After speaking to the Source, Fefelov loaded the PARK dead drop with the package I’d prepared. Several days later, Degtyar showed up at the rezidentura with a note, this time handwritten. “Received $10,000. Ramon.”
6
I was soon back in the Soviet Union, but the Source continued to spy for Moscow, on and off—including a yearlong hiatus after my departure and another after the Soviet collapse—until his arrest in February 2001. He was caught one evening, minutes after leaving a dead drop under a footbridge at Wolftrap Creek in Foxstone Park, near his house in Vienna, Virginia. FBI agents also found $50,000 the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR, the post-Soviet successor to the FCD) left for him at another site. Sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole, the Source is now locked in so-called supermax conditions—underground solitary confinement without visitors or reading material. I first learned his name several days after his arrest, when I saw it on a news report.
In the following days, the American press reported that the KGB and SVR paid Robert Hanssen a total of $600,000, diamonds and a Rolex watch. Of that amount, I myself had counted out $60,000 in hundred dollar bills to be deposited for him at the PARK drop site. The Center allocated a further $800,000 to be deposited under his name in a Moscow bank.
In all his years of spying, Hanssen never had to take a polygraph test. As part of a plea bargain cut by his defense lawyer, Plato Cacheris, he would now have to take them on demand to determine whether he was telling the truth about his espionage. But his wife, Bonnie, was given a widow’s pension of about $38,000 a year.
The information Hanssen provided Moscow was worth tens of billions of dollars. He supplied the KGB and then the SVR with thousands of documents, many on twenty-seven computer disks containing information downloaded from FBI servers. The intelligence helped expose some of the NSA’s most expensive and technologically advanced eavesdropping programs, the most shocking of which was a tunnel the agency built with the help of the FBI beneath the Soviet embassy compound in Washington. A technological wonder, it was packed with equipment to listen in on conversations. Special sound-conducting materials helped. On orders from the FBI, American contractors had installed them during the compound’s construction. The project had cost almost $1 billion.
Ames is called America’s “deadliest” spy because he unmasked the CIA’s human intelligence network, leading to many deaths. But Hanssen was even more important to us because his disclosures went to the heart of Washington’s intelligence infrastructure. He gave us documents about the national MASINT (measurement and signature intelligence) program, revealing American spy satellite technology. He provided information about how the United States intercepted the satellite transmissions of other countries, including the Soviet Union. And he passed along documents on the American continuity of government program meant to secure the country’s political succession in the event of nuclear war. The program included measures to track cabinet officials and evacuate them, together with the president, to command centers in massive underground bunkers.
Among other information Hanssen provided from the CIA, NSA and NSC was the FBI’s effort to recruit double agents. He also gave us documents detailing what the FBI knew of KGB recruitment operations against the CIA and our efforts to acquire U.S. nuclear secrets. Various CIA and FBI analyses of the KGB, as well as the budget for the FBI counterintelligence program, came our way.
Among the operations Hanssen betrayed was an FBI investigation of Felix Bloch, State Department director of European and Canadian Affairs. Bloch fell under suspicion of spying for the KGB in 1989, after he received a telephone call from Reino Gikman, a KGB illegal agent in the United States who was being tracked by the CIA.
When Bloch subsequently traveled to Paris, French intelligence helped the CIA observe him dining with Gikman in the Hotel Meurice on May 14, 1989. Two weeks later, they were spotted together in Brussels.
Hanssen didn’t like Bloch, who was widely criticized as stiff and arrogant. In one note to the KGB, he called him a “such a shnook.” But wanting to protect Gikman, he informed us of the FBI investigations into both men. Tipped off, Gikman soon boarded a plane for Moscow. But Bloch remained uninformed of the probe into his activities for some time.
Early one morning at the end of June, Bloch received a telephone call from someone identifying himself as Ferdinand Paul. He said he was calling on behalf of a man named Pierre who “cannot see you in the near future.
“He’s sick,” the caller said, adding that “a contagious disease is suspected.
“I am worried about you,” the caller said before hanging up. “You have to take care of yourself.”
