Federal prosecutors said on Monday that a retired State Department official worked for decades as a secret agent for Cuba, and told an undercover F.B.I.
agent that the United States was “the enemy.”In a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Miami, the prosecutors said that the diplomat, Manuel Rocha, had secretly aided Cuba’s “clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against the United States” since 1981 as he rose undetected through the ranks of the diplomatic corps and the National Security Council.
Mr. Rocha, 73, appeared to have met with handlers from Cuba’s premier spy agency as recently as 2017, prosecutors said, and boasted that his 40 years of spying on behalf of the communist government in Havana had “strengthened the revolution immensely.”For more than two decades, Mr. Rocha handled matters related to Latin America in a series of roles at the State Department under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, including a stint as ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002.
More recently, Mr. Rocha, a native of Colombia who grew up in New York, served as an adviser to the U.S. military command responsible for Cuba.
Persons:
Manuel Rocha, Cuba’s, . Rocha, “, Rocha, Bill Clinton, George W, Bush
Organizations:
State Department, United, National Security
Locations:
Cuba, United States, Miami, Havana, America, Bolivia, Colombia, New York