My Lunch with Felix

By BRUCE VAN VOORST

For Felix Bloch it was "just another day," but a meal with him last week at Washington's posh Jockey Club took place under the watchful gaze of FBI agents two tables away, while a posse of reporters and TV cameramen waited outside. Two months have passed since the State Department accused Bloch of contacts with a Soviet agent, setting off a circus of public surveillance but no formal charges. Yet as Bloch sipped a vodka tonic and spoke angrily of the "F Bureau of Incompetents," he seemed little changed from the career foreign-service officer I have known for more than 28 years. "I guess the bottom line is they don't have a case yet," he said.

Bloch, 54, appears much more dynamic than the stiff-necked, melancholy personality portrayed on television. Always a meticulous dresser, he suggested that we meet "someplace where you need a coat and tie" in order to keep the casually attired press mob outside.

"Do you really think I'm dour?" he began, referring to a description of him in a recent issue of TIME. It seemed an odd concern for a man at the center of the most serious State Department espionage scandal since the Alger Hiss affair. But perhaps Bloch's preoccupation with the media is understandable: he carried with him a color photo of a woman knocked to the ground in a supermarket by a burly TV cameraman who had been tracking Bloch's grocery cart. "That's the way it is nowadays," he said, sighing.

Some suggest that Bloch enjoys his notoriety. Yet he has rejected a barrage of telephone calls and messages from Diane Sawyer asking him to appear on Prime Time Live and from Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes. Bloch plays along with the reporters who dog his every step. "Longevity runs in the family," he cautions. "This could go on for another 35 years."

With the skill of a veteran diplomat, he dodges questions about espionage. "There have been no charges," he said at lunch. What of the Government's statement that he had been involved in a "compromise of security"? "What's a 'compromise'?" he asked coyly. Anyway, he added, "there's no evidence of a compromise."

Does that mean he is innocent? Bloch paused an agonizing 30 seconds. "I can't comment on particulars, for then I must comment on the whole." He has heard that a federal grand jury is investigating. "What more can they learn?" Bloch asked. "They have all my papers and have talked to all my friends and colleagues."

Bloch's attitude toward the investigation is ambivalent. At his first FBI interrogation, on June 22, he not only surrendered his diplomatic passport, as he was required to do, but volunteered to give up his regular passport as well. He says he agreed to permit the FBI to search his car and apartment without a warrant and even reminded the agents to check the cellar storage space. But when Bloch and his wife Lou returned from a trip to New York City, they found a valuable chandelier cracked, the windows open and the air conditioning running. They submitted a bill to the FBI. To Bloch's great irritation, the FBI also confiscated his private papers and only belatedly returned a checkbook, with just three blank checks, so he could pay some bills.

Angered by intense surveillance in New York City, Bloch took to marching up one-way streets, causing traffic tie-ups as the pursuing FBI autos bucked oncoming cars. At intersections the FBI held traffic, but Bloch chose to let ! cars back up while he waited for a green light.

In Washington, to ease the FBI's burden, Bloch generally tells agents where he is headed. Even so, as one agent allowed, there have been some fender benders caused by the troupe. In front and back of Bloch's Washington apartment, FBI agents sit in autos, the motors running, smiling wanly at passersby.

Still, Bloch does not play the deeply wronged innocent. A self-described fatalist, he is stoic. "Life is unfair, that's it," he said. "I don't expect anything else." Can he endure the pressure? "I know people think of suicide," Bloch said, "but my roots are in Vienna, where everybody thinks of suicide all the time." Thinking and doing, he seemed to be saying, are two different things.

Acquaintances have searched in vain for an indication of what might have motivated Bloch's espionage, if indeed the Government's suspicions are justified. Money is an unlikely answer. He still earns $80,000 a year from the State Department, and his wife has additional income. Except for their $328,000 apartment, Bloch has modest tastes. He seems satisfied with his books, the theater, his stamp collection and a glass of good wine. Bloch resented serving under politically appointed ambassadors in Vienna, but his real complaint is with the State Department's failure to consider him for appointment as Ambassador to East Germany, and his later lack of success in becoming Deputy Ambassador to the Hague or Consul General in Munich, even though he had the backing of his immediate bosses.

Is he guilty? Bloch's Talmudic refusal to deny everything leaves the question open. After lunch we stopped in the men's room, where an FBI agent rushed in, standing, staring and listening as we washed our hands. Bloch agreed to meet again, "providing I don't defect to East Berlin before then.

"Just kidding," he added, smiling at the agent. Outside, Bloch headed toward Dupont Circle, trailing agents and media like the Pied Piper. "The guy's got guts," mused one agent as he rejoined the procession.