An American ex-ambassador is accused of was spying on “40 plus years» them United States for Bucket, a historical enemy of Washington, the US Department of Justice announced today. This case is “one of the highest and most sustained infiltrations by a foreign agent into the bosom of the American stateAttorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 and a member of the White House National Security Council from 1994 to 1995.
“We believe that for more than 40 years, Victor Manuel Rocha worked as an agent of the Cuban state,” Garland said.
The former diplomat “sought and obtained positions within the US government apparatus that would have given them access to non-public information and the ability to influence US foreign policy,” he added.
Born in Colombia and a naturalized American, Rocha began working for Cuba’s communist government in 1981 in the ranks of its largest intelligence agency, according to the indictment.
According to the Justice Department, he continued spying on behalf of Cuba even after he left the State Department in 2002 after thirty years of service, mostly as an adviser to the head of the US Southern Command, which coordinates US armed forces in the region which includes Cuba, between 2006 and 2012.
“He always referred to the United States as the ‘enemy’ and used the word ‘we’ to describe Cuba and himself,” he underlined. In a court document, Rocha is accused of secretly supporting Cuba and the secret intelligence-gathering mission against Washington since 1981.
Rocha admitted his decades-long offering to Cuba in a series of meetings in 2022 and 2023 with an undercover FBI agent posing as a representative of Cuba’s Directorate General of Intelligence, according to the court document.
Rocha was arrested and is expected to appear in federal court in Miami in the next few hours. He is accused of committing several federal crimes, including acting as an illegal foreign agent and using a fraudulently obtained passport.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said today that the United States will work with partners in the intelligence community to assess any long-term national security implications following the disclosure of this case.
Source: News Beast
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