If you wish to continue our discussions, please have someone run an advertisement in the Washington Times during the week of 1/12/87 or 1/19/87, for sale, “Dodge Diplomat, 1971, needs engine work, $1000.” Give a phone number and time-of-day in the advertisement where I can call.
Although the ad sounds legitimate, when the “minus 6” formula is applied to the dates — subtracting 6 from the month and day — his handler knew that the ad needed to appear the week of July 6, 1986, or July 13, 1986.
Carefully constructing a series of twists and turns to keep his identity a secret, Hanssen successfully avoided discovery. However, part of the credit for his longevity as a mole must be given to the inept actions of the FBI. Like the CIA in the Ames case, the Bureau would not believe that the mole was one of their own. Yet they missed a golden opportunity to catch Hanssen in 1990, after his wife had caught him with the pile of money. Bonnie Hanssen told her brother, Mark Wauck, an FBI special agent in Chicago, about what she had seen. When Wauck heard about the cash his brother-in-law had tried to conceal, the agent went to his supervisor and told him what Hanssen had been up to. He also reported how his brother-in-law was spending far too much money for an FBI agent. He concluded his meeting by saying that he believed Robert Hanssen was spying for the Soviet Union. His superiors did nothing. Wauck was furious.
Why didn’t the FBI initiate an investigation of Wauck’s allegations? There are theories, but no certainty about the reason. Was the Bureau simply protecting one of its own? Did Wauck’s information simply disappear in the bureaucracy of the FBI? Wauck wondered if a friend of Hanssen’s stopped an investigation, but given Hanssen’s relationship with his colleagues, this seemed unlikely. Agent Wauck told his story at a time when global politics were changing. The Berlin Wall had been torn down. The Soviet Union had collapsed, leading to closer ties between the intelligence agencies of the two superpowers. Is it possible that the investigation of Hanssen at that point was buried for fear of creating an embarrassment to East and West?
Regardless of the reason, Hanssen was not investigated in 1990, and his work as a mole continued into 1991. Then he suddenly dropped out of the spy game and didn’t resume his role for eight years, although he continued to work for the FBI. With a new, more open regime in Russia, it became riskier to spy for the KGB since it thrived in a totalitarian state. Hanssen sat on the sidelines with a keen eye trained on the political situation in Russia.
Finally, in 2000 his attitude changed with the political changes in Russia. The reformers were struggling in their attempt to bring Russia into the modern political world. Boris Yeltsin was out as president, and Vladimir Putin, a former KGB spy, assumed the role. With Putin in power, Russia reverted in many ways to the authoritarian ways of the past, meaning more secrets, more centralized control. Hanssen knew it was his time to return to his world of dark secrets.
It’s ironic that the more successful he became as a spy, the greater were his chances of being uncovered. As David Major, one of Hanssen’s only Bureau friends, put it, “He forgot that the better he was, the more at risk he was.” In other words, as Hanssen delivered thousands of pages of classified documents to the KGB, he built a thick case file. And the thicker it became, the more ripples it made with the FBI, giving the Bureau more sources to pinpoint him as the mole. One historian observed that as Hanssen’s case file grew, it became “a valuable bargaining chip for a Russian mole doing business with the CIA.” So, despite how careful Robert Hanssen had been, his “success” ultimately brought him down.
On the afternoon of February 2, 2001, FBI Director Louis Freeh reported to Attorney General John Ashcroft that the Bureau had received a case file from Russia detailing a staggering security breech. The file contained thousands of pages of sensitive intelligence and secret documents, and the paper trail went back sixteen years. With the betrayal of Rick Ames still in their minds, the FBI believed that the mole was a CIA operative, perhaps someone who had worked with Ames or who had taken over when Ames was arrested. However, one bit of evidence in the case file told a different story: fingerprints on a black plastic trash bag, used by the mole to protect documents he left at a dead drop. Careful analysis of the fingerprints indicated that they belonged to Special Agent Robert Hanssen.
