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>> one of the most dangerous spies ever captured is scheduled to be released this weekend. >> for 16 years she was loyal to fidel castro leaving her position in the pentagon to spy for cuba. >> she had spent the last 22 years and a maximum security prison. >> she is pretty fortunate to be getting out of jail. there are not a lot of spies of this caliber's who walk out. quite frankly she could have spent the rest of her life in prison. i would have preferred that, frankly. susan: your new book, "code name blue wren" tells the story of

ana montes. you tell readers she was more dangerous then names the public knows like aldrich ames and robert hanssen. why does anybody not know her story? jim: it was a big story but it was just lost in the headlines. i was working at nbc news at the time and we did not even do a story on it because we were covering 9/11 and the terror attacks. she is a very important spy. i would put her at the same caliber as some of the other major spies you mentioned because of the longevity of her spine career is nearly -- spying career is nearly 17 years, for cuba. she would memorize classified information and pass it along to cuba and cuba has a track record of sharing that information with russia and other adversaries.

there was a multiplier effect there. susan: two things and reading your story that we learn about ana montes that contracts or with other spies. she did not take any money per se and second, she was not just passing information. you talk about her working from both ends. can you explain? jim: she was an ideological spy motivated by her politics and her hatred of the reagan era which she considered meddling throughout central america. she took barely any money, she took probably a couple thousand dollars in this nearly 17 year period for her car, for a computer to pay off college loans. but she was not motivated by money unlike say robert hanssen, the fbi agent who was spying for russia or aldrich ames who work for the cia and was spying

secretly for russia. they enriched themselves, she did not. susan: what are some known consequences of her spying? jim: she blew up every program that we had in cuba at the time. she provided the true identities of americans working in havana and elsewhere in cuba which is very dangerous. whatever plans they had were interrupted. on her computer, when the fbi searched her apartment in may of 2001, they found a document from the cubans thanking her for providing the true identity of an american working in cuba' we were waiting for him here with open arms, which is chilling. so she compromised all of those names and turned over hundreds of names of americans working on cuban matters throughout the intelligence community.

she also revealed the existence and details of a supersecret spy satellite that went by the name misty which the u.s. had been successfully using in russia, china and other countries. including cuba. she turned over details of this to the cubans. they shared or sold that information to the russians and the program, satellite program never worked as well again. susan: first, her family is filled with fbi agent. what were their reactions when they found out about this espionage? jim: she had for family members her worked for the fbi. they are loyal, patriotic americans who were horrified to learn 10 days after 9/11 when anna was arrested that their sister was a spy and castro's top spy in history.

they were absolutely stunned. they continued to be upset i this. as i am sure we will discuss, she just got out of prison and they are now trying to figure out how to reintegrate her into their family. susan: her sister, lucy shares the subtitle and we will talk about their relationship later, but and the opening clip we heard that she served her sentence and high-security, a super max, throughout her almost 20 years in prison why such high-level security? jim: she is in a super max or women in the federal system, it it and it is really ntration known. it is a prison within a prison near fort worth, texas. she was there and served just a

little bit more than 21 years in total but almost all of it was served at the admit unit -- administration units. it is a very restrictive facility and the reason why is because she had so much classified info they really wanted to control what she was able to share. i was never able to interview anna. that was taken off the table during her plea negotiations. no reporter could talk to her. she was restricted in any access to her. she had a small group of friends and family that's communicated with her for nearly 21 years but outsiders could not contact her. susan: if there was -- so much classified information, she is out of prison now and still has that. how will authorities square that? jim: she is under probation for five years. she did not want to go back to the administration units.

