DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: CUBAN SPIES, IN U.S., SHARE THEIR DATA WITH THE LIKES OF RUSSIA, IRAN, CHINA & OTHERS

Cuban agents in league with Iran, Russia, China: US spy-catcher

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States is likely riddled with Cuban spies who are sharing their intelligence with US foes and rivals like Iran, Russia and China, the Pentagon's top spy-catcher said Wednesday.

Scott Carmichael, the burly head of counter-intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), was the lead investigator who exposed former DIA analyst Ana Montes as a long-serving Cuban agent in 2001.

"The ease with which they recruited Ana Montes leads me to strongly believe there are others," Carmichael, who has published a book about the Montes case called "True Believer," said at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI).

The spy-hunter said he had written the book "because I wanted to heighten public awareness of the threat that continues to be posed to our national security by the Cuban intelligence operations."

He said that Cuba "shares her information ... with countries like Iran, China, Russia, other countries who have interests maybe inimical to those of the United States."

Montes is serving a 25-year jail term in Texas after being convicted of spying for Cuba over two decades. She could have faced the death penalty but reached a plea deal by agreeing to cooperate with federal investigators.

After joining the DIA, the military equivalent of the Central Intelligence Agency, in 1985, Montes rose to become the US intelligence community's "queen of Cuba" with an influential role in shaping government policy.

But Carmichael said she had already been recruited by Cuban intelligence in 1984.

She "never took a dime" from her secret bosses in Havana and was a "model employee" who for years operated with a low profile, convinced that US policy on
Fidel Castro's regime was "dead wrong."

Montes has received "scant attention" in the US media "and yet she was one of the most devastating spies of the modern era," Carmichael said.

"She came to us with the full intention of spying against us, and she spied against for us for 16 years until the date of her arrest on 21 September, 2001."

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1) Cuban agents in league with Iran, Russia, China: US spy-catcher