A former career U.S. diplomat has agreed to plead guilty to charges of working for decades as a secret agent for communist Cuba; seemingly putting an end to one of the most high-profile espionage cases in the history of the U.S. foreign service.
Victor Manuel Rocha, who also served as the former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, was charged in December 2023 with having secretly passed information to the communist-run Cuban government since 1981 while he was working for the U.S. State Department.
Mr. Rocha initially pleaded not guilty in mid-February to charges of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government; acting as an agent of a foreign government and making false statements to obtain a U.S. passport.
However, during a hearing in federal court in Miami on Feb. 29, attorneys for the 73-year-old indicated he planned to change his initial not-guilty plea to guilty.
The guilty plea change was part of a plea deal, according to the Associated Press. The publication reported that Mr. Rocha replied “I am in agreement” when the judge asked him if he wanted to change his initial plea.
Mr. Rocha is due to be sentenced at a hearing on April 12.
According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Mr. Rocha served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 and ultimately as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002.
Diplomat Sought Multiple High-Ranking Roles
However, prosecutors allege Mr. Rocha secretly worked as a covert agent for the Cuban government for over 40 years and purposefully sought out and obtained positions within the U.S. government that would provide him with access to non-public information and the ability to affect U.S. foreign policy.
In court filings, prosecutors claimed Mr. Rocha—a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Colombia—was recruited by Cuba’s spy agency, the Directorate of Intelligence, in 1981 and began supporting its clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against Washington after securing his position at the State Department.
That job role provided him with easy access to various classified information, prosecutors said.
After his State Department employment ended, Mr. Rocha also conducted other acts aimed at supporting Cuba’s intelligence services, including working as an advisor to the Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, a joint command of the United States military whose area of responsibility includes Cuba, from around 2006 until around 2012.
He also worked in a string of other government roles including as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Deputy Principal Officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba, and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Rocha ‘Abused His Position of Trust’
Mr. Rocha also served on the White House’s National Security Council.
Prosecutors said he concealed his double life from Washington officials, allowing him to engage in additional clandestine activity.
Additionally, Mr. Rocha provided false and misleading information to the United States to maintain his secret mission, traveled outside the United States to meet with Cuban intelligence operatives, and made false and misleading statements to obtain travel documents, the DOJ said.
Mr. Rocha was ultimately arrested after admitting in a series of meetings in 2022 and 2023 with an undercover FBI agent posing as a covert Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence representative that he had been working for Cuba for decades.
In announcing the charges against Mr. Rocha late last year, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said the case against him exposed “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent.”
Meanwhile, Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said Mr. Rocha had “abused his position of trust in the U.S. government to advance the interests of a foreign power.”
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
