(CNN Spanish) – Manuel Rocha is 73 years old and worked as a US diplomat for several decades. He served as deputy director of the United States Interests Office in Cuba and became that country’s ambassador to Bolivia. He is now accused of acting as a secret agent for Cuba.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Dec. 4 that the case against Rocha “exposes one of the most far-reaching and longest-running infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent.”
Rocha claims to be innocent. How did the US discover that this high-ranking official was allegedly a spy?
Rocha’s career
Manuel Rocha, who according to the State Department is a “naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Colombia,” has an extensive diplomatic history with positions at U.S. embassies and consulates in Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Italy, Bolivia, Mexico and Argentina.
According to his U.S. State Department biography, Rocha graduated with honors from Yale University in 1973, received his Master of Public Administration from Harvard University in 1976, and a Master of International Relations from Georgetown University in 1978
He began his career as a diplomatic officer in the Honduras office of the State Department in November 1981. In January 1983, he was appointed political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He later served as a surveillance officer in the State Department’s Operations Center and as Consul for Political and Economic Affairs at the U.S. Consulate General in Florence, Italy. In March 1987, he was appointed political-military officer at the embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
He later served as deputy director of the United States Interests Section in Havana and director for inter-American affairs at the National Security Council in Washington. He also served as deputy political advisor at the embassy in Mexico City.
Between 1991 and 1994, Manuel Rocha was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. He later served as deputy director of the United States Interests Section in Cuba.
Rocha was chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires from 1997 to 2000.
Rocha then served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002, his highest diplomatic position.
He then worked as an advisor to the commander of the United States Southern Command, a position he left in 2012.
According to court documents, Rocha currently works at the consulting firm LLYC USA as a “Senior International Business Advisor.”
What do they indicate?
The State Department says Rocha “secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its secret intelligence gathering mission against the United States by acting as an undercover agent for the Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence.”
“The indictment alleges that Rocha acted as an undercover agent for the Cuban government for more than 40 years,” said Attorney General Garland.
Rocha faces 15 charges, including acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government and others – added to the indictment on Tuesday, December 5 – of wire fraud and making false statements to investigators.
Prosecutors allege the 73-year-old former US diplomat acted as a “secret agent for the Cuban intelligence services” for decades.
Rocha was arrested and made his first court appearance in Miami on Monday, where federal prosecutors asked a judge to hold him until trial.
In the indictment, prosecutors allege that the Cuban government worked for years to recruit people in the United States to help gather intelligence, including people within the U.S. government.
As a State Department employee, the former diplomat had “unique” access to government information that was not public, according to prosecutors.
Rocha was represented by Miami attorney Jacqueline Arango, who works for the Akerman Law Firm. At the arraignment on Tuesday, December 6, Rocha pleaded not guilty.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Stratton said the government plans to present additional charges to a grand jury and schedule a preliminary hearing and arraignment for Dec. 18.
“Breach of trust by pledging false loyalty to the United States while serving a foreign power is a crime punishable to the fullest extent of the Justice Department,” Garland said.
The indictment further states that Rocha allegedly praised another U.S. government official who was working as an agent for Cuba. In secretly recorded conversations, Rocha allegedly spoke about a Cuban government employee named “Ana” and said she “unfortunately would have done much more if she had not been deceived.”
While court documents do not identify the individual, a U.S. citizen named Ana Montes was convicted of spying for the Cuban government while working at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency. He spent more than 20 years behind bars.
How an undercover FBI agent contacted Rocha
It all started with a tip the FBI received. An undercover FBI employee posing as a Cuban intelligence agent sent a message to Rocha on WhatsApp in November 2022, shortly after investigators received a tip about Rocha’s alleged undercover work, court documents say. In the message, prosecutors said, the undercover agent said: “He has a message for you from his friends in Havana. This is a delicate matter.” The former ambassador agreed to meet with the undercover employee in Miami for a discussion.
In several meetings with an undercover FBI agent posing as a member of Cuban intelligence, Rocha repeatedly referred to the United States as “the enemy” and praised Fidel Castro, according to court documents.
Rocha said he was “responsible” for what he described as the “shooting down of the small planes,” which prosecutors say refers to an incident during the time Rocha was working for the State Department in Havana, when Cuba shot down two planes in 1996 shot down unarmed aircraft operated by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a U.S.-based group opposed to Fidel Castro’s government. Four men were killed in the incident.
Rocha allegedly bragged – according to prosecutors – about his “decades” of work on behalf of the Cuban government, said he had “strengthened the revolution over the last 40 years” and allegedly lamented “the blows dealt by the enemy.” He was referring to the US government and had “attacked the current revolution”.
With reporting from CNN’s Ione Molinares, Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand, Evan Perez, Denise Royal and Katelyn Polantz.