IWP IAFIE Chapter Book Talk: Queen of Cuba

***This lecture is sponsored by the IWP IAFIE Student Chapter***

About the Lecture:

In his book, Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent’s Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years, former Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Peter Lapp recounts the gripping investigation and ultimate capture of Ana Montes, the highest-ranking Cuban spy ever arrested for infiltrating the U.S. government. Working as a top Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst, Montes compromised highly classified American military secrets and operations out of ideological sympathy for Fidel Castro’s regime, refusing any financial compensation for her espionage. In this book talk—conducted on the 25th anniversary of Montes’s arrest—Lapp provides a firsthand, behind-the-scenes look at the painstaking counterintelligence operation he ran to unmask a mole operating at the highest levels of national security. The narrative climaxes with the urgent race to arrest Montes just days after the September 11 attacks—a necessary and accelerated takedown to prevent her from leaking sensitive war plans and jeopardizing American lives.

About the Speaker:

Mr. Peter Lapp spent 22 years as a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Special Agent conducting counterintelligence investigations against Cuba, China, and Russia while at the Washington Field Office and Baltimore Division. Later, he held the position of Supervisory Special Agent and unit chief of the economic espionage and People’s Republic of China espionage units at the FBI Headquarters Counterintelligence Division. After retiring from the FBI, he was the insider threat program manager at General Dynamics Information Technology and later started an insider risk consulting firm. He is currently on contract as a senior threat manager at the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency’s (DCSA) Behavioral Threat Analysis Center (BTAC). Finally, he is the co-author of the book Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent’s Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years, an accomplished public speaker, a regular law enforcement contributor on CNN and other media outlets, an adjunct professor at Marymount University’s graduate Forensic Legal and Psychology program, and the co-host of the DCSA’s “BTAC: Beyond the Bulletin” podcast.