Bloch Surveillance Circus : U.S. Agencies, Media Draw Fire in Bizarre Spy Case

WASHINGTON —  In a John Le Carre novel, it wouldn’t play like this. The mole, identified by discreet inquiries and fine-drawn deductions, would be whisked away to an isolated safehouse. Internal security would wear him down. Then George Smiley would come for the confession.

Such neat efficiency is easier in fiction than fact. In America’s latest spy affair, the bizarre case of suspected Soviet agent Felix S. Bloch, the real-life suspect, is being sweated out live on television.

The State Department has been so public about its suspicions and the FBI investigation so conspicuous in its surveillance that the stakeout of Bloch has appeared nightly on the air and in newspapers. Every day, as if reading another chapter in a thriller, America watches--television so real it seems fake.

All this is happening without Bloch being arrested or charged with any crime. Though knowledgeable sources say he was interrogated at least once, some government officials are now privately suggesting that the FBI does not have enough evidence to support an arrest warrant, much less a conviction. Unless Bloch confesses, some sources say, no legal action may ever be taken against him.

Why has the government handled the case this way? And why has the news media so unhesitatingly promulgated the government’s accusations--with only the barest nod to the possibility of Bloch’s innocence?

Scant Evidence

Making such a public spectacle of an unfinished investigation has few precedents in the hushed world of espionage, experts say. But it does raise discomforting questions about the ability of the government--aided by the news media--to paint an individual as having betrayed his duty and his country without the necessity of proving it.

One popular theory is that perhaps the government has gone public to pressure Bloch into confessing, a strategy that reflects how difficult it is to prosecute in the covert world of espionage, where evidence is scant and accomplices are usually protected foreign diplomats.

But sources familiar with the case say that after Bloch was tipped by a Soviet contact that he was under investigation, the FBI started making its surveillance obvious, not to pressure Bloch but to make it harder for him to escape.

Once the story broke, in this view, the various government agencies involved were split on how to respond. The Justice Department was opposed to confirming the story and the FBI was hesitant, sources familiar with the case said. These sources suggested that the State Department’s motive for going public with the Bloch case may have been political, not investigatory.

If so, some attorneys worry that the effect of the publicity could be to force the Justice Department into prosecuting Bloch prematurely. Given the tendency of juries to be offended by espionage, some defense attorneys still worry about Bloch’s chances.

And the case is raising concerns among journalists about whether government is using the media to pressure an intransigent Bloch into cooperating: If the FBI can’t scare him, maybe the crews from NBC and ABC can. There is also concern that, in its eagerness to pursue a dramatic story, the media--as well as the government--have trampled on Bloch’s right to a presumption of innocence.

Before 1975, the government generally didn’t even prosecute spies for fear of having to disclose sensitive secrets. Since then, the policy has been to prosecute spies vigorously, but government agencies normally have refused to discuss ongoing inquiries. And investigators usually take pains to operate away from public view, lest their sources and methods be compromised.

In the case of Bloch, by contrast, the FBI conducted its surveillance so openly that it became the talk of his Washington neighborhood. And when the story broke in the press, the State Department readily confirmed on the record that the senior State Department diplomat is under suspicion as a Soviet spy. Suddenly, hordes of television and print journalists joined the surveillance, turning Bloch’s every move into a gangly caravan--dutifully recorded and broadcast nightly to the nation.

On Monday, for example, the FBI and the media joined in a televised chase after Bloch and his daughter across the suburbs of New York’s Westchester County and into Manhattan.

The Bloch spy story broke last Friday, when ABC News reported that the government earlier this year had videotaped Bloch handing a briefcase to a known Soviet agent in Paris. The network said Bloch was under surveillance and on administrative leave from the State Department.

One key question in trying to understand the peculiar nature of the affair is whether the story was deliberately leaked and, if so, why?

While no evidence seen so far suggests that the leak was planted, sources at the FBI and State have said privately that they expected the story to come out eventually and were prepared.

After all, Bloch had been on administrative leave since June 22, several department officials had been briefed on the case and Bloch’s secretary had even delivered the contents of his desk in a cardboard box to the State Department lobby, where Bloch was waiting under guard.

State Department officials had discussed what to do when the story broke, had made a decision to confirm it and had even begun preparing a statement once they knew ABC was working on the story, according to a senior official in the department.

Quick Confirmation

The result was that the department confirmed the story last Friday night within 90 minutes of ABC’s report, giving it extraordinary momentum in the press.

Why do so? One theory that counterintelligence and legal experts offer is that getting physical evidence in espionage cases is so difficult that the government might be trying to use publicity to pressure Bloch into cooperating.

“The only physical evidence involved usually are documents that long ago went to Moscow,” said author Ronald Kessler, author of “Spy vs. Spy: Stalking Soviet Spies in America.”

Instead of physical evidence, spy cases rely either on wringing out confessions or plea bargains, or in some cases, in running a sting operation on the suspect to catch him in the act of espionage.

Typically, before questioning a suspect, investigators build a detailed biography and psychological profile from childhood on--gathering so much information that it eventually can encircle the suspect and persuade him to talk, maybe confess.

Former National Security Agency employee Ronald W. Pelton, for instance, was convicted of giving the Soviets secrets largely on the strength of statements he gave in a five-hour interview that the FBI spent six weeks preparing for. Similarly, the investigators persuaded Navy man John A. Walker Jr. to accept a plea bargain to reduce his son’s and his own sentences.

