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

by Jim Popkin

10 hours, 24 minutes

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Espionage, True Crime, Audiobook, Crime

10 pages, Audiobook

First published January 3, 2023

Reviews

[Joan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book, more so since I worked with Ana at DOJ, and was truly shocked when I heard of her arrest for spying for Cuba. I wanted to understand why anyone would do what she did and still cannot get my hands around it. The various characterizations of Ana were spot on. Smart but aloof with such a promising future all turned to dust for unforgivable actions. A real betrayal of our country, no matter the intent, and the fact of no remorse just makes it worse.

[Rachael | Booklist Queen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ana Montes was one of the US government's top experts on Cuba, working her way up the ranks to the Defense Intelligence Agency. The daughter of an Army Colonel, Ana's family was full of patriots; her siblings were FBI agents, and her sister Lucy was responsible for hunting out Cuban spies. Yet, even Lucy was shocked when, in the days after 9/11, Ana was arrested as a secret agent for Cuba. With Ana Montes's release from prison scheduled in January 2023, Jim Popkin details the opposite routes two sisters took and how one turned into the most-damaging spy against America.

Who knew the story of the most deadly spy in US History could be so completely and utterly boring. With stilted writing full of cliches, Code Name Blue Wren was more informative than interesting. Popkin failed to add any force behind his writing, and I finally gave up at the 25% mark, realizing that the writing was never going to improve enough for me to care about this book.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Harlequin Trade Publishing through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ana Montes eldest child of immigrant Puerto Rican parents came to the decision that Latin and Central America had been ‘done wrong’ by the USA. That may be so, but that does not justify her deciding to become a spy against the country that had given her a life, an education and a profession of trust up to highest echelons of the intelligence service. Why did she do it? It wasn’t for money. For “principle” says Ana. She was just pissed off at how America treated Cuba.

The book starts out (somewhat boringly) chronicling the early years of abusive treatment by the father at which time I wondered if the author was telling the reader that abusive parents made dangerous spies. But it can’t be that because her siblings all turned out to be exceptional Americans working in the service of their country in the same intelligence community as did Ana.

Troubling is that it took so long to arrest this woman even after some real ‘hints’ had come to light. But no, they kept promoting her and giving her awards. There are so many different organizations you can’t keep track. Too many cooks in the kitchen AND the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing – AND no one is sharing information. I am amazed that they are able to catch anyone doing anything wrong at all.

This quote was the highlight of the book for me: “It had taken a Cuban American, forced to flee her homeland at age six, to help expose Fidel Castro’s most successful spy.” (Pg.270)

Ana Montes was released from prison in January 2023.

[Amy Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

Popkin fails to meet the standards of other authors examining complicated historical figures and is unable to knit together a coherent picture of his protagonist. I found the writing unbalanced and uninterested in grasping Ana's understanding of her own experience. Instead Popkin relies heavily on weaponized psychological reports from the CIA, depictions from Ana's politically moderate, estranged family, and vindictive details from self-involved ex-lovers. Her close friends seem to reflect her sense of values, integrity, and compassion, but these depictions are the ones that Popkin strives hardest to discredit. I'm not pro-Cuba or pro-espionage (obviously), but I did finish this book feeling upset at Popkin for his disinterest in exploring his protagonist's heart, without projecting "narcissism" or "evil" onto her intentions so consistently that, at times, the portrayal seemed like Nixon era propaganda. It's a very interesting story, so I hope one day, someone will reflect this tale with the nuance and curiosity it deserves.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

If the epilogue had been the introduction of this vindictive, gossip-laden book, I would have never picked it up in the first place.

Most readers will hope that the release of this book will bring newly released information on Ana Montes from the FBI, as well as Ana's family, Ana's friends, perhaps even Ana herself - objective information that will allow the reader to come to their own conclusion on why Ana did what she did, whether they believe she did it for the right reasons, just how "dangerous" she was, and whether the punishment she received was fair.

Unfortunately, you're getting the complete opposite of an objective, well-balanced story from this (unbelievably) Yale educated journalist. He has a bone to pick with her, which would obviously turn most readers off immediately, because, well... bias.

