Family of Cuban Dissident Who Died in Mysterious Car Crash Sues Accused American Diplomat-Turned-Spy 1

Ambassador-Spy Manual Rocca

By JOSHUA GOODMAN AND JIM MUSTIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIAMI — The widow of a prominent Cuban dissident killed in a mysterious car crash has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against a former U.S. ambassador suspected of working for Cuba, accusing the former diplomat of sharing intelligence that emboldened Cuba’s communist leaders to assassinate a chief opponent.

Oswaldo Payá died in 2012 when his car crashed into a tree in eastern Cuba in what the government deemed an accident caused by driver error. However, a survivor said the vehicle had been rammed from behind by a red Lada with government plates, a claim in line with findings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights last year that state security agents likely participated in the activist’s death.

In the state lawsuit filed Thursday in Miami, Ofelia Payá accused Manual Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia, of being an “accomplice” to her husband’s “assassination.” Rocha was arrested in December on charges he worked as a secret agent of Cuba stretching back to the 1970s.

Rocha “directly aided Cuban officials by providing them with critical intelligence that he obtained through his Top-Secret security clearance and influential roles,” the lawsuit alleges. “Cuba would not have been able to execute Mr. Payá with impunity without Defendant conspiring with and providing intelligence and aid to Cuba’s dictatorship.”

The lawsuit, filed on what would have been Payá’s 72nd birthday, underscores the deep anger and sense of betrayal felt by Miami’s powerful Cuban exile community, which viewed Rocha as a conservative standard bearer and one of their own. Payá is being represented pro bono by attorney Carlos Trujillo, the son of Cuban immigrants who served as Ambassador to the Organization of American State during the Trump administration.

While the lawsuit cites no evidence linking Rocha to the death, it claims Rocha as a diplomat and in business after retiring from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2002 sought ways to secretly strengthen Castro’s revolution.

Those efforts allegedly included securing a position from 2006 to 2012 as a special adviser to the head of U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which has responsibility over Cuba.

“Beneath this veneer of loyalty and service to the United States, Defendant held a clandestine allegiance to the Cuban regime,” the lawsuit alleges.

A review by The Associated Press of secret diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks found that over 20 months between 2006 to 2008, diplomats from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana sent SOUTHCOM’s commander 22 reports about Payá’s activities, his funding from the U.S. government and interactions with American officials.

Feature Continues Here: Cuban Spy Sued

Former US Ambassador Admits to Working for Decades as Cuban Intelligence Agent 2

Former Ambassador and admitted spy, Manuel Rocca

A former career U.S. diplomat says he will plead guilty to charges of serving as a secret agent for communist Cuba going back decades

By JOSHUA GOODMAN Associated Press and JIM MUSTIAN Associated Press

February 29, 2024, 2:37 PM

MIAMI — A former career U.S. diplomat said in court Thursday that he will plead guilty to charges of serving as a secret agent for communist Cuba going back decades, bringing a lightning fast resolution to a case prosecutors described as one of the most brazen betrayals in the history of the U.S. foreign service.

Manuel Rocha, 73, told a federal judge he would admit to two federal counts of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government, charges that carry a maximum penalty of between 5 and 10 years in prison each. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop 13 additional counts for crimes including wire fraud and making false statements.

Prosecutors and Rocha’s attorney indicated they have agreed upon a sentence but details were not disclosed in court Thursday. He is due back in court on April 12, when he’s likely to be sentenced.

“I am in agreement,” said Rocha, shackled at the hands and ankles, when asked by U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom if he wished to change his plea to guilty.

Rocha was arrested by the FBI at his Miami home in December on allegations that he engaged in “clandestine activity” on Cuba’s behalf since at least 1981 — the year he joined the U.S. foreign service — including by meeting with Cuban intelligence operatives and providing false information to U.S. government officials about his contacts.

Federal authorities have said little about exactly what Rocha did to assist Cuba while working at the State Department for two decades at posts in Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. He followed that with a lucrative post-government career that included a stint as a special adviser to the commander of the U.S. Southern Command.

Instead, the case relies largely on what prosecutors say were Rocha’s own admissions, made over the past year to an undercover FBI agent posing as a Cuban intelligence operative named “Miguel.”

