by Eric O'neill
In September 1985, Hanssen returned to the New York Field Office. This time around he supervised a foreign counterintelligence squad, which gave him access to a wealth of Soviet spy information, including the identity of the FBI’s Soviet sources and informants and the locations of Komitet gosudarstvennoy bezopasnosti (KGB) defectors in the United States. Empowered by his success with the GRU, Hanssen graduated himself to the big leagues. He decided to spy for the KGB.
* * *
On October 4, 1985, the mailman delivered an odd envelope to Viktor Degtyar’s home in Alexandria, Virginia. Degtyar opened the envelope and found a second envelope nestled within the first like a matryoshka doll. Stern instructions forbade Degtyar from opening the second and demanded he take it to Victor Cherkashin.
The contents of the envelope would either make or break Degtyar’s career. Whoever sent the envelope knew Degtyar was a KGB Line PR officer. The KGB organized its espionage activities into distinct lines (or sections) that had different responsibilities in gathering intelligence and pursuing counterintelligence. Each line of activity came under the direction of the KGB rezident, a spy operating out of a KGB First Chief Directorate rezidentura, typically an embassy. In Washington, DC, the rezident was an official member of the ambassador’s staff who had the covert job of spymaster. He operated out of the Soviet embassy, and all espionage lines reported to him.
Degtyar’s Line PR collected information about political, economic, and military strategic intelligence and conducted active measures. Other lines pursued different tasks. Line X sought to acquire American technology and implement technical spying. Line KR gave the FBI the biggest headache. KR intelligence officers were the ones who recruited American spies.
The mere existence of the letter would inform the KGB that the FBI had uncovered Degtyar. He dismissed thoughts of opening the inner letter, or burning it in his fireplace. Either could mean prison or worse if the KGB found out.
The next day Degtyar dutifully handed the entire package to Cherkashin, the Line KR chief at the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC. Cherkashin opened the letter with calm hands. As the head of counterintelligence and security for the KGB in America’s capital, he’d seen it all. He had already extracted a wealth of information out of the CIA from Aldrich Ames. What new spy had volunteered to the cagey spymaster? Once his eyes skimmed the letter, his hands began to shake.
Dear Mr. Cherkashin:
Soon, I will send a box of documents to Mr. Degtyar. They are from certain of the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. Intelligence community. All are originals to aid in Verifying their authenticity. Please recognize for our Long-term interests that there are a limited number of persons with this array of clearances. As a collection they point to me. I trust that an officer of your experience will handle them appropriately. I believe they are sufficient to justify a $100,000 payment to me. I must warn of certain risks to my security of which you may not be aware. Your service has recently suffered some setbacks. I warn that Mr. Boris Yuzhin (line PR, SF), Mr. Sergey Motorin, (line PR, Wash.) And Mr. Valeriy Martynov (line W, Wash.) Have been Recruited by our special services.
To further support my bona fides Details regarding payment and future contact will be sent to you personally….My identity and actual position in the community must be left unstated to ensure my security. I am open to commo suggestions but want no specialized tradecraft. I will add 6, (you Subtract 6) from stated months, days and times in both directions of our future communications.
True to his word, the mysterious spy signed the letter with the simplest of monikers: “B.”
From 1985 to 1991, Hanssen handed the KGB the intelligence community’s most important Soviet counterintelligence and military secrets. His first letter to Cherkashin caused enormous damage. The FBI and CIA relied on Yuzhin, Motorin, and Martynov to spy for the United States and provide critical inside information about Soviet espionage operations. After Hanssen’s letter, the KGB flew each of the spies back to Moscow and tried them for espionage. After sham trials, the Soviets executed Motorin and Martynov. Yuzhin received a fifteen-year sentence. By 1991, Hanssen had also completely compromised the FBI’s ACS database. The intelligence efforts of the United States against the Soviets unraveled.
Meanwhile, Hanssen counted his money at his FBI desk, laughing while the FBI looked for him in all the wrong places.
