Arraignment for ex-US ambassador accused of being a secret Cuban agent postponed
A former U.S. ambassador arrested at the beginning of December on charges of being a longtime secret agent for Cuba was supposed to have his arraignment and detention hearing on Tuesday, but it has been postponed until mid-January — about six weeks after his indictment.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was indicted a week ago by a grand jury, so his arraignment to enter a plea in Miami federal court would normally be held in short order.
But Rocha’s defense attorney, Jacqueline Arango, on Monday asked the magistrate judge to delay the arraignment as well as the detention hearing “in the interests of justice,” without explanation. Federal prosecutors did not oppose her request, so Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres granted it.
Arango, a former federal prosecutor in private practice with the Akerman law firm in Miami, could not be reached for comment.
Some legal observers said the delay of Rocha’s arraignment until Jan. 12, 2024, suggests that he and his lawyer are possibly negotiating with the prosecutors to resolve the highly sensitive case quickly through a plea deal.
Rocha, who has been held at the Federal Detention Center in downtown Miami since his arrest, is expected to enter a not guilty plea at his arraignment. His detention hearing would promise to be more intriguing because it would delve into some of the evidence supporting the FBI’s national security case and into whether the dual citizen would be deemed a danger to the community or a flight risk.
Prosecutors Jonathan Stratton and John Shipley have already indicated that they want to continue to detain Rocha, who was living in a Brickell Avenue condo tower and has both U.S. and Dominican Republic passports. But Arango said in a prior hearing that she plans to challenge his detention before trial, which has been scheduled by U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom for Jan. 29, 2024. It will likely be delayed for months.
Working as Cuban agent since 1981: Indictment
Rocha, who was initially arrested on an FBI criminal complaint on Dec. 1, was indicted four days later on charges of conspiring to act as an unregistered Cuban agent over the span of a 40-year career in the State Department and private sector for the “purpose” of turning over classified information to the intelligence service in Havana.
Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia who was arrested by FBI agents in Miami, is accused in the new indictment of conspiring as an agent for Cuba since 1981 to obtain “sensitive” U.S. government secrets and “provide such information to agents or representatives of the Republic of Cuba.”
The indictment, which expands upon a criminal complaint unsealed Dec. 4, further accuses Rocha of using “access to [classified] information for the benefit” of Cuba and disclosing “such information without authorization.”
The 15-count indictment charges Rocha, who ended his government career in 2002 but continued to work in the national-security field, with conspiracy to defraud the United States. He’s accused of failing to register as a foreign agent with the Justice Department, wire fraud stemming from his State Department pension and making false statements related to his U.S. passport applications.
But while the 35-page indictment hits Rocha harder than an FBI criminal complaint made public earlier, it does not cite any particular “overt act” in the conspiracy accusing him of handing over classified materials to his Cuban intelligence handlers.
In other words, Rocha is not accused of committing espionage — though in a news release Attorney General Merrick Garland described him much like a spy, saying the case “exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent.”
FBI got tip
An FBI affidavit filed with the criminal complaint says that the FBI received a tip in November 2022 that Rocha had been working as a “covert agent” for Cuba. The indictment elaborated on that allegation, saying the bureau discovered that Rocha first pledged his loyalty to the Cuban intelligence service in 1973 when he was living in Chile and elsewhere.
At that time, the indictment says, Rocha became a “great friend” of the Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence and that he forged his relationship as a covert agent when he started working for the U.S. State Department in 1981 — three years after the Colombian native was naturalized as a U.S. citizen and had earned degrees from Yale, Harvard and Georgetown universities.
Like the affidavit, the indictment alleges that an FBI undercover employee posing as a covert Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence representative by the name of “Miguel” was able to approach Rocha through a WhatsApp text, saying “I have a message for you from your friends in Havana.” The undercover employee then asked him if he would be willing to talk by phone, and Rocha responded, “I don’t understand but you can call me.”
In the phone conversation, the undercover employee talked about Rocha’s past relationship with Cuba and how he could be helpful with a problem at the Cuban embassy in the Dominican Republic. Rocha agreed to meet with him during a series of video-recorded meetings in Miami over the past year in which the former diplomat repeatedly admitted his “decades” of work for Cuba that spanned “40 years.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2023 at 12:00 AM.
