Plea deal gives her 25 years in jail

                      BY TIM JOHNSON

                      WASHINGTON - A senior U.S. intelligence analyst, Ana Belen Montes, admitted in federal court on
                      Tuesday that she was a longstanding spy for Cuba, burrowing a long and deep tunnel through the
                      ranks of the U.S. intelligence community and unmasking at least four U.S. covert agents to Havana.

                      The soft-spoken Montes accepted a plea agreement in federal court that would give her a 25-year jail
                      term.

                      ''The evidence was overwhelming,'' said her attorney, Plato Cacheris, who is a veteran broker of plea
                      agreements between accused spies and federal prosecutors.

                      Montes was arrested at her workplace at the Defense Intelligence Agency six months ago. She is the
                      highest-level spy for Cuba ever caught by U.S. officials.

                      She didn't do it for money, her attorney said.

                      ''She was motivated by a desire to help the Cuban people, and she did not -- I underline -- did not
                      receive any financial benefit,'' Cacheris said.

                      Cacheris said his client, a U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican background, offered to help Cuban intelligence
                      ``because of her belief that United States policy does not afford Cubans respect, tolerance and
                      understanding.''

                      In new revelations, the Justice Department said Montes was already working for Havana when she
                      began as a junior analyst at the DIA in 1985, suggesting that Cuban spy-masters may have directed
                      her career to the most sensitive sanctuaries of U.S. intelligence.

                      Debriefers from the DIA, the CIA and the FBI plan to glean details of her spying career as they question
                      her in coming months. Under the plea agreement, Montes must cooperate -- or face a higher jail term
                      when she is formally sentenced Sept. 24.

                      ''What the plea agreement is going to allow us to do is find out what she did, how she did it and who
                      she did it with,'' said Navy Lt. Cmdr. James E. Brooks, a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

                      Montes, 45, was so wily as a spy that her brother and sister, who work in South Florida for federal
                      investigators, had no clue she was an agent, said a U.S. official involved in the investigation, who spoke
                      on condition of anonymity.

                      ''Her sister was a translator and actually worked on a spy-ring case in Florida,'' he said.

                      Montes listened quietly as the charges against her were read in court, then told U.S. District Court
                      Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, ``Yes, those statements are true and accurate.''

                      Asked if she admitted to the crime of espionage, she replied: ``Yes.''

                      A grand jury indictment against Montes released during her hearing said that Montes first unmasked a
                      U.S. intelligence officer to Cuba in May 1994, and revealed the name of another U.S. agent in
                      September 1996. She betrayed two others in May 1997.

                      U.S. officials said none of the four was harmed.

                      The indictment said Montes communicated with the Cuban intelligence service through encrypted
                      messages and received instructions from Havana through short-wave transmissions picked up on her
                      radio, usually in numeric codes. She communicated with Cuban handlers by using public telephones and
                      leaving numeric coded messages.

                      'A search of Montes' residence after her arrest . . . revealed a list of these numeric codes, including
                      codes for 'I received message' or 'danger,' '' the Justice Department press release said.

                      Montes, who lived in a low-key but fashionable neighborhood of northwest Washington, kept her
                      communication methods with Havana ''on water soluble paper to permit its rapid destruction in
                      emergency,'' the indictment said.

                      Montes was educated at the University of Virginia and has a master's degree from Johns Hopkins
                      University.

                      ''She doesn't fit the profile,'' said the U.S. investigator. ``She wasn't flashy.''

                      She held a low-level job handling freedom of information requests at the Department of Justice from
                      1979 until 1985, where she obtained a security clearance.

                      Her recruitment may have occurred in New York City, the investigator said, where the Cuban mission to
                      the United Nations handles intelligence matters.

                      She entered the DIA as an intelligence research specialist and rose to become a senior analyst on Cuba
                      in 1992. She refused ''promotion and career advancement opportunities'' at DIA in order to keep her
                      hands on valuable intelligence on Cuba, the indictment said.

                      She traveled to Cuba at least four times while working at DIA, according to a still-secret court
                      document, and handled information deemed ''secret'' and "top secret.''

                      Her recruitment, when she was in her late 20s and still a graduate student, and her climb to senior
                      ranks of the DIA, where she helped draft a 1999 finding that Cuba no longer presents a military threat
                      to the United States, revealed the meticulous tradecraft of Cuban intelligence in directing her, experts
                      said. Still unanswered is how she could have remained undetected so long as a spy in the DIA.

                      After the arrest last year of FBI Robert Hanssen -- who gave intelligence to the Soviet Union, and
                      Russia, while running U.S. counter-intelligence operations at the bureau -- FBI investigators were
                      chagrined to learn that he had never been given a polygraph test.

                      The FBI is now seeking about $7 million from Congress to hire more polygraph test experts, and require
                      every FBI employee granted a security clearance to take one.

                      Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Montes'
                      ''traitorous act'' shows that Cuba remains a threat to U.S. citizens.

                      ''The very fact that sensitive national security information belonging to the United States was
                      compromised is an indication of Fidel Castro's continuing desire to undermine the U.S. government and
                      the security of our people,'' Graham said.