Hanssen shelved “B” in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell and Russia orchestrated a pivot from communism to quasi-democracy. The new government split the notorious KGB into the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR). (The GRU continued to collect intelligence for the Russian military.) Hanssen feared that KGB spies fleeing the USSR’s bloated husk would find their way into FBI nets and trade their secrets for freedom. Better to go dark until Russian intelligence sorted itself out and disappeared any defectors.
In 1990, the FBI had promoted Hanssen to the FBI headquarters inspections staff. By then, the Soviets had paid him more than half a million US dollars, and that money burned a hole in his pocket. He spent a lot of it as an inspector’s aide. His assignment required travel to FBI field offices, resident agencies, and FBI legal attaché offices in US embassies across the world so that he could rate their performance. Traveling gave Hanssen an opportunity to spend some of his espionage money away from the prying eyes of the FBI and his family. He rented fast cars, holed up in lavish apartments with an exotic dancer, and acted out his James Bond fantasies.
In the summer of 1991, the FBI brought Hanssen back to headquarters and made him a program manager in the Soviet Operations Section. His unit fought to keep US technology and scientific achievements out of Russian hands. Six months later, the FBI finally promoted him to unit chief in charge of the National Security Threat List Unit. The choice position at one of the FBI’s most glamorous new units should have fast-tracked Hanssen to new executive heights. Instead, Hanssen’s dour personality and caustic leadership skills frustrated the team he managed. He would frequently sit in his office and listen to foreign-language tapes instead of rolling up his sleeves and pitching in with his team. In 1994 the FBI removed him from the position and assigned him to a computer squad at WFO.
While Hanssen’s career fizzled and died, the FBI and CIA hunted for the mole they’d named Gray Suit. By 1993, the FBI was pouring enormous resources into the search. The problem? The FBI focused all its investigative powers on the CIA.
The FBI’s CIA tunnel vision blinded the investigation to two events that may have ended Ramon Garcia’s long reign as king of spies. In the summer of 1990, while Hanssen flew around the world inspecting FBI field offices, Bonnie found $5,000 in her husband’s dresser drawer. Perhaps remembering the last time she found incriminating evidence, Bonnie asked her brother for advice. Her brother happened to be Special Agent Mark Wauck, an FBI agent based in Chicago. Wauck reported the money, along with other suspicions he had about his brother-in-law, to his FBI supervisor in Chicago. The Chicago Field Office dismissed the concerns. At the time, the FBI didn’t have a policy or procedure for investigating such reports. No one at the FBI questioned Hanssen about the money, and the incident never made it to his file.
In 1993, the day after his father died, Hanssen nearly self-destructed. He surprised a GRU officer in the garage of the officer’s apartment building. He told the shocked Russian that he had spied for the KGB, and that he was Ramon Garcia. The GRU officer backed away from the rabid FBI agent and refused to accept a package that Hanssen insisted contained details about double-agent cases that the FBI ran against the GRU. Hanssen returned to headquarters and monitored the FBI’s computer systems. The GRU officer complained about the meeting to his superiors. Russia lodged a protest against the US government, complaining that the FBI had officially sanctioned a provocation.
Hanssen sweated behind his computer monitor. The FBI opened a formal investigation that should h
ave led directly to him. After all, the spy had broken his careful cover and even used the code name he’d given the KGB. Hanssen kept his passport and open ticket to Moscow handy in case he had to run.
But the FBI never linked the strange parking-garage approach to Hanssen or to any other agent. Hanssen thanked God for his good fortune. His recklessness had almost cost him everything. From now on, he would be more cautious. He put Ramon Garcia back on injured reserve and silently plotted his next move. Hanssen had learned patience.