that was a hard time. say what you will about the length of her sentence. also, it has been a long time. her information she started as a spy in 1985, she is arrested in 2001, a lot of her info is now dated but she is a barred from talking to any foreign agents whatsoever. if she reaches out to the cuban government she is going back to prison so i cannot imagine she takes that risk. if you have the opportunity to talk to her, what would you ask? i would -- jim: i would try to understand her motivation, the why. i am curious about her relationship with her father, who was a doctor in the army. he was abusive to his children and i have a cia document that

looked at anna's behavioral study, of her after she was arrested. they conclude that one of the reasons she spied was to act out against her father. so i would want to ask her about that. i would also want to ask her about lucy, her sister who worked for the fbi as a translator in miami and why their relationship deteriorated. you can make the argument that on a protected her siblings and family members because she refused to discuss not just anything about her work but anything about her personal life for a long time. it created a schism between the relatives. they did not understand why she was so closed mouthed and pence up and away. i would want to know where you protecting them or under so much stress? susan: how did this story first

come to your attention? jim: i have been a journalist for ages and i was a producer at the time at nbc news with pete williams, a correspondent who recently retired. pete and i were covering 9/11 and that was our main focus for a long time. this story came across the news, i read about it. i will love -- i loved spy stories. but we cannot get to it. about a week later, a friend and college roommate of mine called me and said did you see the story about ana montes? i said yeah. why? he said she bought my condo. and then i realize, i had been in her apartment many, many times. obviously not when she was there, but it just rooted me in

the story. i know her building and i know that unit and it gave me a connection to the story and i made a mental note to go back when things calmed down a bit and pull on the threads of the story. susan: a 15 year labor of love for you. why so long? jim: of session may be. i am fascinated with it. -- of session may be. -- of session --obsession maybe. she is so incredibly disloyal. that is interesting. the whole mechanics of how she did it is fascinating. my book is really a study of two sisters and their paths, obviously they intersect but in many ways they do not. it was extremely difficult for

lucy to have this relationship with her sister d t understand why things had broken down for so long. lucy told me an anecdote that was fascinating. she said at a rest day she is brought into the fbi, she assumes she is in miami. she assumes she is brought to the bosses office for a new investigation regarding 9/11. and she is brought in, and they set her down and one of her supervisors say we have to tell you that your sister was just arrested in washington. your sister is a cuban spy. i bring that up to say her immediate reaction was relief. there was shock and anger and surprise of course. but she was relieved to have this information because it

explained a lot of really odd behavior for many years with her sister, her only sister. those elements, it is a great spy story but there is a sister story here that is fascinating. susan: the third story which is the intel community and the long time it took for them to figure her out which is really an interesting area to explore. so lucy clearly cooperated and gave you interviews and information and i was surprised at the number of people in the intel community who spoke with you. was there any principal character that just said no, i will not talk to you? jim: there were a few who refused to talk either because it is sensitive, some of it involves classified information, some former officials were sensitive about that and did not want to get into it.

there was shame from some of them. some of them did not want to talk. my presumption is because of shame. and anger, there are former colleagues out there who remain incredibly angry to this day to and amount is. one of her -- two ana montes. one of them said my life went up in flames as a result of this and he meant that everything he was working on, she was privy to and had access to. if you are in the intel world, and you have a spy for fidel castro sitting next to you, everything you are learning and developing is going right to castro. faster probably than if you are publishing something. so he just felt his life's work was a waste in some ways.

there are folks like that who refused to talk to me because they feel burned. susan: so on to anna's story, you mention her father. readers will learn a great deal about her father who was a military psychologist and yet an abusive husband and father. how could he have operated of a dual capacity? jim: he was really a brilliant man. he grew up in puerto rico very poor. no running water when he was young. and he was so right, he goes to college in puerto rico and then he goes to medical school in albany in the states. -- he was so bright. he kind of works his way up. he was a doctor for the army.

