by David Wise
I am grateful as well to Jack Hoschouer, who described himself aptly as closer than a brother to Robert Hanssen, and who figures at many points in the story. Although mortified by the highly public exposure of his participation in Hanssen’s bizarre sexual activities, Hoschouer agreed to speak to me at length in a series of interviews by telephone to Germany and in person in Washington. I felt he showed considerable courage in doing so; another man might have retreated behind a wall of silence. I thank him for his openness, his patience, and his help. His wife, Aya, also was kind enough to share with me her recollections of Robert Hanssen. His mother, Jeanette Hoschouer, told me of her encounters with Howard Hanssen.
I am particularly indebted to Plato Cacheris, the defense attorney who saved Hanssen from a possible death penalty, and to Dr. David L. Charney, whose insights into Hanssen’s psyche were invaluable. My thanks as well go to Preston Burton, Plato Cacheris’s law partner.
Among the FBI counterintelligence officials interviewed, I am especially grateful to Neil J. Gallagher, then the assistant director in charge of the National Security Division, as well as to James T. Caruso, Michael J. Waguespack, Leslie G. Wiser, Jr., and James D. Lyle. Still other FBI counterintelligence specialists were helpful but preferred not to be named; I am no less grateful for their assistance.
I also greatly appreciate the help of John E. Collingwood, the FBI assistant director in charge of the Office of Public and Congressional Affairs; Michael P. Kortan, chief of the public affairs section of that office; Bill Carter, the acting unit chief of the FBI national press office; and Supervisory Special Agent Steven W. Berry of the national press office, whose assistance was unstinting and invaluable. Others in the FBI helped as well, including Bill Houghton, Kimberly Lichtenberg, Candy Curtis, Kevin Wilkinson, and James H. Davis.
More than thirty former FBI agents and officials were also interviewed, and I thank them all for their assistance. I must begin with William H. Webster, former director of the FBI and the CIA, who headed the special commission that reviewed FBI security programs for the Department of Justice. John F. Lewis, Jr., the former assistant director in charge of the FBI’s National Security Division, provided many valuable insights, and his patience with my endless questions never flagged. I am grateful as well to James D. Ohlson, Edward J. Curran, and Thomas E. Burns, Jr.; to David G. Major and Paul Moore of the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies; to Raymond A. Mislock, Jr., Joseph Tierney, Donald E. Stukey, James E. Nolan, Jr., Phillip A. Parker, Thomas J. Pickard, Robert M. Bryant, A. Jackson Lowe, John F. Mabey, Harry B. “Skip” Brandon, R. Patrick Watson, Dick Alu, Robert B. Wade, Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr., Pete O’Donnell, Dale H. Pugh, James A. Werth, Theodore M. Gardner, and Bill Westberg.
I also appreciate the generous help I received from Charles C. Stuart, the prizewinning producer and president of Stuart Television Productions, and Chris Szechenyi, his talented and tireless field producer, who together created the documentary on the Hanssen case for the A&E cable network, on which I served as a consultant. Emily Ratliff, their production assistant, was always marvelously helpful.
I am obliged as well to Professor Chester Gillis of Georgetown University; Brian Finnerty, the U.S. spokesman for Opus Dei; Father C. John McCloskey III, director of the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C.; Father Franklyn M. McAfee of St. Catherine of Siena Catholic church; and Father Robert P. Bucciarelli. To understand the legal aspects of the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession, I relied principally on Michael J. Mazza’s “Should Clergy Hold the Priest-Penitent Privilege?” in the Marquette Law Review 82, no. 1 (fall 1998), pp. 171–204.
Several former CIA officials were interviewed, including former CIA director James Woolsey, Milton A. Bearden, Paul J. Redmond, Jr., John C. Platt, Gordon C. Oehler, Colin R. Thompson, and Suzanne Spaulding. My thanks as well go to Mark Mansfield, the CIA deputy director for public affairs. Other current and former CIA officials preferred to speak only on background. To tell the story of GRAY DECEIVER, the CIA official who was erroneously thought to be the mole, I interviewed his attorney, John Moustakas, and drew as well upon several intelligence sources and on published accounts by James Risen and David Johnston of The New York Times and Dan Eggen, Brooke A. Masters, and Vernon Loeb of The Washington Post.
Viktor Cherkashin, the former KGB counterintelligence officer who ran the Hanssen case in Washington, was reached at his home in Moscow and interviewed at length. His comments provided an intriguing perspective from the Russian side of the drama.
Many other individuals helped me to tell the story of Robert Hanssen. The list is too long to include everyone, and a few preferred to remain anonymous. But I thank Thomas B. Ross, coauthor with me of three books; James Bamford, Priscilla Sue Galey, Dr. Alen J. Salerian, Herb Romerstein, William Schulz, Edward S. McFadden, Momcilo Rosic, Mike and Judi Shotwell, John C. Sylvester, H. Keith Melton, Ed Pound of USA Today, John Carl Warnecke, Benny Pasquariello, Ronald Sol Mlotek, and Boris Yuzhin.