In those recordings, Rocha praised the late Cuban leader Fidel Castro as “Comandante,” branded the U.S. the “enemy” and bragged about his service for more than 40 years as a Cuban mole in the heart of U.S. foreign policy circles, the complaint says.

“What we have done … it’s enormous … more than a Grand Slam,” he was quoted as saying in one of several secretly recorded conversations.

Article continues here: Spy pleads guilty

Cuban Spies Have a Particular Talent for Getting People to Spill Secrets. That’s a Problem for Washington 1

Geoff Nixon – CBC News

Convicted spy Ana Belén Montes — formerly the Defense Intelligence Agency’s lead analyst on Cuban affairs.

Cuba lies more than 100 kilometres from the nearest slice of the continental United States, but it has managed to keep a close eye on what Uncle Sam is up to for a very long time.

That’s because it has repeatedly been able to find high-flying American sources who are willing to spill U.S. secrets to Havana — for years, or even decades.

They include Ana Belén Montes, the U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency analyst who passed secret information on to her Cuban handlers from the mid-1980s through to the start of this century. Her spying days ended with an arrest days after the 9/11 attacks.

Then there’s Walter Kendall Myers, the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell and former State Department employee, who spied for Cuba nearly twice that long and was arrested in his retirement years. Now 86 years old, he is serving a life sentence at a Colorado prison.

Most recently, U.S. officials announced charges against Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador and one-time member of the Bill Clinton-era National Security Council, accused of having acted as a covert agent for Cuba since 1981. The 73-year-old Rocha has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Cuba has shown a knack for finding the right people to help advance its interests in the U.S. over the long-term. Yet former spy-catchers say the country remains undervalued in this realm, despite its prowess.

“They’re not as big as the CIA but they’ve done a phenomenal job of punching the U.S. in the nose,” said retired FBI special agent Pete Lapp, who helped investigate the spying activities of Belén Montes early in his career. His recently published book Queen of Cuba: An FBI Agent’s Insider Account of the Spy Who Evaded Detection for 17 Years tells that story.

Eric O’Neill, a former FBI counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence operative, offered a similar assessment of Cuba’s record on U.S. soil.

“They have been eating our lunch,” he said in a recent interview.

Article continues here: Cuban targeting

Cuba Interferes With Florida 2022 Elections, Says US Intelligence 1

By Bert Hoover, Latin Post  

The US intelligence community revealed in a report on Monday that the Cuba government engaged in influence operations targeting specific US candidates in Florida during the 2022 midterm elections, according to the Miami Herald.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence stated that Cuban officials built relationships with American media members critical of Havana’s critics in Congress.

Additionally, a network of social media accounts, likely linked to Cuba, was identified as amplifying derogatory content about US politicians deemed hostile to the Cuban state.

The declassified intelligence assessment does not specify targeted individuals or the effectiveness of Cuba’s influence campaign in Florida.

The report acknowledged only a few countries with targeted campaigns against the US democratic system, including Russia, China, Iran, and Cuba.

Foreign Meddling Expands in US 2022 Midterm Elections

Declassified US Intelligence findings on Monday indicated an increase in foreign government efforts to influence the US 2022 midterm elections compared to the 2018 elections, CNN reports.

While no foreign leader ordered a comprehensive influence campaign like Russia’s in 2016, the report highlighted meddling attempts by China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba in the 2022 congressional elections.

The intelligence community, with high confidence, asserts that China implicitly sanctioned efforts to influence selected midterm races involving members of both US political parties.

This aligns with a broader set of directives issued by Chinese Communist Party leaders since 2020, aiming to intensify endeavors to shape US policy and public opinion favorably toward China.

Feature continues here: Cuban Interference

Ex-U.S. Ambassador Accused of Being Cuba’s ‘Clandestine Agent’ Since 1981 2

Manuel Rocha is charged with acting secretly on Cuba’s behalf for decades

By Devlin Barrett

The Justice Department unsealed charges Monday against a retired ambassador, accusing him of being a “clandestine agent” for decades — allegedly betraying his country by acting covertly on behalf of Cuba’s spy agency.

