(WWJ) – On Monday Victor Manuel Rocha, an ex-US Ambassador, was charged with being a spy for Cuba for more than 40 years.
What kind of damage could Rocha have caused over those four decades? And what makes people become foreign agents in the first place? WWJ’s Brian Fisher finds answers to those questions from spy experts on a new Daily J podcast.
Michael McDaniel, a tenured professor of constitutional law at Cooley Law School and retired brigadier general compares Rocha's case to two of the most infamous spies that cost the U.S. valuable information -- and lives.
"In both of those cases, those are low level guys," McDaniel said. "But an ambassador is wholly different in terms of what the damage may be. It could be the worst ever for two reasons: first is because of his high rank, and secondly, because of longevity. For almost 40 years they groomed him."
As for why people become spies, Andrew Hammond, a historian at the International Spy Museum in Washington D.C., says their are four main reasons. But in Rocha's case, it may have been ideological.
"It sounds like there's a degree of ideology there," he said. "He called Fidel Castro 'comandante'... he called the U.S. 'enemy' and things like that."
As the case unfolds, one big question remains: how did Rocha -- and how do other spies -- evade detection for so long?
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