The Desperate Spy

It was hard not to admire Communist Spy Robert Soblen: for almost three months, by hook, crook and desperate deed, he had mocked the laws and made monkeys out of the lawmen of three anti-Communist nations. Last week he spectacularly did it again.

Through a morning drizzle, an ambulance was carrying Soblen--who is supposed to be mortally ill of leukemia--from Brixton Prison to London Airport. There he was to be put aboard a Pan American jet to New York; once in the U.S., he would at last begin serving the life sentence he got for turning national secrets over to the Soviets. But the ambulance never got to the plane: Soblen had swallowed a great wallop of barbiturates and collapsed on the way. Unconscious, he was rushed to Hillingdon Hospital--and his enforced return to the U.S. was off again. The delay was only the latest of Soblen's ingenious, utterly determined efforts to thwart U.S. justice.

Massive Tangle. The first took place last June, just three days before he was to enter prison. Soblen made his way to Idlewild Airport, boarded a plane and, using a dead brother's Canadian passport, flew to Israel. He was arrested in Tel Aviv for entering the country illegally, expelled from Israel without a court hearing, and bundled aboard an El Al jet to New York via London. Just before the jet touched down at London Airport. Soblen stabbed himself in the wrist and stomach; on landing, he was hurried off to nearby Hillingdon Hospital for emergency treatment.

There ensued a massive international legal tangle. In Israel, Soblen's lawyers challenged the legality of his expulsion, later applied in his behalf for a visa under the "law of return," which gives every Jew the right to enter Israel as an immigrant; both moves failed. In Britain, Soblen put in for a writ of habeas corpus and requested political asylum; after a jumble of unsuccessful appeals, and after the Israeli government-controlled El Al airline refused to fly him to the U.S.. the Home Office ordered him deported. Soblen appealed that order through the courts, got nowhere. Finally he sent a 20-page personal plea to Home Secretary Henry Brooke. After "careful consideration," Brooke stuck to his guns and refused to cancel the order. But each legal defeat brought a new wave of British sympathy for Soblen, described last week by the Daily Mirror's Cassandra as "this wretched man." Cheered the Daily Mail: "The Soblen story is that of one sick man against the world--and so far he has beaten the world. Mr. Brooke has been running about to please the American government, with the result that he finds Soblen still on his back."

Next Boat? Last weekend, after gulping down his supply of barbiturates, Soblen was pronounced in grave condition by British physicians. The British Home Office was in a furor trying to figure out just how Soblen had managed to accumulate his massive dose--and to consume it while presumably under heavy guard. In any event, when and if Soblen does get back to the U.S., authorities had better be sure he does not just walk off one day and board the next slow boat to Red China.

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