Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, was arrested late last week on three charges of spying on behalf of Cuba for over 40 years, federal authorities said Monday.
Rocha has been accused of secretly helping Cuba gather “non-public” U.S. intelligence since November 1981. The 73-year-old ex-diplomat allegedly referred to the U.S. as the “enemy” and said his covert work for Havana “strengthened the Revolution . . . immensely,” according to newly unsealed court papers.
The arrest “exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,” U.S. attorney general Merrick Garland told reporters Monday.
“Those who have the privilege of serving in the government of the United States are given an enormous amount of trust by the public we serve,” he added. “To betray that trust by falsely pledging loyalty to the United States while serving a foreign power is a crime that will be met with the full force of the Justice Department.”
Rocha faces at least three criminal counts, with possibly more to come later this week. The current charges include the following: conspiracy to act as a foreign agent to defraud the United States, acting as an illegal agent for a foreign government, and use of a passport obtained by false statement.
The defendant appeared before chief magistrate judge Edwin Torres in a Miami, Fla., court on Monday.
Assistant U.S. attorney Jonathan Stratton, who filed the criminal complaint in conjunction with the arrest three days prior, claimed Rocha poses a potential flight risk due to his dual citizenship, arguing he should be held without bail. The defense countered, saying Rocha will attend all court proceedings if granted bail. A hearing on the issue is scheduled for Wednesday, NBC News reported.
The court documents allege Rocha made multiple trips to Cuba, where he helped promote Cuban interests at the expense of the U.S. for the past 42 years. While specifics on the allegedly shared information remain sparse, the charging statement detailed Rocha’s private conversations with an undercover FBI agent that led to the former envoy’s arrest.
Rocha and the agent interacted with each other since November 2022, when the agent first contacted Rocha via WhatsApp, claiming to be a representative of the Cuban Intelligence Services. After that, Rocha met with him three times and talked about his time working as a Cuban agent while in the U.S. government.
Originally from Colombia, Rocha became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1978 and graduated from Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown. After obtaining his degrees, he served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 and worked as the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002.