the family then moves to topeka, kansas and he works at an institute and gets training in psychiatry and becomes a psychiatrist. he did that with private patients. it is so richly ironic that someone who is studying freudian psychology and the effects of childhood on one's adult life is so abusive at home. lucy shared a lot. she loves her father. he is past. she loves her father and has really deep feelings for him, strong, positive feelings and yet she also shared that starting at age five, he would beat the kids with a belt for

almost any childhood infraction. he had a wicked temper and he was explosive and unpredictable at home. the kids lived in fear of him. he was abusive to his wife, amelia. he later divorced and remarried and i found the second family. the children, his stepchildren, to this day, he is passed over 20 years ago, they still live in fear of him. it is still in their hearts. his stepdaughter, michelle told me a horrifying story about him beating his wife and essentially breaking her arm and sending her to the hospital. so, this is a psychiatrist who, at home, has a private life and is abusive to his family. that had a major impact on all the montes children including

anna. susan: interestingly, anna chose the path that you described and two of the other children were highly successful fbi agent. it is interesting how the same family environment had such a different outcome. jim: yes, and lucy makes the point that she does not want to excuse on as behavior because her father -- and as behavior because her father was an abusive person. lucy and her became fbi special agent, there were four ch. anna w oldest, lucy become a translator for the fbi in miami. tito became an agent with the fbi and a fourth brother -- i'm sorry a second brother who was not in the fbi and had a different career path. but lucy wants to make the point

known that ok, yes my father was extremely difficult and we all are still dealing with trauma from its. but i joined the fbi, i am loyal, my brother tito feels the same way. there was something inside anna, something that made her want to do this. it is probably ego and a lot of other things mixed in. but lucy has always been very firm about that in a saying this is my sister's decision, not mine and we cannot blame it all on our father. susan: the mother amelia finally split from him and you say she became a role model for anna. in what ways? jim: and it was close to amelia and still is. they are going to reunite very soon.

amelia is a really bright woman. i read a lot of her writings. she ended up working for the federal government and the baltimore area. she also became an activist of sorts, like a community activist in baltimore for the latino community. she put on festivals that celebrated the different latino communities and neighborhoods in baltimore. she started a letter writing campaign. i found a lot of her old letters to the baltimore newspapers. you kind of tracker political development, i would just grab -- i would describe her as a progressive person, not at all radical. she also was born in puerto rico, that was important to her.

i think anna modeled herself in her as looking as an independent woman who left her husband, lived alone and raised her children, working for herself. and expressing her views and a very open and political way as well. susan: you have three parts of anna's young life that shape her politics, she went to undergraduate where? jim: university of virginia. susan: and junior year was a pivotal year, why? jim: she spent her junior year abroad in madrid, spain in the 1970's when it spain was really bubbling and lots of ways politically and there was a lot of anti-american sentiment. she went there, i interview a good friend of hers named mimi

who lived with her and became almost eight lifelong friend of hers. and mimi describes the situation there, the protest which were anti-american. the community of friends who were appalled by american behavior throughout the world but in latin america. anna fell for a young man named ricardo who was an argentinian and who lived through the abuses of the government especially towards leftist in argentina. he was living with another family in madrid and he was very radical and influenced her thinking and her politics. she is a very young woman, she is only 19 or 20 years old. she is a junior in college but that was really a formative experience. susan: after graduation she went to puerto rico and there she --

jim: she started to believe in puerto rican nationalism, the u.s. has had a difficult connection to puerto rico for a long time. there are many different political views about how that should be handled. some puerto ricans believe we need more independence. some like anna think the shackles should come off and puerto rico should be completely on its own and apart from the u.s.. so she developed those beliefs and then she moved very shortly, she was in puerto rico for a couple months only and moved back to washington dc and took a job with the u.s. department of justice. susan: the mt votal was graduate school. where did she go and what ppened?

jim: she attended the johns hopkins graduate school in washington d c. it is a very prestigious school here in d.c.. and she was already working at the u.s. justice department and the freedom of information act office, if you want to be a spike that is kind of a backwater. -- be us -- be s5, that is kind of a backwater. presiden ian interventionist in central america in nicaragua and el salvador. anna was opposed to that aggressive approach and she shared those views with her

classmates. importantly, there is a young woman also a classmate of hers named marta velasquez. marta also was born in puerto rico. she had gone to princeton and georgetown law and now she is rounding off her academic career at the same college. marta had already been recruited by the humans. she had gone -- by the cubans. she had already gone her senior year at princeton. and she presumably met some cuban intelligence officers, so they were already aware of her. by the time she gets to graduate school she is already essentially working with the cubans. one of her rules is to be a

spotter of new talent and anna is perfect. she has security clearance. she is puerto rican as well. she is very liberal and outspoken and she cannot stand what the reagan administration is doing. and bilingual. put all that together she is a natural recruit. her recruitment took place while she was in grad school. susan: how is the process of getting recruited look? jim: in this case it was a very low-key sell. you don't go to someone and say hello i want you to be a spy. what happened in this case, marta befriended anna and i cannot say to this day whether that was from the heart or just for work purposes for her spine career essentially. but -- for her spy in career.