There was more corroborating evidence on a tape recording of a brief telephone conversation between the mole and a known KGB operative. A number of Bureau agents listened to the original version of the recording as well as a version that had been electronically “cleaned” of background noise. Two agents who had worked with Hanssen had no doubt that the voice of the mole belonged to “the Mortician.”
With this evidence, the investigation of Robert Hanssen kicked into high gear. Armed with the proper legal paperwork, the FBI bugged Hanssen’s office, home, and car. FBI agents discovered that Hanssen had made extensive use of its Electronic Case File (ECF), a computer database that tracked all ongoing investigation. From the summer of 1997 until the end of 2000, Hanssen had searched the ECF for his name, the name of his street, and the term dead drop nearly eighty times. The bureau that Hanssen had always found intellectually inferior to him had outsmarted him by not entering the details of their investigation of Hanssen into the database.
The evidence against Hanssen mounted. When agents searched the trunk of his car, they discovered a roll of white athletic tape and a box of colored chalk, both used at his signal sites. They also found seven classified documents from Bureau files. In addition, they found a roll of wide, clear shipping tape and a number of black plastic trash bags. The agents photographed the objects rather than taking them, careful not to alert Hanssen to the investigation.
Details that would be considered circumstantial evidence filled in some of the blanks for the investigators:
Two of the dead drops most frequently used by Hanssen were close to two houses that he had lived in. One dead drop, in fact, was only about sixty steps from his home.
Although Hanssen thought he had outwitted the Bureau when he mailed his first letter to the KGB from Maryland instead of from New York City, investigators soon discovered that the letter was postmarked during a time when Hanssen was in Washington on Bureau business.
Hanssen’s PDA made mention of the Ellis dead drop.
And perhaps the most telling bit of circumstantial evidence was the fact that various positions that Hanssen held with the FBI over the years gave him access to the very information that had been passed on to the Soviets.
For his part, Robert Hanssen seemed to sense that he was in the endgame of his work for the KGB. After attending church on Sunday, February 18, Hanssen prepared his final package of intelligence, which included a stack of documents as well as a computer diskette. He also included a note to his handler. “Dear Friends,” the letter began. “I thank you for your assistance these many years. It seems, however, that my greatest utility to you has come to an end, and it is time to seclude myself from active service.” He went on to tell his handler that he’d been promoted to a “higher do-nothing Senior Executive job outside of regular access to information within the counterintelligence program.”
After dropping off a friend at Dulles International Airport, Hanssen drove to Foxstone Park, where he carefully placed a piece of white tape on a pole on the park’s entrance sign. This was the signal to his handlers that he would be leaving a package at the Ellis dead drop. After carefully hiding his bundle, he turned to walk back down the path to his car. He didn’t make it. He was surrounded by fellow FBI agents, all with weapons drawn and pointed at him.
Hanssen was neither surprised nor impressed that the agents had finally discovered his secret. In fact, his words were filled with arrogant disdain. “What took you so long?” he asked as he was handcuffed and led to an FBI car. In the months to come, that question would linger in the mind of many people in the intelligence community.
Robert Hanssen’s spy case ended the same way Rick Ames’s case did, with a guilty plea and the realization that he would spend the
rest of his life in a federal prison. He was saved from the death penalty when he agreed to answer truthfully any questions put to him in the FBI debriefing sessions. He further agreed to take a lie detector test, ironically, something he had not been required to do in his twenty-five years with the Bureau. Finally, Hanssen accepted a condition that denied him access to a computer for as long as he lived.
Despite his dire situation, Hanssen continued to defy the Bureau, and it nearly led to the revocation of his plea agreement. He failed one lie detector test, and debriefing team agents reported that Hanssen’s “cooperation concerning his finances, the significance of his espionage, and his motives were problematic.” Despite these reservations, the judge who reviewed the record saw no reason to revoke Hanssen’s plea bargain.
