U.S. Spy Flees, Flouts Indictment from Overseas

Here is a chilling story that’s quite revealing about the U.S. “intelligence” community; a spy earned top secret security clearance, somehow infiltrated the State Department and operated a decades-long espionage ring for a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government.

It actually gets better; when the feds finally got a clue the spy, Marta Rita Velazquez, fled to a northern European country that doesn’t extradite citizens accused of espionage so she’s over there flipping the finger at Uncle Sam. Nevertheless, Velazquez got charged nearly a decade ago with conspiracy to commit espionage and this week the Department of Justice (DOJ) finally unsealed the indictment.

It’s essentially a worthless piece of paper, but it reveals embarrassing details of how the U.S. government let a foreign spy, who collaborated with a fellow spy that’s currently in prison, get away. A graduate of a prestigious Ivy League university, the Puerto Rican-born Velazquez worked at several government agencies, earned top secret security clearance and represented the U.S. at embassies in two Central American countries.

The feds say she started spying for Cuba, which for years has appeared on the State Department’s list of nations that sponsor terrorism, around 1983. Velazquez conspired with others to transmit to the Cuban government and its agents documents and information relating to U.S. national defense, with the intent that they would be used to injure the United States, according to the indictment.

Though she ran this operation for decades, the FBI only heard about Velazquez in 2002 because her partner in crime, Ana Belen Montes, a former Defense Department analyst, pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba for 17 years. Montes, who’s serving a 25-year prison sentence, ratted out her buddy. Both women spied for the Cuban Intelligence Service.

When Velazquez discovered she was being investigated, she took off to Stockholm because she obviously knew that a treaty between the U.S. and Sweden prohibits extradition for spying. If she were tried and convicted, she could face life in prison. It’s unlikely that will ever happen because the U.S. let her get away. And you wonder why our “intelligence” agencies can’t keep track of domestic terrorists, even when a foreign government spoon-feeds us valuable information?