In Bloch’s case, the argument goes, it is possible that such earlier attempts at persuading him to talk have failed. When FBI agents confronted him about a month ago, for instance, Bloch reportedly “admitted nothing.”

It is not uncommon in such situations, experts say, to allow a suspect to discover he is being watched constantly. The tactic is designed to breed a sense of hopelessness in the suspect, convincing him that he will never lead a normal life as long as he holds out, according to intelligence experts.

Under such pressure, sources say, spies sometimes confess in order to end the ordeal and strike a bargain that offers the possibility of eventually resuming a normal life.

But other evidence suggests that the theory of trying to use publicity to pressure Bloch may be wrong.

Sources familiar with the case say that a key factor came when the FBI learned that a Soviet contact had tipped Bloch to the fact that he was under investigation, sometime in late June. Once that occurred, the tone of the case changed.

The State Department stripped Bloch of his security clearance and put him on leave. And rather than continue with discreet surveillance to catch Bloch at something, the FBI made its surveillance obvious to make it harder for Bloch to escape, as occurred in the embarrassing case of Edward Lee Howard in 1985.

Howard, a CIA agent who was spying for the Soviets, escaped FBI agents using a dummy and other CIA techniques, even though the FBI had his house wiretapped and under video surveillance.

If the surveillance of Bloch was not made conspicuous to pressure him, it is also possible that ABC News simply got a scoop on the case and that the initial decision to confirm some information to the press about Bloch has snowballed out of control--perhaps with some agencies wanting to provide more information than others.

Sources familiar with the case, for instance, say that the Justice Department opposed the State Department’s decision to confirm the ABC story, and FBI officials opposed it but went along anyway.

Decision Blamed

Now officials at both Justice and the FBI blame that decision for making the case into a circus, sources said.

These sources also said that FBI officials were particularly angry about an ABC News report Monday night stating that Bloch was first alerted to the FBI investigation by a Soviet handler.

The report was based on a recording of a Bloch phone conversation, a recording authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, sources said. Wiretaps or recording secured under the act are deeply held intelligence secrets that are never supposed to become public, unlike more conventional federal wiretaps issued under the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Acts.

As a result, the leak has added to already mounting strain between the agencies involved in the Bloch case, the sources said.

There is no precedent for going public in an espionage case without sufficient evidence to charge someone, various authorities said.

Perhaps the closest analogy is the case of British double agent Harold (Kim) Philby, who was publicly suspected of being a Soviet spy after the arrest of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951. Philby even called a news conference to profess his innocence. It was 12 years later that new evidence emerged, and Philby defected to narrowly elude British authorities.

Several former FBI counterintelligence sources said they could see no rational reason for the government to make the Bloch case public deliberately. “It really does not do a hell of a lot of good to have the media press things like this,” said Ray Wannall, once the head spy catcher in the FBI as chief of counterintelligence.

And even the argument about the difficulty of prosecuting espionage cases is not entirely persuasive. The conviction rate in espionage cases has been high since the government made the conscious choice to start prosecuting them in 1975, said Tony Tamburello, the attorney who defended Walker accomplice Jerry Whitworth.

“The only scenario that would make sense would be if the people who went public . . . had a sense by their own conclusions that this case was not going to prosecuted,” said Joel Levine, who has both prosecuted espionage cases (in the so-called “Falcon and the Snowman” case of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee) and defended them (in the case of former FBI agent Richard W. Miller, now awaiting retrial).

“Now there is enough pressure,” Levine said, “how could the government back out?”

Indeed, going public makes so little sense, Levine said, that if it is deliberate, it is just as plausible that it is a disinformation campaign designed to make the Soviets believe Bloch is really a suspect when he is not.

Whatever the truth, a troubling question remains over whether the media are letting themselves be used improperly.

“You are always manipulatable,” said Washington Post Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee. Yet the problems are always greater in the case of espionage. “You can go get five people to tell you the same thing, but you are all talking about one original source,” Bradlee said.

“I know this (story) wasn’t a plant,” said Richard Wald, executive vice president of ABC News. But either way, “whether that helps or hinders the federal government in some of its designs cannot be a determining factor in our coverage,” Wald said.

And what if Bloch is innocent? Is the media being irresponsible in putting under the spotlight of notoriety a man who law enforcement officials apparently lack enough evidence to even arrest and charge?

The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday “condemned” those government officials who have talked about the Bloch case with the media. Citing constitutional guarantees of presumption of innocence and rights to fair trial, the group said “the government should not publicly accuse a person of violating the law unless it has indicted that person.”

Journalists said once the government is talking, they are going to publish, though they do take precautions.

“I say in my stories that this man might well be innocent,” said CBS correspondent Rita Braver. “But I think we have to take our cue from the behavior of the government officials to say the truth about what the concern is.”

One problem with Braver’s approach is it is difficult to know where the concern really is.

“If we are being fed half-truths or information, that is where media manipulation becomes an issue,” said Tom Bettag, executive producer of CBS News.

And the danger of publicity may not simply be from the media. It could be that it forces the government into prosecuting Bloch, whether it has a strong case or not. If that happens, attorney Levine for one says that is a concern.

“I really fear that they will be forced to jump in because they will look stupid not prosecuting,” Levine said, and because juries are so struck by espionage charges, Bloch could be convicted anyway.

“It really is a major uphill battle to defend one of these,” Levine said.

Times staff writers Doyle McManus and Ronald J. Ostrow contributed to this story.