The Secrets of the FBI

by Ronald Kessler

  Noting that Shull was one of the FBI’s best polygraphers, Rochford says, “So what are we supposed to think? Had he not said that, it would have been much easier to walk away. But I couldn’t.” At the same time, Rochford admits, “There were different folks within the bureau who thought we should be moving on to other suspects, and they were probably right. We just didn’t.”

  On to him at last, the FBI on January 13, 2001, reassigned Hanssen to headquarters and manufactured a position so he could be watched. A little after 8:00 p.m. on February 18, 2001, ten FBI agents shivered in the cold as they observed Hanssen walk to a dead drop, a spot under a bridge in Foxstone Park in Vienna, Virginia.

  As the fifty-six-year-old Hanssen emerged from under the bridge, the agents, weapons drawn, surrounded their fellow agent and placed handcuffs on him. Another team of agents found $50,000 in hundred-dollar bills left for Hanssen at a second drop site.

  Charged with spying for the Russians, Hanssen pled guilty to selling to the Soviet Union and later to Russia six thousand pages of documents and twenty-seven computer diskettes cataloguing secret and top-secret programs over twenty-one years. He left more than two dozen packages in dead drops for his handlers in parks in New York City and Washington, D.C.

  Hanssen had begun spying for the GRU, Soviet military intelligence, in 1979. He compromised Dmitri F. Polyakov, a Soviet general in the GRU who was code-named Top Hat. A double agent for the FBI since 1961, Polyakov considered himself a Russian patriot, dedicated to the cause of overthrowing the Communist regime. He would accept no more than $3,000 a year, provided mostly in the form of Black and Decker power tools, fishing gear, and shotguns.

  In 1985, Hanssen chose to deal with the KGB, which was more prestigious and powerful than the GRU. As a sign of his bona fides, when he was in New York, Hanssen disclosed to his handlers the names of three KGB officers the United States had recruited—Valeriy Martynov, Sergey Motorin, and Boris Yuzhin. Shortly after that, they were recalled to Moscow. Yuzhin was jailed for fifteen years, and the other two were executed. Ames also had fingered them.

  Besides compromising nine agents working for the United States, Hanssen gave the Russians documents that included the Continuity of Government Plan, the program to ensure the survival of the U.S. government in the event of a nuclear attack; the National Intelligence Program, which revealed everything the U.S. intelligence community planned for the coming year; and the FBI’s Double Agent Program, which evaluated double agent operations worldwide.

  Hanssen told the Russians how NSA intercepted the satellite communications of the Soviet Union and other countries, let them see the results of debriefings of KGB defector Vitaly Yurchenko, and provided them with a range of documents from the CIA and National Security Council.

  Perhaps most intriguing, Hanssen let the Soviets know that the United States had built a secret tunnel under the Soviets’ new diplomatic compound at Mount Alto along Wisconsin Avenue in Washington. The Americans had used new technology the NSA developed for drilling silently. NSA also began developing highly advanced bugging devices that the FBI hoped a double agent might be able to place inside the embassy. The cost of the tunnel, which ran from a townhouse owned by the FBI, was nearly $1 billion, including development of the new technology.

  While Ames’ spying had led directly to more deaths, Hanssen gave up the crown jewels of the intelligence community.

  Compared with Ames, “Hanssen was even more important to us [the KGB] because his disclosures went to the heart of Washington’s intelligence infrastructure,” Victor Cherkashin, a former KGB colonel, wrote in his book Spy Handler.

  In November 1990, Felix Bloch, who was being investigated by the FBI over his meetings with a KGB officer, lost his job with the State Department, but no charges were ever brought against him. Before FBI agents interviewed Bloch, John Martin of the Justice Department went over with the agents how to establish the elements of the crime of espionage and when a Miranda warning should or should not be given. Bloch was neither in custody nor about to be arrested. He began talking to the agents and seemed on the verge of making an admission about money he had received from the Soviets. At that point, the agents stopped the interview and read Bloch his Miranda rights.

  “If I have the right to remain silent, I will remain silent,” Bloch said.