Sarah J. Albertini provided vital computer advice and research assistance along the way. Ida Sawyer made sure my newspaper files were up to date.
I am especially grateful to Robert D. Loomis, my editor at Random House on this and eight previous books, whose editorial skills and dedication are unsurpassed and reflected throughout these pages.
Finally, and as always, I am indebted beyond measure to my wife, Joan, who, without complaint, heard more about Robert Hanssen and the murky world of spies he inhabited than she probably wanted to know.
—David Wise
Washington, D.C.
July 30, 2002
About the Author
DAVID WISE is America’s leading writer on intelligence and espionage. He is coauthor of The Invisible Government, a number one bestseller widely credited with bringing about a reappraisal of the role of the CIA in a democratic society. He is the author of Cassidy’s Run: The Secret Spy War over Nerve Gas, Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million, Molehunt, The Spy Who Got Away, The American Police State, and The Politics of Lying, and coauthor with Thomas B. Ross of The Espionage Establishment, The Invisible Government, and The U-2 Affair. He is also the author of three espionage novels, The Samarkand Dimension, The Children’s Game, and Spectrum. A native New Yorker and graduate of Columbia College, he is the former chief of the Washington bureau of the New York Herald Tribune and has contributed articles on government and politics to many national magazines. He is married and has two sons.
THE EARLY YEARS
A happier moment … Robert Hanssen, at age seven in 1951, proudly holds up his catch with his father, Howard, a Chicago police officer. But the two already had a deeply troubled relationship.
“Science is the light of life.…” Hanssen’s future technical prowess was forecast by the motto he chose for his high school yearbook and his membership in the ham radio club.
Hanssen’s high school classmate Jack Hoschouer became his lifelong friend.
Chicago, August 1968: A smiling Hanssen, twenty-four, and his bride, Bonnie Wauck, twenty-one. Standing behind them are his parents, Howard and Vivian Hanssen. Seated at left is Howard’s mother, Louise.
October 1970: After dropping out of dental school, Hanssen switched to accounting at Northwestern University. Here, while a student, he poses with Bonnie, right, and her sister, Jeanne, in front of the Wauck family home in Park Ridge, a Chicago suburb.
Bob and Bonnie at a Wisconsin park in the early 1970s. In 1972, after working briefly as an accountant, Hanssen was hired as a police officer in Chicago and assigned to investigate corruption on the force. Four years later, he joined the FBI.
THE SPY
A pudgy Hanssen, now a special agent at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., relaxes on the deck of his Vienna, Virginia, home in the early 1980s. He had already begun his career as a Russian spy and betrayed vital secrets to Moscow.
The spymaster. Viktor Cherkashin, the KGB counterintelligence chief in Washington, was contacted b
y Hanssen in an unsigned letter when the FBI agent resumed spying in 1985. Cherkashin told the author that the KGB never learned Hanssen’s identity.
After a two-year tour in New York City, where Hanssen wiretapped Soviet installations, the couple returned to Washington in 1987 and bought this house on Talisman Drive in Vienna.
Jack Hoschouer. He was unaware that Hanssen, his best friend, had offered him up to the KGB as a possible target for recruitment. But the Russians never approached him.
Bob and Bonnie Hanssen in Vienna, Virginia, in the late 1980s. It was his most active time as a Soviet spy.
Hanssen would leave a piece of white tape on this signpost near his home to signal the KGB that he had left secret documents at dead drop ELLIS, a hiding place under a footbridge in the park.
A satellite view of dead drop ELLIS in Foxstone Park, the signal site, and the Hanssen house on Talisman Drive.
Dead drop LEWIS, used by Hanssen and the KGB to exchange documents and money, was beneath the wooden stage in this outdoor amphitheater in Arlington, Virginia.
The electric utility pole used as the signal site for dead drop LEWIS. Hanssen failed to pick up the last $50,000 the Russians left for him at LEWIS after rain washed the tape off the pole. The FBI recovered the money.
In 1989, Hanssen tipped off the KGB to one of the FBI’s biggest secrets—the eavesdropping tunnel it had dug under the new Soviet embassy in Washington. The FBI wondered why the multimillion-dollar project produced so little of value.
“He knew all the secrets.…” David Major, a former senior counterintelligence agent who worked with Hanssen, said the FBI spy’s job gave him access to the bureau’s most sensitive operations.
Paul Moore, a former FBI analyst, befriended Hanssen.
THE VICTIMS
General Dimitri Fedorovich Polyakov, right, code name TOPHAT, in a top hat. Photo was taken aboard the Queen Elizabeth in 1962 as Polyakov and two unidentified Soviet companions were returning to Moscow. One of the most valuable FBI and CIA sources of the Cold War, Polyakov was betrayed first by Robert Hanssen, then by CIA turncoat Aldrich H. Ames, and later executed.
Lieutenant Colonel Valery Martynov of the KGB was secretly working for the FBI until Hanssen betrayed him. Lured back to Moscow, Martynov was executed.
Major Sergei Motorin of the KGB, another FBI asset in Washington, was also betrayed by Hanssen. When he returned home, he, too, was executed.
