MIAMI \u2014 A former U.S. ambassador with a long career in the federal government has been charged with working secretly since the early 1980s for Cuba\u2019s intelligence services as an unregistered \u201ccovert\u201d foreign agent in the United States, according to an FBI complaint unsealed Monday in Miami federal court.<\/p>\n
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, a former ambassador to Bolivia who had also worked as a senior diplomat in the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, spent the weekend in custody at the Federal Detention Center in Miami and made his first appearance in federal court Monday. Prosecutors said they plan to file a grand jury indictment Tuesday and seek his detention at a bond hearing Wednesday before Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres, who signed the complaint for Rocha\u2019s arrest on Friday.<\/p>\n
His defense attorney, Jacqueline Arango, a former Miami federal prosecutor with a national security background, declined to comment but plans to argue for Rocha\u2019s release before trial. His arraignment is scheduled for Dec. 18.<\/p>\n
Although the FBI complaint does not charge Rocha with spying for the Cuban government, the nation\u2019s top law enforcement official characterized him that way in a statement released Monday by the Justice Department that harkened back to the Cold War and frosty relations between Cuba and the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,\u201d Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said.<\/p>\n
Under U.S. law, it is required for anyone working as an agent for a foreign government in the United States to register with the Attorney General\u2019s Office in the Department of Justice. The FBI criminal complaint charges Rocha, who was born in Colombia and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1978, with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and to defraud the United States, acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, and use of a passport obtained by a false statement.<\/p>\n
Over the span of 40 years as an employee in the State Department and private sector, \u201cRocha secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against the United States by serving as a cover agent of Cuba\u2019s intelligence services,\u201d according to an affidavit filed with the FBI complaint.<\/p>\n
In his covert role, Rocha secured diplomatic positions in the U.S. government that \u201cprovided him access to nonpublic information, including classified information,\u201d and \u201cthe ability to affect United States foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter his (government) employment ended (in 2002), Rocha held other positions and engaged in other acts intended to support Cuba\u2019s intelligence services,\u201d states the affidavit, adding that Rocha provided \u201cfalse 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 22-page complaint with affidavit says that the FBI received a tip in November 2022 that Rocha had been working as a \u201ccovert agent.\u201d The affidavit alleges that an FBI undercover agent posing as a covert Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence representative met in Miami with Rocha during a series of video-recorded meetings over the past year in which Rocha repeatedly admitted his \u201cdecades\u201d of work for Cuba that spanned \u201c40 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the FBI undercover agent told Rocha he was \u201ca covert representative here in Miami\u201d whose mission was \u201cto contact you, introduce myself as your new contact, and establish a new communication plan,\u201d Rocha answered \u201cYes,\u201d according to the affidavit. Rocha then went on to describe and celebrate his activities as a Cuban intelligence agent.<\/p>\n
Throughout the meetings, Rocha behaved as a Cuban agent, consistently referring to the United States as \u201cthe enemy,\u201d and using the term \u201cwe\u201d to describe himself and Cuba, according to the affidavit. Rocha also praised the late Fidel Castro as the \u201cComandante,\u201d and referred to his contacts in Cuban intelligence as his \u201cCompa\u00f1eros\u201d (comrades) and to the Cuban intelligence services as the \u201cDirecci\u00f3n.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocha described his work as a Cuban agent as \u201ca grand slam,\u201d states the affidavit, filed by prosecutor Jonathan Stratton.<\/p>\n
In particular, Rocha noted he was deputy principal officer of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana between 1995 and 1997, when the Cuban government orchestrated the conspiracy to shoot down two Cuban exile planes flown by four pilots for Brothers to the Rescue over the Florida Straits in February 1996.<\/p>\n
According to the affidavit, Rocha described the international controversy as \u201cthe knock down of the small planes. … That was a time of a lot tension … that was the time of the \u2018Brothers to the Rescue\u2019 and other similar people … who were pushing politics towards unnecessary provocations.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocha also told the FBI undercover agent that his last trip to Cuba was in 2016 or 2017.<\/p>\n
Word of Rocha\u2019s arrest Friday was kept secret by U.S. authorities over the weekend.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, FBI spokesman James Marshall declined to comment on Rocha\u2019s arrest at his Miami area home. The U.S. attorney\u2019s office spokeswoman, prosecutor Sarah Schall, did not respond to several text, email and voice mail messages seeking comment on Sunday. After The Associated Press broke a story that evening about Rocha\u2019s arrest, Schall said later that she could not comment.<\/p>\n
Rocha\u2019s most recent former employer, the Foley & Lardner law firm in Miami, where he worked as a senior adviser on international business, said he left the office in August. \u201cWe are neither representing nor providing legal assistance to Ambassador Rocha,\u201d a spokeswoman said Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The charge brought against Rocha under the Foreign Agents Registration Act has been used by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney\u2019s office in the past, including a pending case against former Miami Congressman David Rivera, who is accused of lobbying on behalf of the Venezuelan government without registering as a foreign agent. The offense was also among several charges brought against a Cuban spy ring in the late 1990s, when a group of Cuban government operatives were accused of espionage and a conspiracy to shoot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes in the Florida Straits, killing three U.S. citizens and one Cuban American.<\/p>\n
Rocha, who gradated from Yale University and obtained graduate degrees from Harvard University and Georgetown University, had a long diplomatic career working in various foreign posts in the Caribbean, Mexico and South America for the U.S. government, including his service as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.<\/p>\n
A former colleague said it was hard to believe that Rocha was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent for the Cuban government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is shocking,\u201d said a former U.S. official who knew him. \u201cManuel would not be in the list of people I would think would be working for these guys.\u201d<\/p>\n
While serving as ambassador to Bolivia, Rocha gained some notoriety when he warned voters ahead of the 2002 election that if socialist Evo Morales were elected president, the country would risk losing U.S. aid.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was considered sort of a conservative career officer,\u201d said the former official, who did not want to be identified. \u201c(He) spent a lot of time licking these wounds over Bolivia, where he drew a lot of fire and criticism because of what he said about Evo Morales in the middle of an election, with people later claiming that those comments got Morales elected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rocha\u2019s term as ambassador ended in August 2002.<\/p>\n
Until that controversy, Rocha was known as a versatile diplomat who moved from one U.S. embassy post to another, starting in the early 1980s during the Reagan administration. Along the way, he also served as deputy principal officer of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, as well as the director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n
In his \u201clucrative\u201d post-government life, as the FBI described his career in the affidavit, Rocha was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and served on the University of Miami\u2019s International Advisory Board. He also served on the advisory board of the Cuba Transition Project at UM and as a special adviser to the U.S. military commander of U.S. Southern Command in Miami between 2006 and 2012. He was also a member of the late Henry Kissinger\u2019s International Council on Terrorism.<\/p>\n
In addition, Rocha was director of government relations for Arcos Dorados Holdings, which owns and manages most of the McDonald\u2019s restaurants in Latin America.<\/p>\n
_____<\/p>\n
\u00a92023 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a> <\/p>\n KeyWords:: 88818e85-960c-43b5-92aa-ddc0ef8b2e43 MIAMI \u2014 A former U.S. ambassador with a long career in the federal government has been charged with working secretly since the early 1980s for Cuba\u2019s intelligence services as an unregistered \u201ccovert\u201d foreign agent in the United States, according to an FBI complaint unsealed Monday in Miami federal court. Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, a former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56195,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56194\/revisions\/56195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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