Bloch, in New Interview, Deflects Spying Questions

American diplomat Felix S. Bloch, in his first interview since becoming the subject of a major U.S. espionage investigation, told an Austrian magazine that the case against him amounts only to “suspicions,” the publication reported Saturday.

Bloch, according to the report in the authoritative Profil magazine, deflected questions on whether he is guilty of passing sensitive information to the Soviets.

Urged by the interviewer to declare that he was “not a spy,” Bloch instead said only: “There are suspicions, but there is no proof. They have to prove my guilt.”

Asked when he might have more to say about the matter, Bloch said: “I have to wait to see how things develop.”

Bloch, who served for four years as the No. 2 official in the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, had refused all public comment since the State Department confirmed last month that he is suspected of spying for the Soviets since the mid-1970s. He talked briefly with U.S. investigators when they first confronted him with the allegations but since then has refused to cooperate with the probe, U.S. officials have said.

In the magazine interview, Bloch acknowledged that he had “heard the name” Reino Gikman, the alias U.S. investigators say was used by the Soviet agent who may have served as Bloch’s contact with the KGB.

But he would not say whether he had ever met him, saying that “nobody has told me who Gikman is, so I can’t say if I have seen him or not.”

According to U.S. investigators, French intelligence agents observed Bloch pass a travel bag to Gikman at a rendezvous at a Paris restaurant in May. The contents of the bag are unknown. Later, in a telephone call monitored through electronic eavesdropping, Gikman allegedly warned Bloch that they had come under suspicion.

In its new report on the Bloch case, Profil said that three years ago, Austrian counterespionage officers shadowed Gikman, a suspected Soviet agent then traveling on a forged Finnish passport, when he was seen meeting with a man.

Gikman’s companion was not identified at the time, the article said, but high-level Austrian officials now believe it was Bloch.