This is Intelligence Matters, sponsored by Orbis. Peter Lapp is a former FBI agent who specialized in counterintelligence. Peter joins us today to talk about his new book, Queen of Cuba, an FBI agent's insider account of the spy who evaded detection for 17 years. We'll be right back with that discussion after a quick break. I'm Michael Morrell, and this is Intelligence Matters. Routed in the US Intelligence and Special Operations communities, Orbis is investing today in
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to be here, Michael. Thank you so much. So you are the author of a terrific book called Queen of Cuba, an FBI agent's insider account of the spy who evaded detection for 17 years. Peter, it's a terrific book. I couldn't put it down. I highly recommend it to my listeners. I'm really looking forward to our conversation about it. Thank you. I'm very proud of it. It's great to hear that people have enjoyed it and appreciate it. So thank you very much.
So I want to start, Peter, with three broad questions. And the first is, who is Anamontes? Anam is an American born in Germany on a military base because her father, and I think this is important, was a member of the US military as a psychologist off and on. Older, most of four children, the Montez family is a very proud family and came from a family
of public servants. That was in the military. Her mother worked in federal service. Brother Tito retired as an honorably as an FBI agent of Atlanta and her sister Lucy retired honorably as a translator in the FBI's office in Miami. The fourth sibling worked in industry as whole career. Raised very morally. All four children were raised very morally. And they grew up kind of all over the place with dad's career, but she settled in Baltimore
County outside of Baltimore, Maryland, and then went to University of Virginia. Got her degree at International Affairs. Went on to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies to get her masters. And at the time was working at the Department of Justice as a clerk. So she had a clearance and was going to work at school at night working on her master's degree in the early to mid 1980s. How did she come to work for the Cubans?
It was at Johns Hopkins that she met a woman named Marks of Alaska as they had a lot in common. Obviously both were female, both were Puerto Rican and being women in graduate school in the mid 1980s. The ratio of men to women, they naturally just kind of drifted towards each other. Marks already had a relationship with the Cuban Intelligent Service by that point in time and was working at the Department of Transportation as an attorney, but had been
recruited herself. And they got to know each other and in an academic environment, we're talking very candidly about the war in El Salvador and Nicaragua and what the United States was doing under President Reagan to support the contras in the jungles. And it was a very controversial foreign policy that was being debated in the public space at that time. And Anna had some very strong opposition to President Reagan's policy at the time. So
they just kind of natural drew to each other. Marks was in a spotting and assessing role because she didn't really have access to classified information and keeping her eyes open and walking into the door was Anamantas and fate becomes the reality in the sense that the right person met Anna at the right point in her life with the right degree of discrepancy with US foreign policy at the time. And being came almost a fateful relationship, frankly. Marty is what we at CIA call an access agent.
Correct. Second broad question, Peter. What is counterintelligence for those folks that don't have a good understanding of that? It's the counter to foreign intelligence. The CIA obviously conducts foreign intelligence overseas. The Cuban intelligence service tries to collect foreign intelligence here in the United States and the FBI with its partners tries to counter that foreign intelligence effort. We try to identify, detect, deter and disrupt the foreign intelligence activity
here in the United States. We try to identify those intelligence officers that are working through other countries and other diplomatic establishments here legally, but conducting activities that are inconsistent with their diplomatic responsibilities. I think is the nomenclature for espionage here in the United States on the diplomatic side of the thing. And primarily looking for those individuals that foreign intelligence services have recruited
within our government. That's really the core primary goal of counterintelligence. Who within our government in the United States has a dual loyalty is working for us, but really working for a foreign power, providing them classified information and harming our national security. So it's this effort to identify these folks through deterring and then deterring
and detecting them and then hopefully disrupting them. In this case with Anna, we disrupted it with an arrest, but in a lot of cases when you think about the diplomatic core and the intelligence officers, we would disrupt through a PNG, a persona non grata, kicking them out of the country if you will. And then third broad question just to kind of set the table here. You're not just the author of this book. You're not just a former