The list of documents, operations, and double agents that Robert Hanssen handed over to the Soviets is staggering: over 6,000 pages of documents and nearly thirty computer diskettes. William Webster, former FBI director, said Hanssen’s treason was like a “five-hundred-year flood.” Because of Hanssen, the FBI changed the way it monitors its agents, much like the way the CIA made changes to prevent a repeat of the Ames debacle. Nonetheless, perhaps we should bear in mind the words of Robert Hanssen’s attorney, who said that his client was “as artful a spy as we’ve ever seen. Except for the one who’s out there now and hasn’t been caught.”
EVEN BEFORE THE U-2 SPY PLANE piloted by Francis Gary Powers was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, the United States was hard at work developing the next generation of spies in the sky, the reconnaissance satellites. In 1959, two years after the Russians launched Sputnik, the U.S. launched the Corona satellite, the first man-made object to be put into orbit. The Corona satellite was the first of the U.S. satellites designed to take photographs from space. It is estimated that between 1959 and 1972, the Corona was launched more than one hundred times. U.S. intelligence services constantly made changes to the Corona, modernizing the launch vehicle as well as the camera.
The Corona was the first in the KH, or “keyhole” line of satellites. It was equipped with a single camera that took panoramic black-and-white photographs. The resolution of such early satellite cameras was about six feet, meaning that the camera could photograph structures and landscape features of that size or larger.
One of the most important parts of the spy satellite is the camera. As with other spy technology, the orbiting camera system has been constantly improved. One major improvement in the first few years of Corona development was the addition of a second camera. The two cameras photographed 30 degrees apart, one camera pointing forward, one pointing backward. The satellites gathered evidence on how fast the USSR was producing long-range bombers and ballistic missiles.
Even though the technology was constantly changing, the method of recovering the film was primitive. Used film canisters returned to earth in a capsule, or “bucket,” for analysis. The bucket fell to earth attached to a parachute and was then plucked from the air by specially equipped airplanes. The bucket was also designed to float so it could be retrieved from the ocean by boat if the recovery plane missed the parachute. Now, of course, photographic intelligence is electronically relayed to earth.
Since the days of the early keyhole satellites, satellite and optic technology have improved dramatically and their uses now go beyond the military. They deliver television signals, weather reports, and telephone calls. Every Global Positioning System (GPS) device relies on signals sent from satellites. Search and rescue teams use satellites to receive emergency signals from ships in distress.
In addition, satellites provide invaluable information to the military. Satellites orbiting the earth relay encoded messages, eavesdrop on radio signals, notify our military of enemy troop movements, and monitor nuclear testing. Cameras in modern satellites have a much sharper resolution than the Corona-era cameras. Intelligence experts agree that the current breed of satellites is capable of taking pictures with a clarity that was unimagined when the Corona was launched.
Beyond such traditional military uses, satellites have been used more extensively since the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Although shrouded in secrecy, details of the Echelon satellite system have emerged and are controversial. The Echelon satellites are developed and launched by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), an agency that was not officially acknowledged until the 1990s. The NRO operates all the spy satellites used by various U.S. intelligence agencies for taking pictures and eavesdropping on communication transmissions, including e-mails. Although U.S. intelligence officials maintain that none of the satellites is used for commercial espionage, many countries are skeptical about such reassurances. In addition to the Echelon satellites, the National Security Agency has its own group of eavesdropping satellites, code-named Groundbreaker. Satellites of these agencies orbit several thousand miles above the earth, deploying antennas the size of football fields. These antennas can listen in on ground-line conversations all over the world.
As amazing as these intelligence gathering advances may sound, it is clear that the technology and capabilities of spy satellites will continue to develop into the twenty-first century.
Chapter 1: Outspying the British
“Washington did not . . . outspied us!”: Allen, p. 149.
“Health and Spirits of the Army, Navy, and City”: Allen, p. 51.
“I live in daily fear . . . unmanned me”: Rose, p. 258.
“faithful friend . . . in all respects”: Ford, p. 165.
“Every 356 . . . outwit them all”: Ford, pp. 198–199.