  Martin was furious. It was, he now says, the same mistake Freeh made when he ordered agents to read Richard Jewell his rights in the middle of an interview.

  “I specifically advised the agents that they were under no obligation to give Bloch his rights,” Martin says. “Only if the agents had enough evidence to arrest him going into the interview and intended to arrest him, or if Bloch already was in custody, did they need to warn him of his rights. Giving him his rights in the middle of an interview was inconceivable. To this day, I don’t know what they were thinking. Clearly, they had their own ideas.”

  When Louis Freeh announced Hanssen’s arrest at a press conference in February 2001, he pointed out that while Hanssen’s spying was a disaster, the FBI’s impressive investigation was a success story. A reporter asked the director how much responsibility he accepted for the fact that Hanssen had evaded detection by the FBI for fifteen years.

  “Well, the buck stops with me,” Freeh declared. “I’m accountable, I’m responsible.”

  Freeh’s comment was artful, but it papered over the fact that after Ames’ arrest in 1994, Robert “Bear” Bryant, as head of the National Security Division, urged Freeh to approve regular polygraph tests for all counterintelligence agents. After encountering opposition from many SACs and from the FBI Agents Association, Freeh shelved the proposal.

  Polygraph tests are not perfect, but if nothing else, they are a deterrent. If Freeh had approved Bryant’s proposal in 1994 to polygraph counterintelligence agents, it is highly unlikely Hanssen would have taken a chance on continuing his relationship with the Russians. The Hanssen spy case was another debacle traceable in part to Freeh.

  As for the movie Breach, the movie never purports to depict how the FBI got on to Hanssen. Instead, it portrays Eric O’Neill as the hero who helped document the case against Hanssen once the bureau focused on him. In fact, as a member of the Special Support Group (SSG), O’Neill’s job was simply to keep track of him for six weeks during the three months he was under surveillance by the FBI. In contrast, Rochford had been trying to track the spy since 1986.

  To create more drama, the movie showed Hanssen firing his revolver in Rock Creek Park and almost hitting O’Neill.

  “That never happened,” Rochford says. “What did happen is I remember that Eric saw his gun in his briefcase one time in the office. And I remember him reporting back to the handling agent, who was a female agent, that he was a little afraid of that.”

  In addition to O’Neill, the FBI ran two other undercover operatives against Hanssen, Robert King and agent Rich Garcia. Their contributions to the case were equal to O’Neill’s, Rochford says. To allay any suspicions the spy might have, King met several times with Hanssen over lunch at various restaurants during the month before his arrest.

  “King calmed him and gave him the impression that we were not very far in finding the mole, when in fact we knew the mole was Hanssen,” Rochford says.

  Two days before his arrest, Hanssen showed up unexpectedly at the control center for the spy case, on the fourth floor of FBI headquarters. Because it was a room within a room to shield it from electronic emanations from within and without, it was known as “the Vault.” Agents there were putting the final touches on the Washington field office’s plan for his arrest. Hanssen asked to speak with King.

  “King came to the only door of the Vault and talked to Hanssen in the hall,” Rochford says, “while the others continued to work feverishly inside the Vault. Hanssen asked about the buzz going on inside. King allayed his suspicions and said it was just normal analytic work.”

  Contrary to the movie’s portrayal, O’Neill never socialized with Hanssen or his
wife. He did tell the FBI where Hanssen had left his Palm III Pilot when Hanssen had left his office: in Hanssen’s leather briefcase. The FBI obtained a court order under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) so that the bureau’s Tactical Operations Support Center and case agent Stefan Pluta could conduct an entry. Rather than O’Neill, it was Regina Hanson, a new FBI agent, who downloaded the PalmPilot’s memory card with Hanssen’s stored phone numbers and other secure information.

  In all, “there were well over three hundred agents, SSGs, pilots, analysts, and agency folks that worked that case,” Rochford says. “Eric O’Neill didn’t do 90 percent of what the movie gave him credit for. The agency and the bureau worked together over a period of time to come up with terrific resolutions to penetrations,” Rochford says. “That’s how you got Ames, that’s how you got Harold James Nicholson, that’s how you got Pitts, that’s how you got Hanssen.”

