A former U.S. Ambassador and National Security Council official admitted to acting as a secret agent of the Cuban government for decades as a judge handed down a 15-year sentence.
A former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia and a National Security Council member pleaded guilty on Friday to secretly acting for decades as an agent of the government of the Republic of Cuba, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
A federal judge sentenced Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, of Miami, to 15 years in prison for working against the U.S. government for decades for communist Cuba in « clandestine intelligence-gathering missions. »
« Today’s plea and sentencing brings to an end more than four decades of betrayal and deceit by the defendant, » said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the DOJ’s National Security Division. « Rocha admitted to acting as an agent of the Cuban government at the same time he held numerous positions of trust in the U.S. government, a staggering betrayal of the American people and an acknowledgment that every oath he took to the United States was a lie. »
Prosecutors agreed to dismiss more than a dozen other charges in exchange for his guilty plea, the Associated Press said.
Rocha was a former U.S. Department of State employee who served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995, and as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002.
« Victor Manuel Rocha secretly acted for decades as an agent of a hostile foreign power. He thought the story of his covert mission for Cuba would never be told because he had the intelligence, knowledge, and discipline to never to be detected. Rocha underestimated those same skills in the prosecutors and law enforcement agents who worked tirelessly to bring him to justice for betraying his oath to this country, » said U.
