
Agents also wanted to identify her Cuban handler and were waiting for a face-to-face meeting between the two of them, which is why they held off arresting her for some time. Through physical and electronic surveillance and covert searches, the FBI was able to build a case against Montes. After a careful review of the facts, the FBI opened an investigation. He contacted the Bureau with his suspicions. The security officer filed the interview away until four years later, when he learned that the FBI was working to uncover an unidentified Cuban agent operating in Washington. The official interviewed her, but she admitted nothing. Her downfall began in 1996, when an astute DIA colleague-acting on a gut feeling-reported to a security official that he felt Montes might be under the influence of Cuban intelligence. After receiving instructions from the Cubans in code via short-wave radio, she’d meet with her handler and turn over the disks.ĭuring her years at DIA, security officials learned about her foreign policy views and were concerned about her access to sensitive information, but they had no reason to believe she was sharing secrets. Then, she transferred the information onto encrypted disks. Instead, she kept the details in her head and went home and typed them up on her laptop. To escape detection, Montes never removed any documents from work, electronically or in hard copy. By the time she started work there in 1985, she was a fully recruited spy. She knew she needed a job inside the intelligence community to do that, so she applied at DIA, a key producer of intelligence for the Pentagon. Soon, her opinions caught the attention of Cuban “officials” who thought she’d be sympathetic to their cause. government’s policies towards Central America.

In 1984, Montes held a clerical job at the Department of Justice in Washington. It began as a classic tale of recruitment. military information and deliberately distorting the government’s views on Cuba. Little did anyone know how much of an expert she had become and how much she was leaking classified U.S.


intelligence community for her expertise. Montes was actually the DIA’s top Cuban analyst and was known throughout the U.S. And she was soon to have access to classified information about America’s planned invasion of Afghanistan the following month. intelligence community itself-as a senior analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA.

If (slot) slot.addService(googletag.Montes, it turned out, was spying for the Cubans from inside the U.S. (function (a, d, o, r, i, c, u, p, w, m) Female Mossad Agents News and latest stories | The Jerusalem Post
