Former US ambassador arrested in Florida, accused of serving as an agent of Cuba, AP source says

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https://apnews.com/article/fbi-cuba-bolivia-former-ambassador-arrested-af9d80a4f268099364dff249dd74b3ec

Former US ambassador arrested in Florida, accused of serving as an agent of Cuba, AP source says​

FILE - An FBI seal is seen on a wall on Aug. 10, 2022, in Omaha, Neb. A former American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested in a long-running FBI counterintelligence investigation, accused of secretly serving as an agent of Cuba’s government, The Associated Press has learned. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
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MIAMI (AP) — A former American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested in a long-running FBI counterintelligence investigation, accused of secretly serving as an agent of Cuba’s government, The Associated Press has learned.

Manuel Rocha, 73, was arrested in Miami on Friday on a criminal complaint and more details about the case are expected to be made public at a court appearance Monday, said two people who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing federal investigation.

One of the people said the Justice Department case accuses Rocha of working to promote the Cuban government’s interests. Federal law requires people doing the political bidding of a foreign government or entity inside the U.S. to register with the Justice Department, which in recent years has stepped up its criminal enforcement of illicit foreign lobbying.

The Justice Department declined to comment. It was not immediately clear if Rocha had a lawyer and a law firm where he previously worked said it was not representing him. His wife hung up when contacted by the AP.

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Rocha’s 25-year diplomatic career was spent under both Democratic and Republican administrations, much of it in Latin America during the Cold War, a period of sometimes heavy-handed U.S. political and military policies. His diplomatic postings included a stint at the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba during a time when the U.S. lacked full diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro’s communist government.

Born in Colombia, Rocha was raised in a working-class home in New York City and went on to obtain a succession of liberal arts degrees from Yale, Harvard and Georgetown before joining the foreign service in 1981.

He was the top U.S. diplomat in Argentina between 1997 and 2000 as a decade-long currency stabilization program backed by Washington was unraveling under the weight of huge foreign debt and stagnant growth, triggering a political crisis that would see the South American country cycle through five presidents in two weeks.

At his next post as ambassador to Bolivia, he intervened directly into the 2002 presidential race, warning weeks ahead of the vote that the U.S. would cut off assistance to the poor South American country if it were to elect former coca grower Evo Morales.

“I want to remind the Bolivian electorate that if they vote for those who want Bolivia to return to exporting cocaine, that will seriously jeopardize any future aid to Bolivia from the United States,″ Rocha said in a speech that was widely interpreted as a an attempt to sustain U.S. dominance in the region.

The gambit angered Bolivians and gave Morales a last-minute boost. When he was finally elected three years later, the leftist leader expelled Rocha’s successor as chief of the diplomatic mission for inciting “civil war.”

Rocha also served in Italy, Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic, and worked as a Latin America expert for the National Security Council.

Rocha’s wife, Karla Wittkop Rocha, would not comment when contacted by the AP. “I don’t need to talk to you,” she said before hanging up.

Following his retirement from the State Department, Rocha began a second career in business, serving as the president of a gold mine in the Dominican Republic partly owned by Canada’s Barrick Gold.

More recently, he’s held senior roles at XCoal, a Pennsylvania-based coal exporter; Clover Leaf Capital, a company formed to facilitate mergers in the cannabis industry; law firm Foley & Lardner and Spanish public relations firms Llorente & Cuenca.

“Our firm remains committed to transparency and will closely monitor the situation, cooperating fully with the authorities if any information becomes available to us,” Dario Alvarez, CEO of Llorente & Cuenca’s U.S. operations, said in an email.

XCoal and Clover Leaf Capital did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Foley & Lardner said Rocha left the law firm in August.

____​

Tucker reported from Washington.

___ Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or AP News Tips

 

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`

 

[BigMoneyGrip]

Get him outta here traitor

 

[88m3]

What a degenerate. I wonder if his wife is proud of him.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Get him outta here traitor

What a degenerate. I wonder if his wife is proud of him.

Cuba's man in Foggy Bottom

Although spy stories generate public attention, even fascination, many of them have limited impact on real-world events. A lot of espionage cases turn out to be "just spy vs. spy stuff," as the skeptics put it. But sometimes a spy scandal is every bit as big as it seems.

www.washingtonexaminer.com

Cuba's man in Foggy Bottom
FBI Seal
Although spy stories generate public attention, even fascination, many of them have limited impact on real-world events. A lot of espionage cases turn out to be "just spy vs. spy stuff," as the skeptics put it. But sometimes a spy scandal is every bit as big as it seems.

We got one of those on Monday.

