Victor Manuel Rocha, a former career diplomat who previously served as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia under former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, has admitted to a judge that he spied for communist Cuba for decades and confirmed that he would plead guilty to his charges.

🚨Ambassador Rocha is a despicable traitor, who collaborated with the brutal Castro regime, to spy on & target countless innocents.

Communist #Cuba continues to be a national security threat to the United States and must remain on the List of State Sponsors of Terrorism! pic.twitter.com/mHGaBGz4es

— Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) March 1, 2024

Rocha acknowledged his actions in court on Thursday, declaring that he “intends to plead guilty to federal charges.”  

The 73-year-old career diplomat was initially indicted in Dec. 2023 on charges of spying for Cuba’s intelligence agency for several decades in “clandestine intelligence-gathering missions.”

During that hearing, Rocha agreed to plead guilty to two charges of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government — prompting prosecutors to agree to drop more than a dozen charges in exchange for the guilty plea.

Despite the significant amount of time that Rocha betrayed his country, the maximum sentence he is facing for the two counts is just five to ten years in prison.

The judge asked him during the hearing if he was sure he wanted to plead guilty, to which he responded, “I am in agreement.” Rocha’s next court date is scheduled for Apr. 12.

According to investigators, Rocha was enlisted by Cuba’s spy organization, the Directorate of Intelligence, in 1973 while in Chile. The communist country’s intelligence service reportedly told Rocha to fabricate a story to help hide his “double life.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has described this case as “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the U.S. government by a foreign agent” — noting that Rocha had purposely pursued U.S. government jobs that “would provide him with access to non-public information and the ability to affect U.S. foreign policy.”

The government has thus far refused to publicly release details about the information that Rocha was privy to, how much he may have divulged to Cuba or how he could have influenced American policy.

Rocha was ultimately caught after speaking to an undercover FBI agent who he believed was a representative of Cuba’s spy agency — holding at least three separate meetings with the undercover agent where he referred to the United States as “the enemy” and declared that “what we have done” was “enormous” and “more than a grand slam,” according to the indictment.

“My number one concern; my number one priority was … any action on the part of Washington that would endanger the life of the leadership, or the revolution itself,” the career diplomat allegedly told the undercover FBI agent.

In one of his meetings with the undercover agent, Rocha reportedly praised a U.S. government employee who had been convicted of spying for Cuba, declaring that she had been “betrayed.”

It is likely that he was referring to Ana Montes, a former Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for spying for Cuba. Montes, who was released in 2023 after serving her full sentence, worked for the U.S. government at the same time that Rocha did. She was recruited by Cuba’s spy agency in 1984 just before being hired by the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Rocha was born in Colombia and became a U.S. citizen in 1978. In 1981, he began working for the State Department and subsequently held several different positions in Latin American for over 20 years, including his term as ambassador to Bolivia from 2000-2002. He also had jurisdiction over Cuba while employed as the National Security Council’s director for inter-American affairs and as the deputy principal officer of the American embassy in Havana. After leaving the State Department, Rocha worked as an advisor to the commander of U.S. Southern Command (CENTCOM), which surrounds Cuba.