  When asked about the disparity between his role and the movie’s portrayal, O’Neill initially claimed that King had nothing to do with the case. When given the details, he said he was not aware of them. He also claimed that Regina Hanson had nothing to do with the case. “That person didn’t exist,” he said. Again, when given the details, he said he was not aware of her role.

  But O’Neill insisted his big contribution was coming up with the idea of downloading the data from Hanssen’s Palm Pilot, and that that was crucial to the case.

  “He [Hanssen] treated the PalmPilot like it was one of his children,” O’Neill said. “I thought we really need to get this device from him.” From the PalmPilot, agents learned the date and time of Hanssen’s next drop of documents for the KGB. At that point, the FBI arrested him.

  While Rochford says O’Neill may well have suggested it at some point, downloading the contents of such an electronic device was “standard procedure” in such a case and would have occurred no matter what. Because Hanssen was under surveillance “every minute,” Rochford says, agents would have detected his next drop without needing to know of it in advance.

  When it was pointed out that the real key to solving the case was developing the source who gave up Hanssen, O’Neill, who pitched the idea of a movie originally and sold the rights to his story, said, “I agree that the movie has a lot of fiction in it and overplayed my role. It’s a movie, and you have to sell tickets and have a bad guy and a good guy. I didn’t have control over the movie, other than providing some direction and saying this happened or this didn’t happen.”

  Of the spy’s own motives, Hanssen wrote dramatically to the KGB in March 2000, “One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I’d answer neither. I’d say, insanely loyal.”

  If Hanssen was not insane, he certainly was kinky. On the surface, he seemed a devoted family man, with a wife and six kids, who lived in a four-bedroom split-level house on a cul-de-sac on Talisman Drive in Vienna, Virginia. Almost every day, he attended Mass at St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Virginia. Coincidentally, it was the same church Freeh attended. Hanssen belonged to the church’s conservative Opus Dei society, which was fiercely anti-Communist.

  Yet there were many compartments concealed behind Hanssen’s perpetual smirk. Besides spying for the Soviets, Hanssen befriended Priscilla Sue Galey, a well-proportioned woman Hanssen met at the Washington strip club where she worked. Hanssen bought her a used Mercedes-Benz and jewelry and paid for her trip to Hong Kong, where he went to inspect the FBI legat.

  When Hanssen’s high school friend Jack Hoschouer came to visit, Hanssen would rig a closed-circuit video camera so his friend could stand on a deck outside the Hanssens’ bedroom and watch him have sex with his wife, Bonnie. He also posted on the Internet erotic stories about Bonnie that gave his full name and email address, along with his wife’s name.

  Hanssen looked down on everyone, especially women at the FBI. He told colleagues women never should have been accepted as agents. At one point, he became involved in a dispute with a female intelligence analyst. He pushed her, and she fell. In 1995, Bear Bryant transferred him to work at the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions, where he had less access to secrets.

  Dressed in a green jumpsuit, Hanssen, looking gaunt, pled guilty on July 6, 2001. Soon after, he began twice-weekly debriefings. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

  More than the money, Hanssen seemed to enjoy getting back at the FBI, outwitting the intelligence community, and feeling he was in control. He hated uncertainty, he told the KGB. Spying gave him power and control over both the KGB and the FBI.

  17

  UNEXPLAINED CASH

  ON THE EVENING OF ROBERT HANSSEN’S ARREST, KATHLEEN McChesney, the special agent in charge in Chicago, called Walt Stowe, the associate SAC at the field office, to say she would pick him up in twenty minutes. She did not tell him why.

  When Stowe got into McChesney’s bureau car, she explained that Hanssen had been arrested for espionage. The FBI wanted them to tell Mark A. Wauck about the arrest. An FBI agent based in Chicago, Mark was the brother of Hanssen’s wife, Bonnie.

  At about eight o’clock, McChesney and Stowe pulled up to Wauck’s home in Park Ridge, Illinois, and knocked on his door. Wauck’s youngest son opened the door and said to his father, “Dad, there are some people here to see you.”

