Retired US diplomat accused of working as a secret agent for Cuba

US authorities on Monday accused a retired American diplomat of working as a secret agent for the Cuban government for decades. They said there was evidence he had secretly supported the foreign nation as he rose through the ranks of the US State Department.

In a criminal complaint In federal court in Miami, federal prosecutors said the diplomat, Manuel Rocha, had secretly aided Cuba’s “clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against the United States” since 1981 and had recently met with handlers from Cuba’s main spy agency. 2017.

For more than two decades, Mr. Rocha handled matters related to Latin America in a series of positions at the Department of State, including as Ambassador to Bolivia until 2002. More recently, he served as an advisor to a U.S. military command responsible for Cuba, among others.

The complaint does not go into details about how Mr. Rocha may have influenced U.S. policy or what information he may have sent to Cuba. But it describes three meetings over the past year or so between Mr. Rocha and an undercover FBI agent whom Mr. Rocha believed to be a representative of Cuba’s spy agency, the Directorate of Intelligence.

During those meetings, Mr. Rocha spoke several times about working in that organization’s interests and referred to the United States as “the enemy,” according to an affidavit filed with the court by Michael J. Haley, a special agent of the FBI in Miami. Mr. Rocha was quoted in the affidavit as saying that “what we have done” is “huge” and “more than a grand slam,” although the affidavit does not specify what he was referring to. The conversations were in Spanish and translated by the FBI

Mr. Rocha was charged Monday with acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government and two other crimes. He was scheduled to appear in a Miami courtroom Monday afternoon.

In a statement, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said that Mr. Rocha had sought a position in the diplomatic service that gave him access to classified information and allowed him to influence foreign policy.

“This action exposes one of the most far-reaching and longest infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent,” Mr. Garland said.