Catch Me If You Can: The Story of Robert Hanssen Essay Example

job in the FBI's budget office gave him access to information involving many different FBI activities. This included all the FBI activities related to wiretapping and electronic surveillance.

He became known in the Bureau as an expert on computers. In 1983, Hanssen transferred to the Soviet analytical unit, which was directly responsible for studying, identifying, and capturing Soviet spies and intelligence operatives in the United States. Hanssen's section was in charge of evaluating Soviet agents who volunteered to give intelligence to the US, to determine if they were genuine or double agents. In 1985, Hanssen was again transferred to the FBI's office in New York, where he continued to work in counter-intelligence against the Soviets. While on a business trip back to Washington, he resumed his career in espionage.

This time, he became an operative for the KGB (Wise, 2003). On October 1, 1985, he sent an anonymous letter to the KGB offering his services and asking for $100,000 in cash. In the letter, Hanssen gave the names of three KGB agents in the United States secretly working for the FBI: Boris Yuzhin, Valery Martynov, and Sergei Motorin. Since the FBI attributed the leak to Ames, the trail to Hanssen was diverted. The October 1st letter was the beginning of an active espionage period for Hanssen. He remained busy with KGB correspondence over the next several years (Wise, 2003). In 1987, Hanssen was recalled yet again to Washington.

He was given the task of making a study of all known and rumored penetrations of the FBI in order to find the man who had betrayed Martynov and Motorin. This meant that he

was looking for himself. For obvious reasons, Hanssen ensured that he did not unmask himself with his study (Wise, 2003). In 1989, Hanssen handed over a large amount of information about American planning for Measurement and Signature Intelligence, a term for intelligence collected by a wide array of electronic means, such as radar, underwater hydrophones for naval intelligence, spy satellites, and signal intercepts.

When the Soviets began construction on a new embassy in 1977, the FBI dug a tunnel beneath the Soviet embassy, right under their decoding room. The FBI planned to use it for eavesdropping, but never did for fear of being caught. Hanssen disclosed this detailed information to the Soviets in September 1989 and received a $55,000 payment the next month. On two occasions, Hanssen gave the Soviets a complete list of American double agents (A not-so-secret tunnel, 2009). In 1989, Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation of Felix Bloch.

Bloch was a State Department official who had served all over the world for more than 30 years when he came under suspicion in 1989. Bloch was seen by French intelligence agents meeting a known KGB operative and giving them a black bag. Bloch was a stamp collector and tried claiming that the bag contained stamp albums. In May 1989, eight days after the meeting of Bloch with the KGB operative, Hanssen warned the KGB that Bloch was under investigation. In June, the operative called Bloch and said that he could not see Bloch anymore, specifically saying, "A contagious disease is suspected".

Felix Bloch maintained his innocence through an aggressive investigation that continued for months afterward. The FBI was unable to

produce any hard evidence, and as a result, Bloch was never charged with a crime. The failure of the Bloch investigation, and the FBI's suspicion of how the KGB found out about the Bloch investigation, drove the mole hunt that eventually led to the arrest of Robert Hanssen (Wise, 2003). When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Hanssen worried that he could be exposed during the ensuing political upheaval, broke off communications with his handlers that same month and was out of contact for a time.

He resumed his spying activities at in 1992, this time for the Russian Federation. Hanssen, who in the past had always taken care to keep his face and his name hidden from the Russians, went in person to the Russian embassy and physically approached a GRU officer in the embassy's parking garage. Hanssen, carrying a package of documents, identified himself by his Soviet codename, "Ramon Garcia. ” The Russian officer, who evidently did not recognize Hanssen's codename, got into his car and drove off. The Russians then filed an official protest with the State Department, believing Hanssen to be a double agent.

Despite showing his face, giving away his code name, and revealing his FBI affiliation, Hanssen escaped arrest when the investigation didn't go anywhere (Wise, 2003). In 1994, Hanssen expressed interest in a transfer to the new National Counterintelligence Center. Three years later, convicted FBI mole Earl Edwin Pitts told the Bureau that he suspected Hanssen due to the Mislock incident. Pitts was the second FBI agent to mention Hanssen by name as a possible mole, but the FBI simply wrote this off as a reference

to the Mislock incident.

In 1997, Hanssen would go onto the FBI's internal computer case record and search to see if he was under investigation. He was indiscreet enough to type his own name into FBI search engines. Finding nothing, he decided to resume his spy career after eight years without contact with the Russians. He then established contact with the SVR in the fall of 1999. He continued to do highly incriminating searches of FBI files for his own name and address. In November 2000, he sent his last letter to the Russians (Wise, 2003).

