U.S. intelligence worker says she spied for Cuba

? A U.S. intelligence analyst who revealed the identities of four undercover agents to Cuban officials pleaded guilty Tuesday 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.

A U.S. official familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Montes was believed to have been recruited by Cuban intelligence when she worked in the Freedom of Information office at the Justice Department, between 1979 and 1985, and was asked to seek work at an agency that would provide more useful information to Cuba.

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