I really have an excellent review prepared for this utterly ridiculous story which does not deliver on its promises whatsoever (you literally get no real information or quotes from Ana's true friends nor Ana herself) but rather is clearly a vendetta against Montes for criticizing Popkin's Washington Post article on her in 2013 - however, I can't really think straight right now because, well... someone is snoring on the couch where I'm trying to type this and yeah. It's distracting. :(

I promise I'll finish it tomorrow because it's mostly all written out and I have a bit more to say, because it's insane the grudge that Popkin holds against Montes for such a silly reason (when I think he would have done well to have taken the advice she gave on his article and used it for his book).

The further I got into the book, the more I realized I wasn't going to be able to walk away with my own opinion of Ana Montes, as I continued to wonder what in the world Ana had done to this journalist to make his view of her so one-sided, even going so far as to state that on January 8, 2023, Ana is scheduled to walk free - "She will have spent twenty-one years, three months, and nineteen days behind bars. That's a generous reduction of her twenty-five year sentence, nearly four years off for good behavior."

What the hell?! Is he actually insane? Just two chapters prior to mentioning this, he calls the prison she is in "a psychological hell", talks about how many pending lawsuits it has against it for abuse and rape of inmates, explains how only the worst offenders are housed in the unit Ana spent over two decades in. And he believes that over twenty years wasn't quite enough?! No, a "generous reduction" would be like, four years off a seven-year sentence.

Really, don't buy this book and expect to learn anything new. It basically states she spied for Cuba, here's how the investigation played out, she totally betrayed her family (I don't really see how, she just didn't have any relationship with them) - and that the reasons WHY she spied isn't important, but that "illegal is illegal and wrong is wrong." I purchased this book to decide for myself what I thought of Ana and her espionage, not to be given a morality lesson by an author who was clearly angry that Ana critiqued his article ten years ago. I had no idea that illegal and wrong were always so black and white. I was hoping for a bit of gray area, but Popkin makes it pretty clear he sees none.

For God's sake, he even sent a Swedish journalist to harass her former college friend in Sweden (the one that had recruited her as a spy for the Cubans). The friend in question is also now 65, has immunity from prosecution, and has never once been bothered by the press about this - until he sent the reporter in Sweden after her, asking, "If you could say anything to Ana Montes right now, what would you say?!" It seriously sounds like a question you'd hear from a paparazzi hack following a reality star in Los Angeles.

I'm hoping the publication of this book helped to relieve a bit of his anger and bitterness toward Ana, because it honestly reads as obsessed and unhinged. You absolutely should not be an investigative journalist if you're going to have such thin skin - especially when it comes to what your subject says about you. And what she said wasn't even that horrible!

Again, I promise I'll clean this review up tomorrow and make it better. Ugh.

[BJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't the typical thing I read, and I had never heard of Ana Montes prior to this book. But when I stumbled upon it, it sounded fascinating, and so I settled in for a real-life story of shadowy figures, near misses, and ethical grey areas. This book certainly has those things, but not at all in the way I expected.

Admittedly, it has a hell of an introductory hook that peaks your interest right away, but following that is an unnecessarily detailed exposition of Ana Montes' family--two generations back (or maybe three?)--her siblings, college friends, lovers, and teachers. All of it is interspersed with the political history of Cuba and Nicaragua prior to, and during, Montes' coming of age. This consumes approximately the first 30% of the book and is incredibly tedious to slog through. After reading the epilogue of the book, I got the notion that Popkin wrote the book as a "fuck you" to Montes' criticism of the article he wrote over a decade ago. As if to say to her "I added all that stuff you wanted, but you're still a self-righteous hypocrite and traitor."

So if you skip ahead (which I dutifully did not), you might get at something similar to what the "back cover" promises. But if you're looking for sexy, I doubt you will find any version of it here. There is just ugly and sad.

That being said, after nearly two months of crawling through the first third of the book, the pace and engagement picked up, and I finished the back half in two days. That easily earned a third star for me; it's well written and well-researched.

For a moment I considered bumping my rating up one more star, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that I had been offered a sexy weekend beach get-away only to spend the entire first day in an artificially lit conference room where some asshole tried to sell me a condo.

