MIAMI– A former U.S. diplomat was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison after admitting to decades of working as a secret agent for communist Cuba, a plea deal that leaves many unanswered questions about a betrayal that stunned the U.S. Foreign Service.
Manuel Rocha, 73, will also pay a $500,000 fine and cooperate with authorities after pleading guilty to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. In return, prosecutors dismissed more than a dozen other charges, including wire fraud and making false statements.
“I plead guilty,” Rocha, dressed in a beige prison uniform, told U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom, adding that he understood the severity of his actions.
The conviction ended an exceptionally speedy criminal case and averted a trial that would have shed new light on what exactly Rocha did to help Cuba while working for the U.S. State Department for two decades.
Prosecutors said these details remain classified and would not even tell Bloom when the government determined Rocha was spying for Cuba.
Federal authorities have conducted a confidential damage assessment that could take years. The State Department said Friday it would continue to work with the intelligence community “to fully assess the foreign policy and national security implications of these allegations.”
Rocha’s sentence came less than six months after his shocking arrest at his Miami home on charges that he had engaged in “clandestine activities” on behalf of Cuba since at least 1981, the year he joined the U.S. Foreign Service.
The case underscored the sophistication of Cuban intelligence services, which have made other damaging penetrations into high levels of the U.S. government. Rocha’s duplicity went undetected for years, prosecutors said, as the Ivy League-educated diplomat secretly met with Cuban agents and provided false information to U.S. officials about his contacts.
But a recent Associated Press investigation has revealed warning signs that have been overlooked along the way, including a warning a longtime CIA agent received nearly two decades ago that Rocha was working as a double agent. Separate intelligence showed that the CIA was aware as early as 1987 that Cuban leader Fidel Castro had dug a “super mole” deep into the U.S. government, and some officials suspected it might be Rocha, the AP reported .
Rocha’s prestigious career included ambassadors to Bolivia and top posts in Argentina, Mexico, the White House and the U.S. Interests Department in Havana.
In 1973, the year he graduated from Yale, Rocha traveled to Chile, where prosecutors say he became a “great friend” of Cuba’s intelligence agency, the Directorate General of Intelligence, or DGI.
Rocha’s post-administration career included time as special advisor to the commander of the U.S. Southern Command and, more recently, as a stalwart Donald Trump supporter and Cuba hardliner, a personality that friends and prosecutors say Rocha adopted to reveal his true to hide loyalty. .
One of the unanswered questions is what prompted the FBI to open an investigation into Rocha so many years after he retired from the Foreign Service.
Rocha incriminated himself in a series of secretly recorded conversations with an undercover agent posing as a Cuban intelligence agent. The officer initially contacted Rocha via WhatsApp, calling himself “Miguel” and saying he had a message “from your friends in Havana.”
Rocha praised Castro as “Comandante” in the talks, labeled the U.S. an “enemy” and boasted of his service for more than 40 years as a Cuban mole at the heart of American foreign policy, prosecutors said in court filings.
“What we did… it’s huge… more than a Grand Slam,” Rocha said.
Even before Friday’s sentencing, the plea deal drew criticism in Miami’s Cuban exile community, with some legal observers concerned that Rocha would be treated too leniently.
“Any punishment that allows him to see the light of day again would not be justice,” said Carlos Trujillo, a Miami lawyer who served as U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States during the Trump administration. “He is a spy for a foreign adversary who has endangered American lives.”
“As a Cuban, I cannot forgive him,” added Isel Rodriguez, a 55-year-old Cuban-American woman who stood outside the federal courthouse on Friday with a group of protesters waving American flags. “I feel completely betrayed.”
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Mustian reported from Natchitoches, Louisiana.