by Eric O'neill
“Is OPR any good at auditing?” Hanssen asked.
“How do you mean?”
“Can we take a document in ACS and say who accessed it?”
Kielman sighed. “It would be difficult to differentiate a pattern from the wider random access. Unless OPR was focused on a particular person, they would most likely not discover a pattern. So no, I don’t think so. Not yet.”
“What you are telling me,” Hanssen said, “is that ACS’s audit feature doesn’t work unless a specific OPR investigation is opened. In other words, ACS only works as long as someone is not a spy.” He turned toward the door. “I know the Russians. If there’s a spy in the system, I’ll find him.”
“So you are saying ACS is flawed?” Kielman said.
Hanssen stretched himself to his full height. “The FBI is flawed.”
He wasn’t wrong. In 2003 the US Department of Justice’s inspector general conducted an exhaustive review of the FBI’s failures to detect Robert Hanssen. The IG’s team reviewed over 368,000 pages of material from an alphabet soup of intelligence agencies. The FBI, CIA, DOJ, NSA, and State Department all fell under the task force’s scrutiny. They picked apart Hanssen’s personal and professional life. Family, friends, supervisors, and colleagues were interviewed for hours, their every sentence dissected for clues. No stone was left unturned.
Most of the 674-page report remains classified at the top-secret level, but a 31-page public summary uncovered major deficiencies in the FBI’s approach to internal investigations. In short, the IG concluded that the FBI’s internal security was flawed, and that those flaws made it impossible to catch a trusted insider.
The IG report rattled off a laundry list of problems, some specifically related to the Hanssen case, but most endemic to the FBI. Hanssen received a background investigation when he joined the FBI, but in twenty-five years at the bureau, he never received a polygraph. He also never submitted a disclosure form detailing his finances and investments. The FBI submitted Hanssen to the only background reinvestigation of his career in 1996, twenty years after he joined, but although the background investigator raised red flags after a perfunctory review, the FBI declined to follow up. Frankly, I was shocked the investigator managed to find anything of concern in the first place. Hanssen’s reinvestigation didn’t involve review of his personnel file, security file, or credit reports. The investigator never even interviewed Hanssen.
Had the reinvestigation followed best practices, the FBI might have caught Hanssen early in his spying career. A review of Hanssen’s personnel file and interviews with Hanssen’s various supervisors would have revealed weak managerial and interpersonal skills and a narcissistic personality. Details about an early ’90s Office of Personnel Management investigation might have raised an eyebrow too. Hanssen threw a female FBI employee to the ground after she confronted him over an administrative issue. Hanssen received only a letter of censure and a five-day suspension.
A deep dive into Hanssen’s security file might have revealed numerous breaches. In 1992, the FBI promoted Hanssen to chief for the National Security Threat List (NSTL) Unit. The newly minted unit investigated economic espionage (the theft of secrets with the intent to provide them to a foreign agent), trade-secret theft, and nuclear proliferation. While serving as boss of the NSTL, Hanssen hacked the FBI’s computer system and illegally snatched Soviet counterintelligence documents from his colleagues’ hard drives. Worried that the FBI might figure out that he had knifed through their computer security, Hanssen then reported his breach to his superiors, claiming to have hacked the FBI in order to expose flaws in the system. In late 1994, the FBI moved Hanssen to the Office of Foreign Missions at the State Department, where FBI computer specialists found password-breaking software on Hanssen’s computer and referred him to the FBI’s security programs manager. Hanssen’s excuse? He told the security chief that he had installed the forbidden software in order to connect his desktop to a color printer. The FBI didn’t even bother recording the incident in Hanssen’s personnel or security files.
And if he’d ever been subjected to a financial review, Hanssen’s spy career would have smacked into a brick wall. His profound disregard for the FBI’s ability to detect a spy in the worst possible place led him to take risks. He opened a passbook savings account in his own name at a bank a block away from FBI HQ, where he would deposit the cash left for him under park platforms by the KGB—after counting it in his FBI office.
