The Bloch Case: Shnook or Spy?
Cold case
For American spy chasers, Felix Bloch is the one who got away. David Major, a former counterintelligence agent, recalls how Bob Hanssen would come into his office to agonize over how the aristocratic former U.S. diplomat had eluded their grasp. For hours, they debated who might have tipped him off. Little did Major imagine that the mole might be Hanssen himself.
The case began in April 1989. Bloch was the No. 2 diplomat in the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. But somehow a telephone surveillance of Reino Gikman, a known Soviet agent in Austria, picked up Bloch. The FBI scrambled. Twice in the next month, Bloch was surreptitiously filmed handing over two briefcases to Gikman. But only a few weeks later, Bloch received an anonymous phone call. Gikman "cannot see you in the near future," the caller said, warning that "a contagious disease is suspected." The FBI's case was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Finger-pointing. FBI officials have long pointed fingers at French officials or another State Department official for compromising the probe. But KGB documents cited in last week's FBI affidavit finger Hanssen. The FBI alleges that Hanssen tipped off his Soviet handlers to the Bloch investigation just over a month after it was launched.
Still, the FBI wanted Bloch badly, even bringing a former Viennese prostitute before a Washington grand jury to testify that she received $10,000 from Bloch over seven years. Bloch himself was never tried, and he maintains his innocence. Once the investigation leaked to the press, Bloch became a news media sensation, leading to the spectacle of FBI agents jockeying with hordes of reporters and television cameras to follow the suspected Soviet spy.
Today, Bloch's days of diplomatic receptions and Alpine vacations are long gone. Living alone in an apartment in Chapel Hill, N.C., Bloch, 65, drives a bus for the city's transit authority. A stint bagging groceries was cut short after he was accused of shoplifting $100.59 of food from his employer. He has been accused of shoplifting two other times, including an attempted heist last year of $16.03 of candy bars and cheese (although the charges were later dismissed).
To his former pursuers, his new life provides some consolation as punishment for a man they derided as aloof and haughty. "Talk about arrogant--this may be worse than prison for him," says former FBI official Harry "Skip" Brandon. Even Hanssen had no use for the diplomat. "Bloch was such a shnook," he wrote to his alleged handlers in Moscow. "I almost hated protecting him, but then he was your friend, and there was your illegal [Gikman] I wanted to protect."
Even though the Hanssen revelations suggest that Bloch was indeed in contact with Russian officials, he is unlikely to face trial because prosecutors would still need to prove that he actually handed over classified information.
This story appears in the March 5, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.