Gray Day

by Eric O'neill

  In the center of the park, Hanssen stopped on a small wooden-and-steel bridge. He leaned on one railing, looking down toward Wolf Creek’s thin trickle of water past icy banks. The gray sky hung heavy with the promise of snow. All the better to cover his tracks.

  Hanssen looked and listened. A dog barked, momentarily startling him, but the echo came from far away. Distant traffic from Route 123 droned like waves on a beach. He was alone.

  Minding the mud along the creek bed, Hanssen stepped off the bridge and clambered under it. He fished a package out of his sport coat and slid it into the superstructure. He’d wrapped the package in dark trash bags and packing tape, following a routine that had carried him through decades.

  Once satisfied that no one could spot the dead drop, he climbed back onto the bridge and smiled. He had just loaded his final drop to the Russians after twenty-two years of spying. He knew that no other spy could match his body of work. None of them had lasted long enough to try. Now Hanssen would go dark. This was his farewell.

  He retraced his steps toward his car and placed a piece of white tape on the Foxstone Park sign to signal his Russian friends that his secrets waited under the bridge. At Hanssen’s next stop, he would collect his payment: $50,000 that would help secure the many things his growing family needed. He’d included a warning of sorts in his last letter. Something had aroused the FBI “sleeping tiger.”

  After Hanssen made the drop, he retraced his steps back to the car. He fished his keys from a pocket, then dropped them. Two vans screeched to a halt on either side of his Taurus. Camouflaged agents rose like apparitions from the gloom of the park around him. SWAT team members swarmed out of vans, their rifles at the ready.

  Hanssen began to raise his arms but was grabbed by FBI agents before they cleared his waist. “The guns are not necessary,” he said quietly.

  Rough hands pulled Hanssen’s arms behind his back and handcuffed him. His former colleagues told him to stand with his legs apart as they patted him down for weapons. Hanssen suffered the indignity in silence. He’d lost his final gamble.

  “What took you so long?” he said.

  CHAPTER 25

  UNDERSTANDING

  February 18, 2001–8:15 p.m.

  “What is with you?” Juliana asked.

  Rain drizzled from the evening sky, blotting out the taillights of the traffic ahead. I clicked on the windshield wipers.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were distracted all weekend,” she said, glancing at the phone on my lap. “You carried that thing around the entire time.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. “Stuff is going on at work.”

  She turned away, watching Route 295 as it curved along the banks of the Anacostia River toward the brightly lit monuments of downtown DC. Juliana and I had spent the majority of our drive from the Delaware coast in silence. To say I had a lot on my mind was an understatement.

  My cell rang, and we both jumped. Emotion fell away and I raised the phone to my ear. Either way, at least I’d have my answer.

  “It’s Kate. It’s done.”

  The words sent my stomach into free fall. I put on my blinker and eased right through traffic toward the shoulder. My hands shook on the wheel. “Do you need me to come in?”

  “No. Nothing for you to do now.” She paused. I could hear voices in the background. “You were right, Eric.”

  “The Palm?”

  She shouted at someone, her voice muffled, then turned back to me. “The Palm gave us where and when he’d make the drop to the Russians, right down to the hour. He showed up and we got him.”

  My world narrowed to Kate’s voice in my ear. The Palm Pilot also sealed an airtight connection between Ramon Garcia, “B,” and Hanssen. It was our smoking gun—a unicorn in intelligence investigations. Ever since Gene had smiled out his car window at me on that Sunday morning back in December, the FBI had piled lies upon lies like weights on my back. They all fell away to be replaced by the hand-shaking realization that I’d shot the moon and won. I’d helped catch the biggest spy in FBI history. What came next?

  “Look,” Kate said, “I need to run. We can talk on Tuesday. We’re searching Hanssen’s house right now.”

  “Wait!” I stopped her before she hung up. “Can I tell Juliana?”

  Quiet on the other end of the phone. Then, finally: “Just immediate family. We’re trying to catch the IO when he comes to service the drop. We don’t want the story out.”