marta says to anna i would like you to meet a friend of mine. i think you would find it useful. that you young women take a train from d.c. to new york and late 1984. they meet a man who it turns out is an intelligence officer with the cuban government. he works out of the mission out of the united nations in new york. they have a meal together and anna agrees at that meeting to spy on behalf of cuba. susan: for what reason? jim: she thought she would be helping with the struggles with nicaragua and el salvador. the cubans were involved, it was essentially a proxy war with the cubans on the other side of u.s. foreign policy. anna agreed with that point of

view so she thought she could be helpful. it really did not exactly have to do with cuba. it had more to do with the civil wars being fought at the time. but she agreed to help and it starts out in a very innocuous fashion. marta encouraged anna to write an autobiography which turned out to be very useful. the cubans now know what she is thinking and how to manipulate her and they ask her to translate some documents, which was also somewhat enough u.s. in a way but drew her into this process in terms of becoming a spy. susan: where was she working at that point? still at the low level freedom of information act? jim: corrects at the department of justice. what happens is after this meeting in new york, the two women decide with the

encouragement of the cubans they are going to take a trip to havana. this is a covert and illegal trip. and it works for the department of justice. she was not supposed to go to cuba. they make it look like they -- like it is a fun girls trip to europe. they fly to madrid with their real passports. when they are in madrid, they are met by acumen handler -- a acumen handler who gives them fake passports. -- cuban handler. they are given new close and a fake passport and then accompanied and flown to havana. so it is a secret and illegal trip. the purpose is for the cubans to figure her out but they decide

this is perfect, they want to work with her and they get spy 101 training. they learn how to see if someone is following them, how to communicate using shortwave radio and anna insists on this trip that she learns how to defeat a polygraph. she knows she is going to come back and start applying to other government jobs and she is worried she is going to be poly graft -- polygraphed. she received training in cuba. susan: they are straight out of hollywood, disappearing ink, tap codes. it is fascinating. jim: it is but it works. it is a continuation of the cold war. the main way the cubans communicated with anna was by shortwave radio.

she knew the frequency and would listen on a radio with a headset in her apartment and the cleveland park section of d.c.. this is once she is fully recruited. the way the cubans communicated is fascinating. you can actually find some of this online. people collect this audio. what would happen is a woman in cuba would go into a sound booth in havana and just read a series of numbers in spanish. 150 digits. one after another. typically, she would say attention, attention and then read random numbers. you would not know what those numbers meant unless you had the code. anna had the code in her toshiba laptop. so she would listen to this and

jot down these 150 numbers, type it into her computer and it would come out translated and tell her what the cubans wanted her to do that week. she would listen to or three times a week. that is how she got her messages from castro, from havana. the way she would communicate with her handlers was typically in person in restaurants in washington. where she would type up all her notes from the week, all of her classified information and put them on a disk and slide the disc to her handler and a restaurant in washington. susan: she lands a job at the defense intelligence agency, dia , what is its mission? jim: dia is the intelligence arm of the u.s. military. they do not like it when i call

at this but it is the cia for the military. they want to distinguish themselves from cia but it is an easy way to think about it. the intelligence arm, now i think there are 16,000 employees. it is a very large and important part of the intelligence community. when anna comes back from cuba on this trip, the cubans encourage her you need to get out of doj. you are working in the freedom of information act office. you will not have access to that much information. you should apply to some other job and she does. dia is one of the places she outplays. marta velasquez, helps her and lends her her typewriter. so with her help and to the cubans help, she applies to be an analyst for dia and is accepted in 1985.

