Ana Belén Montes, a former senior Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, was released from prison Friday after more than 20 years behind bars in a federal prison in Texas.
Montes, 65, was released early after pleading guilty to conspiring to commit espionage as part of a plea deal in 2002.
He admitted that he revealed to Havana the identities of four US agents undercover in Cuba, as well as other classified information, including US surveillance of Cuban weapons.
Montes, an American, is believed to have been hired by Havana while working at the Justice Department’s Freedom of Information Office, where she started in 1979 and sought work at DIA to be in a better position to share secrets.
Ana Belén Montes with the former director of the CIA, George Tenet.
(US Department of Defense/Handout via REUTERS)
Havana sent Montes coded messages while working as a Cuba analyst beginning in 1985 that he translated into an encoder.
She was arrested in 2001 and could have been sentenced to death if convicted at trial. The officers whose identities she revealed were not harmed, prosecutors said.
“I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself against our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it,” Montes said in her defense at the time.
The judge said he had put the United States “as a whole” at risk.
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Upon his release, Montes faces five years of supervision, including monitoring of his Internet activity. He is also prohibited from working in the government unless special permission is granted.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