  Catching the Russian intelligence officer tasked with picking up Hanssen’s drop wasn’t necessary to fully prosecute Hanssen, but it would give the State Department explosive ammunition against Russia. Right now, none of that mattered to me.

  “Just Juliana,” I said.

  I finished easing the car over to the shoulder, one set of tires into the grass. Trucks screamed by with such force that the wind of their passing rocked our Jeep Cherokee. It all felt like a dull blur.

  “Tell me what?” Juliana said softly.

  “I need to tell you about Hanssen.”

  She folded her hands in her lap and waited. Half in a dream, I told Juliana the entire story, from Gene showing up at our apartment, to the truth behind all the lies I’d told her throughout. I told her about going to church with Hanssen and the FBI searching his car. I told her about replacing the Palm Pilot and the way we’d said goodbye. I told her about Kate, and how she’d shepherded me through an ordeal that forever molded my life. I told her I loved her, and always would.

  When I finished, she looked at me for a long time. Her eyes found mine and held them. I feared that she would condemn my dishonesty or kick me out of the car, vow to return to Germany, or tell me to move back in with my parents.

  When she finally spoke, she said a few perfect words.

  “Now I understand.”

  I leaned over and kissed her. My final leap in the Hanssen investigation would guide the rest of my life. Hanssen had never found real happiness. I’d found the path to mine.

  * * *

  On Tuesday morning, Kate met me in Hanssen’s office. She waited quietly while I turned a slow circle. Most of Hanssen’s possessions waited in banker’s boxes along one wall. Different FBI agents working the case from behind the scenes had taken the rest; trophies from the biggest espionage case in FBI history. An agent I had never met carefully inventoried the contents of my desk. Everything was evidence, including a floppy disk containing my criminal law exam outline. I hoped they’d give that back to me.

  Kate puffed out her cheeks and exhaled. “We still have to finish the search of his house and inventory this office. We’ll talk to his wife and kids. We hope he’ll plead guilty.”

  I thrust my hands into my pockets. “I never got his keys.”

  Kate laughed. “I never told you this, but there were two squads working this case at the end, and we had a bet as to who could collect the best evidence.” She leaned a hip against Hanssen’s desk and glanced around the office before continuing. I wondered what would become of this dreary place that had forever changed my life.

  “I received a telephone call on Saturday telling me I had won that bet.” Kate’s eyes met mine. “It was because of your ability to pick up Hanssen’s Palm Pilot.”

  She asked me what I planned to do next. I didn’t know. Maybe I’d apply to work in the real Information Assurance Section; maybe I’d go back into the field.

  “You know, Eric,” Kate said. “Most FBI agents spend a career chasing a case like this and never find one.” Her eyes softened. “You did a great thing here.”

  “Can you think of a better time to leave?”

  She laughed. “Nope. You can only go down from here.”

  I leafed through the green ledger books I’d never been authorized to touch and righted a picture of Hanssen’s family that the search team had knocked over. I pick
ed up Hanssen’s pen. Clicked it a few times for good measure.

  “Can I?”

  “I think you’ve earned it,” Kate said.

  I pocketed the pen and walked away.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE FUTURE IS YESTERDAY

  The FBI lauded the Gray Day squad and handed out awards and commendations to numerous agents. In late February 2001, Louis Freeh and newly appointed Attorney General John Ashcroft met in an HQ auditorium with every individual who worked the Hanssen case, from agents and ghosts to support staff and analysts. As Director Freeh gave one of his final addresses to the FBI before his resignation and Ashcroft told us that Hanssen would remain one of the most damaging spies in US history, a number of hardnosed agents blinked away tears.

  I sat apart from my former colleagues in the SSG and on the Gray Day team. I was the first investigative specialist in FBI history to work undercover directly against a spy, and I might be the last. Now I didn’t know on which side of the investigation I belonged.

