U.S. Ambassador and spy for Cuba: One of the 'highest level and longest duration' of infiltrations

report SRA 2024 / [PDF version]

° Investigations indicate that he began to work secretly for Havana from the time he became a U.S. foreign service officer in 1981.

° For forty years, first as a diplomat and then in the private sector, Rocha served Cuban interests; he was also an advisor to the Southern Command.

° The former ambassador has admitted his guilt before the judge and has agreed to a reduction of charges, which could reduce the sentence from a maximum of 60 years to only one third.

During his two decades at department of State and a short stint at the White House Security committee , and then another two in the private sector using his government connections, Victor Manuel Rocha never generated suspicions of his secret activity in favor of Cuba. On December 4, 2023, three days after his arrest, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland presented the case as "one of the highest-level and longest-running infiltrations of the U.S. Government by a foreign agent." Rocha, 73, eventually admitted to the main charges, which could leave him in prison for the rest of his life.

At the moment it has not been revealed what sensitive information she could have transferred to Havana during her diplomatic degree program in several embassies and other destinations of the State department . Her case recalls that of Ana Montes, the high-ranking analyst of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) arrested in 2002 for also spying for the Castro regime. She thus joins the list of spies in favor of Cuba detected in the United States, in which the 'Miami Five', the five Cuban intelligence officers arrested in 1998, also have a prominent place.

committee and embassies

Of humble origins, Rocha was born in Bogotá in 1950. At the age of ten, after the death of his father, he moved with his mother and siblings to New York City. They resided in subsidized housing in Harlem, in a predominantly black environment; his mother worked in a sewing factory and they received federal financial aid for food. After the Harlem riots in 1964, Rocha was awarded a scholarship that promoted minority students, which gave him access to a good Education. He excelled in his programs of study at Yale, Harvard and Georgetown. In 1978 he completed a master's degree in Foreign Service, which joined another at public administration, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

In 1981 he began his degree program as a civil servant in the department of State. He served in different positions in the embassies of the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Mexico. During the Clinton Administration, in 1994-1995 he served as director of Inter-American Affairs in the committee of National Security, and between 1995 and 1997 he was the main attachment of the U.S. Interests Section in the Swiss Embassy in Havana, which at that time and until 2015 was the 'de facto' U.S. embassy on the island. He then moved to the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires and in 2000 was promoted to the post of ambassador, heading the legation in Bolivia.

In this country he was the protagonist of a controversy now revisited with his arrest. During the 2002 Bolivian presidential elections, Rocha was accused of having helped the leftist Evo Morales candidate for a statement in which he said: "I want to remind the Bolivian electorate that if they elect those who want Bolivia to return to being a cocaine exporter, they will endanger the financial aid of the United States". The comment, which could be seen as an example of the much criticized US arrogance and interference, was considered counterproductive, since the candidate of the Movement Towards Socialism and leader of the coca growers' unionism, who was in third place, ended up second (he would end up winning in the following elections to stay in power until 2019).

It is unclear whether Rocha's intervention was a political strategy to benefit leftist regimes in Latin America or a miscommunication. In any case, the newly arrived Bush Administration decided to change its representative in Bolivia and that same year, after two decades as a diplomat, Rocha moved to Miami and went into the private sector.

Thus, he worked for several law firms and established his own import business . Between 2012 and 2018 he was in Santo Domingo managing a Canadian mining business , where he also acquired Dominican nationality. In addition, Rocha continued to maintain some public activity, as a member of the 'think tank' committee of Foreign Relations, of the board advisor to the University of Miami and of its project of Cuban Transition, an initiative of the Institute of programs of study Cubans and Cuban Americans of that university that, with government funds, is dedicated to study and make recommendations for the reconstruction of Cuba once the dictatorship is over. He was also advisor special to the U.S. Southern Command.

Trap and arrest

It is possible that Rocha's relationship with Cuba began long before his diplomatic degree program and his naturalization as an American. It may have begun in Chile in 1973, impacted by the Pinochet-led coup d'état against socialist Salvador Allende. In any case, U.S. authorities place November 1981, when Rocha became an official at department of State, as the time when he began gathering information for the Cuban government.

Finally on the former ambassador's trail, in an undercover operation in November 2022, an FBI agent posed as employee from General Administration Intelligence. Arranging a call, the agent told Rocha about a fictitious problem that was occurring at the Cuban embassy in Santo Domingo. This was followed by three meetings that continued until June 2023. Closing the circle, the Diplomatic Security Service invited Rocha for an interview on December 1, 2023, in which he denied his previous meetings with the undercover agent. That same day the FBI formalized its complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and Rocha was arrested in Miami.

Attorney General Garland announced that the Justice department would respond relentlessly to Rocha's treason; for his part, Rocha initially chose to deny any criminal activity. On February 29, however, he accepted his guilt in exchange for the prosecution dropping part of the indictment. He admitted the two main charges brought against him, relating to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, which each carry a maximum penalty of 5 to 10 years' imprisonment; the prosecution agreed to drop 13 other charges, linked to wire fraud and false statements.

No information has been released about the case and some conjectures have suggested the possible link between Rocha and certain episodes. The widow of opposition leader Oswaldo Payá has stated that the attack against him, carried out by the Castro regime in 2012 by simulating a car accident, could have been carried out with U.S. information about Payá's movements leaked by Rocha.

Other spies

The Prosecutor's Office research follows similar patterns to those of previous cases of Cuban spies. In 2002, a high-ranking DIA analyst, Ana Montes, was convicted of having leaked classified information from that military intelligence agency to the Cuban regime. The attacks of September 11, 2001 led the United States to be stricter in the handling of information in its agencies and that allowed the arrest of Montes. Although the West German-born spy had nothing to do with 9/11, her position would have given her access to the planning of the invasion of Afghanistan. She was released in January 2023.

Another well-known case is that of the 'Miami Five' arrested in 1998 and whose espionage activity among exiles in Florida, as Castro intelligence officers, was admitted by Havana in 2001. It was a Cuban espionage ringthat was known as network Avispa. Their trial was challenged on appeal written request for "prejudice," but their conviction was upheld by the court's plenary session of the Executive Council . One was released in 2011 and another in February 2014. The other three were handed over to Cuba in December 2014, in a swap that sealed the agreement between Barack Obama and Raul Castro for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.