For much of his career as a Central Intelligence Agency analyst on Latin America, Mr.
Armstrong's work was shrouded in secrecy. That changed when Mr. Kerryblurted out his name during 2005 hearings on George W. Bush's nomination of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Mr. Bolton's adversaries claimed that he was unqualified for the job because he had tried to have Mr. Armstrong fired for political reasons. 

Otto Reich, a former assistant secretary of state for Western hemisphere affairs, went before staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to testify on Mr. Bolton's behalf. Mr. Reich says he told the staffers that he had found Mr. Armstrong's work consistently unreliable and that much of the national security bureaucracy saw it the same way. The late columnist Robert Novak wrote for Townhall.com at the time that Mr. Reich's views fit "complaints I have heard from Reagan administration officials about Armstrong's left-wing bias on Western Hemisphere questions in general, but particularly on Cuba." 

Mr. Armstrong's name also comes up in the 2007 book "True Believer," by Defense Intelligence Agency "mole hunter" Scott Carmichael. It tells the story of how the U.S. busted Cuban spy Montes in 2001. 

As the National Intelligence Officer for Latin America in 2000, Mr. Armstrong was "in frequent telephone and e-mail contact with Ana," Mr. Carmichael writes. "As NIO he was the senior subject-matter expert on Latin American affairs for the [director of central intelligence], and he welcomed Ana's participation in the fellowship program under his personal tutelage.

They had discussed the nature of her research project in some detail, and preparations were already underway to launch Ana further and deeper into the U.S. intelligence community." The book does not say that he knew she was a spy. Mr. Armstrong's office did not respond to my request for comments.