FBI agent. You played a major role in this case. So who is Peter Lap and how did he come to work at the FBI and how did he come to work on this particular case? All right. That's that's what that could be a big long question here, but I will I will I won't I won't talk about my third grade teacher. You know, I'm sure she was the one who made it to you. She inspired me to go to it. No. You know, I grew up in New Jersey
in the 80s and and had wanted to be the next John Bon Jovi. That didn't work out. No, no, I wanted to be a rock star. I didn't want, but I didn't want to put in the time and the effort to practice and I didn't I lacked that talent and striking good looks. But you do play music now, right? I do play music now. So I'm in the loud county reason. I guess you could say I'm kind of a rock star. I I went to college, you know, kind of not really
having a great solid goal. And then I met my roommate Joe who knew he wanted to be a Maryland State trooper. We were from New Jersey. I don't know why he picked Maryland for say, but but I I then said, you know, my father lost his job early on in my my freshman year. And he said to me, you ought to start thinking about ROTC and the Army because I lost
my job. And it kind of woke me up to, okay, I got I got to become I got to do that adulting thing real quick and and started looking at the Army, the National Guard, the ROTC and and went into both very quickly. But then it it inspired me to, you know, kind of be all you could be. And that was the tagline for the Army at the time. And and as I was doing that, I set my aspiration on going into law enforcement. And I knew very quickly, no disrespect to any
of my peers in the state, local and other federal agencies. I knew I wanted to go to what I felt was the best law enforcement agency in the world. And set my sights on that very quickly. Went got my master's degree was was I'd become a police officer, a local police officer had some amazing experiences, you know, got to really learn about dealing with people from all walks of life. And those those experiences helped me later on down
the road. And then about, you know, 10 years after I came up with this idea to go to the FBI, I stuck in somehow I got in through the cracks and became an FBI agent and was a was incredibly proud to be to say I was an FBI agent and still on today. Even though I retired, I retired, I'm a retired, a very proud Sam will retire at FBI agent. And how did you come to work in the case? I mean, that happened pretty early in your career,
right? Very early. It was probably two and a half years in it was it was done luck. Which is which, you know, luck played a role in this case. Sometimes it worked against us and sometimes it worked in our favor. And I write about a lot of those lucky moments in the book. Steve McCoy, my my my my my my eventual partner, he had the what we call the unsug
case, the unknown subject case. We knew that the Cubans had penetrated the US government with an agent that they referred to as either agent F or Sergio, obviously a man's name. And about two months before he and I had an interaction, the FBI had received a name from the defense intelligence agency of on a monta as a possible prime suspect. And and I knew that the case was it was really interesting and involved high frequency messages which
resonated with me because my father made me learn Morse code when I was a kid. This was not happy peak time. I was not enjoying 10 years old sitting in our basement listening, learning da da da da da da da da. I didn't aspire to this. He made me do it. And I'm I'm thankful to this day that he did because I I used that as a Hey man. I know Morse code and and I know a little bit about high frequencies that kind of sold myself to him and it meant
nothing to the case. But it was enough for me him to say, yeah, I want to listen to your parents. Yeah, yeah, you know, you should learn Spanish. You should learn a foreign language, read something because you never know. And you know, I write about it in the book. It's like the owner of dad was right. And it's it's frustrating, but rewarding at the same time. You know, it also it Peter, it also speaks to the responsibility, the early responsibility
that working in the national security community in general gives to its employees. You don't sit around, you know, waiting forever. You're put to you know, you're given a lot of responsibility right off the bat, whether it's the military CIA, FBI, what have you?
We were told at Quantico and and we thought it was kind of just cliche. You know, day one, you could have the biggest case of your career thrown on your desk and and they're not quite that specific, but within two and a half years, I was about to be the co case agent on on the most significant investigation of my life time. And there's no question about it. And Steve, you know, Steve had 25 years in in the FBI and for him, this was absolutely the
most significant case of his career. So we were just at kind of tail ends of of our careers. And but you're absolutely right. You know, day one, you could have you could have you could recruit the biggest asset agent that that that reveals things that go right to the president to use your line of work. And it's it's it's it's powerful and it's motivating and it's it's a also kind of humbling, you know, at the same time, really, when you think about it.
