Convicted spy Ana Belen Montes, a key figure in the Cuban Wasp Network, is scheduled for early release from prison on Jan. 8, 2023. She began her career in the U.S. Justice Department, where she was an outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Latin America. It was at Justice that she was recruited as a spy. Her career then led her to become the premier Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), where she also assisted in directing U.S. policy towards Latin America. Convicted in 2002, she was sentenced to 25 years and theoretically should remain imprisoned until 2027.
As part of a network of spies, she not only funneled Fidel Castro’s input into U.S. foreign policy; she also appears responsible for outing 450 operatives. The information she provided may have led to the death of Green Beret Sgt. Gregory A. Fronius in El Salvador, according to her critics. Others also link her activities to the killing of four volunteer pilots, gunned down in international waters over the Straits of Florida in February 1996. At the time, they were flying humanitarian aircraft with Brothers to the Rescue, a group seeking to save Cuban raft refugees adrift on the high seas.
The DIA investigator who helped uncover the ring, Chris Simmons, said to Hank Tester of CBS Miami, “I have never seen someone so heartless in my life.”
That is not the way Montes saw her role. In her statement before sentencing, she said:
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 tolerance 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.
Does her defense sound that much different from the open-borders activists currently running the U.S. Department of Homeland Security or the legion of radical actors in both the Biden administration and the permanent federal bureaucracy?
U.S. Communist groups and a radical Puerto Rican group have lobbied for years for her release, calling her a prisoner of conscience. They claim her living conditions in federal prison were harsh. Perhaps they should speak to the man who spent four years in a Cuban prison cell with no windows and no light. A nail from his shoe, scrapped on the wall, was his only source of light during those years. These are not nice people.
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As a traitor, Montes passed every lie-detector test. So much for the accuracy of the “sweat machines.” And rather than removing documents, she memorized them and later retyped them and passed the information on to Havana.
Even today, there are an estimated 300 Cuban spies operating in the United States. “The Wasp Network was the largest foreign spy network to operate in the United States, and Montes was one of Havana’s top ten assets,” said Simmons. He is not happy with her early release.
But given the current makeup of the federal government, it is unlikely anyone will put the brakes on it. And while she may no longer qualify to be rehired by the U.S. government, unless she has truly reformed her ways in prison, there may be many activist groups in the U.S. more than willing to embrace her and her policies with open arms.
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