Manuel Rocha, former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia and several countries in Latin America has been charged in federal court with acting as a foreign secret agent for Cuba, according to court documents. The 73-year-old former American diplomat “secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its clandestine intelligence collection mission against the United States by serving as an undercover agent of the Cuban intelligence services,” was the message from the Prosecutor’s Office. In the indictment, prosecutors claim that the Cuban government has worked for years to recruit people within the United States to assist in intelligence gathering, including individuals within the U.S. government.
The United States Considers Manuel Rocha a Traitor
As a State Department employee, Manuel Rocha had “unique” access to non-public government information, prosecutors said. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the case against Rocha “exposes one of the most extensive and enduring infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent.” Rocha faces three federal charges, including acting as an unlawful agent of a foreign government. Rocha was arrested and had an initial appearance Monday in Miami, where federal prosecutors asked a judge to hold him until trial.
Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, described everything that happened with Manuel Rocha as a betrayal. According to the official, the situation is dire having worked in favor of a country that the United States openly considers as a hostile nation. “Like all federal officials, American diplomats take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Acting as an agent of Cuba, a hostile foreign power, is a flagrant violation of that oath and betrays the trust of the American people,” Wray stated in his remarks.
Who Is Manuel Rocha?
Manuel Rocha was the United States ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 and was also the chief deputy officer of the United States Interests Section in Cuba in the 1990s. Rocha also worked for the United States Embassy in the Dominican Republic in the 1980s, as well as at the U.S. Consulate in Italy, and served in various roles at the U.S. embassies in Mexico and Argentina. In several meetings with an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of Cuban intelligence, Rocha repeatedly referred to the United States as “the enemy” and praised Cuban revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro, according to court documents.
Rocha described being “in charge” of what he called the “shooting down of the small planes,” an incident that prosecutors believe occurred during the time Rocha worked for the State Department in Havana, when Cuba shot down two unarmed planes operated by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a US-based group that opposed Castro’s government, resulting in the deaths of four men.
The Capture of Manuel Rocha
An undercover FBI employee posing as a Cuban intelligence agent sent a message to Manuel Rocha on WhatsApp in November 2022, shortly after investigators were alerted to Rocha’s alleged undercover work, according to court documents. In the message, prosecutors say the undercover employee said “They have a message for you from your friends in Havana. “This is a delicate matter.” Rocha allegedly responded, “I don’t understand, but you can call me.” The former ambassador agreed to meet with the undercover employee in Miami to talk.
During the meeting, Manuel Rocha allegedly took several precautions to ensure he was not followed, such as taking a longer route to the meeting and asking the undercover employee to speak in a “fast food area” with only “low-level employees.”. In that first meeting, Manuel Rocha allegedly told the undercover employee that the Cuban intelligence agency called the General Directorate of Intelligence, “asked me to lead a normal life” and said that he “created the legend of a right-wing person.”
“I always told myself, ‘The only thing that can jeopardize everything we’ve done is… the betrayal of someone, someone who has known me, someone who has known something at some point,” Rocha said, according to a recording of the meeting cited in court documents.
He allegedly added: “My main concern; “My number one priority was… any action by Washington that could endanger the lives of… the leadership, or the… or the revolution itself.” In another meeting several weeks later, Rocha allegedly described how he obtained his State Department job to the undercover employee, saying: “I went little by little… It was a very meticulous process… very disciplined.” “I knew exactly how to do it and the Management accompanied me… they knew that I knew how to do it… According to prosecutors, ” it is a long process and it was not easy,” he said.
Manuel Rocha also allegedly boasted of his “decades” of work on behalf of the Cuban government, saying that he “strengthened the revolution” for “the last 40 years,” and lamented “the blows that the enemy,” supposedly referring to the US government. ., “has tipped the current revolution.” Rocha was working at the consulting firm LLYC USA as a “senior international business advisor” at the time of his arrest.
This story was written in Spanish by Miguel Fernandez in Cultura Colectiva News