The arrest of 73-year-old Manuel Rocha capped an undercover sting operation that lasted more than a year, in which an FBI agent pretending to be a Cuban intelligence operative secretly recorded Rocha making incriminating statements about his life of diplomatic deception.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the Rocha case “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,” adding that in those secretly-recorded conversations, Rocha repeatedly referred to the U.S. as “the enemy.”

Court papers filed in Miami describe a series of meetings in which Rocha discussed his secret work for Cuba, including one where he said that the “Direccion” — a reference to that country’s General Directorate of Intelligence — “asked me … to lead a normal life.”

Rocha allegedly said he followed that instruction by creating a public reputation as “a right wing person,” when he in fact was committed to the cause of communist Cuba.

At one secretly recorded meeting between Rocha and the undercover agent, the suspect allegedly described how he became a State Department employee: “I went little by little. … It was a very meticulous process. …I knew exactly how to do it and obviously the Direccion accompanied me. … They knew that I knew how to do it.”

Rocha was born in Colombia and became a U.S. citizen in 1978. He joined the State Department in 1981. The criminal complaint against him says that at least as early as that year,he “secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against the United States by serving as a covert agent of Cuba’s intelligence services.”

Rocha pushed false and misleading information within the U.S. government, authorities say, and met with Cuban intelligence operatives. In the secretly recorded conversations with the undercover FBI agent, Rocha allegedly insisted he was still committed to the revolutionary cause of communist Cuba, according to the court papers unsealed Monday. Rocha’s arrest late last week was first reported by the Associated Press.

Over the years, Rocha rose through the ranks of the State Department to serve in positions at the U.S. embassies in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, and Argentina before ascending to more sensitive governmentposts.

From mid-1994 to mid-1995, Rocha served on the U.S. National Security Council, with a portfolio that included Cuba.

From 1999 until 2002, Rocha served as the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia.

Feature continues here: FBI arrests ex-Ambassador 

Cuba Wants YOU For The Venceremos Brigade! 1

Interior secretary’s daughter works with group tied to Cuba regime support movement

Illustration on a Cuban connection to the Department of the Interior by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

Commentary By Jeffrey Scott Shapiro – – Wednesday, September 20, 2023

OPINION:

One of the greatest myths in the Western Hemisphere is the nobility of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

For decades, the Cuban military dictatorship’s public relations machine has snowed the American left by projecting Che Guevara and the Castro brothers as heroes. In reality, the Castro regime betrayed the real freedom fighters who battled to end Fulgencio Batista’s iron rule, paraded innocents into lawless “revolutionary justice” stadium trials, and transformed a Caribbean paradise into an island-wide slave plantation.

Despite this cruelty, the left buys into Cuba’s false reality that the poverty-stricken island is a paradise of equality. To enhance this false image, pro-Cuba intermediaries invite well-positioned Americans to the island, where they are given controlled tours designed to persuade them to offer their help.

The organization responsible for this diabolical influence campaign is the Institute of Friendship Along With the Peoples, known as ICAP, a group sponsored by the Cuban Intelligence Directorate, or DGI, that targets leftist activists all over the Western Hemisphere.

In 1969, Cuba’s intelligence apparatus helped create the U.S.-based Venceremos Brigade, whose aim, according to a 1976 FBI report, “is the recruitment of individuals who are politically oriented and who someday may obtain a position, elective or appointive, somewhere in the U.S. government, which would provide the Cuban government with access to political, economic and military intelligence.”

A 2019 online Cuban state press report boasts that the brigade has imported more than 10,000 Americans to the island since 1969.

A 1982 U.S. Senate report confirms that shortly after the Venceremos Brigade’s formation, “the DGI [Cuban intelligence] quickly began tasking VB members to collect public information on prominent Americans. … The DGI found telephone books to be an especially useful item, as the books could identify and verify the identity of high-interest personnel. VB members also provided considerable details on U.S. Congressional members, staff and their relatives.”

OPED continues here: Cuban Intelligence proxy

How Russia Is Recruiting Cubans To Fight In Ukraine 1

Photo-illustration by Lon Tweeten for TIME Images: Alain Pararazzi Cubano / YouTube, Facebook, CyberResistance UA / Telegram

BY VERA BERGENGRUEN 

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023 6:00 AM EDT

Alex Vegas Díaz was surprised to find himself sleeping next to Russian soldiers in a trench in Ukraine, more than 6,000 miles from home. In his telling, the skinny 19-year-old Cuban accepted an offer posted on WhatsApp to make good money doing “construction work” for the Russian military. Instead, he and a friend were taken to a base, outfitted with weapons, and sent against their will to the front lines of a war they never intended to join.