Hanssen snuck under the FBI’s radar partly because the bureau failed to properly investigate its own employees. At a minimum, Hanssen should have undergone a background reinvestigation with a polygraph and interview every five years—as should all FBI employees with access to classified information. But even without the reinvestigations, he wouldn’t have been able to evade capture as long as he did were it not for the FBI’s lack of information security. The FBI had no systems to monitor and track access to classified national-security information, which meant Hanssen often waltzed out of FBI buildings with copies and even originals of some of the US government’s most sensitive documents. He routinely accessed information in ACS that he did not have a need to know. In addition to the case information he stole and handed over to the Russians, Hanssen habitually checked his own name and address and the locations of his favorite drop and signal sites for active investigations. Hanssen couldn’t have explained away these searches the way he had brushed off installing password-cracking software and hacking his buddies. But the FBI rarely used the ACS audit function to find those sticking their noses in the wrong places.
In fact, the agency may have even helped Hanssen carry out his work on behalf of the KGB. One year before the FBI identified him as a possible mole, when the investigation was still focused on Brian Kelley, headquarters ordered the closed network WFO team to brief Hanssen on the hunt for the mole. Two agents from the Gray Suit squad shared an evening chat with Hanssen in which they sought his opinions about the identity of the mole and requested a list of Russians who might provide information on him. The FBI required everyone seeking access to the elite Gray Suit squad to submit to a special polygraph. Everyone except Hanssen. The crafty spy’s list of Russian targets sent the FBI on multiple wild-goose chases, each designed to put further distance between the real Gray Suit and the FBI investigation.
Hanssen was the most damaging spy in the history of the FBI—and possibly the worst in US history. Every scrap of information Hanssen delivered to the Russians required access to highly classified documents. Good cybersecurity demands that each time someone accesses critical information, that access is noted and at some level scrutinized. From 1979 until 2001, the FBI had been ignoring one of the cardinal rules of counterintelligence: watch those with access to the keys to the kingdom. Trust, but verify.
“Let’s go, Eric,” Hanssen said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
I hung back and stopped Dr. Kielman while Hanssen passed through security.
“Do you think I could requisition a Palm Pilot? The newest model is a Palm V.” I glanced at Hanssen’s back. “Actually can I have two?” Always good to ingratiate myself with the boss.
“Why do you need these?” Dr. Kielman asked.
“Every executive needs a digital assistant,” I said. “If I don’t get one, I’ll continue to be a no-good, do-nothing, worthless clerk. Plus, one is for my boss.”
A smile twitched Kielman’s mustache. “That might be the best requisition request I’ve received. Submit the paperwork and I’ll approve it.”
“Thanks, Doc.”
“I hope you and Bob can help improve security,” Kielman replied.
My mind sped through the days ahead. If we could prove that Hanssen was Gray Suit, and catch him in the act of espionage—if I granted all of Kate’s wishes—we could rebuild the counterintelligence walls that Hanssen had spent a career undermining.
Hanssen held the door open, loo
king back toward me when he realized I hadn’t obediently heeled to his command. I masked my disgust with a cough and flashed a grin toward the doctor.
“We’ll improve security, Dr. Kielman,” I said. “In fact, I guarantee it.”
CHAPTER 16
NOT A BEAR
January 29, 2001—Monday, Early Morning
I dreamed I was on a Boy Scout camping trip. My childhood friend Christian and I shared a dilapidated army tent, which we’d set up on a collection of old pallets that someone had left in the campground ages ago. Our troop had hiked out into the deep Appalachian woods when fall edged into winter. Nightfall had dropped the temperature so drastically that all the scouts had fled to their warm sleeping bags. Sleep had nearly claimed me when a rustling broke the silence right beside my head. Christian stopped me before I could shout.
“Don’t move,” he said. “That’s a bear.”
Juliana shook me awake.