The Department of Justice announced the indictment of Victor Manuel Rocha on a raft of serious charges stemming from his four decades acting as an alleged spy for Communist Cuba . The 73-year-old Rocha, a native of Colombia and naturalized U.S. citizen, enjoyed a dulcet life, including attending a boarding school in Connecticut, followed by an undergraduate degree from Yale plus master’s degrees from Harvard and Georgetown. In 1981, Rocha joined the Foreign Service, and over the next 21 years his State Department career prospered. Rocha’s work focused on Latin America, including posts in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, as well as his service as the deputy chief of mission in Argentina, culminating with the ambassadorship to Bolivia from 1999 to 2002. Other assignments — this will become important soon — included secondment to the National Security Council in 1994-95 where Rocha held the Cuba portfolio, then serving with the U.S. Interests Section (our de facto embassy in Cuba before President Barack Obama normalized relations in 2015) from 1997 to 1999.

The entire time, Rocha was a Cuban spy.

According to the DOJ, Rocha was recruited by Cuba’s Direccion de Inteligencia, the infamous DI, in 1981 (although he appears to have had some secret contact with Cubans since 1973). It was his Cuban handlers who instructed Rocha to join the State Department, as he did. His long career with the U.S. government was, in effect, his side gig: Rocha’s real employer was the DI and we should assume that he passed to Havana every American secret he got his hands on. Since Rocha held high-level security clearances — he was the State Department's de facto Cuba maven — the damage here appears to be severe indeed. Neither did that damage cease when Rocha retired from the State Department in 2002. After Foggy Bottom, Rocha cashed in with the private sector, including work for a Miami law firm, plus membership on the Council of Foreign Relations. From 2006 to 2012, he served as a special adviser to U.S. Southern Command, the Miami-based Pentagon command with responsibility for South America and the Caribbean — including Cuba. That position gave him access to defense secrets and we should assume that Rocha passed those to the DI too.

BIDEN WANTS TO PICK AND CHOOSE WHO GETS TO GO TO COLLEGE

The DOJ accuses Rocha of being a witting DI agent for four decades, passing secrets, meeting with Cuban intelligence officers clandestinely, visiting Cuba without State Department authorization, and repeatedly lying to the U.S. government about his secret life in Fidel Castro’s service.

The indictment includes tantalizing hints at Rocha’s double life. Although the DOJ leaves opaque how the FBI got wise to the accused’s treachery, noting only that the bureau received information that Rocha was a Cuban covert agent "prior to November 2022," it highlights four meetings in the months that followed between Rocha and someone whom he believed was a DI officer, but who was in reality an FBI agent working undercover. That agent contacted Rocha on behalf of his "friends in Havana" and the turncoat took the bait. Three Miami meetings followed, during the course of which Rocha admitted his guilt.

He referred to Cubans as "we" and America as "the enemy" while hailing Fidel Castro as "the Comandante." Before the meetings, Rocha employed counter-surveillance techniques to avoid detection, showing his awareness of espionage tradecraft. During the first rendezvous, Rocha told the undercover FBI agent about his four decades of secret work for the DI, whom he referred to as his "comrades" from the Direccion de Inteligencia, to whom he sent his "warmest regards" — all Cuban spy insider lingo. He admitted that he "created the legend of a right-wing person" to keep his DI work under wraps while stating that he hadn’t been in touch with his Cuban handlers since 2016 or 2017 when he last traveled to Havana via Panama on a Dominican passport. All shady spy shenanigans here.

During the second meeting, Rocha reaffirmed his commitment to the DI, stating he was willing to pass to Havana any American secrets he could still get his hands on. He further hailed his secret work for the DI, stating that he worked to "strengthen the Revolution," adding that "What we have done … it’s enormous. … More than a grand slam."

In a third meeting with the FBI agent, Rocha restated his continuing commitment to Havana, even if he came under investigation: "I know how to defend myself," he explained, "I have the intelligence." Rocha arranged for a fourth meeting with the DI on Dec. 8, 2023, but that would not come to pass because he was called in for a chat with State Department Diplomatic Security on Dec. 1, during which he was shown surveillance photos taken during his recent meetings with the undercover FBI agent. Rocha declined to comment. Presumably at that point he knew he was in serious trouble.

If convicted, Rocha will probably spend the rest of his life in federal prison, since he faces grave espionage-related charges. It’s difficult to see how Rocha can beat this rap since the FBI has him on tape admitting his treachery in detail. The big questions now focus on counterintelligence. How many secrets did Rocha pass to Cuba? This is a particularly serious case because Rocha didn’t just have access to U.S. government secrets; he was able to push American policy in Havana’s direction. In the aftermath of Rocha’s arrest, the intelligence community faces one of the most daunting damage assessments in its history, given the length and breadth of Rocha’s apparent treachery.

Worst of all, given the long-standing close ties between Cuban and Russian intelligence, anything important that Rocha passed to the DI should be assumed to have wound up in Moscow.

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John R. Schindler served with the National Security Agency as a senior intelligence analyst and counterintelligence officer.

 

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