“What is happening in Ukraine is ugly—to see people with their heads open before you, to see how people are killed, feel the bombs falling next to you,” Vegas Díaz said in an Aug. 31 video, speaking from a Russian hospital, where he said he was recovering from an illness before being sent back to the front. “Please, please help get us out of here.”

The plea for help went viral. Similar stories began to surface, as Cubans posted online and called into talk shows to ask for information about family members who had also flown to Moscow to join the Russian military. The outcry eventually prompted the Cuban government to issue a striking allegation: a “human trafficking network” operating out of Russia was luring young Cubans to enlist to fight in Ukraine. On Sept. 8, Cuban officials said they had arrested 17 people in connection with the alleged trafficking scheme. They could face up to 30 years in prison for engaging in mercenary activity, which is against Cuban law.

But social-media posts, audio messages, and videos from recruits in Russia reviewed by TIME, along with interviews with family members and documents obtained by a Ukrainian hacker group that corroborate their identities, combine to tell a very different story. They indicate that Vegas Díaz became caught up in a large, organized operation that has openly recruited hundreds of Cuban volunteers to fight in Moscow’s increasingly depleted army since July. They also suggest that the trafficking allegations may be an attempt by the Cuban government, a longtime ally of Russia, to maintain its stated neutrality on the war in Ukraine, four Cuba experts and former U.S. officials tell TIME.

Feature continues here: Havana Human Trafficking

Cuba Accuses Russia Of Quietly Recruiting Its Citizens Into The War In Ukraine 3

By NPR’s Morning Edition

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

It sounds like a chapter out of a Cold War-era novel. Cuba says a covert and, as of yet, unnamed group has been recruiting citizens living on the island and in Russia to fight in the ongoing war in Ukraine. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it is working to dismantle the ring and bring those responsible to justice. Thus far, Moscow, Cuba’s one-time communist ally, has been quiet. Here to help us understand what this all means is Chris Simmons, a former counterintelligence officer whose expertise is Cuban spy craft. Welcome, Chris, to the program.

CHRIS SIMMONS: Thank you for having me.

FADEL: So what’s your sense of why Cuba is making this accusation so publicly?

SIMMONS: I think the easy – short explanation is because they got caught, once again. This is just the latest in a long series of criminal enterprises run by the Cuban government. And any time they’ve gotten caught, historically, their first act is to deny it and then imprison some individuals as proof that they had no knowledge.

FADEL: So really covering their tracks, in your view?

SIMMONS: Correct. And this has been – this type of endeavor has been going on for about 60 years, starting with terrorist support and then them serving as the proxies for intelligence efforts on behalf of Russia and others, drug trafficking. So it’s just – it’s institutionalized criminal enterprise by the Havana government.

FADEL: Now, Cuba has made it very publicly clear, at least tried to say, that they have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, that they had nothing to do with these recruits of Cubans to go fight in the war. Is that about placating the U.S. and telling the U.S., we’re not involved?

SIMMONS: It goes back to the – their deniability. Cuba is a police state, and they proudly boast that. A million Cuban residents are part of what’s called the Committees and Defense of the Revolution, which is essentially a neighborhood snitch program. So the idea that someone could be running a mercenary ring without the government’s knowledge is ludicrous. It’s absolutely impossible for major criminal enterprises to exist without the Cuban government’s knowledge and involvement.

FADEL: So it doesn’t ring true to you. But does the public announcement from Cuba suggest at all that there are cracks in the long relationship between Cuba and Russia?

SIMMONS: The – yes, because there was also – Cuba had good relations with the Ukraine as well. And so before this became public, there had been some intense media coverage, on island, debating the pros and cons of staying out of any aspect of the war in Ukraine, since both were allies.

Interview continues here: Cuba’s Human Trafficking

 

Growing Concerns As Russians Make Big Return To Cuba 1

Headquarters of Cuba’s dreaded Ministry of the Interior (MININT) [Photo — Havana Times

BY HANK TESTER, CBS Miami

MIAMI – “The Cuban government is desperate, they have no money, no gas, they have no food.”

