The US has indicted a former diplomat who served on the National Security Council in the 1990s on charges that he secretly served as an agent of the Cuban government for more than 40 years, The Guardian reports.
Victor Manuel Rocha was arrested on Friday as a result of a lengthy FBI counterintelligence investigation. As US ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002, Rocha also served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995. He faces charges of multiple federal offences. The attorney general, Merrick Garland, said:
This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent. We allege that for over 40 years, Victor Manuel Rocha served as an agent of the Cuban government and sought out and obtained positions within the United States government that would provide him with access to non-public information and the ability to affect US foreign policy.
Federal law requires people who carry out political assignments for a foreign government or organisation on US soil to register with the Justice Department, which in recent years has stepped up criminal prosecutions for illegal foreign lobbying.
Rocha’s 25-year diplomatic career has spanned both Democratic and Republican administrations, much of it in Cold War Latin America, a period when the US at times pursued harsh political and military policies.
Among his diplomatic positions was working in the US Interests Section in Cuba during a period when the US did not have full diplomatic relations with Fidel Castro’s communist government.
Rocha was born in Colombia, grew up in a working-class family in New York City and received liberal arts degrees from Yale, Harvard and Georgetown universities.
The government alleges that Rocha held positions in the State Department since 1981 that gave him access to nonpublic information, including classified information, and the ability to influence US foreign policy.
