It’s Just Not the American Way

If Felix S. Bloch of the U.S. Foreign Service won’t declare himself innocent of spying, we certainly are not going to put words in his mouth. But after seven months of surveillance, eavesdropping and investigation of his bank and tax records, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seems unable to make a case that he is guilty, either. It makes us uneasy that in a country that puts so much store by individual rights, Bloch will be punished anyway, at least by the loss of his State Department job, and that official Washington continues to give the impression that he is guilty until proven innocent.

This cloak-and-dagger affair began earlier this year, months after Bloch returned from a tour at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, when U.S. intelligence officials claim that they intercepted and recorded an incriminating telephone call from a man they say is a Soviet spy and but who Bloch says is nothing more than a fellow stamp collector. Tipped by the call, French agents are said to have watched Bloch hand over a bag to the Soviet in a Paris restaurant sometime last May. After that Bloch was followed, if not hounded, by the FBI for months. In an almost comic touch, Bloch and his FBI tail were trailed by a band of cameras and reporters once the story became public in June.

Sources told The Times last week that the same kind of analysis of financial records that helped put Chicago’s notorious Al Capone in jail for income tax evasion failed to yield a clue in Bloch’s case. This would seem to mean that Bloch either buried any money he got for handing over secrets or that he worked for nothing.

Even without hard evidence, a spy story ought to hold together better than the Bloch case seems to do. If he did do favors for a Soviet agent--who knows, he may after all be guilty as sin--it seems that Washington will never know what they were. If he did not, Washington will have humiliated him for naught. One official told The Times that the case “is coming out the worst possible way.” We can’t disagree with that statement.