“Juliana, what…”
She shook her head, eyes wide, and made a harsh shushing noise. I quieted immediately and listened. Rustling right outside the window closest to my head. Not a bear. Footsteps.
The Super Bowl party had not gone as I hoped. We hadn’t fought, which was a mark in the win column, but we’d gone together and spent the time apart. My buddy Mike had thrown the party in the group house he shared with a few other guys out near the University of Maryland in College Park. Viv was also there with a large number of our mutual friends.
Once we arrived at the party, Juliana paired off with Viv and the other women while I joined the guys around a newly tapped keg. Mike took one look at my face and pressed a beer in my hand.
The Baltimore Ravens annihilated the New York Giants 34 to 7. For a few hours, I let football drive my worries away. But soon enough, the game ended, the snack trays lay barren, and the keg floated in an icy bath. I found Juliana, and she drove us home.
I’m a terrible backseat driver on the best of days. After a few beers, I criticized every movement of our Jeep. Juliana had to pull over and threaten to make me walk before I would retreat into the sullen silence that got us home. That silence had continued as we readied ourselves for bed and fell asleep.
Two thoughts fought in my mind as the not-bear trudged around outside our window. Joy that my wife had decided to speak to me again. Anger that she’d done so only because a greater threat than me had shown up. The two emotions danced and caught and melted together, finally resolving into one. My anger had a target.
“Stay here,” I whispered. “I’ll check it out.”
Juliana clutched my arm, half holding me to the bed. “What, are you crazy? Call the police.”
I put my lips close to her ear. “It might be an animal.”
Before she could talk me out of it, I disentangled myself from her and padded from the room. I found my shoes and threw on a heavy coat.
“This is a bad idea,” Juliana hissed from the bedroom doorway.
I stuffed my FBI credentials and a heavy extendable baton from my messenger bag into my coat pockets and handed Juliana my cell phone. “If I shout, you call 911.”
Before she could say another word, I was out the door.
Our apartment was tucked into the back corner of our building. Our bedroom windows looked past two feet of moss to a massive wooden wall on one side and a parking lot strewn with gravel on the other. The surrounding fences forced anyone walking to the back of the building to enter via the driveway.
I eased the front door shut and crept around the side of the building, trying not to let the gravel crunch underfoot. My ears filtered out the constant rush of street noises and car horns that are the background track to every city and focused on the noise of feet—or paws—on the dead leaves left over from the fall. The trespasser still made noises behind our apartment. Whether it was animal or burglar, I had it trapped.
“Who’s there?”
Footsteps careened around the corner. A heavyset man saw me and skidded to a halt in a spray of gravel. He gripped a crowbar in one gloved hand.
“What are you…oh!” Juliana froze next to me.
“I told you to stay inside,” I breathed.
The man took a step toward us. My heart raced, not out of fear for myself—I welcomed this fight—but for the unknown danger to Juliana. I gently nudged her behind me with my left hand and reached into my pocket with my right. For the first time, I thought about how ridiculous I must look in a winter coat over black-and-neon Grinch pajamas.
“Did you call the police?”
“No,” Juliana said, her voice too fast. “I forgot the phone.”
I held out my right hand and gave it a flick. The cold snick of the baton extending flooded me with courage as I faced down the shadowy form of the man standing at the end of our small driveway. We stared at each other for a long moment, each waiting for the other to move first. Then I herded Juliana back around to the front of the building, moving slowly backward to keep the burglar in sight. The moment he had enough space, the trespasser fled past us.
Back in the warmth of our apartment, Juliana called the police, and I tried not to shake through an adrenaline crash. She hung up the phone and rounded on me.
“What if he had a gun?”
“He didn’t.”
“But what if he did?”
“Then you should have stayed inside like I told you and called the police.”
She slammed the phone into its charger. “I’m not a little girl you need to protect.”
