US Prosecutors Seek Denaturalization of Ex-Ambassador Rocha

Federal prosecutors in Miami filed a civil denaturalization complaint on Thursday against Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia who pleaded guilty to serving as a secret agent for Cuba for more than 40 years, seeking to strip him of the American citizenship he obtained in 1978.

Rocha, 75, a Colombian native who moved to New York City at age 10 with his mother and siblings, acknowledged in a 2023 guilty plea that he began working with Cuban intelligence in 1973 while participating in a student program in Chile near the end of President Salvador Allende's rule. At Havana's direction, he pursued graduate studies at Harvard and Georgetown universities before joining the U.S. State Department. He rose through the ranks, holding senior positions in Argentina, Mexico, the White House and the Dominican Republic, and serving as ambassador to Bolivia from 1999 to 2002.

Arrested in late 2023, Rocha pleaded guilty to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and acting as an unregistered foreign agent. Undercover FBI recordings captured him praising Fidel Castro as "El Comandante" and boasting that his service to Cuba was "more than a grand slam" against the United...