By JOSHUA GOODMAN and ERIC TUCKER (Associated Press)
MIAMI (AP) — A former American diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia has been charged with serving as a mole for Cuba’s intelligence companies relationship again a long time, the Justice Department mentioned Monday.
Newly unsealed court docket papers allege that Manuel Rocha engaged in “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf since at the very least 1981, together with by assembly with Cuban intelligence operatives and offering false info to U.S. authorities officers about his travels and contacts.
The grievance, filed in federal court docket in Miami, fees Rocha with crimes together with performing as an unlawful agent of a overseas authorities and comes amid stepped up Justice Department prison enforcement of illicit overseas lobbying on U.S. soil. The 73-year-old had a two-decade profession as a U.S. diplomat, together with prime posts in Bolivia, Argentina and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.
The charging doc traces Rocha’s unlawful ties with Cuba’s notoriously refined intelligence companies to 1981, when he first joined the State Department, to properly after his departure from the federal authorities greater than 20 years later.
The FBI discovered in regards to the relationship final yr and organized a collection of undercover encounters with somebody purporting to be a Cuban intelligence operative, together with one assembly in Miami final yr through which Rocha mentioned that he had been directed by the federal government’s intelligence companies to “lead a normal life” and had created the “legend,” or synthetic persona, “of a right-wing person.”
“I always told myself, ‘The only thing that can put everything we have done in danger is — is … someone’s betrayal, someone who may have met me, someone who may have known something at some point,’” Rocha mentioned, in line with the charging doc.
He is due in court docket later Monday. It was not instantly clear if he had a lawyer.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”