A former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia accused of spying for Cuba for four decades told a judge Thursday that he sensationally admitted to the charges and said he had been collecting information for the rogue state since 1981.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was arrested in December for what U.S. officials called “one of the most far-reaching and longest-running infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent.”
Rocha pleaded not guilty two weeks ago to charges of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government, but told Judge Beth Bloom at a pretrial conference Thursday that he wanted to change his plea.
The court set a date of April 12 for Rocha to formally change his guilty plea and sentence.
Rocha was appointed to the position in Bolivia by then-President Bill Clinton in 2000.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was arrested in December for what U.S. officials called “one of the most far-reaching and longest-running infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent.”
Rocha’s wife, Karla Wittkop Rocha (left), declined to comment when contacted by the AP. “I don’t need to talk to you,” she said before hanging up.
Rocha, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Colombia, allegedly began helping Havana as an undercover agent for Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) in 1981, and his espionage activities continued until his arrest, according to U.S. authorities.
Rocha had been living in the Miami area with his wife, graphic designer Karla Wittkop Rocha. The couple has two adult children together.
Attorney General Merrick Garland, in announcing Rocha’s arrest, said he had “repeatedly referred to the United States as ‘the enemy’ and ‘repeatedly boasted about the importance of his efforts.'”
Rocha joined the State Department in 1981 and rose through the ranks as a career diplomat, also holding posts in Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, the Dominican Republic and Washington.
Rocha served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 during President Bill Clinton’s administration and was ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 under Clinton and George W. Bush. He also served as an advisor to the US military command responsible for Cuba.
The criminal complaint against Rocha details how, during multiple meetings with an undercover FBI agent beginning in November 2022, he “behaved like a Cuban agent,” praising the communist-ruled island’s late leader, Fidel Castro, and ” using the term ‘we’ to describe him and Cuba.”
He admitted to having traveled to Havana in 2016 or 2017 to meet with his DGI managers and asked the undercover agent to send “my warmest regards to the Directorate,” referring to the DGI.
Other Americans arrested for leaking secrets to Havana include Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers, who were charged in 2009 with spying for Cuba for nearly 30 years.
As ambassador to Bolivia, Rocha (right) intervened directly in the 2002 presidential race.
– ‘Murdered’ by Cuba –
Rocha also faces a lawsuit filed Thursday in Florida by the widow of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá.
She alleges that Rocha was responsible for the death of her late husband, winner of the European Parliament’s 2002 Sakharov Prize for Human Rights, in a car accident in Cuba in 2012.
A court document states that “the Cuban terrorist dictatorship murdered Mr. Payá with impunity” as a direct result of Roche’s “actions as an undercover agent of the Cuban terrorist dictatorship and his intelligence gathering mission against the United States.”
Another Cuban dissident, Harold Cepero, also died in the same car accident, while two others in the vehicle survived: Spanish politician Ángel Carromero and Swedish conservative politician Jens Aron Modig.
Cuban authorities blamed the accident on Carromero, who was driving, but he claims the car was hit by a Cuban secret service vehicle.
In a report published last June, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concluded that agents of the Cuban State participated in the deaths of the dissidents.
“I am looking for what I have always looked for: truth, justice and for the regime and its accomplices” to stop acting with impunity, Payá’s widow, Ofelia Acevedo, said in a statement.