Former U.S. diplomat and Cuban spy Manuel Rocha has been sentenced to 15 years in prison and ordered to pay a $500,000 fine after pleading guilty to conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government earlier this year. The plea agreement stipulates that Rocha, 73, must also cooperate with federal investigators in an ongoing assessment of the impact his espionage activities have had on U.S. interests.
U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom told Rocha at the sentencing hearing: “Your actions were a direct attack to our democracy and the safety of our citizens.” The Cuban spy acknowledged responsibility for his actions and said he would accept the court’s penalty.
Rocha — who served as the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia under both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — was arrested in early December of last year. His entering of a guilty plea to spying allegations in late February shocked the U.S. foreign service community. The scale of damage that Rocha may have caused to U.S. intelligence and national security operations around the communist Cuban regime is not yet known. Details of the former diplomat and spy’s activities are considered classified – Judge Bloom herself was not even informed by prosecutors when they became aware that Rocha was an agent of Cuba.
In recorded conversations with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence operative, Rocha referred to the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro as “Comandante,” referred to the U.S. as the “enemy,” and bragged about his role as a Cuban operative for over 40 years within U.S. foreign policy circles.
