{"id":85556,"date":"2024-02-27T15:03:08","date_gmt":"2024-02-27T04:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=85556"},"modified":"2024-02-27T15:03:08","modified_gmt":"2024-02-27T04:03:08","slug":"last-of-the-true-believers-or-harbinger-ana-montes-and-the-future-of-espionage-against-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/last-of-the-true-believers-or-harbinger-ana-montes-and-the-future-of-espionage-against-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"Last of the \u2018true believers\u2019 or harbinger? Ana Montes and the future of espionage against the West"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Ana Montes<\/a> was US Intelligence\u2019s \u2018Queen of Cuba\u2019<\/a>. The Defence Intelligence Agency\u2019s leading Central America analyst; go-to voice on Cuban intentions and capabilities; eldest daughter of a family dedicated to US Government service<\/a>. She was also a Cuban spy her entire professional life, until arrested 10 days after the 9\/11 terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n

Now, after almost 21 years in prison, Montes resides in Puerto Rico<\/a>, an unrepentant critic of US policy towards Cuba.<\/p>\n

Montes represents an apparently extraordinary case of espionage. She is a Hispanic woman, recruited at university, while most spies have been white, middle-aged, middle-career men. As an agent, she not only stole secrets but shaped assessments and influenced policy in an adversary\u2019s interests\u2014and then there\u2019s the sheer audacity of penetrating the heart of US military intelligence. But she was also a \u2019True Believer\u2019<\/a> \u2013motivated not by material rewards but by commitment to Castro\u2019s revolution and opposition to US policy in Latin America. In her words:<\/p>\n

\u2018I felt morally obligated to help [Cuba] defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.\u2019<\/p>\n

She was the \u2018I\u2019 in the traditional schema of espionage motivations: MICE<\/a> (Money, Ideology, Coercion\/Compromise, Ego). Acknowledging that espionage cases are rarely singular in character and Montes\u2019 ideology was buttressed by psychological issues around her early (and on her account, abusive) family life.<\/p>\n

Montes might therefore be regarded as a throwback to ideologically-motivated spies of the interwar years and early Cold War\u2014the \u2018Cambridge Five\u2019, George Blake, Karl Fuchs, the Goldbergs, etc. This espionage threat was meant to have been killed off by the atrocities and contradictions of communist reality; swept away by purges and by 1956 in Budapest (and Krushchev\u2019s repudiation of Stalinism), 1968 in Prague and finally in 1989. Isn\u2019t spying now a function only of the venal and disturbed? By grubby malcontents like Hanssen<\/a>, Ames<\/a>, Walker<\/a> and Nicholson<\/a>? Surely by the 1990s neoliberalism and the dollar\u2019s pursuit had triumphed in the treason market as much as in attitudes to state ownership or to international financial transactions and currency conversion?<\/p>\n

Of course, this is too narrow a perspective. Ideologically motivated spies continued to operate in Western Europe late into the Cold War. Norwegian diplomat and rising star of left-wing politics Arne Treholt<\/a> was arrested in 1984 and convicted of spying for the Soviets and Iraqis. Furthermore, while appropriate categorisation of self-directed insider threats like Edward Snowden is problematic in a traditional counter-espionage context, their motivations are often (including in Snowden\u2019s case) at least partially ideological.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, might the Cuba-US dynamic be too unique a circumstance, stuck in Cold War aspic? Cuban recruited spies inside the US have typically been ideologically committed: eg Carlos Alvarez<\/a>, Walter and Gwendolyn Myers<\/a>, plus former US Ambassador to Bolivia Manuel Rocha,<\/a> currently awaiting trial. After all, Cuba has always existed simultaneously within and without the Cold War paradigm\u2014as much about more 21st<\/sup> century notions of power, privilege, race and hegemony, than about control of the means of production.<\/p>\n

More provocatively, the Montes case is a reminder of a challenge we\u2019d rather not contemplate\u2014given its implications. Western liberalism\u2019s triumph at the \u2018end of history\u2019 is looking threadbare in 2024 but it\u2019s the CIA<\/a> and MI6<\/a> who are appealing to men and women of principle inside Russia to work clandestinely against Putin. It\u2019s a former ASIS Director-General<\/a> who stated publicly and optimistically that \u2018\u2026 closed societies run the risk of a greater number of individuals willing to betray the secrets of their country, because they are not happy, they don\u2019t get a voice\u2019. The idea of the reverse: an American, a Briton, an Australian betraying their country on principle seems discordant.<\/p>\n

We should not be so complacent. Yes, psychological disturbance, ego and money characterise those few instances of espionage against Australia in the last 45 years (ie Peacock<\/a>, Wispelaare<\/a> and Lappas<\/a>). But ideology\u2019s not alien. In the 1940s and 1950s some Australians were indeed motivated to do just this in assistance to the Soviet Union, a brutal dictatorship and obviously bloody ideology. Now, think about the weird realignments of ideology occurring today. The melding together of domestic and international politics. The \u2018horseshoe theory\u2019<\/a> of convergence between left and right extremes. Circumstances in which the aforementioned Treholt was an advocate for Putin\u2019s Russia<\/a> before he died.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the question as to what degree Australia should be concerned about insider threat motivations is now pertinent. We\u2019re currently seeing wide-ranging reforms in how the Australian Government manages personnel security and combats insider threats\u2014including through a more central role for ASIO<\/a>. National security agencies are needing to transform<\/a> to meet operational requirements and industrial realities: contemplating and implementing multiclassification workspaces and workforces; rapidly growing staff numbers; embracing greater openness and leveraging relationships beyond traditional security frameworks. All this is happening amidst accelerating strategic circumstances faced by Australia\u2014and our resulting attraction as an espionage target\u2014and changes amongst some younger people in attitudes to traditionally intrusive security clearance processes and maintenance regimes.<\/p>\n

The implications can be profound. Leaving aside direct effects, ideological spying invariably causes\u2014contrary often to na\u00efve intentions\u2014collateral damage. Montes spied for Cuba for reasons specific to US policy in Latin America. She still ended up likely betraying sensitive (and expensive) US intelligence sources and methods to the Soviets (and latter-day Russians), via her Cuban handlers.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s for these reasons that further research on evolving motivations for espionage, associated insider threat consequences for Australia, and effective mitigations is a future priority for ASPI\u2019s Statecraft & Intelligence Centre<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Questions that such research will seek to answer include:<\/span><\/p>\n