A former career U.S. diplomat was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison after admitting that he worked for decades as a secret agent for the Cuban government, a plea deal that leaves many unanswered questions about a betrayal that stunned the U.S. foreign service. .
Manuel Rocha, 73, will also pay a $500,000 fine and cooperate with authorities after pleading guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government. In exchange, prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen charges, including wire fraud and making false statements.
“Your actions were a direct attack on our democracy and the safety of our citizens,” U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom told Rocha.
Rocha, dressed in beige prison clothing, asked his friends and family for forgiveness. “I assume full responsibility and accept the sanction,” according to him. The Associated Press.
The sentencing capped an exceptionally swift criminal case and avoided a trial that would have shed new light on what exactly Rocha did to help Cuba, even as he worked for two decades for the U.S. State Department.
The details, prosecutors said, remain secret, and Bloom was not even told when the government determined Rocha was spying for Cuba.
Six months ago, Rocha was arrested at his home in Miami, accused of participating in “clandestine activities” on behalf of Cuba since at least 1981, the year he joined the United States foreign service.
Rocha, 73, secretly supported Cuba's ruling Communist Party and helped the country's intelligence gathering against Washington all along.
“Today's statement brings to an end more than four decades of betrayal and deceit by Mr. Rocha,” David Newman, a senior national security official at the U.S. Department of Justice, said during a news conference in Miami. “For most of his life, Mr. Rocha lived a lie.”
Rocha admitted to his decades of work for Cuba and boasted about his ability to avoid detection in a series of meetings in 2022 and 2023 with an undercover FBI agent who posed as a representative of Cuba's foreign intelligence service, according to a complaint. criminal case filed in federal court in Miami. court.
“What we have done… is enormous. More than grand slam“Rocha told the undercover agent, according to the complaint.
A lawyer for Rocha did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. Rocha agreed to plead guilty as part of a deal with federal prosecutors that requires him to disclose details of his interactions with Cuban intelligence.
The full extent of Rocha's cooperation with Havana may never be known, according to U.S. officials.
In his two decades of work in the public sector, Rocha served in the State Department from 1981 to 2002. And even as a member of the White House National Security Council from 1994 to 1995, according to court documents.
The case highlighted the sophistication of Cuba's intelligence services, which have achieved other damaging penetrations into high levels of the US government. Rocha's betrayal went undetected for years, prosecutors said, when the Ivy League-educated diplomat secretly met with Cuban agents and provided false information to U.S. officials about his contacts.
However, recent research by Associated Press found overlooked red flags along the way, including a warning a former CIA agent received nearly twenty years ago that Rocha was working as a double agent. Independent intelligence revealed that the CIA knew as early as 1987 that Cuban leader Fidel Castro had a “super mole” hidden deep within the U.S. government, and some officials suspected it could have been Rocha, reported AP.
Rocha's prestigious career included stints as ambassador to Bolivia and senior positions in Argentina, Mexico, the White House and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
In 1973, the year he graduated from Yale, Rocha traveled to Chile, where prosecutors say he became a “great friend” of Cuba's intelligence agency, the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI).
Even before Friday's sentencing, the plea deal drew criticism from Miami's Cuban exile community, with some legal objections.
“Any sentence that allows him to see the light of day again would not be justice,” said Carlos Trujillo, a Miami lawyer who served as U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States during the Trump administration. “He is a spy for a foreign adversary who put American lives at risk.”
“As a Cuban I cannot forgive him,” added Isel Rodríguez, a 55-year-old Cuban-American woman who stood outside the federal courthouse on Friday with a group of protesters waving American flags. “I feel completely betrayed.”
[Con información de The Associated Press y Reuters]
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