THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH 2025 37 Colonel Rene Fonseca, a retired Honduran military officer who was the political liaison for the armed forces. “He was very attentive to every piece of information the Contras put on the table to the Americans. He never spoke, he was always taking notes,” Fonseca said. “He sat at the end of the table with a spiral notebook.” Fonseca recalls three of four meetings with top Honduran military intelligence officers and senior Contra leaders. “They would show maps where their forces were located and go over the results of operations,” he said. “Now, I wonder if that information was being passed to the Sandinistas,” he added. Briggs doesn’t recall attending Contra meetings with Rocha. “He may have escorted a number of congressional delegations to the Contra camps. But he would not have had access to rarefied intelligence with the Contras,” he said. Fonseca also socialized privately with Rocha. “He was very reserved, circumspect about some things, but he could be very outgoing too,” said Fonseca. “He would invite me to his house. I imagine he hoped he would get good information from me.” Privy to Insider Information Rocha would have been privy to the regular flow of insider embassy information of value to Cuba’s friends. The embassy comprised a large military group, with a presence outside the capital at the Palmerola Air Base. The U.S. military also used a smaller, more secret base, El Aguacate, to train and supply the Contras. A rare, brown-skinned Hispanic recruit in the State Department, Rocha was born in Colombia and moved at a young age to the U.S., where he was raised in Harlem by his single mother, who worked as a seamstress.
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