Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy-and the Sister She Betrayed

Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy-and the Sister She Betrayed

by Jim Popkin
Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy-and the Sister She Betrayed

Code Name Blue Wren: The True Story of America's Most Dangerous Female Spy-and the Sister She Betrayed

by Jim Popkin

Hardcover(Original)

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Overview

*An Amazon Best Book of 2023*
*Apple Book of the Month for January*

The incredible true story of Ana Montes, the most damaging female spy in US history, drawing upon never-before-seen material and to be published upon her release from prison, for readers of Agent Sonya and A Woman of No Importance.


Just days after the 9-11 attacks, a senior Pentagon analyst eased her red Toyota Echo into traffic and headed to work. She never saw the undercover cars tracking her every turn. As she settled into her cubicle on the 6th floor of the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, FBI Agents and twitchy DIA officers were hiding in nearby offices. For this was the day that Ana Montes—the US Intelligence Community superstar who had just won a prestigious fellowship at the CIA—was to be arrested and publicly exposed as a secret agent for Cuba.

Like spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen before her, Ana Montes blindsided her colleagues with brazen acts of treason. For nearly 17 years, Montes succeeded in two high-stress jobs. By day, she was one of the government’s top Cuba experts, a buttoned-down GS-14 with shockingly easy access to classified documents. By night, she was on the clock for Fidel Castro, listening to coded messages over shortwave radio, passing US secrets to handlers in local restaurants, and slipping into Havana wearing a wig.

Montes didn’t just deceive her country. Her betrayal was intensely personal. Her mercurial father was a former US Army Colonel. Her brother and sister-in-law were FBI Special Agents. And her only sister, Lucy, also worked her entire career for the Bureau. The highlight of her distinguished 31 years as a Miami-based language specialist: Helping the FBI flush Cuban spies out of the United States. Little did Lucy or her family know that the greatest Cuban spy of all was sitting right next to them at Thanksgivings, baptisms, and weddings.

In Code Name Blue Wren, investigative journalist Jim Popkin weaves the tale of two sisters who chose two very different paths, plus the unsung heroes who had to fight to bring Ana to justice. With exclusive access to a “Secret” CIA behavioral profile of Ana, family memoirs, and Ana’s incriminating letters from prison, Popkin reveals the making of a traitor—a woman labelled “one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history” by America’s top counter-intelligence official.

After more than two decades in federal prison, Montes will be freed in January 2023. Code Name Blue Wren is a thrilling detective tale, an insider’s look at the clandestine world of espionage, and an intimate exploration of the dark side of betrayal.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781335449887
Publisher: Hanover Square Press
Publication date: 01/03/2023
Edition description: Original
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 78,665
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jim Popkin is a journalist and writer whose work has appeared in Washington Post Magazine, WIRED, Newsweek, Slate, The Guardian, Washingtonian and on National Public Radio. He was a senior investigative producer at NBC News as well as an on-air correspondent, and his stories have appeared on NBC’s Today, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC and CNBC. He received a BA from Northwestern University and a master’s of studies in law from Yale Law School, and he currently resides in Washington, DC.

Table of Contents

Introduction 13

Chapter 1 The World's Worst Sorority 19

Chapter 2 Topeka 23

Chapter 3 The Hothouse 31

Chapter 4 Stevie Wonder and Chocolate Chip Cookies 39

Chapter 5 The Cauldron 53

Chapter 6 "Our Native Land Calls to Us" 63

Chapter 7 "A Sense of Moral Outrage" 71

Chapter 8 "A Rich Array of Targets" 83

Chapter 9 Headed for a Collision 93

Chapter 10 Destination Havana 95

Chapter 11 Miami Vice 105

Chapter 12 A Warrior Monk Deep within the Bureaucracy 111

Chapter 13 Death of a Green Beret 117

Chapter 14 Surrounded 123

Chapter 15 A Meteoric Rise 129

Chapter 16 Spying Gets Lonely 133

Chapter 17 Royal Flush 141

Chapter 18 The Kmart Security Guard 147

Chapter 19 The Interview 151

Chapter 20 "One of the Most Damaging Spies" 157

Chapter 21 Bottoming Out 171

Chapter 22 "A Limited Capacity" 177

Chapter 23 The Seventh Floor 185

Chapter 24 La Otra 189

Chapter 25 McCoy 197

Chapter 26 Warming Up the Ice Queen 205

Chapter 27 Grip and Grin 209

Chapter 28 Scott and Gator 213

Chapter 29 "We're Going to War" 217

Chapter 30 Full Field 225

Chapter 31 Confiding in Robert Hanssen 233

Chapter 32 Snuckln like Ninjas 239

Chapter 33 A Manati Farewell 247

Chapter 34 Out of Time 251

Chapter 35 The Immaculate Confession 257

Chapter 36 Your Sister Is a Spy 263

Chapter 37 "All the World Is One Country" 271

Chapter 38 Escape to Sweden 281

Chapter 39 "A Psychological Hell" 289

Chapter 40 "You Are a Coward" 297

Chapter 41 Release 301

Epilogue 303

Author's Note 307

Endnotes 315

Index 339

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