Robert Soblen

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Dr. Robert Soblen (November 7, 1900 – September 11, 1962) was a psychiatrist and Soviet spy.

In 1940, the Lithuanian Jews - born Robert Soblen and his brother Jack - were sent to America by Soviet Secret Police Chief Lavrenty Beria. Their families emigrated with them.

During World War II, Dr. Soblen provided the Soviets with secret documents from the Office of Strategic Services and information from the Sandia nuclear-weapons development center at Albuquerque.

Soblen also was engaged in espionage activities with Hollywood producer and U.S. counterspy Boris Morros. After the war he worked at New York's Rockland State Hospital as a psychiatrist. In December 1960 the FBI arrested him on a charge of wartime espionage, which could carry a death sentence.

In August 1961 he was sentenced to life imprisonment but released on bail pending an appeal. In June 1962 he fled to Israel, but was expelled; he stabbed himself on the plane that was to take him back to the U.S. and was taken off at London. Britain rejected an appeal for political asylum, and when he was about to be deported again, he took a fatal overdose of barbiturates.

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