Four days of public scrutiny for Bloch

Press, 26 July 1989, Page 11

Four days of public scrutiny for Bloch

NZPA-Reuter Washington A senior United States diplomat, Felix Bloch, suspected of spying for Moscow, has been the subject of an extraordinary four days of public scrutiny without being arrested or charged with any crime.

Mr Bloch was another faceless bureaucrat in the State Department until last Friday when it was disclosed that the F. 8.1. was investigating him for "illegal activities" involving "agents of a foreign Intelligence service.”

Since then he has been a hounded man, under heavy Federal Bureau of Investigation surveillance but not arrested; subject of countless newspaper and television reports that left the impression he was guilty until proven innocent.

The reports were quick to compare Mr Bloch with Alger Hiss, target of the most famous espionage case involving the State Department. Hiss insisted he was innocent of espionage, but was con-

victed in 1950 of lying to Congress about passing secret documents.

The style in which the Bloch case has been handled seemed the opposite of the normal procedure of arresting an espionage suspect before even considering making a comment about him.

“If he’s a deadly spy, why isn’t he in jail?” asked a former Defence Intelligence Agency chief, Daniel Graham. “Usually, if a man is suspected of espionage, not only is he seized, he is not allowed out on bail. You are held incarcerated until your trial.

“I’m really astonished that the man is still loose,” said Mr Graham, now an Intelligence expert for the High

Frontiers Defence Research Institute, a private organisation. Officials have tried to be careful in their public statements about Mr Bloch to avoid the appearance of judging him prematurely. But merely mentioning the case, as President George Bush did on Monday, would seem to chip away at Mr Bloch’s credibility. “If a person is ... allegedly involved in betraying his country, that to me is a very serious matter,” Mr Bush said. “The minute I heard about it, I was aggrieved because it is a very tragic thing should these allegations be true.”

The State Department placed Mr Bloch on administrative leave on June

22, meaning he was not supposed to enter the Washington building without escort but could still draw his pay. The investigation seems to involve Mr Bloch’s service earlier this decade as the second ranking diplomat at the United States Embassy in Vienna, a hotbed of espionage activity.

The United States Ambassador to Austria at the time, Ronald Lauder, said yesterday he had demanded that Mr Bloch be recalled to Washington in 1987, saying he was insubordinate. Mr Lauder said Mr Bloch “went outside of channels” in his contacts with Austrian officials at an especially tense time in United States-Austrian relations.