While covertly working for Fidel Castro from 1992 until her arrest in 2001, Ana Belen Montes was instrumental in shaping every memorandum, briefing paper, and intelligence estimate on Cuba for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of these materials still continue to influence U.S. policy today. Montes was admired for her productivity and talent and rose through the ranks of the bureaucracy even though she openly aired within the intelligence community her opposition to U.S. policy on Cuba. How did a Castro mole infiltrate the U.S. intelligence community while spinning tales about the Castro regime? To what extent do the lies promulgated by Montes still influence the Pentagon’s thinking today? How will these lies affect the future of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba and its imminent transition? Are there other Castro agents embedded in the foreign policy and intelligence communities?

These and other questions will be discussed by Scott Carmichael, the Defense Intelligence Agency investigator who helped apprehend Montes and author of the just-published True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba’s Master Spy. Joining him will be Cuba scholars Norman Bailey and Paul Crespo. AEI’s Roger F. Noriega will moderate.