In 1995, the FBI found a quiet spot at the State Department Office of Foreign Missions to stash Hanssen until his mandatory retirement in 2001. OFM acts like a watchdog for foreign missions operating in the United States. This includes activities like registering and titling vehicles operated by the foreign diplomatic community in the United States, protecting US citizens from foreign diplomats that abuse their privileges and immunity, and ensuring that American diplomats abroad are treated well. The FBI brass figured that the OFM liaison position would be a perfect fit for a seemingly unambitious supervisory FBI agent and promptly forgot about him. During the six years he liaised with the State Department, Hanssen had no supervisor, submitted no performance reviews, and made no reports to the FBI about his work efforts. While I graduated from the FBI Academy and was thrown face-first into deep-end work, ghosting Russian targets and chasing terrorist bombers, Hanssen spent his days surfing the Internet, watching movies, and hanging around with friends and colleagues. He also spent a great deal of time searching the ACS.
For some reason, the FBI had given Hanssen unrestricted access to thousands of internal FBI classified documents for which he had no “need to know.” Hanssen would routinely search his own name and address, the addresses of his drop sites and signal sites, and other identifying information to determine whether the FBI had a case open that might link Ramon or “B” to him. While in ACS he mined the FBI’s database for the most sensitive espionage investigations. Ramon might have been taking a break, but Hanssen was preparing for his future.
In 1999, the exiled FBI agent contacted a known SVR Line KR senior intelligence officer identified as “V.K.” The newly formed SVR was delighted to hear that their goose would once again lay golden eggs. In October 1999, “B” received a triumphant letter from the SVR.
Dear friend: welcome!
It’s good to know you are here. Acknowledging your letter to V.K. we express our sincere joy on the occasion of resumption of contact with you. We firmly guarantee you for a necessary financial help. Note, please, that since our last contact a sum set aside for you has risen and presents now about 800.000 dollars. This time you will find in a package 50.000 dollars. Now it is up to you to give a secure explanation of it.
As to communication plan, we may have need of some time to work out a secure and reliable one. This why we suggest to carry on the 13th of November at the same drop which you have proposed in your letter to V.K. We shall be ready to retrieve your package from DD [dead drop] since 20:00 to 21:00 hours on the 12th of November after we would read you signal (a vertical mark of white adhesive tape of 6–8 cm length) on the post closest to Wolftrap Creek of the “Foxstone Park” sign. We shall fill our package in and make up our signal (a horizontal mark of white adhesive tape).
After you will clear the drop don’t forget to remove our tape that will mean for us—exchange is over.
The letter went on to describe a new signal site, code-named “Ellis,” on a telephone pole at the southwest corner of a T-shaped intersection of Foxhall Road and Whitehaven Parkway. The pole sprouts from the sidewalk between two crosswalks near the curved brick sign for George Washington University’s Mount Vernon Campus. During the morning and evening rush hour, numerous cars crawl through the intersection and give way to a single stoplight and frequent foot traffic. In the middle of the day or after the evening commute, the Ellis telephone pole stands a silent and lonely sentinel. Perfect for a spy.
Hanssen could request a dead drop by driving a tack into the pole 1.2 yards from the ground. He could do so anytime he wished, even in the middle of a crowd seeking to cross the intersection. It takes little sleight of hand to stand beside a pole and drive a tack into it.
A Russian intelligence officer would occasionally drive by Ellis looking for a spot of yellow or white. A white tack meant that Hanssen wished to request an urgent dead drop. Yellow signaled that Hanssen felt threatened and needed assistance from his Russian friends.
In addition to the bridge in Foxstone Park, the Russians offered a new drop site called “Lewis,” located under a podium in the Long Branch Nature Center Amphitheater. The nature center’s sprawl of paths and ponds lies along a creek of the same name, which spills from the larger Four Mile Run stream. A wilderness trail winds past the nature center’s small green-sided education building to an isolated amphitheater hidden in a basin of trees. Sparse wooden benches set on rising tiers of brick and stone face a wooden stage that resembles an oversized pallet. During opening hours, a family might stumble through the quiet space, or a tour group might chatter through, seeking the meadow or Willow Pond. Occasionally the Nature Center will erect a screen between two large poles at the back of the stage and host a family movie night.
