This has been a month of coincidences in this blog with overlap of stories new and stories forgotten. I've been listening to a recorded book in the car by Malcolm Gladwell called "Listening to Strangers", the theme of which is "How do we know when someone is not telling the truth?" One of the examples is spy Ana Montes who rose in the ranks of the Defense Intelligence Agency and all the time was spying for Fidel Castro. How does she connect with Castro, Track and Field, and an NCAA champion?
First let's learn that in addition to playing 'besbol', Fidel had been a runner in high school.
Next let's look briefly at Anna Montes:
First she had worked for the CIA and and the Defense Intelligence Agency and for most of her career with those organizations she was also working for Cuban intelligence. She even met Castro in Cuba while on sabbatical and received an award from him. This is recounted in Gladwell's book along with some other liars and deceivers like Bernie Madoff, Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar.
Well when Anna was finally caught out, she got a 25 year sentence for espionage.
Here are some pictures of Ana at various stages of her career.
Ana Belen Montes a Free Woman after 20+ Years
One of the highest-ranking US officials ever proven to have spied for Cuba has been released from prison early after spending more than two decades behind bars.
Ana Belén Montes pleaded guilty in 2002 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 the identities of some US spies, to Havana. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison at the age of 45.
Montes, now 65, was released on Friday, the US bureau of prisons said.
A US citizen of Puerto Rican descent, Montes began working for the DIA in 1985 and rapidly climbed its ranks to become the agency’s top Cuba analyst
Prosecutors said during this time Montes received coded messages from Havana over a short-wave radio as strings of numbers, which she would type onto a decryption-equipped laptop to translate to text.
Montes was arrested on 21 September 2001, shortly before the United States invaded Afghanistan. Her lawyer, a leading espionage specialist, said she had cooperated without reservation.
She was accused of supplying the identity of four US spies to Cuba, as well as other classified information.
Montes was arrested on 21 September 2001, shortly before the United States invaded Afghanistan. Her lawyer, a leading espionage specialist, said she had cooperated without reservation. At her sentencing a year later, Montes argued that she had obeyed her conscience and that US policy to Cuba was cruel and unfair. “I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it,” she said.
Ricardo Urbina, the sentencing judge, ruled she put fellow US citizens and the “nation as a whole” at risk.
On her release from prison, Urbina had ordered Montes should be placed under supervision for five years, with her internet access monitored and a ban from working for governments and contacting foreign agents without permission.
Under the president, Joe Biden, the United States has eased some sanctions on Cuba but maintained its cold war-era embargo on the island and stepped up restrictions on illegal migrants, arriving in record levels amid raging inflation and medicine shortages.
You guessed it, the judge in Ana's case, Ricardo Urbina back in his undergrad years at Georgetown was a very good runner, with an NCAA indoor championship under his belt.
Judge Ricardo Urbina, ret'd.
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