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Read the extensive feature article on Montes in April 18, 2013 issue of The Washington Post magazine
"Several years ago, I informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation of a growing suspicion that one of our own DIA employees, Ana Belen Montes, was secretly an agent of the Cuban government. The evidence at first was weak, but I worked with the FBI over several years to develop the facts and finally bring her to justice. This book is the inside story of that long and ultimately successful spy hunt." --Scott W. Carmichael
Ana Montes appeared to be a model employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Known to her coworkers as the Queen of Cuba, she was an overachiever who advanced quickly through the ranks of Latin American specialists to become the intelligence community's top analyst on Cuban affairs. But throughout her sixteen-year career at DIA, Montes was sending Castro some of America's most closely guarded secrets and at the same time helping influence what the United States thought it knew about Cuba. When she was finally arrested in September 2001, she became the most senior American intelligence official ever accused of operating as a Cuban spy from within the federal U.S. government. Unrepentant as she serves out her time in a federal prison in Texas, Montes remains the only member of the intelligence community ever convicted of espionage on behalf of the Cuban government.
This inside account of the investigation that led to her arrest has been written by Scott W. Carmichael, the DIA's senior counterintelligence investigator who persuaded the FBI to launch an investigation. Although Montes did not fit the FBI's profile of a spy and easily managed to defeat the agency's polygraph exams, Carmichael became suspicious of her activities and with the FBI over a period of several years developed a solid case against her. Here he tells the story of that long and ultimately successful spy hunt. Carmichael reveals the details of their efforts to bring her to justice, offering readers a front-row seat for the first major U.S. espionage case of the twentieth century. She was arrested less than twenty-four hours before learning details of the U.S. plan to invade Afghanistan post-September 11. Motivated by ideology not money, Montes was one of the last "true believers" of the communist era. Because her arrest came just ten days after 9/11, it went largely unnoticed by the American public. This book calls attention to the grave damage Montes inflicted on U.S. security--Carmichael even implicates her in the death of a Green Beret fighting Cuban-backed insurgents in El Salvador--and the damage she would have continued to inflict had she not been caught.
Scott W. Carmichael, the senior security and counterintelligence investigator for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), served as the lead case agent for the DIA on the Ana Montes espionage investigation. He has been investigating attempts by foreign intelligence services to penetrate DIA operations worldwide for nearly twenty years. Prior to that he was a Chinese-Mandarin linguist in the U.S. Navy and a special agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. His contributions toward the successful resolution of national security matters have earned Carmichael the DIA Civilian Expeditionary Medal and Award for Meritorious Civilian Service, the Defense Intelligence Director's Award, the Department of Defense Counterintelligence Award, and the National Intelligence Medal of Achievement, among other awards and various forms of recognition. He lives with his wife and three sons in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.