That said by Otto Reich, the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela and President of The Center for a Free Cuba.

Reich reacting to news that Russia and Cuba are renewing their relationship that all but disappeared after the Soviet Union dissolved in the late 1980’s.

Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, the Soviet Union was a big Cuba player, propping up the Castro Governments Communist based economy.

The Russians bailed when the Soviet Union fell apart.

Now, they say they are back with big promises and the Cuban’s are sweeting the pie.

Russia is offering Cuba great deals on gasoline, emergency donations of wheat, promises to build hotels, increase Russian tourism flows, and open retail stores stocked with Russian household products.

In return, Cuba will grant Russian entrepreneurs long term property leases.

Russian banks can open up, duty-free import of Russian equipment.

Russian business would be able to take profits out of the country.

“There is the promise to open a Russian vehicle assembly plant,” Reich is quick to mention.

“I am told they are sending personal to revamp the spy station,” he said.

The Russian operated an ease dropping spy station for years, then phased out their facility, but now may bring it back.

Cuba watchers say we should get ready for more Russian Naval Ships docking in the Port of Havana. With Russian long range bombers flying down the East Coast of the United States, landing in Cuba.

Russian Spy ships lingering just off the Atlantic territorial waters of the United States of America.

“They, the Russians, have always seen Cuba as a permeant aircraft carrier off the coast of the United States.”

Feature continues here: Russia’s Return to Cuba

China Has Had A Spy Base in Cuba For Decades, Former Intelligence Officer Says 1

Nora Gamez Torres, Miami Herald

China’s espionage efforts in Cuba targeting the United States are not recent and date back at least three decades, a retired army counterintelligence agent has told the Miami Herald. It took U.S. intelligence agencies nine years to figure out who was behind the repair and enhancements spotted during the 1990s at a “signals intelligence facility” — a reference to the interception of electronic communications — in the town of Bejucal, a 45-minute drive from Havana. “We saw the enhancements over a decade, a steady evolution; clearly something was going on, but we didn’t know what,” said Chris Simmons, a former chief of a counterintelligence research branch on the Western Hemisphere at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, which had Cuba as its number one target. “And then, in 2001, we discovered that the Chinese had been there already for nine years. We were told at that time that when the Chinese arrived in 1992, they were embedded in a single building within Bejucal, and they were 50 officers in this facility.”

The revelations of the long-term foothold of Chinese spy agencies in Cuba come after new intelligence reported by the Wall Street Journal suggested Cuban and Chinese officials were discussing building a spy base and a military training facility on the island and paying billions of dollars to Cuba in exchange. White House and Pentagon officials first said the initial report had “inaccuracies” without further elaboration. But later, Biden administration officials confirmed that China had intelligence-collection facilities in Cuba since at least 2019, when they were upgraded. The revelations come amid efforts by the Biden administration to improve communications with Beijing. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will visit China on Tuesday following a trip by the Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month, in which he said he raised the issue of the Chinese base in Cuba with senior Chinese officials. Following the first media reports about a spy base, members of Congress expressed concern for what seemed like a recent effort by China to establish intelligence facilities in Cuba.

“It comes as no surprise to us that the Cuban regime — which has historically opened its doors to foreign adversaries of the United States — and the [People’s Republic of China] are working together to undermine U.S. national security. However, the establishment of intelligence facilities and expansion of military ties this close to U.S. territory is a significant, escalatory step,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the chairmen of the Senate and the House committees handling foreign affairs, wrote last week in a letter requesting an intelligence briefing on the matter. But as it turns out, Chinese spies have been in Cuba longer than previously disclosed. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, China quickly moved to secure a position in Cuba, just 90 miles off the Florida Keys, though, at the time, the Asian country was not perceived as a U.S. adversary, but just as a regional power, Simmons said. “Washington knew the Chinese were engaged,” Simmons said. “But the conventional wisdom was that China just seized the political opportunity because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. That was the simplified D.C. logic. We could see the ships going in and the weapons coming off. But for the most part, Washington didn’t want to ask the hard questions.”

Feature Continues Here: China-Cuba SIGINT Cooperation