Our very own local spy in residence, Felix Bloch of Chapel Hill, is back on the radar screen. Robert Hanssen, the notorious FBI officer turned Soviet agent, confessed that he was the one who tipped off Bloch in 1991 that US government agents were on to him, giving him time to run as far from the incriminating evidence as possible. You may remember the frantic scene on national TV. Reporters chased Bloch from pillar to post in Paris and Washington after it was leaked that he was to be arrested.
But he wasnt. Now, over 10 years later, when I met CIA officer Brian Kelley last July in Washington, DC, at the opening of the International Spy Museum, he still wanted to know why. He even encouraged me to confront the prosecutor in charge of espionage cases (he was there too) and ask him why Bloch has yet to be arraigned. The prosecutor gave me some vague answers, such as it was circumstantial evidencenational security concerns you know, and I left it at that until I received a call in November from a producer for the Discovery Channel. He said Bloch would be a segment in an upcoming documentary on Brian Kelley.
Why Brian Kelley? If you read the earlier books on Hanssenor watched the CBS docudramathere is mention of the anonymous CIA agent who was thought to be the Soviet mole before they caught Hanssen. This mans life was disrupted and his reputation put at stake due to the bumbling, stumbling idiocy of the FBI, which was working in conjunction with the CIA to track down a spy in their midst whom they knew was compromising operations and costing the lives of agents. They landed on CIA officer Brian Kelley as their man because he accidentally fit their matrix of data that matched the moles activities.
Kelleys house was searched in his absence; his phones were tapped; investigators tried to trap him into confessing; and his colleagues were browbeaten and put under a cloud of suspicion. FBI agents harassed his two sisters and even threatened to visit his 84-year-old mother at a nursing home and tell her he was a spy. Kelley was told he was being investigated for a capital crime and was suspended from his CIA post, his career in shambles.
Only after the joint FBI/CIA investigation team two years later paid a former Soviet espionage officer $7 million for secret files did it come out that Robert Hanssen of the FBI was the mole, exonerating Kelley. He was restored to his position at the CIA but it took an additional six months for the FBI to apologize. But there is another sinister dimension of incompetence by the FBI. Robert Hanssen, aware that investigators were on the wrong scent, reactivated his spying activities after a two-year dormancy, costing more American lives and the compromise of additional US assets.
Kelley and the CIA, with agreement from the FBIwho were fearful of additional bad publicityagreed to keep his name out of the public eye and life returned to normal, at least for a little while. The very week I received a call from the Discovery Channel producer, a book came out by espionage pundit David Wise named Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBIs Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, that took legal risks and withstood pressure from the CIA and the FBI by naming Kelley as the mistaken suspect, or, as Wise put it in a chapter heading: The Wrong Man. So the cat is out of the bag and Kelleys case is becoming a cause clbre. He will appear on a segment of 60 Minutes this month and a scathing internal report is expected out soon criticizing the FBI and then director Louis Freeh for their incompetence in the Hanssen investigation and for nearly ruining Kelleys life.
But there is more to the story. Brian Kelleys interest in the arrest of Felix Bloch goes beyond the revelation that Hanssen, the root cause of his recent travails, tipped off Bloch. It turns out that Kelley was part of a high-level team investigating Bloch before he was suspended. And Bloch should not be characterized simply by the publicity created around his two shoplifting convictions in Chapel Hill or by the lowliness of his occupations as a food clerk and bus driver. Bloch cut a Claus von Bulow figurehaughty, accomplishedand had reached the high echelons of the American diplomatic service. He was DCM (Deputy Chief of Mission) in Vienna, serving as acting ambassador on a regular basis, and was privy to high-level secrets.
He is not just the spy amongst us; he is the highest-level known espionage agent since the Alger Hiss days. Yet, while Brian Kelleys life was torn apart, his prey is alive and well in Chapel Hill. After what Kelley went through as the Wrong Man, it is understandable that he wants Bloch, the man he knew to be a high-level Soviet agentwho is a free man due to the machinations of his nemesis Robert Hanssenbrought to justice. So do I.
I am planning an international conference on espionage to be held in Raleigh in late spring featuring Chris Andrew (who has been chosen to write the official history of MI5the UKs security service) and Brian Kelley has agreed to help headline the program. More later. (Go to the website for the Hartford Courant and check the archives for In the Most Damaging Spy Case Ever, The FBI Had One Suspect and One Alone published on December 8, 2002, to read more about Brian Kelley and the Hanssen case.)
Notes from La-La Land
I guess I'm glad our National Public Radio affiliate in the Triangle, WUNC-FM-91.5, has for the most part gone to all-talk, especially as we have the excellent WCPE-FM-89.7 playing classical music 24/7, but more talk from NPR usually means more infantile politically correct party-line propaganda. Upon announcing the appointment of Henry Kissinger (he resigned later) to head the Oval Office investigation into 9-11, NPR reported that Henry the K was a former Secretary of State, National Security Advisor and to many Americans a war criminal for his involvement in the bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Really now. On the same day, one of their experts on a magazine segment called SUVs weapons of mass destruction. Even worse is the unfunny, badly acted, shrill radio drama Id Rather Eat Pants, starring Ed Asner and Anne Meara, among others, inflicted on listeners during December. When you have no standards, in order to be politically correct so as not to hurt anyones feelings, tripe like this is considered worthwhile.
There was one report on NPR worth the listening that slipped through the thought police. A writer just returned from North Korea offered a fascinating account of life in this brutal Communist nation, including a very telling remark about city planning under this dictatorship of the proletariat that we should heed, and is remindful of why mass transit carries with it a whiff of Bolshevism. Said the writer, the cities are failing because they are built on the Soviet model of high-rise worker apartments and extensive subway systems to move workers around. Sound like the Triangle Transit Authority to you?
Happy New Year.