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So let's take a little bit deeper dive here. You mentioned, you mentioned that we learned, the US government learned that the Cubans had a spy. How did we learn that starts in 1994 with three individuals who were committing espionage against Cuba in Cuba for the US intelligence community. They when you think about it, Mike, I know you'll really appreciate this given your history. Three people committing espionage at the same
time, knowing each other's identities is really risky. Right. Really risky because of one goes down, they can bring down the other two. So so to it really is it's amazing to me that these three guys banded together to not just not just get back at the regime,
but they wanted to hurt it. And they still looking over each other's shoulders, still Cuban classified information and importantly, decryption key discs that the that the Cubans had had created to communicate to illegal officers and agents gave it to the US intelligence community in dead drops throughout Havana. And then two of the three would escape in the summer of 1994 on a I don't even call it a raft. It's really a dinghy. It had a if you think about it,
it had a seven and a half horsepower engine. I challenge your listeners to go out to their lawnmowers and see what kind of horsepower their lawnmowers have. And then think about that in a you know, dinghy motor. And then you're you're escaping Cuba on a raft and floating with this you know engine, putting air quotes around the engine that stopped working like two hours into the escape. And then they just drifted into the currents to be picked up.
So they they really provided the intelligence spark. The third guy was out of the country at the time. I believe he was in Russia and I'm doing training. He comes back and his buddies are gone. And then he's arrested about a year and a half later by the Cubans and convicted and sentence not to death, but sentenced to life. His father had been a high ranking Cuban intelligence officer
himself. And his life was spared probably because of that. And then in 2014 the Obama administration got him back as part of a spy swap where we got back Alan Gross, the USAID employee who was not a spy, but who the Cubans had arrested and accused of being a spy. And so he is safe. And all three all three of these guys really are American heroes in my mind because they begin to help us unravel the La Retavispa case in Miami with all the network, you know, September
98, the arrest that they're occur. And then obviously Anna, which leads the Marta and then Kendall Myers. And I presume I'm not 100% sure because I'm no longer 100% in the know. I believe Ambassador Rocho would be part of the spark that these three guys help us start. And then you mentioned that Peter, you mentioned that that DIA said, you know, take a look at Anna. What what what sparked their, what sparked that concern on their part?
Tom luck, Tom luck. I mean, and I don't mean that facetiously, you know, smart luck actually. We had an analyst that we were working with. So the three guys provide us the spark. And one of the things it does is it gives us decryption key that allows us to read encrypted messages, high frequency messages that start in Cuba and come that you can hear them in the United States. And we could we could read a series of messages to honors illegal officer
handler from 1996 to 1997. And it gives us even more tidbits. We so we had this grouping of tidbits, if you will, almost like a serial killer. I kind of put these in the context of a serial killer. We knew that there was someone committee as we knew a little bit about them, but but not enough to have a name. And an analyst from NSA who I've given the name of Elena gave her a student name at her request. I knew all the information, but tenacious analyst, just a hard
driving, almost a nanchi drew kind of character. And she reached out to the DIA and and found somebody who she she didn't know, but who knew enough and gave him a couple of the tidbits. And he said, you know what, this sounds like us. And in fact, this sounds like honor. But it could be other, some other, some other person. And can you give us more? And this is all going on behind, you know, frankly, behind Steve McCoy's back and behind the back of the FBI. But it's,
it's creating this lucky break that the right information got to the right people. And we were not even thinking about DIA at that point in time. And even the and not even think about the the Department of Defense. And that was, you know, not to get to in the weeds, but the Department of Defense was a potential employer for Agent S or Sergio. And you know, DOD is enormous.
