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...
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