Espionage: The Brothers

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The two men sat just 25 ft. apart in the federal district courtroom in Manhattan. Each was balding, with a long, lined face and piercing, deep-set brown eyes. They looked like twins and were in fact brothers —and one, a confessed Soviet spy, was accusing the other of spying too. Cried the accuser, Jack Soble, 58, from the witness chair: "For me it is a personal tragedy to sit here with a brother—with me it is not a case of publicity. I want to make it clear that for 4½ years I have been begging him to tell." The accused, Robert Soblen, 60,* scowled, then slumped down in his place at the defense table.

Thus last week did the case of the Soble brothers near its climax. Members of a well-to-do Lithuanian family, they had, according to Jack, been recruited for espionage work around 1940 by Soviet Secret Police Boss Lavrenty Beria. He had promised them and 13 relatives safe passage to the U.S. in return for their services. Jack and his wife Myra were arrested in 1957; he admitted his guilt, and in return for turning state's evidence was sentenced to only seven years. Robert, a psychiatrist, was arrested last November and has since kept his silence.

Last week, as the star witness against his brother, Jack Soble said that for 20 years Robert had been getting secret information from such sensitive Government agencies as the wartime Office of Strategic Services, and passing it along to Soviet agents. According to Jack, Robert was paid only $100 to $150 a month, once had a street fight with his Soviet superior, one Stephan Choundenko, about the low wages. As he testified, Jack Soble was constantly interrupted by defense objections. "I can hear you," he cried to his brother's attorney. "I'm not deaf." He said he had "spent hundreds of sleepless nights when I examined myself and my brother's life, and why did we go this way in America?" And he answered his own question: "I was always in a state of fear of the Russians, as was my brother, even in America. This is a great country, but if [the Russians] want to kill you, they will—anywhere in the world."

As Jack Soble spoke, the haggard defendant, charged with conspiring to gather and transmit U.S. defense secrets—a crime punishable by death—looked away and reached for a pill. He is, his doctor says, dying of leukemia.