You know, there's a 1.3 million uniform and 800,000 civilian employees. So how do you break down from an investigator perspective and discreetly inquire about a Nespianov subject who's unknown in an organization like the Department of Defense? It's really difficult. We are talking with former FBI agent Peter Lap. We'll be right back after a break.
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With the bipartisan team and decades of experience, Beacon provides a global perspective to help clients tackle their toughest challenges. We should probably probably mention here that that Anna did not fit the type, right? She she was a woman, most spies are men. She was a high performer, most spies aren't. That is kind of interesting in this case. And it really worked to her advantage because there's an interaction between her and DIA security in 1996. Someone
saw something that she did and it caused them pause. It's that bystandering engagement that we talk about to see something say something. And Scott, the DIA security officer had never heard the name on a mantis. She never was on his radar because she behaved. She was highly accomplished. When he gets the name and the observation, he pulls her file, her personal file and her security file. He does his due diligence and he says, wow, I don't know about this allegation
because this woman is going to be the next director of the DIA. I mean, highly accomplished. Received awards from George Tennant with the time was the deputy director of the CIA. So this is I think I think her reputation and her accomplishments almost acted as a force field around her and protected her anytime there was any kind of inkling of something going on there. And it definitely in that moment protected her from from furlors scrutiny. What was Peter? What was her trade craft?
How did she deal classified information? You talked about these high frequency messages. Is that how she shared the information with the Cubans or did she meet with them directly? How did all that work? The high frequency were one way. So it was just two on a from Cuba. So she wasn't transmitting the classified information through high frequency. I wanted to name the book. I thought about, you know, there's a long title, Queen of Cuba, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to call her the perfect spy.
And I thought long about that because, you know, she really was frankly the perfect spy with the exception of the fact that she did get caught. Most people, you know, espionage, they'll download documents, they'll take photos. She memorized. She went to work every day with the sole goal of memorizing the three most important things that she thought the Cubans needed to know. And there is no guard, gun, gate, technology that the government uses today in 2024 that will detect someone memorizing
something and walking. Everyone who works in the intelligence community remembers things when they leave and go home. And there is absolutely no way to, it's almost perfect. The methodology that she, that she removes the classified information from. She would go home and type it up on her computer. She would encrypt it. And then this is what was really mind blowing to us.
You see, you see in movies and you see in documentaries about espionage. You see dead drops, you see brush passes, you know, the interaction between the agent and the handler is, is, is brief, if at all. And on a, on a, that wasn't going to work for Anna. She needed to, to, to meet with her friend, as she called them. And she would have lunch in broad daylight in a public restaurant in Washington, DC for two or three hours on a Sunday and commit espionage in broad daylight. And would
slide the encrypted disk across the table. He would discreetly take it and then they'd have a conversation about what she just gave them again in broad daylight using cryptic, you know, not saying the CIA and the State Department of White House, but they would have, you know, fake names for them. So, but, but the, the, for us it became really interesting. This seemed like an operational security of, of bad thing, right? She's taking enormous risk. Right.
An enormous risk. But then again, okay, think about it from this perspective. You've got a Hispanic man and a Hispanic woman having lunch in Washington, DC on a Sunday afternoon. How suspicious is that? It's not right. And then, but the, but the, let's talk about the why. Anna, I think as a woman, in my opinion, needed that emotional intimacy. You know, she could not have a long-term relationship and commit espionage at the same time. She described these individuals,
not as illegal officers, not as handlers, but as friends. And I do believe that this friendship really was her primary lifeline because that guy sitting across the table from her knew more about her than her own mother and her own siblings. And, and therefore that guy knew her hopes for dreams. What, what, I mean, knew enough to, to get her arrested if he went bad. And therefore that trust, that moment of, of time really helped sustain her emotionally through 17 years of, of this dual life
that she, she decided to go into. And I, I thought I didn't really kind of look at it from that perspective until my co-author, Kelly Kennedy, really helped me frame it from the perspective of a woman. And now it makes a lot more sense. Did she have one handler or did she have multiple handlers? She had multiple handlers over the course of, I think we counted seven total over the course of, of 17 years, but they, they transitioned initially it was intelligence officers who were
at the, the Cuban mission to the UN under diplomatic cover very early on. And then as it, you know, I think they finally realized we need to go to the illegal way because on as that sensitive and then transitioned her to illegal officers who are intelligence officers, but here in the United
States illegally, not under diplomatic cover, not recognized by the US State Department as being diplomats, but really, you know, here illegally, frankly, and could be arrested for espionage, like Anna could have been, or was arrested for espionage, unlike it was a diplomat, we would just, you know, kick them out of the country and, and P and GM as we call it. Well, she polygraphed when she was hired and then routinely through her career or not.
