Victor Manuel Rocha (73), a former diplomat who worked at the U.S. State Department for over 20 years and served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, was indicted after being found to have worked as a secret agent for Cuba for 40 years. He worked as the director of Latin American affairs, including Cuba, at the White House National Security Council (NSC) in the 1990s. Around the same time, it was established within the Swiss Embassy in Havana, the capital of Cuba, and served as the deputy representative of the U.S. Interest Representation, which served as a de facto U.S. embassy.
American society was shocked when it was revealed that a Cuban spy had infiltrated the heart of the White House. Attorney General Merrick Garland expressed concern, saying, “This is the longest-running case of a foreign intelligence agent infiltrating the highest level of the U.S. government.”
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on the 4th that it had indicted former Ambassador Rocha on charges of espionage. Born in Colombia, South America, in 1950, he immigrated to the United States with his parents and became a citizen in 1978. With degrees from prestigious American universities such as Yale and Harvard, he joined the State Department in November 1981 and worked until August 2002. He retired as the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia and also served as an advisor to the U.S. Southern Command in charge of Cuba from 2006 to 2012.
Federal prosecutors said in the indictment that he collected confidential information for the Directorate of General Intelligence (DGI), a Cuban intelligence agency, from the first year of his posting to the State Department until recently. On the outside, he pretended to be a right-wing figure who supported former US President Donald Trump, but in reality, he referred to the US as an ‘enemy’ and praised former Cuban National Council Chairman Fidel Castro, who led the communist revolution in Cuba.
Former Ambassador Rocha, who lived in Miami, Florida, where there are many Central and South American immigrants after retirement, was caught last year when an undercover investigator from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who found him suspicious, approached him disguised as a DGI agent. He believed that the Spanish-speaking FBI agent was a DGI agent based in Miami and confessed that he had “worked as a spy for Cuba for nearly 40 years.” When this investigator met former Ambassador Rocha, he completely pretended to be a Cuban agent, taking detours as former Ambassador Rocha had been trained at DGI, stopping along the way to check if anyone was following him.
When an FBI investigator asked former Ambassador Rocha how he got into the State Department, he replied, “It was a long process and it wasn’t easy, but the headquarters (DGI) was with me.” This can be interpreted to mean that he was already captured by Cuba even before he joined the State Department.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.