The Elusive Spy

The Soblen affair recalled flickering old movies about improbable tangled doings in imaginary European principalities. Movies of that kind always included slices of villainy to provide dramatic interest--but the sinister kept getting swamped in the absurd.

In late June, a few days before he was supposed to begin serving a life-imprisonment sentence for wartime espionage on behalf of Russia, New York Psychiatrist Robert Soblen, 61, jumped $100,000 bail and fled to Israel, using a dead brother's Canadian passport to gain entry. A Lithuanian-born Jew, Soblen expected Israel to let him stay, but Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion bent to U.S. pressures and arranged to send Soblen back in the general direction of the U.S. aboard a flight of the government-controlled airline, El Al. As a result of covert but obvious cooperation between U.S. and Israeli authorities, Soblen was accompanied on the flight by one James J. P. McShane, chief of U.S. marshals, who had flown to Israel to bring Soblen back.

Shaken Government. As the plane neared London, last stop before the hop across the Atlantic, Soblen stabbed himself in the abdomen with a steak knife while McShane was out of the compartment. Soblen was not attempting to commit suicide; he was trying to wound himself just enough to be hospitalized in Britain, thereby gaining time to try to obtain asylum.

In Israel, meanwhile, the repercussions of the Soblen affair had shaken the Ben-Gurion government. Many Israelis, including chieftains of two parties who were members of Ben-Gurion's wobbly coalition, insisted that the government could not legally send Soblen back to the U.S. Israel has no extradition treaty with the U.S., and even if it did have, political crimes such as espionage are not considered grounds for extradition. In self-defense, Ben-Gurion insisted that his government did not deport Soblen to the U.S., but merely expelled him from Israel. He was free to get off the plane at any stop, the government insisted.

Extended Deadlines. The British tried to evade the extradition flypaper by 1) maintaining that Soblen was not really in Britain, legally speaking, and 2) trying to persuade El Al to fly Soblen to the U.S. But with Ben-Gurion under political attack, the Israelis insisted that if El Al had to fly Soblen out of Britain it would take him to Israel, not to the U.S. Britain rejected the back-to-israel solution: the U.S. was pressing for Soblen's return and Britain did not want to annoy its No. 1 ally by letting Soblen get away. Again and again, the British laid down a deadline for El Al to fly Soblen to New York, only to extend the deadline when El Al refused to comply.

At week's end the British finally gave up on El Al and, despite the earlier insistence that Soblen had never really entered Britain, ordered him deported to the U.S.

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