions are thinking in terms of a lot of things besides actual justice–and boy does it show. Disgusting and contemptible.