A former U.S. ambassador accused of working for many years as a undercover agent for Cuba stated on Thursday that he would plead responsible, a transfer that might deliver to a swift finish to the authorized case over one of many greatest nationwide safety breaches in years.
Manuel Rocha, 73, informed Choose Beth Bloom in federal court docket in Miami that he would change his plea, signaling that he’s ready to plead responsible. He was charged in December with performing as an agent of a international authorities and defrauding the US. He additionally faces expenses of wire fraud and making false statements to acquire and use a U.S. passport.
Mr. Rocha is anticipated to plead responsible to 2 counts of conspiring to behave as a international agent. Every depend carries a most sentence of 5 to 10 years in jail. Prosecutors are anticipated to drop the opposite expenses; the wire fraud cost carried a 20-year most sentence. He had pleaded not responsible in mid-February.
Mr. Rocha’s lawyer, Jacqueline M. Arango, indicated in court docket on Thursday that she and prosecutors have reached an settlement on his attainable jail time period, The Related Press reported, although particulars weren’t made public. His subsequent court docket listening to is scheduled for April 12.
The indictment stated that Mr. Rocha, a profession diplomat and former ambassador to Bolivia who briefly labored in a White Home function below President Invoice Clinton, had aided the Cuban authorities since at the very least 1981. He was posted on the U.S. mission in Havana through the Nineteen Nineties.
“This motion exposes one of many highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the U.S. authorities by a international agent,” Legal professional Common Merrick B. Garland stated after Mr. Rocha’s arrest in December.
Mr. Rocha was born in Colombia and grew up in New York. He labored within the State Division below Mr. Clinton and President George W. Bush, dealing with issues associated to Latin America. He served as ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 and as an adviser to the U.S. navy command that features Cuba from 2006 to 2012.
Federal prosecutors have stated that Cuba’s aggressive intelligence company might have recruited Mr. Rocha in Chile within the early Seventies. Cuba, which has had hostile relations with the US because the Nineteen Sixties, has had outstanding success in infiltrating the U.S. nationwide safety institution over the a long time.
The indictment in opposition to Mr. Rocha didn’t give specifics of his dealings with the Cuban authorities or accuse him of sharing particular secrets and techniques. He was notably not charged with espionage, although his potential to entry categorised info would have been enormously worthwhile to Cuba and its allies.
Two different former American officers who have been revealed as Cuban spies struck plea offers that compelled them to be debriefed about their information of Havana’s intelligence efforts.
Ana Belén Montes, a former analyst on the Protection Intelligence Company, pleaded responsible to being a Cuban agent after she was arrested in September 2001. Ms. Montes was launched final 12 months.
Ms. Montes’s cooperation led the F.B.I. to cost one other former U.S. official who’s accused of getting served as a Cuban agent for years. That official, Marta Rita Velazquez, who labored on the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement, fled to Sweden after Ms. Montes was arrested and stays a fugitive. An indictment in opposition to Ms. Velazquez was unsealed in 2013.
The second main Cuba espionage case lately concerned Walter Kendall Myers, a former State Division official who pleaded responsible in 2009 to spying for Cuba for many years. Mr. Myers is serving a life sentence. His spouse, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, who was additionally charged within the case, was sentenced to almost seven years in jail.