[Christine LaBatt · Rating 3 out of 5]

A true story about the US’s most dangerous female spy. Ana Montes worked for the US’s government for years, but it turns out she actually was a spy for Cuba. Even worse, her sister was a dedicated FBI agent.

I didn’t know this story, so it was interesting to read. The structure wasn’t my favorite, and some of the chapters felt abrupt. But overall, an interesting story.

[Carrie Esler · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.2
I had high hopes for this book for the fact that she was a spy for so long, while having siblings also in the FBI. However, I found the book to be relatively boring and somewhat repetitive. (she is smart, but aloof, she had a rough past, she was a really strong analyst….)
The book meandered into her childhood and other stories, but even that didn’t really make it more entertaining or terribly insightful

[Katie L'Ecuyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took about 60% of the book for me to even be able to follow what was happening. It was all name dropping and skipping back and forth at first. The last 40% of what actually happened, how they caught up to her, and her time in prison was interesting, though.

[Candace Madera · Rating 1 out of 5]

The story of this woman’s life was interesting but the reporting was extremely one sided almost propaganda. The hypocritical stance on espionage was laughable.

[David Crow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ana Montes, who was just released from prison in January, did more damage as a spy for Cuba than any espionage agent against the U.S. Ana rose to the top of the DIA and was ready to move to the CIA when she was finally caught. For more than twenty-years she sold deadly secrets to Cuba who sold them to Russia and Japan. Jim Popkin tells this story masterfully. A great read about a terrible crime against America.

[Maggie Partipilo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't like this one. I expected it to be full of dangerous espionage adventures and dramatic betrayal. It was not either of those things. It read more like a debriefing memo. I also listened to it which was a terrible mistake. Every page is full of acronyms that were very hard to keep track of without being able to see them or flip pages for clarification. Every other sentence, it seemed, was a quote. Although this made the story chock-full of first-hand details, as an audiobook, hearing "quote" before every quote became an annoying distraction. I really felt like the story itself was very surface-level, also. You don't learn much about her as a person at all, and really, you learn more about the overall impact she had as a spy, how they tried to catch the elusive "un-sub," and then how they actually caught her, as opposed to any details about what she actually did. If it's a subject you really want to dive into (shallowly), I highly recommend getting the hard copy.

[Sabrina Damron Gressly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to enjoy this book, but felt the writing style inferior. Not to my taste at least. I also had to make mental leaps far too many times over whole parenting ideology.

[Dee Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libby audiobook loan 10 hours Narrated by Jim Popkin (A)

3.5 stars This book was not a thriller because Ana Montes' life was not thrilling. The author has a background in news, and although he learned about the arrest of this highly placed spy for Cuba when it was made public, it happened shortly after 9/11 when Americans attention was focused elsewhere. Jim Poplin didn't forget about it. All these years, he has been researching, and Ana has been serving a 25-year sentence. She was released in January, 2023 EARLY. She is now living in Puerto Rico.

it is disconcerting to learn that a highly-respected agent of the Defense Intelligence Agency served as a spy for almost twenty years without being detected. She didn't spy for monetary reward but because of her own personal political grievance against America. At the same time she was spying, her younger sister Lucy was serving as a special agent in the FBI spying on Cuba. Ana's brother and sister-in-law worked for the FBI in Atlanta. All three were loyal to America. This caused some strange family gatherings. This book shows how a father's influence can affect a whole family. Ana Montes' rebellion has certainly affected her family, nearly destroying her mother to whom she was once very close. We will probably never learn how much it has cost our country. This story is so strange that it is almost unbelievable.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am torn on this one. The story of Ana Montes is fascinating, I really enjoyed hearing the level of detail and comprehensive story from Ana’s childhood all the way through being recruited by Cuba and her work in US intelligence. It was a detailed and deep look into the secretive world of US intelligence and spying. On the other hand, I think the author was more biased and one-sided than was necessary for a nonfiction accounting of Ana Montes’ life and work. He cast his own perspective (heavily) on Ana’s life choices, personality, and moral compass. For a nonfiction story, I could have done without the moral scolding. The story would have also benefited from more of a background on US foreign policy towards Cuba and the U.S. solidarity movement with Cuba. I would have loved to see Ana’s story positioned within the larger context.