susan: she spends the rest of her time there until she is arrested. the story of her career is eye-popping. constantly promoted. how did she progress and why was she impressing people so much? jim: anna is very smart, very disciplined. she was a great employee. i have interviewed countless folks who work with her and were impressed by her. she had good memory, good recall, absolutely committed to her job. what is fascinating is she essentially had two jobs. she had her day job at dia, where she goes in at 9:00 and stays at her desk for lunch. she is kind of with her head down, not social at all. the kind of person that would pass you in the whole, you would say hello and she would just

walk by. she would memorize these classified documents. she had legal access to a wide rioting of classified info -- a wide variety of classified info. all kinds of stuff filtering up. as an analyst that is what she is supposed to do is read. she is reading with a purpose and she is memorizing. she did not take documents out of the building, very rarely would she take a piece of paper or a photo out of dia. instead she would memorize. so her day job is study and memorization. then she would go home to her apartment and now her night job begins, where she would type in what she had learned into her encrypted toshiba laptop, put it on a disk and day after day for nearly 17 years, she is aggregating this information and passing it along.

that is why i make the argument that she was so damaging because of the sheer volume of information she was able to pass. susan: in 1990 right she was appointed to the analyst for nicaragua and shortly thereafter the war ended. her moral outrage was about u.s. policy. why did she continue? jim: that is an excellent question. she got started in part because of nicaragua and her anger over the reagan administration policy there and then the war ends. she could have said this has been fun, thank you, cuba. i am done. she did not. there was something about her that liked it. it stroked her ego. she decided she was in a unique position now. she could help her friends, the cubans and i want to continue.

and she did. susan: 1993 promoted to dia analysis. jim: now it is right on the nose. she worked her way across the bureaucracy. she is really -- she has really impressed a lot of folks getting promoted. a lot of recognition. she was the superstar analyst at dia and now she gets the cuba desk. so before it was helpful to cuba for sure because of these two civil wars going on but now she knows exactly what the u.s. government military is doing and wants to dinuba. the castime is so paranoid for good reason about what might happen, what americans might do in cuba. this is just gold for them to have someone in place to provide them this level of info. susan: she traveled to cuba on

u.s. government business a couple times but you explain sheet -- she is -- to business handlers. that seems dangerous. jim: she did two trips -- to illegal trips to cuba and to legit trips working for dia. she went once as an incredible risk as you said in 1998 i believe it was, the pope visits vana and visits cuba. and she goes during that visit and is able to sneak away and meet with her handlers and communicate with them even though she is there with the u.s. delegation, really, really risky but she got away with it at that moment. susan: one point before we talk about how she got caught, you

write it is not only dangerous it is isolating. how is she living her personal life through this? jim: and it was always single, no children. sheated. but spying was very tough for her. there was a lot of angst. i described it as more born than bond. if you think about the jason bourne movies and what was going on in his mind, not the cool sophisticated james bond version of spying. you are sitting on a secret. and who can you discuss it with? almost no one. you certainly cannot go to your family, who works for the fbi. the fbi is the primary law enforcement agency that works on catching spies in the u.s.. she could not tell her friends, or her colleagues. it is really just her handlers. and her handlers are not always there.

they were in certain points but when they get scared or if they think law enforcement might be closing in on them, they disappeared. so anna went through periods where she had no access to her handlers. her friends, her therapist, her buddies, she is able to share her emotions with them in a way that she really can't with anyone else and it created enormous pressure in her life. she suffered a lot of psychological problems especially later in her career. that is what lucy, her sister was picking up on. see describes her 40th birthday party, she invites anna. it is in south florida. all of lucy's friends are there. anna is just sitting there and refuses to engage with anyone. in a very rude but also just on manner.