The existence of two moles working simultaneously, Aldrich Ames at CIA and Hanssen at FBI complicated counterintelligence efforts in the 1990s. Ames was arrested in 1994, and his capture explained many of the asset losses American intelligence suffered in the 1980s, including the arrest and execution of Martynov and Motorin. However, two cases stuck out and remained unsolved. For one, the Felix Bloch case remained a mystery. Ames had been stationed in Rome at the time of the Bloch investigation and the mysterious telephone warning.

Authorities were satisfied that Ames had no knowledge of the case, as he did not work for the FBI and is not thought to have had access to the case files. In addition, the exposure of the tunnel under the Russian embassy in Washington was a second intelligence failure that could not be blamed on Ames (Wise, 2003). In 1994, the FBI and CIA formed a joint mole-hunting team to find the suspected second intelligence leak. They formed a list of all agents known to have access to cases that were

compromised. The codename of the FBI for the suspected spy was Graysuit.

Some promising suspects were cleared, and the mole hunt found other penetrations such as CIA officer Harold James Nicholson, but Hanssen escaped being noticed (Wise, 2003). By 1998, the FBI had zeroed in on the wrong man: Brian Kelley, a CIA operative. A full year after interrogating Brian Kelley, and having failed to either bring a case against him or find another suspect, the FBI decided on a new tactic: buying the mole's identity. They searched for possible candidates to buy off and found one: a Russian businessman and former KGB agent whose identity remains classified to this day.

An American company cooperated by inviting him to the United States for a business meeting. He came to New York and the FBI offered him a large sum of money if he would give the name of the mole. The Russian responded that he did not know the name, but that he could get the actual KGB/SVR file, which he had secretly taken out of headquarters. The file covered the mole's correspondence with the KGB from 1985 to 1991 and even included an audiotape of the voice of "Ramon Garcia". The FBI agreed to pay $7 million for the file and set up the KGB officer and his family with new identities in the United States.

In November of 2000 the FBI finally obtained the file, consisting of a package the size of "a medium-sized suitcase" (Wise, 2003). When the FBI listened to the tape, they were expecting to hear the voice of Brian Kelley. But, the voice on the recording

was not Kelley. FBI agent Michael Waguespack, listened to the tape, and recognized the voice but could not remember who it was. Searching through the rest of the file, they found notes of the mole using a quote from General George S. Patton about "the purple-pissing Japanese".

FBI analyst Bob King remembered Robert Hanssen using that same quote. Waguespack listened to the tape again and recognized it as the voice of Robert Hanssen. The FBI finally had its man. Once the name was known, everything else fell into place from locations to cases and to dates. All these factors were a perfect match with Hanssen's activities during the time period. Also in the file was one of Hanssen's original packages for the KGB, complete with trash bag and with two fingerprints on it, and they were tested and came out to be Hanssen's.

The FBI then placed Hanssen under round-the-clock surveillance and soon discovered that he was again in contact with the Russians. In order to bring him back to FBI headquarters they promoted him in December and gave him a new job supervising FBI computer security. In January, Hanssen got an office and an assistant, Eric O'Neill, who was actually a young FBI employee assigned to watch Hanssen. O'Neill was determined that Hanssen was using a PDA to store his information. When O'Neill was able to obtain Hanssen's PDA.

He gave to agents to download and decode its encrypted contents; the FBI had its "smoking gun" ("Spycatcher: bringing down," 2002). Hanssen realized in his final days with the FBI that something was wrong. Hanssen believed he was hearing noises on his

car radio that indicated his car was bugged. In the last letter he ever wrote to the Russians, Hanssen said that he had been promoted to a "do-nothing job... outside of regular access to information", and that "Something has aroused the sleeping tiger” ("Spycatcher: bringing down," 2002).

Even though he had his suspicions, which did not stop him from making another drop. After dropping a friend at the airport on February 18, 2001, Hanssen drove to Virginia's Foxstone Park. He placed a white piece of tape on a park sign, which was a signal to his Russian contacts that there was information at the dead drop. He then followed his usual routine, taking a package that consisted of a sealed garbage bag full of classified material and taping it to the bottom side of a wooden footbridge over a creek. The FBI then went in and arrested Hanssen on the spot.

Upon the arrest, Hanssen realized his espionage days against the FBI were over, and said, "What took you so long? " The FBI waited two days for any of Hanssen's SVR handlers to show up at the Foxstone Park site. When they failed to do so, the Justice Department announced the arrest on February 20. On July 6, 2001, he pleaded guilty to fifteen counts of espionage. Hanssen was then sentenced to life in prison without parole. He is serving his sentence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Maximum facility in Florence, Colorado.