Ex-U.S. Envoy Worked As Cuban Spy Since The 1970s

Manuel Rocha was well known in Miami’s elite circles for his aristocratic, almost regal bearing, which seemed fitting for an Ivy League-educated career US diplomat who held top posts in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, and the White House.

"Ambassador Rocha" was arrested and charged with serving as a secret agent of Cuba since the 1970s — what prosecutors called one of the most brazen and long-running betrayals in the history of the US State Department. I Photo: FBI

"Ambassador Rocha," as he preferred to be called, commanded and received respect, as reported by Joshua Goodman and Jim Mustian for the Associated Press (AP).

So former CIA operative Félix Rodríguez was skeptical in 2006 when a defected Cuban Army lieutenant colonel showed up at his Miami home with a startling tip: "Rocha," he quoted the man as saying, "is spying for Cuba."

Rodriguez, who participated in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba and the execution of revolutionary "Che" Guevara, believed at the time that the tip about Rocha was an attempt to discredit a fellow anti-communist crusader.

Nonetheless, he passed the defector’s message along to the CIA, which was similarly skeptical. Long before Rocha, a U.S. diplomat, was arrested in 2023 on charges of being a secret agent of Cuba for decades, there were plenty of red flags.

An AP investigation found that the CIA received a tip about his alleged double life as far back as 2006, that Rocha may have been on a short list of suspected spies since 2010, and could have been linked to intelligence from 1987 regarding a US turncoat known as Fidel Castro’s "super mole."

That tip from long ago became painfully clear in December when the now-73-year-old Rocha was arrested and charged with serving as a secret agent of Cuba since the 1970s — what prosecutors called one of the most brazen and long-running betrayals in the history of the US State Department.

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