Felix Bloch

Felix Bloch (; ; born July 19, 1935) is a former director of European and Canadian Affairs in the United States Department of State. He is known for his connection to the Robert Hanssen espionage case.

Hanssen, a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who was a spy for the Soviet Union and later Russia, reported to his KGB handlers about ongoing FBI investigations of Bloch and Reino Gikman in order to save them from possible arrest. Gikman escaped to Moscow and made a warning phone call to Bloch only later. The FBI intercepted this and other espionage-related phone calls, but was unable to collect enough evidence to charge Bloch with any crime.

Bloch would later have a meeting with Gikman in Brussels, but the American authorities did not ask Belgian authorities to observe the meeting, in part because of fears the Belgian intelligence service was penetrated by the Soviets. The CIA observed parts of the meeting but could not determine if Bloch passed any documents to Gikman.

The Gikman phone call regarding the "illness" led U.S. officials to believe their investigation had been exposed. They therefore decided to confront Bloch. Agents demanded that he confess to spying, but he steadfastly held to his explanation about stamp collecting. The lack of any conclusive evidence against Bloch led to an extraordinary media firestorm. Bloch was suspended from his job. For the next six months, Bloch was followed everywhere by a horde of FBI agents and news reporters, who quickly learned of the extraordinary news that a high-ranking diplomat was suspected of spying. Bloch, an avid walker, once led the following horde on a 22-mile trek. In an absurd incident, Bloch was once sitting in a park when children began to taunt him as a "spy" and a man identifying himself as a Vietnam veteran hit Bloch in the head; at which point an FBI agent persuaded the man to leave. Another incident featured a staged "reenactment" of a fictionalized meeting between Bloch and a Soviet agent by a network news crew; the network's anchor later apologized on air for the incident. It is not known whether these tapes were used in the termination proceedings, which were closed to the public. Bloch's employment was terminated and he was dismissed from the State Department without benefit of a pension.

Aftermath Bloch was not charged criminally, and moved to North Carolina. Despite his substantial assets, Bloch chose menial work as a supermarket cashier, beginning in 1992. He took a second job driving buses for Chapel Hill Transit. He appears to have lived an uneventful life there but was arrested twice for shoplifting, first in 1993 and again in 1994. Despite being caught by bagger Shannon Norman and the store manager, the 1993 charge was dismissed. Bloch pleaded guilty to shoplifting in 1994, receiving a 30-day suspended sentence. In a 2001 interview, Bloch's bus-driving supervisor described him as a good employee who worked hard.

Connection to Robert Hanssen case Of all the unanswered questions in the Bloch affair, one of the largest was how the investigation had been blown to the Soviets. Over a decade later, US authorities discovered that Robert Hanssen had been responsible for alerting the Soviets to the investigation. The investigation into the suspected mole had first led officials, however, to misguided suspicion of a CIA official, Brian Kelley. Kelley was placed under surveillance for years and his CIA career was badly damaged. Investigators later became satisfied he had been completely innocent, and he only fell under suspicion because personal data about him fit a matrix that investigators felt they might be looking for in a mole. Hanssen's downfall renewed speculation that Bloch would at last be charged, but that did not happen.