After the park closes at five p.m., the amphitheater is quiet and dark. Hanssen used a flashlight to find his way to the tens of thousands of dollars the SVR would tuck into a small depression behind the stage’s back corner. They set the signal for that dead drop location on a different telephone pole.
Ramon was back in business.
CHAPTER 19
HAVE FAITH
January 31, 2001—Wednesday
Hanssen dashed through the main door and disappeared into his office without so much as a hello. He emerged a few minutes later with his coat still on and a scarf wrapped around his neck.
“Get your coat,” he said.
“Where are we going?”
“To church.”
I huddled in my coat against the chill as we left headquarters and walked about ten blocks until we reached a nondescript building on the corner of Fifteenth and I Streets. The sign above the building read CATHOLIC INFORMATION CENTER. A bookstore.
Hanssen opened the door for me, and we stepped into a cozy, well-lit interior. Pleasant staff wearing name tags pinned neatly on crisp white shirts glided through rows of bookshelves. The store was divided into three sections: Learning the Faith, Living the Faith, and Loving the Faith. Hanssen took me to the Learning section.
“The congregation here is Opus Dei.” Hanssen spoke in the soft voice reserved for a library or place of prayer, which I suppose this place had covered.
At the time, all I knew about Opus Dei was that its members came from influential families, tended to hold positions of power, had to go to church every day, and dedicated their lives to the organization. Later, I learned that Opus Dei—meaning “work of God” in Latin—had been founded by Saint Josemaría Escrivá in Spain in the late 1920s. Escrivá was a Catholic priest who believed mainstream Catholics were losing sight of the true faith, becoming what we’d today consider lapsed or “grocery cart” Catholics. He sought to guide laypeople toward a special offering of their spiritual, professional, social, and family life to God.
Hanssen shared Saint Escrivá’s fears about the insufficiently devout Catholics he liked to call “junior varsity practitioners.” I certainly fit his description. While I tried my best to attend Mass on Sundays and, as the Jesuits at Gonzaga High School reinforced, be a “man for others,” I barely scratched the surface of what Catholicism truly demanded. I lived my faith in my heart and mind, but I could have made it to church on a few more holy days of obligation.
Still, I’ve always felt more comfortable in the Catholicism in which I was raised, “junior varsity” though it may be, than in an organization like Opus Dei. The organization is an orthodox personal prelature of the Catholic Church—meaning it lies outside the
normal Church hierarchy and reports directly to the Vatican—and has been criticized as elitist for the way it separates itself from the broader Catholic Church, as well as for its secret practices, aggressive recruiting, and tight control over its members. As a robust individualist, I knew the rigid requirements of Opus Dei would fit me like a hair shirt two sizes too small. But I also knew it could be the key to understanding Hanssen’s personality.
“Bonnie sponsored me into Opus Dei,” Hanssen continued. “I was a lapsed Lutheran before I met her, and not a good one at that. She saved me.” He gave me a look. “If you like I can sponsor you.”
I nodded, feeling a jolt of adrenaline. Juliana grew up Lutheran in an East Germany that discouraged religion. She limited her church appearances to Easter and Christmas Masses with me at St. Matthew’s Cathedral. Ever musical, Juliana loved St. Matthew’s exceptional choir. Hanssen’s relationship with his wife flipped the script Juliana and I followed, but the similarities between us were jarring. I had sniffed out another connection between us that might help break the case, but I stood perilously close to a line I’d vowed not to cross. The investigation had taken over every other part of my life. I wanted to hold my faith in reserve.
Behind the rows of neat books and Information Center staff, large double doors led into a beautiful chapel with polished wooden pews and an ornate golden altar at the front. The rows of pews might have held a few dozen people, but only ten or so sat in silent reflection. The hushed atmosphere reminded me of drafty morning Masses at Saint Jane de Chantal, where the only noise might be a slight creak of wood or a muted cough.