According to the Department of Justice, Victor Manuel Rocha conducted one of the longest-running undercover investigations into the U.S. government.
Former U.S. diplomat Victor Manuel Rocha was sentenced to 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to acting as a Cuban agent in what the U.S. Department of Justice called one of the most extensive and longest-running infiltration cases. It was announced. US government.
U.S. prosecutors say Rocha secretly supported Cuba's ruling Communist Party for more than 40 years, including a 20-year career at the U.S. State Department, and helped the country gather intelligence against the United States.
“Today's plea brings an end to more than 40 years of betrayal and deception by Mr. Rocha,” David Newman, the top national security official at the U.S. Department of Justice, said at a news conference in Miami on Friday.
“Mr. Rocha has lived a lie for most of his life.”
Mr. Rocha, 73, was arrested at his home in Miami in December 2023 on suspicion of engaging in “covert operations” on behalf of Cuba since at least 1981, when he began his career as a U.S. diplomat.
He is accused of meeting with Cuban intelligence agents and falsifying information about his contacts to U.S. government officials.
An undercover FBI agent posed as a representative of the Cuban Intelligence Directorate and met with Rocha repeatedly in 2022 and 2023. According to court documents, Rocha admitted to the investigator that he had been working for Cuba for decades. Her agent identified himself as “Miguel” and Rocha's confession was recorded.
Rocha praised the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro and bragged about his more than 40 years as Cuba's mole at the center of U.S. foreign policy circles, according to prosecutors' court records.
“What we accomplished… it's huge… it's more than a Grand Slam,” he was quoted as saying.
U.S. officials said they may never know the full extent of Rocha's cooperation with Havana.
US-Cuba relations
Relations between Washington and Havana have been strained for more than 60 years, ever since Mr Castro and his team of armed revolutionaries overthrew the US-backed dictatorship.
The U.S. government then attempted to remove Castro in what was known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, followed by multiple assassination attempts over the next several decades.
In 1962, Cuba also allowed the Soviet Union to secretly install nuclear missiles, which were detected by U.S. surveillance. The Cuban Missile Crisis led to 13 days of tension that brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.
While former U.S. President Barack Obama took steps to ease tensions with Cuba, former U.S. President Donald Trump reversed some of Obama's measures, banning Americans from traveling to Cuba and restricting travel to the island. imposed corporate sanctions;
Current U.S. President Joe Biden has lifted some Trump-era sanctions on Cuba, but many remain in place, weighing on the country's economy.
Additionally, the United Nations General Assembly has passed near-unanimous resolutions on more than 30 occasions condemning the U.S. embargo on Cuba. But any meaningful action on the UN embargo would require approval from the Security Council, where the US has veto power.