Espionage

There's a great, taut, jet-black satire hidden at the center of The Good Shepherd, Robert De Niro's anemic epic about the founding of the Office of Strategic Services before the Second World War and the OSS' postwar transformation into the Central Intelligence Agency. The government and military gamble that men with old school backgrounds will have a deeper emotional investment in their country and fewer conflicts about protecting it than more recent immigrants. They want the reliability of a rock-ribbed bank.

Paul Salopek, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, was charged with espionage and two other criminal counts in a Sudanese court yesterday, three weeks after he was detained by pro-government forces in the province of Darfur. Salopek, 44, who was on a freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine, was arrested with two Chadian citizens, his interpreter and driver. If convicted, they could be imprisoned for years. Chicago Tribune editor Ann Marie Lipinski called Salopek "one of the most accomplished and admired journalists of our time.

SEATTLE -- Remind me: Who is Wen Ho Lee? Oh yeah, he's "an atomic scientist once suspected of espionage." That was The New York Times' summary in its story last week about the settlement of Mr. Lee's privacy lawsuit against the government. This settlement comes seven years after Mr. Lee - an American citizen - was arrested, held in solitary confinement for nine months and subjected to an organized campaign of leaks using private information from his personnel file and painting him as a spy for China and a traitor to his country on a par with Benedict Arnold.

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that the United States would seek clarification from Russia about an American military report that it had helped pass information to Iraq before the 2003 invasion, but she declined to make any specific allegations. "I don't have any reason to doubt or confirm the report at this point," Rice said on Fox News Sunday. "I do think we have to look at the documents and look very carefully." She added that the administration would "take very seriously any suggestion that a foreign government may have passed information to the Iraqis" before the invasion and that "we will raise it with the Russian government."

MOSCOW -- In an incident reminiscent of a Cold War-era James Bond movie, Russian officials accused four British diplomats of spying, saying yesterday that the alleged agents used short-range communications equipment hidden in fake rocks to exchange information with Russian sources. The Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, alleged that one of the diplomats, Second Secretary Marc Doe of the British Embassy's political section, also channeled money from his government to Russian human rights groups.

Robert R. Granville, 89, an FBI agent in New York who headed the team that arrested Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in a sensational Cold War espionage case, died April 12 in Tampa, Fla., two weeks after suffering a stroke. Mr. Granville began working for the FBI in 1940 and was promoted to field supervisor of Soviet espionage in the New York office six years later. On July 17, 1950, he and fellow agents arrested Julius Rosenberg in his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Mr. Rosenberg was charged with giving atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise By Ruth Reichl. Penguin Press. 328 pages. $24.95. It was 1993. Many of us who didn't live in New York still remember Ruth Reichl's first review for the New York Times. Her critique of Le Cirque, an important restaurant that had gotten four stars from her predecessor, was unexpected and clever; and you knew in your bones it was dead on. First the new critic described how she was ignored and mistreated when she was in disguise eating with another woman, then how she was fawned over after several visits when management finally recognized her. "The King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but your table is ready," the owner gushed as he showed her and her companion to a comfortable table for four.

WASHINGTON - A Pentagon analyst being investigated for allegedly passing secrets to Israel has stopped cooperating with authorities and retained a new lawyer to fight possible espionage charges, sources familiar with the case said yesterday. The analyst, Larry Franklin, has been a key witness in a continuing FBI investigation looking into whether classified intelligence was passed to Israel by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, an influential Washington lobbying group. Franklin has been accused of passing the contents of a classified document about U.S. policy on Iran to two AIPAC officials, who in turn might have given the information to Israeli officials in Washington, sources have said.

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. - The court-martial of an airman accused of attempted espionage was delayed yesterday by what a defense attorney said was interference from the Justice Department and by a last-minute memorandum from a top defense official. The Air Force said the delay was caused by efforts to coordinate between agencies. "There's been no improper manipulation" by the Justice Department, and the Air Force still has final authority in deciding charges in a military court-martial, said Air Force Col. John Kellogg, deputy staff judge advocate for Travis.

THE DENIALS are loud and resounding. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee called allegations that the American Jewish lobby received secret information about U.S. policy on Iran from a Pentagon analyst, and passed it onto Israel, "baseless and false." The government of Israel was just as emphatic about the charge: "false and outrageous." The reported FBI investigation touched a nerve. It raised the specter of divided loyalties, Israel spying on its chief ally and benefactor, mudslinging at a pro-Israel president on the eve of his renomination.