I’d recommend this for the story itself, but caution readers to take the author’s tone with a grain of salt.

[Tyler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty boring, not going to lie.not what I was expecting

[Donna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genres: Nonfiction/Biography

This is the story of a disgruntled American who was a Pentagon analyst and how she turned to being a spy for Cuba. I liked listening to this story. I had never heard of her before. I also liked the narrator of the audio.

I appreciated the research but the one thing that I didn't quite get was the WHY? Yes she was abused by her father, had a problem with domintating authority and other issues. But I don't think that really satisfactorily answered the WHY. At the end the author did add to that but it wasn't an A-ha moment.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

I added this book to me TBR list after reading a blogger's most anticipated 2023 books. I almost removed the book from my TBR pile when I discovered that the blogger had later updated the post to add their horribly disappointed review of the book and eventual DNF. I decided to give it a try since it arrived from the library and I read other glowing reviews.

I was drawn in by a book about the most harmful spy to the US. The story had to be interesting; and I hadn't recalled ever hearing about this in the news so I was intrigued. However, I found this book better than Unisom at putting me to sleep. The first 25% of the book was a drag. I decided to skim after that to see if it improves. At 45% I gave up. I couldn't put myself through the pain of this book anymore. The writing is so dry it made it impossible to continue.

[Cristina · Rating 2 out of 5]

I abandoned this book because it was boring! The topic is a real-life female spy for Cuba who's Puerto Rican and working for the US government. You'd think that would be great fodder for intrigue and interest, but I found the reader (who's the author, ugh) terrible, robotic and unemotive. And that helped burn up any bit of good material for me. Meh. Maybe there will be a movie.

[Stan Campbell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a story

I had expected a story of Ana's rise and fall but the many references to her arrest throughout the book took away from a good story. In other words Jim Popkin have away the ending.

[Lisa Amato Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely a future book grouper for those who like true stories!!

[Christine Barth · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author did a very thorough job, but it was kind of a slog. Possibly because there are no real heroes here. I did learn a lot about spies and traitors and U.S. involvement in Central America.

[Stacey Meade · Rating 2 out of 5]

Started strong and got muddled down by the minutia.

[Ariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at a modern day spy. The author does a great job covering the life of Ana from both up to just prior to her release in January of 2023.
I had never heard of Ana Montes before this book, but she was instrumental in (and directly responsible for) some very damaging leaks of highly classified information, and remained completely unapologetic for her actions throughout her prison sentence.
Anyone interested in American history, security, or espionage should read about her.

[Artea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed learning about Latin America’s history with the US during the Cold War. I had limited knowledge on it.

My only beef with the author is the way that he portrays Ana: cold and unsympathetic when all the people he interviewed expressed that they enjoyed her company. Overall, pretty cool biography, especially since she got arrested 10 days after 9/11 so her story did not get a lot of publicity.

[Tracy Wrase · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally finished this. Wow this is something that was never taught in any history class. To hear that someone could put up the act for so long and betray the United States and us have no idea is just mid blowing.

[Linda Rowlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to this book read by the author. I did not remember hearing about the Cuban spy Ana Montes. The book was well written, a very detailed account of Ana’s background and transgressions.

While the family information was interesting, the book was a bit padded with details about fellow prisoners where Ana was incarcerated.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great (true) story! It’s heavy with info at times so I would have to stop it and listen to something else to break it up. But definitely something I’d recommend. The amount of research this author has done is incredible!

[Kathryn Whitaker · Rating 3 out of 5]

A barely 3 stars. The storyline was absolutely fascinating (and a very well researched book). It just felt like it vascillated between a fact book about a Cuban spy and a drama-filled novel. A little disjointed in places. And some story lines were deeply introspective while others had barely a mention. Maybe that’s an editor’s fail. It was an okay read about a fascinating story.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating true story of Ana Montes who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington DC, who willingly gave secrets to the Cuban government.

She was one of the most damaging spies to the security of the American government, that practically no one has ever heard of.

Riveting.