She was only polygraph once, DIA did not have a polygraph program in 1985 when she started, and she was deathly concerned about the polygraph. It, it caused her a lot of anxiety on her, on her trip with Marta in 1985 to Cuba before, after she, she got the job, but while they were doing her background investigation and then again, think about the audacity.
I'm under a background investigation for the intelligence committee. I'm going to go to Cuba illegally and covertly while background investigators are sniffing through my life. She, she really pestered the Cubans there on that trip, knowing that one day she was going to have to take a polygraph and they, they frankly didn't have a lot of confidence in it. They were China, you know, minimized her concern and she, she really persisted and then they, they, they,
they gave her a polygraph and they said, see, you, you passed the polygraph. The polygraph really doesn't work in their, in their minds, but it wasn't until 1994 or nine years into her espionage that her number came up and it was completely random and routine and she, we only have the final report. We don't have the graphs because back in that day, they were on paper and, and hard to store, you know, thousands and thousands of, of, of graphs. But, but, you know, no deception
indicated. Now we do know that from, from Anna, she said that she used countermeasures during the polygraph and manipulated parts of her body during the control questions, which the government has now put counters to the countermeasures. I don't want to get into too much details, but she passed it as far as the report says and then what's interesting after the, after the damage assessment was done at the very end of our debriefings, she, she was polygraphed and completely bombed it.
Um, so, you know, draw your own inference about the utility of polygraphs, but, uh, she, uh, she had mixed results on, on two of her two polygraphs that she took one before her arrest and one after. Well, it's sure, you know, it's sure worked on me. Um, I actually said that I stole a quarter from my mom's purse when I was 10 years old. So, uh, it works with some people. I'm impressed I was only a quarter, only a quarter. That's what my examiner said. Do we know, do we know Peter if, if
Fidel Castro took an interest in her case, followed her case, do we have any idea? You know, that's a great question. Uh, we, we don't have any insight other than there, there's two instances. So Anna, Anna, after she's hired at DIA in 1985, she's working Elsa, but are in Nicaragua. She wasn't even working Cuba for the first seven years of her espionage, which I think is a really
under-ethicized point. It shows that the Cubans really are prolific at collecting intelligence, and I mean, let's be honest, the Cubans are not taking her intelligence and sticking it in a safe for posterity. They're sharing that. So, so they just, that's why they're so dangerous and, and such a threat because their ability to collect and, and share to other countries. And, and, you know, I think that, I think that what's, what's really interesting is she goes to Cuba again
after she's at DIA. And, and the, the, the reason for the trip was to meet with Fidel and for him to give her a medal. And, and that's significant. I mean, you're, it's one thing that, to risk going to Cuba while you're under a background investigation. Now you got the job. I'm going on vacation to Europe, but really I'm going to Cuba. That's a huge, huge risk. I don't know that Hanson ever visited Russia or Ames Franklin. So, you're talking about the, the amazing risk. And, and the, the, the,
the, she receives the medal, but it wasn't from Fidel. I don't know why. Well, to this day, it remains a mystery. And, and, and the medal must have been for something that she gave me. That was really significant. I have a theory, but I have no way of, of proving it. After her arrest, and this is, this is incredibly rare. And, and by all means, you know, a Greek, feel free to agree or disagree. When there's a rest in any country for espionage, usually the country
that, that got caught never acknowledges anything. It's a radio silence. And, and no one ever says, hey, that was a good one, you know, and you, yeah, you, well done. Yeah. Fidel came out after Anna's, I think it was after her plea agreement where she pled guilty. And he came out and he said in an interview, it's a shame that someone of Anna's moral character had to do what she did because of the United States, illegal embargo against our country. And I'm paraphrasing,
