THE Marx Brothers collided with John Le Carré in Vitoria the
other day. Or, to put it soberly, some Spanish secret agents
were caught bugging Basque separatists in the region's capital
in March. They bolted, leaving behind documents that blow the
cover of their entire spy ring, shattering the government's
counter-terrorist operations and showing up its promise to
reform the secret service.  The agents belonged to CESID, the
successor to General Franco's military intelligence service.
They had set up a listening post in a flat above the offices of
Herri Batasuna, the political wing of the terrorist group ETA,
and fled when a telephone engineer working below laid bare the
connecting wires. Herri Batasuna, a legal party (though many of
its former leaders are in jail), went to the police. CESID, it
turned out, had been bugging illegally.  A public-relations
coup, then, for Herri Batasuna and, indirectly, for the
terrorists. The Basque Nationalist Party, which runs the
regional government and supports Spain's mino