LITMIR.BIZ

Ana Montes appeared to be a model employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). Known to her coworkers as the Queen of Cuba, she was an overachiever who advanced quickly through the ranks of Latin American specialists to become the intelligence community's top analyst on Cuban affairs. But throughout her sixteen-year career at DIA, Montes sent Castro some of America's most closely guarded secrets and at the same time influenced what the United States thought it knew about Cuba. When she was finally arrested in September 2001, she became the most senior American intelligence official ever accused of operating as a Cuban spy from within the federal government. Unrepentant as she serves out her time in a federal prison in Texas, Montes remains the only member of the intelligence community ever convicted of espionage on behalf of the Cuban government.This inside account of the investigation that led to her arrest was written by Scott W. Carmichael, the DIA's senior counterintelligence investigator who persuaded the FBI to delve deeper into Montes activities. Although Montes did not fit the FBI's profile of a spy and easily managed to defeat the agency's polygraph exam, Carmichael became suspicious of her activities and, with the FBI, over a period of several years developed a solid case against her. Here he tells the story of that long and ultimately successful spy hunt. Carmichael reveals the details of their efforts to bring her to justice, offering readers a front-row seat for the first major U.S. espionage case of the twenty-first century. She was arrested less than twenty-four hours before learning details of the U.S. plan to invade Afghanistan post-September 11. Motivated by ideology and not money, Montes was one of the last «true believers» of the Communist era. Because her arrest came just ten days after 9/11, it went largely unnoticed by the American public. This book calls attention to the grave damage Montes inflicted on U.S. security–Carmichael even implicates her in the death of a Green Beret fighting Cuban-backed insurgent in El Salvador and the damage she would have continued to inflict had she not been caught.

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The splashdown and recovery of Apollo 11 on 24 July 1969 was a historic event, which fulfilled President John F. Kennedy s national goal of placing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth by the end of the 1960s. This book tells the dramatic story of the USS Hornet s recovery of the astronauts after the splashdown of their command module. This detailed account draws not only on historical records but also on the memories of eighty men who served aboard the Hornet and participated in the recovery operation, including Navy UDT frogman John M. Wolfram, who was the first to reach the Apollo II astronauts. Their inside account offers deck-level perspectives of events and includes details never before documented for the public. Their stories reveal that although the recovery operation looked easy and uneventful, there were many problems to overcome. For example, a machinist s mate had to repair a broken propeller shaft while the ship was underway so the Hornet could reach the point of splashdown on time; storms forced the ship to navigate by dead reckoning placing it miles away from its destination just minutes before Apollo came down; and a HS-4 helicopter narrowly avoided colliding with the command module due to heavy cloud cover. Yet, according to the author, the VIPs on the Hornet never suspected anything amiss. In addition to these behind-the-scenes stories, the book includes a never before published photograph of the Apollo 11 command module as it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Previously known only to those associated with the Navy SEAL who took the photo, the author established its authenticity through interviews with those on the helicopter and those who processed the photograph on the Hornet. Other photographs not previously released to the public, including surface-level photos taken by UDT swimmers during the recovery procedure are also among the illustrations displayed in the book.

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