Michelle Van Cleave, who was head of counter-intelligence under President George W Bush, told Congress in 2012 that Montes had "compromised everything - virtually everything - that we knew about Cuba and how we operated in Cuba".However, unlike other high-profile spies caught during the cold war, Montes was motivated by ideology, not personal gain.She agreed to work for Cuban intelligence in part based on her opposition to the Reagan Administration's activities in Latin America.She was initially approached by a fellow student at Johns Hopkins University in 1984 after expressing outrage at US actions in Nicaragua.For almost two decades she met with Cuban handlers every few weeks at Washington DC restaurants and sent coded messages containing top secret information to them via pager."