Bloch finally knew he was in trouble. “Pierre” was what he had called his contact Gikman.
The FBI was listening in on the conversation. Its investigation compromised, the bureau brought Bloch in for questioning that day. He refused to confess and appeared at work during the following days. Hounded by the FBI and—after his story was leaked—the press, he finally resigned from the Foreign Service. Among the details the FBI investigation revealed at the time was Bloch’s penchant for sadomasochistic sex, and that he allegedly paid a prostitute while he was the U.S. embassy’s deputy chief of mission in Vienna. But the FBI failed to gather enough evidence for an arrest, and Bloch was never charged.
I never met Robert Hanssen and, although I guessed that he worked in FBI counterintelligence, I knew almost nothing about him until February 2001. When a picture of the man began to emerge, I reacted to the characterizations as I would have to those about a complete stranger. I knew the FBI would publicize the most damning information about him while covering up flattering details. The U.S. Justice Department report about his espionage activity is just one case in point. A good intelligence officer, Hanssen was characterized in it as mediocre.
As a child, he was treated roughly by his police officer father. In a letter to the SVR in March 2000, he wrote that he’d been influenced by My Silent War, a book by Kim Philby that describes his spying exploits for the Soviet Union. In fact, Hanssen was twenty-four when the book was published in 1968.
As an adult, Hanssen lived in Spartan conditions and dressed in cheap clothes despite the money he was getting from us. He reportedly denounced communism as “godless” and railed against Marxist infiltrators in the United States. As David Major points out, that was part of his success—he was able to compartmentalize his life, spying for the KGB while remaining an outwardly pious, devout and disciplinarian father of six.
Among the motives attributed to his decision to betray his country was wanting to be perceived as an active FBI agent instead of the nerd analyst image he projected. Hanssen’s colleagues nicknamed him “the mortician” for his dark suits and humorless demeanor. He was also called a misogynist. Stories emerged that he encouraged his best friend, a childhood pal named Jack Hoschouer, to observe him having sex with Bonnie via a secret closed-circuit videocamera set up in his bedroom. Hanssen also posted erotic stories about Bonnie on the Internet, even disclosing his own name and e-mail address. And he became friendly with Priscilla Sue Galey, a stripper he met in 1990 in a Washington club.
Making it his mission to reform Galey, Hanssen gave her tens of thousands of dollars of his KGB funds. He bought her jewelry and a used Mercedes. He paid the bills of an American Express credit card he gave her to cover her car expenses. But he spurned her sexual advances. Two years later their relationship fell apart and she moved to her hometown—Columbus, Ohio—where she became addicted to crack cocaine. Dismayed by her credit card bills, he drove out to confront her and take away her card. When she was arrested on drug charges and called him for help, he didn’t respond.
Hanssen also had disciplinary run-ins at work. He once hacked into the FBI computer system and downloaded a file from the computer of Ray Mislock, head of the Russia section. He did that, he said, to show the system wasn’t secure. In 1993, he was suspended without pay for five days after a young typist named Kimbe
rly Lichtenberg claimed he attacked her after she walked out of a meeting during which another typist’s work habits were being discussed. According to Lichtenberg’s account, Hanssen ordered her to return. When she refused, he approached her from behind and threw her to the ground. The allegation was never proved.
Reading newspaper stories about the Source’s personal life made me realize how little it mattered to me. I didn’t care about his secret lives, only his brilliance as an agent.
7
Robert Hanssen wasn’t only the last person David Major thought would spy against his country. He was also the last person Major thought would invite his best friend to watch him having sex with his wife. Others in the FBI who knew Hanssen well also told Major they’d never have suspected that. But when the details emerged after Hanssen’s arrest, Major understood that his public and private lives reflected his espionage—both were completely compartmentalized. Major agreed with the CIA’s Paul Redmond that once he began spying for the KGB, he didn’t alter his public persona. Dr. Jekyll simply turned into Mr. Hyde, letting loose his inner demons in a way no one could have imagined.
