Colombian Víctor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. diplomat in several Latin American countries, was arrested in the United States and will be tried in a Miami court in a case of espionage for the Cuban government, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Monday.
Rocha, 73, is accused of “committing multiple federal crimes by acting secretly for decades as an agent of the Government of the Republic of Cuba,” the U.S. government said in a statement.
“This action exposes one of the most far-reaching and enduring infiltrations of the United States Government by a foreign agent,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.
“For more than 40 years, Victor Manuel Rocha served as an agent of the Cuban Government and sought and obtained positions within the U.S. Government that would provide him with access to non-public information and the ability to affect U.S. foreign policy,” the U.S. Attorney said.
According to the statement, the former U.S. State Department employee served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 and was U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002.
According to the complaint, beginning in approximately 1981 and continuing to the present, Rocha, who held U.S. citizenship, “secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against the United States by serving as an undercover agent and agent of Cuba’s General Intelligence Directorate.”
Rocha, 73, served from 1991 to 1994 as Principal Deputy Chief Officer of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, as well as director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council in Washington.
Rocha studied in the United States, including at the Taft School and Yale, Harvard and Georgetown Universities, and worked as a U.S. official and diplomat in delegations in several countries, including Cuba, Mexico, Argentina, Honduras and the Dominican Republic, as well as in Italy.
“For decades, Rocha allegedly worked as a covert agent for Cuba and abused his position of trust in the U.S. government to advance the interests of a foreign power,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.