“Did her social position . . . his aide?”: Ford, p. 207.
“355 remains . . . without a name”: Ford, p. 321.
“In a Word, Sir, we must have it”: Robert Morris, The Papers of Robert Morris, vol. 6, 1781–1874 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1984), p. 450.
“a crippled man”: Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), p. 340.
“blood money,” and “sold”: P. K. Rose, “The Founding Fathers of American Intelligence” (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Intelligence, 2009). https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/the-founding-fathers-of-american-intelligence/art-1.htm.
“undertake the part in question” and “small sum of ready money”: Randall, pp. 502 and 503.
“a drawing of the works . . . engineer” and “might take . . . loss”: Randall, p. 507.
“key to America” and “proceed to West Point . . . dependencies”: Randall, pp. 513 and 517.
“mysteriously”: Randall, p. 532.
“[Major André] was so fully convinced . . . to your Excellency”: Randall, p. 546.
“Gentlemen, I hope . . . party?”: Randall, p. 553.
Washington’s instructions for writing with invisible ink: Allen, pp. 69–70.
Chapter 2: Spies in Blue and Gray
“Slave power . . . despotic”: Varon, pp. 48–49.
“profoundly betrayed”: Varon, p. 35.
“alone went . . . in blue”: Varon, p. 85.
“correspondent in Richmond”: Varon, p. 111.
“write me of course . . . at the North”: Varon, pp. 111–112.
“narrow and loathsome,” “nearly to death,” and “Great Yankee Wonder”: Varon, p. 125.
“She risked everything . . . Union preserved”: Varon, p. 252.
“irresistible”: Blackman, p. 7.
“We rely upon you . . . a debt”: Blackman, p. 45.
“agent of Rose’s undoing”: Blackman, p. 49.
“vocabulary of colour”: Blackman, p. 94.
“as being equal to those of their best engineers” and “as well they might”: Blackman, p. 92.
“made my heart leap with joy”: Blackman, p. 236.
“Black Dispatches” and “If I want to find out . . . all I want”: Markle, p. 62.
Chapter 3: Esp
ionage Comes of Age in World War I
“Certainly . . . not his business”: Richelson, p. 5.
“How Germany Has Worked . . . Agent’s Letters”: New York World, August 15, 1915.
“merely a storm in a tea-cup”: Jonathan Heinrich Bernstroff, My Three Years in America (New York: Scribner’s, 1920), p. 197.
“huge and expensive” and “made to backfire, dealing a devastating blow”: O’Toole, p. 225.
“Our contracts . . . came to an end”: Franz von Papen, Memoirs (New York: Dutton, 1953), p. 44.
“hiring destructive . . . organizations,” “destruction agents,” “mobilize immediately,” and “where munitions are being loaded . . . and Russia”: Witcover, p. 65.
“I’ll buy up what I can and blow up what I can’t”: Witcover, p. 84.
“11 [railroad cars] . . . explosives” and “ten barges . . . explosives,” and “The fire had started . . . for us to do anything”: James M. Powles, “Terror Strikes Black Tom Island,” American History, October 2004, p. 30.
5.0 on the Richter scale: Liberty State Park. http://www.state.nj.us/dep/parksandforests/
parks/liberty_state_park/
liberty_blacktomexplosion.html.
registered a 2.3: Lamont-Doherty Seismographic Network. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/
LCSN/Eq/20010911_WTCC/WTC_LDEO_KIM.pdf.
“mentally deficient Hungarian immigrant”: Witcover, p. 166.
“intricate, affectionate . . . in elegant style”: Denise Noe, “Mata Hari,” TruTV.com. http://www.truetv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/spies/hari/1.html.
“You have made me suffer . . . and end to this”: Toni Bentley, Sisters of Salome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 116–117; Julie Wheelwright, The Fatal Lover: Mata Hari and the Myth of Women in Espionage (London: Collins & Brown, 1992), p. 74.
The Dark Game Page 14