The former US ambassador to Bolivia accused of acting as a secret foreign agent of Cuba is expected to appear in a Miami courtroom Friday to be sentenced after pleading guilty.
Manuel Rocha, 73, is charged with several crimes, including acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, wire fraud and making false statements to investigators. Prosecutors have alleged the former American diplomat acted as a “covert agent of Cuba’s intelligence services” for decades.
The court record did not indicate the charges included in the guilty plea.
At a hearing in Miami in February, Rocha and prosecutors said he was changing his not guilty plea entered earlier that month, according to the court docket.
Rocha served as the US ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 and as the deputy principal officer of the US Interests Section in Cuba in the 1990s. He also worked for the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic in the 1980s as well as the US Consulate in Italy, and he served in different roles for US embassies in Mexico and Argentina.
His role as the political officer at the US Embassy in the Dominican Republic gave him “special responsibility” for Cuba, prosecutors alleged.
In several meetings with an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of Cuban intelligence, Rocha repeatedly referred to the US as “the enemy” and praised Cuban revolutionary and politician Fidel Castro, according to court documents.
Rocha described being “in charge” of what he called the “knock down of the small planes” – which prosecutors believe to be an incident during Rocha’s tenure working for the State Department in Havana when Cuba shot down two unarmed airplanes operated by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a US-based group opposed to Castro’s government, killing four men.
“My number one concern; my number one priority was … any action on the part of Washington that would – would endanger the life of – of the leadership, or the – or the revolution itself,” Rocha allegedly told an FBI undercover employee, according to a recording of a meeting cited in court documents.
CNN’s Ray Sanchez, Denise Royal and Katelyn Polantz contributed to this report.
