Besides have a very effective espionage operation that rivals the world’s best, the Castro dictatorship has another very distinct advantage: It rarely needs to pay Americans to convince them to betray their country and spy for them. Instead, the regime employs a very powerful tool, ideology, namely Marxism, as the entry point and the shared ideals to gain loyalty and service from their targets. The Cuban dictatorship expressly targets “true believers,” knowing they would risk it all to promote and defend the cause of Marxism and betray their country with no expectation of monetary reward. Therefore, the big takeaway for the U.S. government here is to stop hiring Marxists, which are easily recruited as spies by America’s enemies.
José de Córdoba and Aruna Viswanatha explain in The Wall Street Journal:
Cuban Intelligence Recruits Driven by Ideology, Not Money
Espionage case of former U.S. ambassador sheds light on officials-turned-spies swayed by sympathy for Cuba’s revolution
The Cuban espionage case involving former U.S. Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha might turn out to be the most egregious in terms of how long it is said to have gone on, but it is far from being the first.
In what Attorney General Merrick Garland called one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting security breaches of the U.S. government, Rocha was detained on Friday on charges of spying for Cuba’s intelligence service for decades, according to a complaint unsealed on Monday.
Former U.S. officials say the damage Rocha is accused of causing might be worse than the harm done by Cuba’s most successful spy, Ana Belén Montes. The senior Cuban analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba in 2002 after working for the island’s intelligence service for 17 years. Known within the U.S. government as the “Queen of Cuba” for her dominance of Cuban issues, Montes was released from prison in 2023.
The espionage affair of which Rocha is accused also echoes the case of a former State Department official and his wife. Walter Kendall Myers and his wife, Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, pleaded guilty in 2009 to having spied for Cuba for 30 years.
What the cases have in common, say U.S. officials and intelligence analysts, is that the agents of Cuba appear to have been driven by deep sympathy for the island nation’s revolution, rather than by financial gain for spying on the U.S.
In three long recorded meetings with an undercover FBI agent, Rocha showed his hostility for the U.S. and his undying allegiance to Cuba’s Communist regime. He made it clear that his work for Cuba wasn’t for money.
“He was still professing to be in love with the revolution,” said Brian Latell, a retired former Central Intelligence Agency analyst, referring to Rocha’s taped declarations made to the undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent during the investigation of the former diplomat.
In that, he is similar to a handful of other former U.S. officials recruited to spy for the Cuban government during the 1980s and 1970s, current and former U.S. officials say. During those Cold War days, Fidel Castro’s Cuba still had the élan of a revolutionary David facing off against a mighty imperialist Uncle Sam, particularly across Latin America.
“The normal motivation for American spies is that they are irritated by somebody they worked for, or they need the money,” said Kevin Whitaker, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. “But these people recruited by the Cubans are motivated by their commitment to the revolution.”
Pete Lapp, a retired FBI agent who investigated Montes, said that Cuban intelligence was very good at recruiting people sympathetic to their cause, while Russians usually paid. Montes was inspired by anti-American ideology, said Lapp, who wrote a book on the Montes investigation called “Queen of Cuba.”
The information Montes shared included details of a classified satellite program, and she never took money for passing on information, except for reimbursement for some expenses, according to FBI records.
During the Montes investigation, the FBI had been tipped off to the presence of numerous Cuban spies within the U.S. government, but didn’t have enough information at the time to identify the others.
“We had enough to know we had a lot of problems, but not a lot of leads to go on,” Lapp said. “Pound for pound they are one of the best intelligence agencies in the world.”
Rocha and Montes would interact periodically in their jobs, Lapp said.
Montes said at her sentencing that she found U.S. policy toward Cuba unfair and “felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it.”
Walter Kendall Myers, of the married duo who pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba, was an intelligence analyst specializing in Europe. He was recruited by Cuban intelligence after making a trip to the island in 1978, according to prosecutors. During his visit, Myers declared in a diary entry his affinity for Castro and the Cuban government, prosecutors said.
Myers and his wife were recruited to work for Havana the following year by a Cuban agent who visited their home in South Dakota and urged him to pursue a career at either the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency, the Justice Department said.
For the next 30 years Myers and his wife communicated with their Cuban handlers using shortwave radios, and met with agents overseas. In meetings with an undercover FBI agent in 2009, they admitted their activities. An analysis of Myers’s computer at the State Department found that he had viewed more than 200 top secret documents dealing with Cuba. He was sentenced to life in prison, while Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers received a sentence of 81 months. Prosecutors didn’t identify any monetary gain.
In the Rocha case, U.S. officials are worried that he provided top-secret information to Cuba over a span of more than 40 years during a career where he occupied top posts across half a dozen embassies in Latin America, including that of ambassador to Bolivia.
The unsealed complaint said that he told an undercover Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who feigned being his Cuban contact and met with him three times in a period of over a year that he had worked for Cuba’s Communist government as a covert agent since at least from 1981 to the present day.
This week, Rocha’s colleagues and acquaintances were shocked by the accusations against him. In Miami, Félix Ismael Rodríguez, a Cuban-American who worked with the CIA and is known for having captured revolutionary guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Bolivia, was stunned.
“It seems impossible that he was working for Cuban intelligence,” Rodríguez said in an interview with Martí Noticias, a U.S. government-run digital station based in Miami which broadcasts to Cuba. “If true, it will be the greatest disappointment of my life.”
Corrections & Amplifications
Kevin Whitaker is a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said his last name was Whitmore. (Corrected on Dec. 5)
Generally speaking, Castro, Inc. does not pay well, if at all, especially when it doesn’t have to. I’m sure the great majority of its foreign spies are like Rocha and the Puerto Rican witch.
The best one can say for Rocha is that he was a stupid fool, but he was also very ungrateful to the country which took him in and from which he greatly benefitted. As far as I’m concerned, every “Latin” involved with American Cuba policy should be treated as potentially compromised and monitored accordingly.
Evidently, attending Yale, Harvard and Georgetown did NOT make him a better person, and may have done the opposite, but it helped give him a veneer of sophistication and class which no doubt proved useful.
Again, based on what has been disclosed, his entire diplomatic career was a treasonous fraud, same as with the Belén Montes woman and others of that ilk. He dedicated his life, more or less, to serving evil.