MIAMI.– The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) revealed new details about the clandestine trajectory of Víctor Manuel Rocha, the former US ambassador of Colombian origin who spied for the Cuban regime for more than four decades from within the US government.
Through an episode of the Inside the FBI podcast titled ‘Catching a Cuban Spy’, agents from the Counterintelligence and Espionage Division of the federal agency described Rocha as a charismatic and chameleon-like individual, whose capacity for social adaptation allowed him to rise in the US diplomatic structure without being detected.
Rocha, 75, is serving a 15-year prison sentence imposed in April 2024 by a federal court in Miami.
Chameleon within the State Department
The FBI podcast revealed that Rocha chose the State Department as his path to the federal government in part because the induction process did not include the use of a polygraph, a tool he considered difficult to overcome given his poor ability to lie convincingly.
Eight years after his recruitment by the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) of Cuba, in 1981, Rocha formally entered the US diplomatic service.
From his childhood in Harlem, where he arrived at the age of ten from Colombia, to his time at boarding schools in Connecticut and Ivy League universities, Rocha demonstrated a remarkable ability to integrate into diverse environments and gain the trust of those around him.
FBI agents described this skill as his greatest strength: a social resilience that allowed him to overcome background investigations and navigate the government’s complex bureaucratic circuits without arousing suspicion.
Throughout his career, Rocha held positions of increasing relevance: he was the United States ambassador to Bolivia between 2000 and 2002, he joined the White House National Security Council as senior official for the Americas, he served as a senior diplomat in Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and the Dominican Republic, and after his retirement he was an advisor to the head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command between 2006 and 2012.
Four decades of leaks
According to the FBI, Rocha held face-to-face meetings with his contacts in the DGI to whom he delivered documents and shared classified information from the US government. His access was especially extensive: he obtained data on the Contra program in Central America, White House policies, immigration agreements, identities of officials and sensitive operations.
For at least two decades, Rocha had the ability to transmit information that, if revealed, could cause serious damage to American national security.
The impact of Rocha’s leaks was reinforced by his indirect relationship with other spies in the service of Cuba, such as Ana Montes, a former analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Walter Kendall Myers, linked to the State Department.
According to the FBI, the intelligence provided by Rocha allowed Havana to obtain a comprehensive view of US operations in Central America, which facilitated rapid and accurate responses by the Cuban government and, in some cases, led to fatal consequences in the region.
“They were decades (…), decades that were profound. Almost 40 years (…) of great danger,” Rocha declared to the undercover FBI agent who led him into the trap that ended with his arrest.
The FBI further revealed that Cuban services used the code name “BUHO” to refer to Rocha, which complicated his identification for years, as communication records only included references between Cuban officials and not directly with him. Rocha, for his part, preferred to refer to Cuba as “The Island” and his superiors in the DGI as “the companions.”
Fall of Rocha
The investigation that led to Rocha’s arrest culminated in an undercover operation designed by Special Agent Michael J. Haley, assigned to the National Security Unit of the FBI’s Miami office.
On November 15, 2022, an agent who introduced himself under the name “Miguel” contacted Rocha via WhatsApp and identified himself as a representative of the DGI. Rocha accepted the communication and the next day he attended an in-person meeting in front of the First Presbyterian Church of Miami, in the Brickell neighborhood.
In that meeting and in subsequent meetings between 2022 and 2023, Rocha was secretly recorded praising Fidel Castro as “the commander,” referring to the United States as “the enemy,” and confessing that his greatest concern during his career at the State Department had been “strengthening the Cuban revolution.”
He also revealed that his last trip to Havana had been between 2016 and 2017, when he entered the island with his Dominican passport to avoid being tracked.
“For me, what has been done has strengthened the Revolution. It has strengthened it immensely. We cannot put that in danger,” Rocha told the undercover FBI agent during a meeting in February 2023.
Rocha was arrested on December 1, 2023 in Miami, after confessing his activities to the agent who had posed as a Cuban spy.
