A STORIED CAREER IN GOVERNMENT

Rocha was born in Colombia in 1950, but grew up in New York City after his mother emigrated to the United States. In 1965, the studious Rocha earned a full-ride scholarship to a prestigious boarding school in Connecticut. This enabled him to earn an undergraduate degree from Yale University in 1973, before completing master’s degrees in public administration and foreign affairs from Harvard University and Georgetown University.

After receiving his security clearance from the Department of State, Rocha relied on his advanced social skills and native command of the Spanish language to quickly rise through the ranks of the diplomatic corps. Within a decade he had served prestigious assignments in Argentina, Honduras, Italy, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic, where he held the post of deputy chief of mission. In the mid-1990s, Rocha served as deputy principal officer in the United States Interests Section in Cuba —effectively the second-in-command in Washington’s de facto embassy in Havana.

Rocha’s diplomatic career culminated with the post of ambassador to Bolivia, from which he abruptly resigned in 2002. He did so reportedly in order to pursue employment in the private sector and raise funds for his children’s college education. Prior to the end of his State Department career, however, Rocha had managed to hold posts as a Latin America adviser to the National Security Council, which is the highest executive decision-making body of the United States government. He had also served as an adviser to the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), which oversees all activities of the Department of Defense in Central and South America, including the Caribbean.

FORMING REVOLUTIONARY LEFTIST IDEALS

By 1978, when he became a United States citizen, the young Rocha had spent time in Chile. While there, he witnessed first-hand the turbulence of Chilean politics in the lead-up to the military coup of 1973, which cut short the presidency of leftist icon Salvador Allende. Washington’s role in the coup, and in the ensuing junta of General Augusto Pinochet, appears to have steered Rocha’s politics decisively to the left. It was in fact in Chile where, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Rocha was recruited by the Dirección de Inteligencia (DI, also referred to by its former acronym, DGI).

The Cubans allegedly trained Rocha for several years and steered him toward pursuing a career in the United States government. It would not be surprising if Rocha pursued his graduate degrees at Harvard and Georgetown under the guidance of his DI handlers, who would have also coached him in the importance of networking in pursuit of government employment. Rocha allegedly began spying for Cuba as soon as he entered the Department of State, in 1981. It is not known whether he continued to work for the DI after 2002. If he did, it would make him one of the longest-serving spies in American history.

THE FBI UNDERCOVER STING AGAINST ROCHA

In late 2022, the FBI received information that Rocha was a spy for the DI. The Bureau appears to have moved fast to neutralize the retired diplomat. In November of that year, an FBI special agent working in an undercover capacity contacted Rocha via the WhatsApp instant messaging platform, pretending to be a representative of the DI. It appears that the DI had not reached out to Rocha for quite some time, so the message seemed to him to be an attempt by the Cubans to re-establish contact.

The criminal complaint [PDF] against Rocha discusses in some detail that Rocha met with the undercover FBI special agent at least twice. During those meetings, Rocha spoke openly and with a sense of pride about his espionage for the Cubans over several decades, and offered to become active again, if needed. Rocha is now facing charges of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign country, lying about it on his passport application forms, as well as engaging in wire fraud.

HOW SERIOUS IS THIS CASE?

The Cubans don’t play around when it comes to human intelligence (HUMINT) collection. American counterintelligence professionals invariably consider the DI as an elite intelligence agency that outranks far larger and more powerful spy agencies in both professionalism and effectiveness. The Cubans are especially skilled in identifying idealistic Westerners, whom they recruit at a young age, and then guide them to pursue government careers. Notably, the Cubans tend to work with ideologically motivated spies, which means that monetary compensation rarely comes in to the picture. This limits the ability of Western counterintelligence agencies to flag suspicious behavior —such as large purchases— among government employees.

Additionally, unlike the Russians or the Chinese, the Cubans understand American society and culture well, having intimately interacted with it for over a century. Indeed, the Russians and the Chinese routinely depend on the DI for HUMINT collection. Over time, they have been rewarded with intelligence supplied by highly placed spies such as Kendall Myers, a senior analyst in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, who spied for Cuba for nearly 30 years until his arrest by the FBI in 2009. Some believe that Myers’ espionage exploits were dwarfed by those of Ana Belen Montes. Montes topped the list of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Latin America analysts while also spying for Havana for nearly 20 years, until her arrest in 2001. It appears that none of those spies —Myers, Montes, or for that matter Rocha— received a single penny in return for their services to the Cuban government.

The criminal complaint against Rocha makes clear that he employed HUMINT tradecraft, including standard counter-surveillance practices such as surveillance detection routes (SDR), in preparation for meeting the man he thought was a DI spy handler. Moreover, Rocha allegedly told the undercover FBI special agent that he had meticulously curated a fake persona of a conservative American for several decades through various means —including coming out in support of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Rocha was not an amateur. He was well-trained and managed to operate undetected for over 40 years while leading a double life. This is incredibly difficult to pull through, both logistically and psychologically.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

Undoubtedly, the news that Rocha was likely a Cuban spy has sparked extensive damage assessments at the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and elsewhere. The fact that Rocha worked in the National Security Council means he had access to a broad array of information that spans across agencies, and even departments. Moreover, his access to SOUTHCOM intelligence has probably compromised operations —and possibly even methods and sources— that may have caused serious damage to American interests. Allied intelligence agencies in the Americas and beyond, including Colombian and Canadian, are probably also checking their records for potential damage that Rocha may have inflicted on their operations.

Even more worrying is the potential for intelligence-sharing between the Cubans and their allies, primarily the Russians, the Venezuelans, and the Chinese. Did the Cubans handle Rocha themselves and share his intelligence with their allies on a per-case basis? Or did they at any point —especially prior to 1991— hand Rocha over to Russian intelligence in the spirit of communist collaboration? This question is not an easy one to answer. Based on his professional résumé, it appears that Rocha has not had access to classified information since 2002. This potentially means that the bulk of his espionage activities took place in the 1980s and 1990s. It will be difficult for the FBI to forensically analyze Rocha’s espionage activities from 20 years ago in sufficient detail.

What is perhaps more likely is that the Department of Justice will offer Rocha a plea deal in exchange for a full account of his espionage. The information he provides to the government could potentially allow the United States Intelligence Community to conduct a detailed damage assessment of his espionage activities and their impact on American interests. It may also provide a deeper understanding of Cuban HUMINT methodologies and practices, which may prevent another case like Rocha’s from occurring again in the future.