MIAMI A former profession American diplomat was charged Monday with serving as a undercover agent for communist Cuba going again many years in what prosecutors portrayed as some of the brazen and long-running betrayals within the historical past of the U.S. international service.
Courtroom papers alleged that Manuel Rocha engaged in clandestine exercise on Cuba’s behalf since a minimum of 1981, together with by assembly with Cuban intelligence operatives and offering false info to U.S. authorities officers about his travels and contacts.
The grievance, filed in federal courtroom in Miami, expenses Rocha with crimes together with appearing as an unlawful agent of a international authorities and gives a vivid case examine of what American officers say are long-standing efforts by Cuba and its notoriously refined intelligence companies to focus on authorities officers who will be flipped.
This motion exposes one of many highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the USA authorities by a international agent, Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland stated in a press release. “To betray that belief by falsely pledging loyalty to the USA whereas serving a international energy is a criminal offense that will likely be met with the total power of the Justice Division.
The 73-year-old Rocha, whose two-decade profession as a U.S. diplomat included prime posts in Bolivia, Argentina and the U.S. Pursuits Part in Havana, was arrested at his Miami residence Friday. He wept as he sat handcuffed throughout his first courtroom look Monday and was ordered held pending a bond listening to Wednesday. His legal professional declined to remark.
The Justice Division didn’t reveal how Rocha attracted the eye of Cubas intelligence operatives nor did it describe what, if any, delicate info he could have supplied whereas in authorities.
As a substitute, the case depends largely on what prosecutors say have been Rocha’s personal admissions, revamped the previous yr to an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence operative.
Rocha praised the late Cuban chief Fidel Castro as Comandante, branded the U.S. the enemy and bragged about his service for greater than 40 years as a Cuban mole within the coronary heart of the State Division and elite U.S. international coverage circles, the grievance says.
What now we have completed its huge greater than a Grand Slam, he was quoted as saying at one in all a number of secretly recorded conversations beginning final yr at discrete places a church and outside meals courtroom in downtown Miami.
They underestimated what we may do to them. We did greater than they thought, the doc quotes Rocha as saying, referring to the USA.
To cowl his tracks, he referred to Cuba because the island and led a standard life disguised as a right-wing particular person, he stated in one of many recordings. He additionally arrived on the conferences with the secret agent in Miami intentionally straying from the most-direct route and pausing alongside the way in which in what prosecutors allege was traditional, counter-surveillance tradecraft as taught by Cubas spymasters.
Its what Ive at all times been advised to do, Rocha advised his handler about his actions.
The case is a part of a traditionally tense relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. Washington and Havana restored diplomatic relations in late 2014 after a half-century of Chilly Battle acrimony, although the Trump administration reimposed sanctions on Cuba and, in 2021, redesignated it a state sponsor of terrorism.
The charging doc traces Rochas unlawful ties to Cuba again to 1981, when he first joined the State Division, to properly after his departure from the federal authorities, when he took on profitable non-public sector jobs most lately as a senior enterprise adviser to a global public relations agency.
The FBI discovered concerning the relationship final yr and organized a sequence of undercover encounters in downtown Miami between Rocha and an agent purporting to be a Cuban intelligence operative.
I at all times advised myself, The one factor that may put the whole lot now we have completed at risk is … someones betrayal, somebody who could have met me, somebody who could have recognized one thing sooner or later,’ Rocha stated in one in all of the conferences, in line with the charging doc.
In one other assembly final yr, Rocha referred to Cuba capturing down two unarmed planes despatched by the Miami-based group of exiles Brothers to the Rescue during which 4 opponents of Castros authorities have been killed in 1996.
Theres no indication within the grievance that Rocha aided the Cubans with the navy operation a serious flashpoint in additional than a half-century of brinksmanship between the communist-ruled island and its right-wing opponents in Miami. However on the time he served as a senior political officer on the U.S. particular curiosity part in Havana.
I lived by means of it, as a result of I used to be in cost, Rocha stated. That was a time of a whole lot of pressure.
Rochas service to Cuba could have gone again sooner than the beginning of his U.S. diplomatic profession.
The grievance cites Rocha telling the secret agent, who glided by the identify Miguel, that he first proved his loyalty in Chile in 1973 the identical yr right-wing Gen. Augusto Pinochet, with U.S. backing, overthrew the socialist authorities of Salvador Allende.
They will need to have advised you one thing since you talked about Chile, Rocha advised the secret agent who introduced himself as having reached out to him on the request of higher-ups in Cubas Nationwide Intelligence Directorate. That impressed belief in me.
Born in Colombia, Rocha was raised in a working-class residence in New York Metropolis and went on to acquire a succession of liberal arts levels from Yale, Harvard and Georgetown earlier than becoming a member of the international service in 1981.
He was the highest U.S. diplomat in Argentina between 1997 and 2000 as a decade-long foreign money stabilization program backed by Washington was unraveling beneath the burden of big international debt and stagnant development, triggering a political disaster that will see the South American nation cycle by means of 5 presidents in two weeks.
At his subsequent put up, as ambassador to Bolivia, he intervened instantly into the 2002 presidential race, warning weeks forward of the vote that the U.S. would reduce off help to the poor South American nation if it have been to elect former coca grower Evo Morales.
I need to remind the Bolivian voters that in the event that they vote for many who need Bolivia to return to exporting cocaine, that may significantly jeopardize any future support to Bolivia from the USA, Rocha stated in a speech that was extensively interpreted as an try and maintain U.S. dominance within the area.
The gambit angered Bolivians and gave Morales a last-minute enhance. When he was lastly elected three years later, the leftist chief expelled Rochas successor as chief of the diplomatic mission for inciting civil conflict.
Rocha additionally served in Italy, Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and labored as a Latin America professional for the Nationwide Safety Council.
After his retirement from the State Division, Rocha started a second profession in enterprise, serving because the president of a gold mine within the Dominican Republic partly owned by Canadas Barrick Gold.
Extra lately, hes held senior roles at XCoal, a Pennsylvania-based coal exporter; Clover Leaf Capital, an organization shaped to facilitate mergers within the hashish business; legislation agency Foley & Lardner; and Spanish public relations agency Llorente & Cuenca, which stated Monday that it had fired him.
John Feeley, who ended an extended diplomatic profession serving as U.S. ambassador to Panama, stated he was “saddened and shocked that my former mentor turned out to be a profession Cuban mole.”
Feeley, who retired from the State Division over variations with President Donald Trump’s administration, stated that the final time he noticed Rocha he was shocked by how a diplomat who had served administrations of each events had so absolutely embraced Trumps model of politics.
It’s past ironic that he cultivated this cartoonish persona and that everybody apparently purchased it, he stated.
