Ana Montes Pt. 1 | The Queen of Cuba, America's Most Damaging Female Spy

Ways to support the podcast:Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ https://bmc.link/philipthompsonDonate via PayPal: 💸 paypal.me/PhilipT284On the morning of Friday, 21 September 2001, Ana Montes began her day with her usual routine. She arrived punctually at her sixth-floor cubicle preparing for another day working as an intelligence analyst for the US Defence Intelligence Agency. For nearly seventeen years she had served as its foremost expert on Cuba. She had access to some of her country’s most sensitive secrets and with her brilliant mind, she helped shape U.S. policy toward Cuba during the tumultuous period of the 1980s and 1990s Cold War.She had, however, been living a double life. Behind her carefully cultivated image of the dedicated civil servant lay a woman harboring a profound ideological commitment to the Castro regime - and a talent for deception that would evade detection through three presidential administrations. By day, she drafted intelligence reports that shaped U.S. policy; by night, she meticulously typed classified secrets from memory onto encrypted floppy disks that she passed to her Cuban handlers in Washington's Chinese restaurants. But finally, her duplicity had caught up with her, and her day was about to take a dramatic turn.The phone on her desk rang. It was her boss, asking her to see him in the Inspector General's office. Not sensing anything out of the ordinary, she made her way to the elevator which she took one floor up. When she entered the meeting room, she immediately froze. She was greeted by FBI Special Agents, and she knew exactly why they were there.This is the story of Ana Montes, the so-called “Queen of Cuba”, and one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history.Further reading (affialiate links):📕 Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent's Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years - Peter J. Lapp: https://amzn.to/4j2d1Vq📕 True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy - Scott Carmichael: https://amzn.to/43r64IF📕 Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy—and the Sister She Betrayed - Jim Popkin: https://amzn.to/42VItQl#philipthompson #truelifespystories #queenofcuba