Summer Spy Scoops

...This may be as good a time as any to leave the questions hanging and go on vacation...

...Never mind...

...But as the execution of Cicippio was suspended and the probability arose that Colonel Higgins had been long dead, the Administration concluded that the Obeid abduction had been a positive event, bringing to life the long-stalemated hostage situation...

...A large group of officers in Berlin were directed to take the test after an Army warrant officer, James Hall, pleaded guilty to selling electronic secrets to a Soviet agent...

...Onastreet, orwasitina restaurant...

...Or the leak (to NBC) of a surmise by Navy investigators that a homosexual sailor was responsible for the explosion on the battleship Iowa...

...Instead, a new crisis in Iran's relations with the West was created by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death sentence against Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses...

...The FBI was obviously intent on not letting Bloch slip through its fingers— as did the CIA spy Edward Howard, who escaped an FBI cordon in 1985 and made it to Moscow...

...Washington Notebook BY DANIEL SCHORR Summer Spy Scoops The big bailout of the savings and loan institutions is on and the investigation into the garage sale of the assets of the Department of Housing and Urban Development rolls along—reminders of the legacy of the Reagan years...

...Yet, in a now familiar media ritual, we saw "experts" explaining the kind of secrets a person in Hirsch's position could have betrayed...

...The story had almost everything— including President Bush's confirmation that this was "a serious matter"— except hard evidence...

...The case of the former Number Two man in the United States Embassy in Vienna seemed to follow a script by John le Carré as it might be directed by Mack Sennett...

...This was a little like Lenin forswearing world revolution for "Socialism in one country...

...Actually, President Bush had sought to broach the hostage situation as early as his inauguration last January...

...ABC has come under some fire for putting on a simulation, only belatedly identified as such, of ameeting between Bloch and a Soviet agent...

...Well, he was born in Czechoslovakia...

...Then he became resentful and depressed at being bossed around by politically appointed ambassadors, namely, Helene van Damm, President Reagan's former secretary, and Ronald Lauder, the son of Estee Lauder and currently candidate for the New York mayoralty...

...In his inaugural address he said, "There are today Americans who are held against their will in foreign lands...

...being "involved" in an investigation because he had been questioned by an FBI agent...

...By mid-August, though, a Pentagon official (also unidentified) was saying that there seemed to be no evidence against Hirsch and that the investigation should not have been disclosed...

...The difficulty was that in saying he would "do nothing that will be seen as a quid pro quo for hostages," he was only emphasizing and compounding his dilemma...

...And what happens if this strange nonnegotiation for a non-deal shows signs of success and America remembers that the Iranian regime was undoubtedly involved in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103 last December in likely retaliation for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner the previous July...

...Assistance can be shown here and will be long remembered...

...And what is the symbiotic relationship that has developed, under this pressure for investigative sensation, between scoophungry journalists and their feeders in government, plying their own interagency conflicts or inflating their own egos...

...Goodwill begets goodwill...

...President Bush, who appeared frequently, almost compulsively, to emphasize how calmly and prudently he was dealing with the tum of events, was clearly seeking some way of letting the Iranian government know that last January's offer was still open—that release of the hostages would have its reward...

...So, okay, his parents fled from the Communists when he was 15...

...We loved the mad motorcade scene, with the FBI pursuing the balding diplomat across Westchester County, followed by the press, followed by diplomatic cars presumed to contain Soviet agents...

...Others suggested a revenge theory...

...Ronald Reagan tried to barter hostages in Lebanon for missiles to Iran, and got only three released (who were quickly replaced) and a black eye in history...

...The abduction of Sheik Obeid was followed by the release of the grisly videotape of Colonel Higgins dangling from a gallows, and the tape of Joseph Cicippio pleading that his life be saved by forcing Israel to free the Sheik...

...Leaked details turned out often to be contradictory...

...There was a lot of envy around the other network newsrooms when ABC, on Friday evening July 21, broke the story of Felix Bloch, a high-ranking diplomat—indeed, the highest-ranking in memory—being investigated on suspicion of espionage...

...What is going on here...

...This time the Russians were put on official notice that they should not try any funny business with Bloch...

...Remember the leak (to CBS) about Representative Bill Gray (D.-Pa...