  Wauck knew McChesney, his boss at the field office of five hundred agents, but he did not know Stowe. He took the two agents into his library. Stowe recalls that as soon as they told him of his brother-in-law’s arrest, Wauck brought up the fact that ten years earlier he had warned James Lyle, a Soviet counterintelligence supervisor based in Chicago, that Bonnie had found $5,000 cash in one of Hanssen’s dresser drawers. Wauck said he had assumed all this time that the FBI had followed up on the warning.

  In fact, it had not. Lyle recalls the conversation with Wauck but says Mark merely told him that Bonnie had found some cash in a drawer and didn’t know where it came from. As a result, Lyle did not take any action or pass the information to headquarters.

  “My reaction was, so what?” says Lyle, who was chief of the counterespionage group at the CIA when Hanssen was arrested. Lyle says he responded, “What’s the issue, Mark? Why doesn’t she ask where the money came from?” While an amount of money may have been mentioned, Lyle says, he doesn’t recall how much.

  But Wauck says he explicitly told Lyle that, given that Hanssen was assigned to Soviet counterintelligence, he felt he should report Bonnie’s discovery—as well as two other troubling facts—because it could mean his brother-in-law was being paid by the Soviets. Stowe remembers clearly that Wauck described his conversation with Lyle ten years earlier as reporting suspicious activity possibly related to espionage.

  “I remember Mark mentioning five thousand in cash his sister found,” Stowe says. “I was flabbergasted. Mark said, ‘Why didn’t someone look into this?’ He seemed to me totally open and forthcoming.”

  Confirming Stowe’s account, McChesney says Wauck immediately brought up the $5,000 in cash and the fact that he had reported it to Lyle as being suspicious.

  “That amount of cash would be suspicious for any government employee to have hidden around his or her house,” McChesney says. “It is the type of situation agents are directed to bring to the attention of their supervisors, regardless of where the money may have come from.”

  The fact that Wauck claimed to have told the FBI about his suspicions back in 1990 has come out before. But what has not been revealed publicly until now is that, upon being told of Hanssen’s arrest, Wauck immediately brought up his warning to Lyle. Given that he had no time to invent a story on the spot, his spontaneous reaction corroborates his claim that he had indeed described the discovery as a red flag of suspicious activity that should be pursued.

  Without knowing that, and given that Lyle denied the claim, many in the FBI understandably dismissed Wauck’s version because it seemed to fly in the face of common sense.

  “If you’
re an FBI agent and you believe that somebody in your family is involved in something, and that person in your family happened to be an in-law, and they have equal clearance to yours, and you’re an agent, you’re trained as an FBI agent, what should you do?” asks Mike Rochford, who thought highly of Lyle.

  “Well, you demand to be interviewed,” he says. “You don’t just whisper in the ear of a supervisor. And if they won’t interview you, what you do is you write an investigative insert, or a teletype, and you document it. He never documented it. And so this did not make sense to me. No agent would ever handle a situation like that. It looked to me like it was post-arrest re-creation of history so as to make him look better than he was.”

  Stowe recalls asking Wauck that same question on the evening of Hanssen’s arrest.

  “Why didn’t you push it?” Stowe asked him. “Wauck said he fulfilled his responsibility. He said he told Lyle, and nothing happened. Are you going to push when a supervisor decides to say nothing?”

  But in the first interview Wauck has given to fully describe what happened, he offered new details to corroborate his story and to help explain why he thought Lyle had followed up on his concerns and reported them to headquarters.

  Wauck says he first began to wonder about his brother-in-law in 1985, when Wauck was about to be transferred from New York to Chicago to work Polish counterintelligence and learn Polish. When Wauck mentioned that to Bonnie, she said, “Isn’t that great? Bob says we may retire in Poland.”

  At the time, Poland was under Soviet domination. An FBI agent would not have been allowed to live there unless he defected and cooperated with Polish and Soviet intelligence services.

  “Bonnie, that’s crazy,” Wauck responded.

  While he was troubled by her comment, Wauck says he somehow convinced himself that the thought of retiring to Poland stemmed from Hanssen’s devout Catholicism and his admiration of Pope John Paul II, who was from Poland.