Woman, 45, revealed identities of 4 undercover agents

                    By Laurie Kellman
                    The Associated Press

                    WASHINGTON -- A U.S. intelligence analyst who revealed the
                    identities of four undercover agents to Cuban officials pleaded guilty today
                    to espionage. She could spend 25 years in federal prison.

                    Ana Belen Montes, 45, was spying for Cuba from the time she started
                    work at the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1985 until her arrest on Sept.
                    21, prosecutors say.

                    By that time, she was a senior intelligence analyst and had used
                    short-wave radio and coded pager messages to give Cuba U.S. secrets
                    so sensitive they could not be fully described in court documents.

                    "Yes, those statements are true and accurate," Montes told U.S. District
                    Court Judge Ricardo Urbina after the charges were read.

                    When Urbina asked whether one reason she had agreed to plead guilty
                    was "the fact that you committed the crime," Montes replied, "Yes."

                    Roscoe Howard Jr., U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said law
                    enforcement officials did not know whether any of the information Montes
                    transmitted to Cuba was shared with other countries. However, the Sept.
                    11 attacks on New York and Washington heightened the need to "get her
                    off the streets," and influenced the timing of her arrest, he said.

                    Howard added that, to the government's knowledge, Montes received
                    only nominal payments for expenses. He would not speculate on her
                    motivation.

                    The four undercover agents whose identities she revealed, Howard said,
                    are safe.

                    Under the plea agreement, Montes would accept a sentence of 25 years
                    in prison with no possibility of parole, followed by five years of supervised
                    release. In exchange, Howard said, the government would get her full
                    cooperation in disclosing all information she may have about criminal
                    activity regarding herself or others with whom she may worked. Urbina
                    set a sentencing date for Sept. 24.

                    According to court papers, Montes communicated with the Cuban
                    Intelligence Agency through encrypted messages and received her
                    instructions over short-wave radio. The instructions were issued in
                    numerical code, which she translated into Spanish text with a computer
                    program provided by Cuba.

                    From public pay phones, she then used a prepaid calling card to send
                    coded numeric messages to a pager owned by Cuban intelligence. Those
                    messages, prosecutors said, typically were codes for "I received message"
                    or "danger."

                    The FBI secretly searched Montes' residence under a court order on May
                    25 and uncovered information about several Defense Department issues,
                    including a 1996 war games exercise conducted by the U.S. Atlantic
                    Command, authorities said.

                    One of the messages the agents found suggested that Montes disclosed
                    the upcoming arrival of a U.S. military intelligence officer in Cuba.

                    "We were waiting here for him with open arms," Cuban intelligence
                    replied.

                    Another message from her Cuban contact said of the 1996 war games
                    exercise: "Practically everything that takes place there will be of
                    intelligence value. Let's see if it deals with contingency plans and specific
                    targets in Cuba."

                    The DIA, based at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, provides
                    analyses of foreign countries' military capabilities and troop strengths for
                    Pentagon planners.

                    Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press