I sighed. Juliana couldn’t understand the risks undercover operatives take the moment they buckle themselves into an unmarked car to chase a target through some of the more dangerous parts of Washington, DC. I couldn’t tell her. The only way to operate in situations where every instinct screams for you to run is to cultivate a powerful sense of self-confidence that dips its toe into the waters of arrogance. Standing across that alley from our would-be burglar, I was certain of one thing: I was the most dangerous person standing on that loose gravel.
I guided Juliana down to the couch next to me. She pulled away, but finally relented.
“I hate this place,” she said.
“Me too.”
“Our nights should be like a honeymoon, not a constant fight.”
I held her tight. “It will all be over soon.”
“What? What will be over soon?”
I let out a deep, shaky breath. “Do you trust me?”
She barely thought before answering. “I don’t know.”
Her words made the room spin. I held her until the dizzying moment passed. “You can trust me. I promise.”
CHAPTER 17
IN THE MIDDLE
January 29, 2001—Monday
Kate intercepted me in the morning as I trudged out of the Archives–Navy Memorial Metro Station, spotting me despite my heavy overcoat and the knitted cap pulled low over my ears. I felt exhausted. Juliana and I had lain next to each other in sleepless silence after we gave our report about the burglar to the police. I’d left out the part about the extendable baton and hadn’t identified myself as FBI. Juliana had gallantly not filled in the blanks. But our united front for the police officer fell to tatters once the two of us crawled into bed. I’d spent the rest of the night watching shadows crawl across our ceiling.
I jumped into Kate’s car. She pulled into traffic on Pennsylvania Avenue and drove past FBI HQ. Sleepless night or no, I needed my wits about me this morning. For the first time, I was going to the Washington Field Office to meet the team working on the Gray Day investigation.
Hanssen was in pocket at a doctor’s appointment, but he wouldn’t be gone long.
I got out of the car and followed Kate through the parking deck to an elevator. When we got out, she led me down a long hall toward a distant room at the back of the squad. I recognized several National Securit
y Division special agents I’d worked with over the years, and as I walked by I heard a smattering of calls: “What’s up, Wolf?” I shot my old colleagues a smile but couldn’t stop to speak. We were heading into the nerve center.
Kate led me through the Washington Field Office. Unlike the ridiculous maze at HQ, the WFO floor plan made organizational sense. Light permeated the white stone building, contrasting with the murky gloom of the Hoover Building. Switching from Room 9930 to the clean walls and orderly desks of the WFO was like escaping a medieval dungeon and ending up on Wall Street. I stayed close on Kate’s heels until she stopped before a nondescript door—the sort I recognized from my Earl Pitts days. Her badge and a key code granted us entry to a room larger than 9930 and infinitely cozier. About a dozen agents and support staff buzzed amid desks and computer monitors. Piles of paper made sometimes orderly and often haphazard islands in all the controlled chaos. In this room, Hanssen’s every action became a data point in the long list of information that might lead to his arrest. I shook hands with various agents and analysts, all of them smiling, and knew that I was only one such data point. Maybe not even the most important one. Perplexed, I followed Kate to a group of analysts relaxing beside a technical station. We were at the listening post, where a team of analysts monitored all of Hanssen’s darkest secrets, from phone calls to the video feed from 9930 and the GPS we’d placed on his car.
“All these people—”
“You’re not alone on this case, kiddo,” Kate smiled. “A lot of people have your back.”
That’s when I realized: I’d been compartmentalized. Not only did the FBI surround Hanssen in a fictional world designed within the FBI’s most hallowed hallways, but the FBI had kept me in the dark, too, isolating me from the other players so I wouldn’t know who else was part of the case. I stood on the outside looking at familiar ground. The FBI had compartmentalized the Hanssen case the way Donner’s squad had sequestered itself when we went after Pitts. Both teams wanted to remove the chance that someone would carelessly divulge information about a highly sensitive investigation in passing conversation—but also to catch any other spies in case Hanssen wasn’t acting alone.