Felix Bloch (diplomat)

Felix Stephan Bloch (born July 19, 1935 in Vienna ) is a former American diplomat. In 1989 he was accused of delivering classified documents to the KGB , which sparked a scandal and resulted in his release. However, the allegations could never be proven to him, which meant a great damage to the image of the FBI's counterintelligence.

Life

Bloch was born into a Jewish family in Vienna. Together with his parents and sister, he was able to flee Austria a year after the Anschluss in April 1939. They went to the USA and settled in Manhattan . There he attended elementary school and high school . His mother joined a Presbyterian church there and raised the children in Christianity. They attended the same church in Manhattan as John Foster Dulles and Laurence Rockefeller. Bloch later studied at the University of Pennsylvania , where he graduated in 1957. He then went to Italy to study for a year at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna . It was there that he met his North Carolina- born wife, whom he married in 1959. At the same time, the student Alois Mock , who later became Austrian Foreign Minister, was at this university and a friendship developed between the two men.

After Italy he began to work for the State Department and was sent to Düsseldorf in 1960 , where two daughters were born. He was later sent to Caracas , Venezuela, for two years . The family then went back to the United States, where Bloch completed a master's degree in international relations . In 1970 he was transferred to the American embassy in West Berlin and later to East Berlin . Then he went to Singapore and in 1980 he was finally transferred to Vienna. In 1983 he was promoted to Deputy Chief of Mission there, that is, Deputy Ambassador, under Helene von Damm , who was also from Austria . Bloch enjoyed life in Vienna, his former hometown. The family lived in the noble district of Döbling , he often went to the opera and had many acquaintances. In 1986, however, a new ambassador was appointed, billionaire Ronald Lauder , with whom he quickly came into conflict. The latter suspected him of divulging secrets, while Bloch thought his superior was incompetent. In 1987 he was finally ordered back to Washington. There he worked for the Bush Sr. administration and arranged state visits.

Espionage scandal

At the beginning of 1989 the Frenchman Pierre Bart contacted him by telephone and asked the passionate stamp collector Bloch to meet. Bloch was interested and agreed. In fact, this man was Reino Gikman, a Finn from East Karelia who worked as an agent for the KGB. On May 14, 1989, the two finally met at the Hôtel Le Meurice in Paris and talked at the hotel bar. The French counterintelligence of the DST , however, was already after the agent Gikman and secretly filmed this meeting. The video recordings showed that Bloch was handing over a suitcase to Pierre Bart / Reino Gikman. After this meeting, Bloch flew to Madrid for business appointments and then back to the USA. At the end of May he traveled to Brussels for President Bush's state visit . There, too, he met up with Bart / Gikman and gave him stamps. This time, however, the CIA was already monitoring this meeting. Back in the US, he received a call from Bart / Gikman in Europe in June, which was bugged by the FBI. The eavesdroppers had the impression that code words were used in the otherwise harmless conversation. From this they concluded that the two had been warned by a mole in the US intelligence apparatus. In conjunction with other evidence from his time in Vienna, the FBI decided to arrest Bloch. He was interrogated and confronted with the surveillance photos from Paris and Brussels. However, Bloch asserted that he had met the alleged Frenchman only out of a private interest in collecting stamps.

Up to this point, all investigations had gone undercover, but on July 21, 1989, the ABC television station suddenly reported the case. On the same day, the State Department publicly confirmed the allegations. The case was widely spread in the media and Bloch was considered a convicted spy by the public. It was suggested that the FBI had deliberately leaked the allegations against Bloch in order to press him into a confession. However, further investigations brought only weak evidence to light and Bloch refused to admit anything. In December 1989 the FBI finally closed the investigation without closing the case. Bloch was released but suspended from duty. All pension entitlements have also been canceled for the 54-year-old. In May 1990, the New York Times published an extensive interview with Bloch, in which Bloch first publicly commented on the allegations.

For the FBI, the case was a major loss of image, as the publicly suspected spy could not be convicted. The blame for this failure was shifted back and forth between the FBI and the CIA, which is why the US Senate Intelligence Committee dealt with it in October 1989. More FBI employees were eventually fired for fear of leaks. The Finn Reino Gikman, on the other hand, fled Paris in June 1989 and never reappeared. His partner, with whom he had lived briefly in Paris, was also unable to make any statements about his whereabouts. She had only met him as a computer expert who worked for IBM . It was assumed that Reino Gikman had been his shadow ( controller ) since Bloch's time in Vienna , who had been explicitly assigned to him by the KGB.

After the media campaign, Felix Bloch had difficulties finding his way back to a normal life. He eventually went to North Carolina in 1992 and took a job as a bus driver. In 2001 the case came back on the agenda. The FBI was able to locate the then suspected mole in their own ranks and has now exposed Robert Hanssen as a former spy for the Soviet Union. During the interrogation, he admitted to having warned Reino Gikman and Bloch in the summer of 1989. Bloch was then arrested again and interrogated. Again he denied all allegations and was eventually released. However, the case was never closed by the FBI.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kurier : Famous Espionage Cases ( Memento from July 5, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Der Spiegel: Espionage-Hysterie in Washington , Issue 34/1989
3. ^ New York Times: THE FELIX BLOCH AFFAIR , David Wise, May 13, 1990
4. ↑ Mark Riebling: Wedge: from Pearl Harbor to 9/11: how the secret war between the FBI and CIA has endangered national security , Simon and Schuster, 2002, ISBN 9780743245999 (English, pp. 399-401)
5. ↑ RCS Trahair: Encyclopedia of Cold War espionage, spies, and secret operations , Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 9780313319556 (English, p. 91)
6. ↑ RCS Trahair: Encyclopedia of Cold War espionage, spies, and secret operations , Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004, ISBN 9780313319556 (English, pp. 27-30)