but he gave her a shout out. Yeah. And I think that was really, really significant and, and, incredibly unusual. So he definitely knew who she was. He knew about what she was providing. He almost was the, the lead case officer on a lot of cases, a lot of assets, you know, I think that was telling that, that he made public remarks about her after her. And he was playing to her
own motivation, right? And what, in terms of what he said, right? Right. Right. Yes. And then, and then someone else, another high ranking official said, you know, one day there'll be a statue in Anna's name in Havana in her honor. So, so definitely giving giving acknowledgement to her sacrifice and her, her work. A life, I don't know if it was a lifeline or a shout out, however you want to phrase it, but
certainly unusual and, yeah, notable, notable. Do we have any ideas? Another question just popped into my head. Do we have any idea whether she manipulated her analysis in an effort to change US policy or was she just providing intelligence? There's a big debate on that from those that have looked at this. And I'll tell you what she said. So she, we asked her that question during the debriefing Steve and I and she said, look, here's the deal. Of course, I have my own
perspective on things. However, you've got to realize I'm not the only analyst in the community looking at this intelligence and drawing conclusions. So if my analysis on X topic is way out, and I won't say left or right, but like way way off the reservation. And the rest of the community is looking at the same data and going, you know, you're over here and the rest of us are in this kind of shock group, if you will. She felt that would draw scrutiny to her, security scrutiny. Like,
why is she, why is she soft on Cuba and all the way over here? She felt like she had to be somewhat close to the the average of where people were with things. Now, I will say, after I wrote the first first version of the manuscript and submitted it for the Pre-Publication Review, I found new people to talk to and I had to send them a 2.0. And I talked to a guy who was a new analyst at the I.A. Younger guy who wanted to write about Cuba's interaction with
counterterrorism. And because he was young and new, he presented this topic, he was socialized with other analysts and he tried to sell it to Anna to get it published and she had the power to clash it and said, that's not right, it's not accurate, you're off, you're not, that's, I don't support that. And her boss is definitely supported her position over him. And to this day, he's really
angry about it. So I will say that it's both. I think that she, she didn't go too far off the reservation mostly, but there as she grew in terms of her problem and this, her voice definitely meant something. And I'm sure she was able to, that's not the only example I would think. But I will say that the day that she was arrested, her boss who was not, I don't believe he was in the know about the investigation, he was stunned and said, this is my best analyst,
she is my best person. And really that's the kind of reputation that she had. Okay, important question. How did you, how did you break the case? How did you reach the point where you were able to convince a US attorney to indict her? 9-11 was a huge factor in that. And the DIA, you know, deserves a tremendous amount of credit because they, not only do they, they, they helped the lucky break and get the name with, with Alaina, very patient during the
investigation. You know, I think, I think it's important to note that if the story ends with the fact that she's just identified as Sergio, no one's ever heard her name. She, she would have been fired. There was plenty of information to, and predicate the fire, her, but that doesn't solve the problem. Right? That takes care of the, the, the losses, but that doesn't really, there's a whole lot more to this. We get involved, we get, we get FISA authority, the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act authority, you know, you've seen a lot of debate about 702. This is the non-702 part of FISA. We get a FISA against her, we get the legal authority to do covert searches and listen to her phone calls and all of that. We get into her home and, and, and I, I can't understate this. The laptop computer under her bed that we found and made an image of that retained national defense information is 90% of the affidavit for her arrest and the reason she went to jail.
