Ana Montes grew up in Topeka and spied on the US for Cuba. She'll get out of prison Sunday
Ana Belen Montes, who spent seven years growing up in Topeka as the daughter of a Menninger Foundation psychiatrist, doesn't regret having spied on the U.S. for Cuba, though it cost her more than 21 years of freedom.
“Prison is one of the last places I would have ever chosen to be in, but some things in life are worth going to prison for,” she wrote in a letter to a relative, said an article published in 2013 in the Washington Post.
Montes, 65, is to be released Sunday from Carswell Federal Medical Center at Fort Worth, Texas, according to the website of the federal Bureau of Prisons.
"I wish we could have kept her in there longer," CBS News was told last month by Chris Simmons, who was part of the team that gathered evidence against Montes. He has written a book, "Castro's Nemesis."
"I have never seen someone so heartless in all my life," he said.
More:If you thought the abortion debate in Kansas ended with August amendment vote, think again
Ana Montes' family lived near S.W. 29th and Gage Boulevard
Four books have been published or are set to be published about Montes, according to CBS News.
Montes was born in 1957 in West Germany, the oldest of four children of Emilia and Alberto Montes. Her father was short-tempered and beat his children with a belt, according to the Washington Post.
That abuse motivated Montes to rebel against authority and made her a potential recruit for Cuban intelligence, federal Department of Defense officials said.
The Montes family spent most of the 1960s in Topeka, where it lived in a house that was later torn down to make way for the construction of the Walgreen's store at the northwest corner of S.W. 29th and Gage Boulevard.
Montes' family subsequently moved to Maryland. Two of her siblings became FBI agents.
Ana Montes became known as 'Queen of Cuba'
Montes spoke openly against the U.S. government's policies toward Central America in 1984 as she held a clerical job at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., according to the FBI website.
Her opinions caught the attention of Cuban intelligence officials, who successfully recruited her to spy for them.
The Defense Intelligence Agency hired Montes the following year to work in the Pentagon. She moved up through the ranks, earned top-secret security clearance and was named the DIA's top analyst for matters involving Cuba.
Her co-workers knew Montes as the “Queen of Cuba" for the wealth of knowledge she possessed about that island nation.
More:The 2023 Kansas legislative session kicks off Jan. 9. Here's what you need to know.
Ana Montes' spying thought to have helped cause death of Green Beret
Meanwhile, Montes was committing acts of treason, memorizing classified U.S. secrets on the job, typing them into a laptop computer in the evenings at her apartment, storing them in coded form on discs and passing the discs to the Cubans.
Montes accepted no pay, except reimbursement for some expenses, the FBI website said.
Cuba shared the secrets Montes provided with adversaries of the U.S., according to CBS News.
It said she "burned" about 450 U.S. operatives, undermined U.S. operations in Central America, distorted the U.S. government's views on Cuba and leaked U.S. military information suspected of helping bring about the 1987 death of Sgt. Gregory Fronius, a U.S. Green Beret killed by guerilla mortar fire at a government garrison in El Salvador.
FBI tip led to Ana Montes' arrest
The DIA learned in 2000 that the FBI had gotten a tip that an unspecified government employee was passing secrets to the Cubans. It investigated, identified Montes as a suspect and built a case against her.
Montes was arrested in September 2001, 10 days after the 911 bombings, amid concerns she might receive and share information that could hinder the impending war in Afghanistan.
The prosecution of Montes received limited media attention, at a time when news reports were focusing on the aftermath of 911. CNN called her "the most damaging spy you never heard of."
Montes potentially faced the death penalty but agreed to a deal that called for her to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage in exchange for receiving a 25-year sentence, which has been shortened for good behavior.
Montes told the sentencing judge she had a moral obligation to help Cubans defend themselves from efforts by the U.S. to impose its values and political system upon them.
More:What Kansas schools can learn from Dodge City USD 443’s post-secondary success efforts
Ana Montes' fellow prisoners were Lisa Montgomery, 'Squeaky' Fromme
Montes' fellow inmates at Carswell Federal Medical Center have included Lisa Montgomery, of Melvern, who was executed by lethal injection in January 2021 after strangling to death expectant mother Bobbie Jo Stinnett and cutting her unborn baby from her stomach in December 2004 at Stinnett's home at Skidmore in northwest Missouri.
Montgomery abducted the child, who survived, and tried to pass her off as her own until Montgomery was arrested and the child was rescued.
Another Carswell inmate was Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a former member of Charles Manson's cult, who went to prison for trying unsuccessfully to assassinate President Gerald Ford in 1975.
Fromme, now 74, was released on parole from Carswell in 2009.
Allison Fluke-Ekren and John T. Booker other traitors with Topeka ties
Montes is among three U.S. citizens sentenced to long federal prison terms after spending some of their formative years in Topeka, then turning against their country. The others are Allison Fluke-Ekren and John T. Booker.
Fluke-Ekren, 43, is an inmate at Carswell Federal Medical Center, according to the website of the Bureau of Prisons.
She was a student between 1992 and 1997 at Topeka Collegiate School, then attended Topeka High School. Fluke-Ekren went by her maiden name of Allison Brooks in those days.
Fluke-Ekren became increasingly anti-American, moving in 2008 to Egypt, in 2011 to Libya and in about 2012 to Syria, where prosecutors said she led an all-female group of ISIS fighters and plotted bomb attacks to be carried out in the U.S.
Fluke-Ekren was captured last year, brought back to the U.S. and sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization.
More:Shawnee County has closed its free public recycling sites, due largely to illegal dumping
John T. Booker sought to carry out suicide bombing at Fort Riley
Booker, 28, is an inmate at Oxford Correctional Institution in Oxford, Wisconsin, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Booker graduated in 2012 from Topeka West High School, after which his mindset regarding Islam became increasingly radical and militant.
Booker shared his plans to carry out a suicide bombing at Fort Riley with two men whom he thought were accomplices, but turned out to be FBI informants.
Booker was arrested in April 2015 near the fort when he tried to set off a simulated improved explosive device, which turned out to be inert.
Facing a potential sentence of life in prison, Booker accepted an agreement that called for him to receive a 30-year sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to one count each of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and attempted destruction of government property by fire or explosion.
Before his arrest, Booker shared information about his plot with Alexander Blair, a developmentally disabled convert to Islam. Blair loaned him money to rent a storage unit, where Booker expected the bomb to be created, in Topeka.
Blair accepted a plea agreement that called for him to receive a 15-month federal prison sentence in exchange for pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy. He was released Dec. 26, 2017, according to the bureau of prisons.
Contact Tim Hrenchir at threnchir@gannett.com or 785-213-5934.
This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: 'Queen of Cuba' Ana Montes spied on US; former Topekan to leave prison
