On Thursday, Manuel Rocha, a former US official, told the judge that he was going to plead guilty to charges that he was a Cuban spy.
In 1981, Manuel Rocha started working at the US State Department as a desk officer in charge of ties with Honduras. He is now 73 years old. He has worked as a White House Security Council member, in the U.S. Military’s Southern Command, and at the Justice Department, among other places.
He was arrested in December 2023 on suspicion that he had been involved in “clandestine activity” for Cuba since at least 1981 when he first started working as a US diplomat.
A fake FBI agent met with Rocha several times between 2022 and 2023 while pretending to be from Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence. This led to Rocha’s arrest. Rocha talked about what he had done for Cuba and even put Fidel Castro in a good light. He brags about being a Cuban spy in the US.
It was said that Rocha said, “What we have done is huge, more than a Grand Slam.”
In February, Rocha pleaded not guilty. But when Judge Beth Bloom asked him if he wanted to change his plea, he said he would plead guilty and that he was “in agreement.” Due to his guilty plea, the charges of wire fraud and making false claims will be dropped.
Some experts say that these kinds of arrests help U.S. foreign policymakers figure out what’s going on in Cuba. The situation between Cuba and the US has been bad for decades. When Castro overthrew the US-backed dictatorship, it was the first thing that made their friendship worse.
Even though Joe Biden lifted some of Trump’s sanctions against Cuba, there are still a lot of them in place, which hurts the Cuban economy.