At work, Hanssen was seen as a perfect support agent. Always remaining in the shadows, he was never put in control because he wasn’t gregarious and didn’t have the skills necessary to manage people. Socially, he behaved in a similar way. Major’s wife told him Hanssen was sexually unappetizing. He never took the limelight at parties. That was the role of his wife, Bonnie, whom many compared to the actress Natalie Wood. Attractive and personable, she never talked about work, only family matters and religion. Hanssen often stood back, basking in her glow, prompting acquaintances to ask, “What’s this geek doing with this beautiful woman?”
Major believed Hanssen didn’t spy for money or ideology, but because he wanted control—maybe with a hint of Darth Vader, the villain of the 1970s film Star Wars. Hanssen too started out “good” before turning to his dark side.
8
It’s worth repeating that no amount of sleuthing by the CIA or FBI unearthed either Ames or Hanssen. In 1989, after it became clear that the post-Soviet Russian SVR couldn’t have gained access to information about the FBI’s Bloch investigation—and other intelligence—from Aldrich Ames, the bureau assigned over sixty agents in the Washington field office to search for a mole. The hunt continued throughout the 1990s. In 1996, the bureau arrested counterintelligence agent Earl Pitts on charges of spying for the KGB and SVR from 1987 to 1992. He was sentenced to twenty-seven years in prison. But it soon became clear that Pitts’s relatively insignificant spying couldn’t explain the bureau’s losses.
According to an account by writer Ronald Kessler, the CIA stumbled on Aldrich Ames after he was betrayed by a retired high-ranking SVR officer who had previously fled Russia. The agent’s cryptonym was AVENGER. After giving the United States information pointing to Ames, AVENGER led the CIA to another retired top-level KGB officer. The second man handed the Americans a gold mine in November 2000: the KGB/SVR files on Hanssen.2 Kessler writes that the new agent, who also defected, was paid over $1 million for the documents. Clearly he too must now be outside Russia under FBI protection.
The files on Hanssen stolen from the KGB archive contained documents from 1985 to 1991. That indicates they must have been taken in 1992 or 1993, while being moved following the post-Soviet reorganization of the KGB. The evidence given to the FBI included correspondence and the black garbage bag Hanssen used to protect the materials for a dead drop—the one we had kept to try to identify him. The file also held the tape recording of Hanssen’s telephone conversation with Fefelov after he’d missed our package. In short, the Hanssen file contained everything except his name, which, of course, we didn’t know.
I can’t name the agents who exposed Ames and Hanssen. Never having worked for the SVR, I’ve seen no documentary evidence of their identities. But uncovering them wouldn’t be difficult. Precious agents such as Hanssen and Ames were known to a very small number of people. Both cases were kept under strict control. Items such as the black plastic bag were kept in special containers in the files along with the paper documents. Hanssen’s file could have been retrieved from the archives only on the authority of someone directly involved in the case. Access was restricted to the heads of several departments, including foreign counterintelligence, and some of their deputies. All those men have remained in Russia. Some are retired and some have died.
As for Ames, the number of KGB officers who knew he was a Soviet agent has been put at five to seven. Actually, it was probably closer to twenty. Among those who knew about Ames in 1985, when I was involved in the case, are KGB chairman Victor Chebrikov, FCD chief Kryuchkov and his deputy Kirpichenko. Others are the Directorate K chief and his two deputies, Washington rezident Androsov, four cipher officers in the Center and one in Washington.
Within a year, the head of Directorate K’s American department joined the list. (Each successive foreign counterintelligence chief would have to be informed for the ongoing drive to find American spies in the FCD.) There were also officers such as Vlad, who met Ames in Bogotá and Rome, the Rome rezident and more cipher officers who worked in various locations and times.
People further down the list would have known fewer details about Ames. A few, such as the SCD’s Krassilnikov—who tracked down and arrested many of the spies Ames exposed—knew about intelligence he provided without being privy to its source.