lucy is like what is going on? why are you not talking to anyone? much later, she realizes and it was in distress. maybe she did not even know how to vocalize it, but she was just so distraught at the moment and just feeling the pressure of all the spying and lying she had done. susan: as you described it, she often pushed her way into meetings she should not have been in. she was totally isolated. wasn't anyone getting suspicious about this behavior? jim: she was very difficult at work and you are right, she did kind of weasel her way into many meetings. sometimes she really did not have a role there. her office mates, many of them found her to be really chilling. her nicknames were ice queen, queen of cuba, which was a term

like queen as in a little bit haughty. could be explosive at meetings in a kind of odd way. she clearly took this very personally. and yet getting promoted because she was really good. she was a very good writer. most of what her job entailed as an analyst, doing longform analyst of trends in cuba was writing and she was excellent at that. she was always prepared at meetings. very sharp. but she had this side of her that was really prickly and she rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. there was not a lot of suspicion about her until around 1996 when one of her colleagues did get suspicious and raised and issue with her with the security

mechanism within dia. the folks who were looking for spies, they are called mole hunters, and it is the investigative function within dia. susan: enter scott carmichael. jim: scott was at dia, he was a mole hunter so he worked on the security matters at dia. they have folks all over the world so he was a busy guy. what happened is a colleague of anna's grew suspicious about her behavior and how she was poking her nose into meetings where she did not need to be involved. and also felt during a crucial period when anna was called in by the generals into the pentagon to brief on a crisis between the u.s. and cuba involving shoot down of planes, the brothers to the rescue

crisis, this employee believed and heard anna had taken a personal phone call and left a meeting early. susan: a secure meeting. jim: exactly. that is just not something you do. it turns out that part, the leaving early part, the leaving early parts and taking a call, is a question and probably did not happen. but the point is, someone within dia, a colleague, was suspicious about anna, reached out to scott carmichael whose job it is to find people with security risks. and that led scott to interview anna way before she was on the fbi's radar or anyone thought she might be a cuban spy. susan:

test. c-span. test. c-span. test. c-span. -- among other things they track communications around the globe particularly involving our adversaries. alayna was with a unit that got involved in decrypting and listening to the secret

shortwave radio communications. and she and her team got a hold of communications between cuba and their handlers, officials in the u.s.. she realized that there was a lot of conversation about someone that was called asian s. -- agent s. she knew agent s had to be at a pretty high-level level based on these random facts that were attributed to agent as. the msa cannot investigate and arrest someone who might be a spy so they bring this to the fbi. this is approximately three years prior to anna's arrest. ballpark 1998. alayna and her bosses go in and

brief the fbi. alayna thought i have done my job, i brought these very specific facts about a likely spy who is a top official, within the u.s. intelligence community, i brought it to the fbi. they are going to do their job. unfortunately, that was not the case. she became very frustrated. the fbi took these clues and spun the reels for more than two years. and the fbi's defense, this is hard work. they now know there is someone who is a spy. they don't know who it is or what agency. they have to keep this close held because you do not want to inform the spy. if you do, the spy will leave. they work this case very slowly and deliberately. it was too slow and deliberate for alayna.

she thought the fbi just wasn't aggressive enough and she was worried that they were letting a potential spy though. alayna is a cuban-american. she came here with her family, forced to leave cuba when she was six years old. she hates the castro regime. so she had a motivation to try and solve this riddle. when she was frustrated with the fbi space, she reached out to them and said someone as the fbi told her the case is closed. i think that is an accurate information. i don't think that was ever closed. she was so frustrated and angry. she thought i am on to a cuban's goodbye -- a cuban spite working

for the u.s. government. i am not letting this go. she went behind the back of the fbi and reached out to investigators at dia and told them about this open case, this open criminal case. when the fbi learned about that, they were furious. they threatened alayna with arrest. her bosses at msa were very unhappy. they threatened to fire her but she did not care and continued to feed information, almost covertly, to the dia while the fbi is slowly still investigating the case. susan: you have lots of detail about the war between the intel agencies and the fbi. i am wondering what you ended up thinking about all that. jim: i think these are all well-meaning people and loyal,