And she knows it. She knows that that computer was her downfall and, and frankly, that computer should have been at the bottom of the Potomac River because it had stopped, hadn't been used in three years. The information we had was, was, was, was, our case was as good as it was going to get in a Memorial Day weekend of 2001, but because we were trying to catch her in the act of committee S. B. Nage, you know, get, get her meeting with the Cuban, get her passing classified information
in the mail, we continued the case. We're trying to identify the legal officer who was handling her. 9-11 happens and DIA had lost patience to their credit and said, look, you know, she's going to be working on Afghanistan. We're all working on Afghanistan. We're done with this, you know, you've got
until they gave, I was told they gave us a deadline of September 21st and this is after 9-11. So, we, we were, we were given the deadline from Scott, you know, either arrest her or she's going to be fired and, and that prompted, you know, pre 9-11, the FBI agents weren't allowed to talk to prosecutors,
local prosecutors. Right. Now that's been asked, what out a whole lot of, I mean, we were talking to main justice in the counter-asping out of section, but we, the, it was, it was a headquarters thing. It wasn't like the street agents, you know, hey, read this. Take a look at this. What do you think this is
from a prosecutor's perspective? And, and after 9-11, the rules changed for the better. And, but 9-11 really prompted the arrest and thankfully we had enough for a conspiracy case, which is like what Ames was charged with. I mean, FBI never caught Ames in passing classified information, but we could prove to a more people we're conspiring. So, the lot of parallels to Ames in terms of the predicate for the arrests, unlike Hanson in some of the other cases. Peter, one, one more question,
where is, where is Anna today? Well, Anna, so Anna pleads guilty, you know, like Ambassador Rocha agrees to a sentence on a, at 46 years old by that point in time, agreed to 25 years. And you had to look at it from the perspective of life expectancy, you know, Anna's mom is almost 90 years old. So, if Anna lives to 45 years old, in order to get a deep briefing, which is critically important. I don't think, I don't think the American people know how important a deep
briefing is. I mean, you don't, you can do a damage assessment without the subject telling you who, what, when, where, and why. But it's not fulsome. So, the person tells you, yeah, I pass this, or I didn't pass that, and gives you that sit down, you really are not, not doing a full damage assessment, which is why I think Ambassador Rocha's plea is so good. So, so 25 years, she spends 22 and a half years in prison, get some time off for good behavior, and was released in, in January
of 2023, at the age of 67 years old, is now living in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Has a couple part time jobs is sustaining herself, and is, is notably being recognized on the streets of San Juan, and celebrated. She is, she is a celebrity. She is a, you know, very, very strong about Puerto Rican independence, which, you know, I can't frankly say I agree or disagree, it's really, it's
an issue that, you know, is legitimate. But, but, you know, many Puerto Rican separatists, in human rights groups, have celebrated her, and, and there are t-shirts for her, and there are, you know, there's a mural in San Juan for her that I have a picture of, and it's just a, part of the reason I wrote the book was because I knew that this hero worshipping was going to come, and, and I wanted to say, okay, well, there's another perspective to this, you know, let's talk about
the damage that she did. Let's talk about whether she has blood on her hands or not, or she would have if she wasn't arrested, she was going to give them information about Afghanistan, and had no problems with doing that, even though we were righteous in invading Afghanistan and self-defense
after 9-11. So, you know, it's, it's tough, it's tough that she's free. I respect the plea, I was a major part of the plea and the evidence, and then the number 25, but I do wish that we had done a better job, and I had done a better job of, of getting evidence that, that resulted in a 35-year percentage, so, you know, but we did the best we could. Yeah. The book is Queen of Cuba, an FBI agent's insider account of the spy who evaded detection for 17 years. The author is Peter
Lap. Peter, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Michael. I really appreciate the conversation, and I really enjoyed it. Thank you. That was Peter Lap. I'm Michael Morrell. Please join us next week for another episode of Intelligence Matters. Intelligence Matters is produced by Steve Dorsey with assistance from Ashley Barry and Sofia Rubin. Intelligence Matters is a production of Beacon Global Strategies.