Victor Manuel Rocha: Who Is He? Former US Ambassador to Bolivia Admits Liability for Cuban Spying

Victor Manuel Rocha, a former US ambassador to Bolivia who is accused of espionage for Cuba for forty years, announced before the court on Thursday that he will enter a guilty plea.

For what US authorities described as “one of the most extensive and persistent infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,” the 73-year-old former ambassador was taken into custody in December.

During a pre-trial meeting on Thursday, Rocha informed Judge Beth Bloom that he intended to modify his plea. Two weeks before, he had entered a not guilty plea to charges of conspiring to serve as an agent of a foreign government. The court scheduled April 12 as the official date for Rocha to officially enter a guilty plea and receive his sentence.

ROCHA: WHO IS SHE?
Rocha, an American citizen by naturalization who was born in Colombia, is said to have started working with Havana as a clandestine agent of the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) in 1981 and carried out espionage work up until his arrest. Rocha had “repeatedly referred to the United States as ‘the enemy,'” according to US Attorney General Merrick Garland, who also said that he had “repeatedly bragged about the significance of his efforts.”

Rocha began working for the State Department in 1981 and advanced through the ranks to become a career diplomat. She held positions in Washington, the Dominican Republic, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Havana, and Mexico City. Rocha held positions as president Bill Clinton’s National Security Council member from 1994 to 1995 and as Clinton and George W. Bush’s ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002. In addition, he advised the US military leadership in charge of Cuba.

According to the federal complaint filed against him, Rocha “behaved as a Cuban agent” during many encounters with an undercover FBI agent starting in November 2022, complimenting the late leader of the communist island, Fidel Castro, and “using the term ‘we’ to describe himself and Cuba.” He acknowledged that he had gone to Havana in 2016 or 2017 to meet with his DGI handlers, and he had requested the undercover agent to give the DGI “my warm regards.”

“ASSINATION” DECLAIMS
In addition, Rocha is the target of a lawsuit that Oswaldo Paya’s widow filed in Florida on Thursday. She claims that Rocha caused her late husband, who was awarded the Sakharov Prize for human rights by the European Parliament in 2002, to die in a vehicle accident in Cuba in 2012.

According to a court document, Roche’s “actions as a covert agent for the Cuban terrorist dictatorship and its intelligence-gathering mission against the United States” directly led to “the Cuban terrorist dictatorship assassinating Mr. Paya with impunity.”

In the same automobile accident, Spanish politician Angel Carromero and Swedish conservative politician Jens Aron Modig survived, but another Cuban dissident, Harold Cepero, also perished. Carromero, who was driving, was given the responsibility by Cuban officials for the collision, although he maintains that a Cuban secret service vehicle hit the automobile.