hard-working americans. i think the fbi was in a difficult position but i also give credit to alayna and to scott carmichael who ultimately was the beneficiary of her info. they ended up working together to solve the riddle. they figured out through these clues that alayna had an information that scott developed at dia, they figured out it was very likely the spy agent s was likely and a montes. they brought it to the fbi. there was some infighting between those agencies early on. the fbi ultimately agreed this is a likely spy and opened a full field investigation in late 2000 and clearly, they ultimately arrest and a montes -- ana montes. susan: she carelessly left

things around the apartment that ended up making a case for them. jim: she was pretty careful in general and not bringing documents out of the building but she was not great at tech. on her laptop, even though she had instructions how to fully delete files, she did not do that and left incriminating info. the fbi got special court authorization to break into her apartment as a black bag job in may 2001. when they went in, they copied her laptop hard drive and that is really ultimately what convicted her. the notes back-and-forth between cuba and and a montes made it clear she was a spy. susan: how did she racked -- how did she react to her arrest? jim: the fbi had a whole charade

when they were arresting her. he arrested her at dia and tried to draw her out and get her to talk. they mentioned me know your family members work for the fbi, hint, hint. maybe they are involved. it did not work. she was cool as a cucumber. the dia repositioned a nurse and cpr equipment. they thought maybe she would faint. she walked out proud, shoulders held high, head held high and did not need any help. susan: how did she plead? jim: she ultimately pled guilty and cooperated with the government. they had a long series of debriefs where she had to reveal what she knew and that is how she was able to get what was a 25 year sentence. she ultimately served a little more than 21 years. there are some critics who say that was not enough you should have gotten a life sentence.

other spies, they got life sentences. ana i think revealed a lot and probably more information in some ways, and got a 25 year sentence. she is out now. she is 65 years old. she is living in puerto rico. she has the chance and ability to rebuild her life. susan: one of the remarkable themes and she had all these years and basically solitary to think about what she had done, was the letter she sent to her 17-year-old nephew. no remorse. jim: she has no remorse whatsoever. she still believes in what she did and thinks she was helping the cause. she is not self-aware enough to think about what her options were. we are americans and have freedom of speech. she could have protested or joined groups opposed to u.s. policy. she did not do any of that so

yes, and her letters from prison, she is not apologetic. puertoic and issued a fierys in statement just a week sago with no -- in fact it was a political statement attacking the u.s. and the ongoing embargo with cuba. susan: what did you -- what was your assessment of the intel services and what they learned having a spy in their midst for 20 years? jim: i spoke the other day at dia and they are introspective about this. they realize insider threats are important and that we need as a government to be aware of that. so i do think they have learned from this. another point, ana did not receive a polygraph upon

entering dia. she did later and past it. that has really changed. polygraphs are far from perfect but they are used a lot more. i want to help our intelligence agencies are more skeptical and look more for insider threats like anna montes. susan: what is your ultimate assessment of her? jim: cold, calculating, refuses to apologize. i don't inc. she is particularly introspective. -- i don't think she is particularly introspective. and i think about lucy, and the family, the mother, amelia and the harm she caused. it is hard to believe she and her heart thinks this was worth it. there are so many people who were burned by her and are still

angry and upset. and it is hard to imagine that she doesn't or shouldn't have some real contrition over this. susan: what has working on the story done for you as a reporter? what have you learned that change your perspective? jim: i guess that you follow these big national stories as i have a new have in your great career, susan. and you think about the families that are involved. these are human stories. i guess that is really what i was left with. on the surface you just think about this is a woman who spied and what happened to the government. there are people on the other end, colleagues and friends and family members who were so hurt by this. i guess that is something that has stayed with me. susan: the title is "code name blue wren" and the sister she betrayed.

i never asked you how it got named blue republican. jim: blue republican was -- blue wren was the codename. susan: thank you so much for the hour you spent with us. jim: i am so happy to be here. thank you so much. susan: we are so glad to have you. thanks for your time. ♪ ♪ >> all q&a programs are available on our website or as a podcast on our c-span now app.

host: friday march the two-year anniversary of the by demonstration. we