...The testing of President Bush started on July 25, when Israeli commandos seeking a bargaining chip for the release of three kidnapped Israeli soldiers captured Sheik Abdul Karim Obeid, a Shi'ite cleric believed to have been at the very least an accessory to terrorist actions, including the abduction of Marine Lieutenant Colonel William R. Higgins, commander of a United Nations peacekeeping detachment in Lebanon...

...Well, he traveled to France, Austria and Italy...

...Not having been consulted about the Obeid operation, President Bush initially reacted with irritation, as did Senate Republican Leader Robert Dole...

...What ground for suspicion was there...

...So, okay, his parents lived in Europe, and one trip to Italy was when his father died...

...To exchange a briefcase, or was it a suitcase...

...Well, he had $120,000 in the bank...

...NBC, quoting unnamed Pentagon sources, said that the case of Captain Hirsch "has all the now familiar indicators of an American selling secrets to the Eastern bloc...

...Bloch was supposed to have met with a KGB agent in Vienna, or was it Paris...

...But, for the capital in midsummer, spies and hostages are more exciting...

...Jimmy Carter tried to rescue the hostages in the U. S. Embassy in Teheran with a military operation in 1980, and failed...

...Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on.' This elliptical language was meant to encourage a war-weary Iran to break the hostage stalemate...

...Then Bloch returned to Washington, where he seemed to enjoy leading the FBI and the press on a (for them) not-so-merry chase around the city, including one 22-mile hike...

...If it was necessary for Bush to demonstrate that economic concessions might follow, but not be connected with a hostage release, then it was probably equally important for President Rafsanjani, still faced with hard-line opponents and the need to consolidate his power, to demonstrate that he was not making the first concession...

...By July, however, the Ayatollah was dead and the Speaker of Parliament, Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, the so-called "moderate" who had masterminded the hostage dealings with the Reagan Administration, had been elected President...

...That didn't pan out...

...Great ABC exclusive...

...Furthermore, the outgoing President, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who now succeeded the Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's spiritual leader, made a major policy speech saying that the principal aim of the Islamic revolution should be constructing a model society in Iran...

...Air Force Captain John Vladimir Hirsch, thechief engineer at a supersecret electronic listening post at Tempelhof Air Base, in West Berlin, had been relieved of his duty and flown to San Antonio, Texas, after a routine polygraph test indicated a possibly deceptive answer to a question...

...It suggested that Iran might be preparing to pull back from trying to export its revolution to Lebanon, which would mean pulling the Persian rug from under the Hezbollah, the Partyof God, considered a principal sponsor of hostage-taking...

...There was no response from Teheran...

...There was no evidence that Captain Hirsch had any foreign intelligence contact...

...Without much to go on besides the leak that an investigation of Hirsch was in progress, NBC said, "Today the Air Force is trying to determine what classified information he may have sold and for how long...

...What is a quid pro quo that is not seen as such...

...So onecan imagine thejoyin the NBC newsroom on Friday night August 4, when the Nightly News came up with its own espionage exclusive...

...Weeks passed, and no charges were filed...

...Here was the Embassy Number Two lusting to be ambassador, but unable to afford the $200,000 campaign contribution that an ambassadorship seems to cost these days...

...The Austrians tried to add a Such die Frau or Cherchez la femme angle to the story, suggesting that Bloch may have been in the toils of a call girl, whom they interrogated on her return from a vacation in Egypt...

...Is the television evening news now competing not only with its rivals but also with entertainment spinoffs from the newsroom like Inside Edition, A Current Affair and America's Most Wanted...

...The broad hint was that rewards would then be forthcoming from the American cornucopia, including the possible release of several billion dollars in frozen assets dating back to the hostage crisis of 1979-80...

...On what was this prejudicial statement based...

...There comes a point where one has to worry about simulation—not just simulated pictures, but simulated facts and simulated villains...

...Hanging Hostage Questions Meanwhile, President George Bush has been experiencing that special hell undergone by two previous Presidents confronted with captive Americans in mortal danger...

...Not much...

...So, okay, his friends said he was very thrifty and saved it from his pay (which sounds pretty unAmerican right there...

...There were rumors, dutifully reported by the New York Times, that Bloch had told the FBI of having taken money from the Russians, but there was no corroboration...