Cuban Numbers Stations and Spies

Ana Belen Montes receiving
CIA Intelligence Award

The August edition of Spycast has an interview with Scott Carmichael, the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) counterintelligence official who investigated the Ana Belen Montes case. Montes, the senior Cuba analyst at the DIA, was arrested in 2001 and charged with committing espionage for Cuba.

The federal prosecutors stated that she communicated with the Cuban Intelligence Service through encrypted messages and received her instructions through shortwave encrypted transmissions from Cuba. This case reminds me again at the famous numbers stations, and more specific at the Cuban "Attencion" station.

This case, just as the "Spy With No Name" case I wrote about last month, once again confirms that numbers stations are indeed spy stations. The messages on these numbers stations are believed to be encrypted with the absolutely secure one-time pad.

See also my Cuban Agent Communications (pdf) about the implementation flaws by Cuben Intelligence and its agents, about Ana Montes, Carlos Alvarez and his wife Elsa Alvarez, Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber. Crypto Museum also covers the Ana Belen Montes case and the radio equipment she used to receive the Cuban numbers station messages.

 

Update: Ana Belen Montes, sentenced to 25 years in prison, was released on January 6, 2023 after serving 20 years in prison. In 2002 she had pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate on a full debriefing of her spying activities, to reduce her sentence and avoid a possible death sentence. Spycast interviewed Jim Popkin on his book about Montes.

SPYCAST - Code Name Blue Wren: Cuban Spy Ana Montes is an interview with Jim Popkin about his book on the most damaging female spy in the United States. More about Popkin's book at  Goodreads.

Declassified Spy Stories - Cuba: Traitor on the Inside

 

Documentary with several of Ana Montes' colleagues interviewed.

 

The Two Faces of Ana: Model Employee/Cuban Spy