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U.S. ‘Mole Hunter' Warns of Cuban Spy Danger Paul Crespo MIAMI -– Fidel Castro's intelligence services still pose a significant threat to the United States. That is the message Scott Carmichael, a Special Agent and counter-intelligence specialist with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) told a packed house of reporters and citizens last weekend. The press conference was hosted by Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and her colleagues, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., and Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Fla. Carmichael was the DIA "Mole Hunter" responsible for investigating and capturing Ana Belen Montes, the senior Cuba analyst at DIA who became the nation's highest ranking Castro spy ever uncovered in the U.S. Carmichael's newly published book, "True Believer," chronicles his five-year counter-intelligence investigation and analyzes the impact Ana Belen Montes had on U.S. national security. According to intelligence officials, Ms. Montes, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, caused incalculable damage to our Latin American intelligence networks. She was arrested shortly after Sept. 11th, 2001 because investigators feared she would provide Castro the U.S. war plans against the Taliban and al-Qaida, which Castro would then forward to them. Unfortunately, Montes became the "forgotten spy" because her arrest was overshadowed by all the reporting in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Carmichael argues that she may have caused more damage than CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames and the FBI's only mole, Robert Hansen. Due to her senior position she was able to compromise sources and methods, including spy networks and technical collection means, allowing Havana to mount effective counterintelligence operations for years. When asked about Montes' motivations, Carmichael sounded like Dr. Phil or Freud emphasizing childhood traumas caused by what she considered a bullying father. Montes, the eldest of several children was unable to protect her siblings from her father's perceived abuse, and felt a need to protect the weak against bullies. Initially she saw Nicaragua under the Sandinistas as the weak country being bullied by the U.S. When the Sandinistas lost power in the elections of 1990, she transferred her protector role to Castro's Cuba. Of course, Montes never saw that the real bullies were the dictatorial regimes in these countries that repressed their own people. Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart noted that we often cover Cuba "like normal countries such as Costa Rica, Panama or France, and that's a big mistake."
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The unrepentant Montes is serving a 25 year prison sentence brokered with U.S. attorneys because she agreed to cooperate with investigators. Carmichael, who remains on duty at DIA, may be the only government "Spy Catcher" to ever write a book while on the job. Using his extensive files and notes on the Montes case as his research, he told NewsMax he was able to write "True Believer" in a matter of weeks. Asked why he wrote the book, which was cleared by DIA, he added that the Castro intelligence threat has consistently been down played or ignored. He wanted to expose and disseminate the dangers posed by Cuba's intelligence services. Part of this downplaying may have been the product of Montes's active disinformation campaign during her 16 years at DIA. In 1998 she helped write the threat assessment which concluded that Cuba did not pose a serious military threat to the U.S. William Cohen., the Defense Secretary at the time, found the assessment so mild, that in his transmittal letter accompanying the report, he added: "While the assessment notes that the direct conventional threat by the Cuban military has decreased, I remain concerned about the use of Cuba as a base for intelligence activities directed against the United States." Cohen also expressed concern about Cuba's asymmetrical warfare threat, including the potential to develop and produce biological agents. Carmichael concurred, emphasizing that while "Cuban amphibious forces may not be landing on Miami Beach anytime soon, the Cuban intelligence threat is serious." Just how serious is what legislators hosting the event want to know. True Believer prompted these lawmakers to call for the Defense Department to reveal more on the damage done by a spy who, among other serious damage, may have caused the death of a U.S. green beret in El Salvador in 1987.
"Our questions are simple," they said in a joint statement. "How many reports did Montes write? How much influence did she have on the final reports the policymakers read? The persons she met with? What was the extent of her spying?" They also are asking for information on Castro's role in the 1996 shoot down of an unarmed civilian plane in international waters off Cuba's northern coast. That premeditated act murdered three U.S. citizens and one U.S. resident. Unfortunately, Montes has been regarded as the exception, not the rule, by many counter-intelligence officials. But Carmichael believes that other Cuban agents remain inside our government, and he believes the level of penetration may be devastating. He asserts that the Cuban intelligence services have penetrated the United States government as thoroughly as the old East German intelligence service, the Stasi, once penetrated the West German government during the Cold War. Let's hope Carmichael and other Mole Hunters can hunt them down before they give away any more secrets to Cuba and other rogue regimes threatening the U.S.
Editor's note:
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