Boris Yuzhin, a KGB officer secretly spying for the FBI, was luckier. Although imprisoned after Hanssen betrayed him, he was pardoned, and now lives in California.
Yuzhin fell under suspicion in the KGB when he lost this tiny camera, disguised as a cigarette lighter, which had been given to him by the CIA.
SEX, LIES, VIDEOTAPE, AND CASH
Hanssen and his friend Jack Hoschouer, left, in a rare photo together. Hanssen sent him nude pictures of Bonnie when Hoschouer served in the Army in Vietnam; later Hanssen insisted his friend watch him having sex with Bonnie, at first through a window, and then on closed-circuit television through a video camera Hanssen had hidden in the bedroom of his house.
FBI agent Mark Wauck, Bonnie Hanssen’s brother, told an FBI supervisor in Chicago that a large amount of unexplained cash had been seen on Hanssen’s dresser. This information was not relayed to FBI headquarters in Washington.
Bob and Bonnie Hanssen on the wedding day of their daughter Jane, 1995.
The stripper. Hanssen, infatuated with Priscilla Sue Galey, whom he had met in a Washington strip club, took her on a trip to Hong Kong and gave her expensive jewelry.
“You bought me a Mercedes!” Galey could not believe her good fortune when Hanssen gave her a silver Mercedes, for which he paid $10,500.
In 1993, Hanssen physically attacked Kimberly Lichtenberg, who worked in the headquarters unit he supervised. He received a mild reprimand, but there was no internal investigation of the agent who was arrested eight years later as the most damaging spy in the history of the FBI.
Hanssen in 1993 at a farewell party in Washington for an FBI colleague. At the time this photograph was taken, he had temporarily broken off contact with Moscow following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Bonnie Hanssen in 1995. She told investigators she knew nothing of her husband’s spying after 1980. When Hanssen was arrested, she cooperated with the FBI and, as a result, received a share of his pension.
When Tom Burns, who had been Hanssen’s boss at the FBI, retired in 1995, Hanssen collected the money for his farewell dinner.
Hanssen resumed spying for Russia in 1999 while assigned by the FBI to the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions. In this group photo of OFM, Hanssen, center, towers over a bespectacled Tom Burns, directly in front of him. Next to Burns, with beard and mustache, is Ron Mlotek, OFM’s chief legal counsel, who formed a close friendship with the FBI agent.
Hanssen’s State Department business card.
CLOSING IN
State Department official Felix Bloch, enjoying a Fourth of July garden party at the U.S. embassy in Vienna, was under surveillance as a suspected Soviet spy when Hanssen tipped off the KGB, which in turn warned Bloch he was in danger. The Bloch case triggered a new mole hunt that eventually led to Hanssen’s downfall.
KGB illegal Reino Gikman, as “Pierre Bart,” met with Bloch in Paris and later warned him of “a contagious disease,” cryptic language that meant the FBI was investigating.
The FBI spy seems unworried at a family picnic in the late 1990s.
FBI agent Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr., thought there might be a mole in the FBI but lacked proof. The portrait in the background is of his grandfather Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, who the FBI man maintains was wrongly blamed for Pearl Harbor.
November 2000: A gloomy Hanssen at a family Thanksgiving gathering in Chicago. He was unaware that three weeks earlier the FBI had spirited a KGB file out of Moscow that conclusively pointed to him as the mole.
Hanssen was to be presented with this souvenir diplomatic license plate when he left the State Department in January 2001. But the gift was not ready at his going-away party and Hanssen never received it; he was arrested five weeks later.
A plastic bag that Hanssen had used to wrap documents he passed to the Russians was recovered by the FBI in the KGB file the bureau obtained from a former Russian spy. Two of Hanssen’s fingerprints were identified on the bag, the final evidence the FBI needed to arrest him.
The FBI retrieved the $50,000 in hundred-dollar bills that the Russians had left for Hanssen at dead drop LEWIS before his arrest. The FBI man received more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds during twenty-two years as a Russian spy.
The last dead drop. Hanssen hid seven documents in dead drop ELLIS, under this footbridge in Foxstone Park, on the afternoon of February 18, 2001. Four minutes later, as he emerged from the woods, he was arrested.
AFTERMATH
For FBI director Louis J. Freeh, the Hanssen case was one of a series of debacles that afflicted the bureau. Less than three months after Hanssen’s arrest, Freeh announced he was leaving the FBI before the end of his ten-year term.
Federal agents were taking no chances when Hanssen was brought into court in May 2001.
Celebrated Washington defense attorney Plato Cacheris, who represented Hanssen, worked out a plea bargain with prosecutors that avoided the death penalty.
Former FBI and CIA director William H. Webster headed the commission appointed after Hanssen’s arrest that strongly criticized the FBI for “pervasive inattention to security.”
The Webster commission report called the Hanssen case “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history.”
Dr. David L. Charney, the psychiatrist who evaluated Hanssen extensively in prison, said a prime motive for his spying was to preserve his image in Bonnie’s eyes as a good provider.