One thing is clear: AVENGER couldn’t have worked on the Ames case because the officers who did are known. Therefore, the agent must have had indirect access to the information. One explanation is that while top secret files were officially handled only by directorate heads and deputies, subordinates also worked with them—often illegally. If the source exposing Ames and leading to Hanssen wasn’t the foreign counterintelligence chief or another directorate head—all of whom, as I’ve said, remained in Russia—he must have been a subordinate entrusted with the files. Still, in the final analysis, blame for the leaks about both Ames and Hanssen lies at the top level because bosses are responsible for the actions of those they authorize to carry out their work.
The cryptonym AVENGER described in Kessler’s book wasn’t given by chance. It refers to someone who perceived himself as harmed in some way and wanted revenge. Since he spied after the Soviet collapse, his motivations couldn’t have been ideological—as many in the West like to attribute to KGB turncoats. AVENGER was punished, demoted or fired—in some way treated badly. The SVR leadership knows who he is, as do I, but is probably sitting on the information because he remains out of its reach.
As for Hanssen’s file, the FBI made a conscious decision to disclose that it came from an agent. By releasing its affidavit detailing the file’s documents, the bureau probably wanted to show the SVR the extent of its knowledge, to flaunt that it could get its hands on detailed information from the heart of Russia’s intelligence structures. However, the affidavit masks the file’s source, partly by incorrectly attributing some of its evidence to vigilant neighbors or intrepid FBI agents digging through garbage. The SVR also knows who stole the Hanssen file. As David Major put it, it was someone’s “insurance policy” after the Soviet collapse. To find the culprit, it would be enough to check who among the tiny number of SVR officers with access to the file left Russia for the United States around November 2000.
9
Russia hasn’t caught the people who betrayed our most valuable agents. And the United States still hasn’t found at least one other Soviet agent in the CIA or FBI responsible for some of the losses of 1985. In other words, another Ames or Hanssen remains at large. In his book, former CIA SE division chief Milt Bearden calls him or her the “fourth mole,” after the three who were exposed—Edward Lee Howard, Ames and Hanssen. As evidence, Bearden cites the case of Sergei Bokhan, the GRU colonel stationed in Athens who eluded a KGB trap to get him to Moscow. He did so by defecting to the United States in May 1985, before Ames composed his list of CIA agents.3 Bearden also cit
es the case of Leonid Polishchuk, the KGB officer in Lagos who was lured home with the story that a Moscow apartment had come on the market. Finally, Bearden includes the 1984 execution of Vladimir Vetrov, the Directorate T (science and technology) officer code-named FAREWELL by the French, as proof the KGB had information that couldn’t have come from Howard—who wouldn’t have known about agents in third countries—Ames or Hanssen, whose spying began after Vetrov’s execution.
It’s very likely the sources who delivered information about Ames and Hanssen to the CIA also revealed some about other Soviet and Russian agents. That the KGB ran a “fourth mole” is undeniable. It’s also true that the CIA ran agents we never caught. Meanwhile, the intelligence agencies of the United States and Russia continue to recruit assets all these years after the end of the Cold War.
My own forty-year experience with intelligence taught me that there can be no real disclosures of information without agents. Despite the billions of dollars spent on counterintelligence, almost all exposed spies are betrayed by other agents. To quote an old saying, spies catch spies. If that weren’t true—if the CIA had managed to develop special technology or come up with a better catching system—agents would be much less important than they are today. Exceptions to the rule, such as the exposure of Oleg Penkovsky, are incredibly rare. The CIA didn’t find Ames when it was actively searching for moles in the 1980s. It caught him only in 1994, when the operational situation vis-à-vis Russia was relatively quiet.
The FBI and CIA deserve criticism for failing to catch Ames and Hanssen. Some of the blame can be attributed to both agencies’ risk-averse nature, which encourages the tendency to protect their own and the belief that they are incapable of harboring moles. Information is often kept secret supposedly because its exposure would harm intelligence-gathering capabilities and help adversaries. In fact, intelligence agencies want to avoid criticism that would result in firings, demotions and the taint of scandal. If that’s natural for all bureaucracies, it’s even more so for those steeped in the practices of secrecy.
Spy Handler Page 25