  I returned to ghosting the streets and watched from the sidelines as information about Hanssen’s long list of crimes became public. His espionage included material on our nuclear program and an assessment of the KGB’s efforts to compromise it. He compromised our methods to retaliate against a large-scale nuclear attack and elements of our defensive strategy if the bombs fell. He provided the Soviets with a tactical edge by passing along our continuity-of-government plan—where we send our president and vice president, the cabinet and Congress, and everyone else who matters most during a catastrophic attack.

  Hanssen gave up detailed “ways and means” for how we protect ourselves and how we hunt spies. He burned covers and put at risk countless operatives working on foreign soil and quite possibly fellow field operatives in Washington, DC. He gave the Soviets our protocols for conducting counterintelligence. The Soviets were able to plan a counterattack to defeat every move we made; it was like the United States was coaching a Super Bowl team against a rival who knew each play before the offense set up at the line.

  Kate must have known some of this, maybe all of it, but she hadn’t told me. I understood. Had I known, my anger might have compromised my ability to calmly collect the facts against Hanssen. I would not have seen the man through the spy and would have never found a way to relate to him. I had to act like a young man finding my way, not a spy hunter seeking to take down Russia’s top mole.

  I realized that Hanssen had placed the FBI through a constantly resetting OODA loop. For two decades, neither his KGB handlers nor the teams of FBI investigators discovered his identity. They couldn’t even nail down in which agency he was hiding. Each time investigators closed in on Hanssen, he’d change his actions, forcing the FBI to observe new information, reorient, decide, and act. Hanssen used pseudonyms and dropped information stolen from other agencies to mask his location. When our highest sources in the Soviet Union reported that a mole hid within our intelligence community, Hanssen gave up Martynov and Motorin to his KGB handlers. Soviet intelligence flew them back to Moscow and put a bullet in the back of each of their heads. No lengthy trial. No celebrity defense attorney or media firestorm. No appeals process or pleas for clemency. Picture a dark hallway, a shadowy figure, and a loud gun. Russia doesn’t waste time with traitors.

  One afternoon, after watching a Soledad O’Brien report on CNN, I scooped up my phone and speed-dialed Kate to confirm a story. The network was reporting that the FBI and the NSA had bored a tunnel under the Russian embassy on Tunlaw Road in Washington, DC. At the end of the tunnel, sophisticated listening devices captured conversations in the embassy above and fed us a constant stream of raw intelligence. Golden information. One of the most expensive and complex tricks of espionage in history. Also a total waste of time. Even before US engineers completed the tunnel, Hanssen had keyed Russia into its existence.

  During all the years I spent chasing Russians out of the embassy, I’d never realized an FBI tunnel was right under my feet. I’d never had a need to know. I traded a few curses with Kate about how Hanssen’s betrayal had likely led investigators down hundreds of useless rabbit holes. If the Russians know that there’s a super-secret tunnel under their embassy and we have round-the-clock analysts drinking pots of coffee and listening to every conversation, and the Russians know that we don’t know that they know, what can they do? They can laugh behind their hands while feeding us false information, years of false information, every word manufactured to make us chase our own tail.

  An FBI friend of mine once told me that it wasn’t what Hanssen did that made him want five minutes alone in a room with the spy, it was what Hanssen undid. Every step we took toward securing our nation—to defeat spies and recruit assets, to follow those who wanted to do us harm, to bring out of the shadows those working against us—the Russians skipped a step ahead of us. And when the United States can’t conduct counterintelligence—when the information brought back by our CIA and NSA is defective, or when we can’t investigate the spies swarming around cities like Washington, DC, and New York—buildings fall and people die.

  In March 2002, Robert Hanssen pled guilty to thirteen counts of espionage, one count of conspiracy to commit espionage, and a final count of attempted espionage. The maximum penalty for each count is the death sentence. Hanssen had a good lawyer. The government agreed to take the death penalty off the table and offered Hanssen life in prison with no chance of parole or reductions in his sentence for good behavior. In return, Hanssen agreed to cooperate fully and truthfully during intelligence community debriefs and to provide the FBI with all information regarding his criminal activity and espionage. Hanssen agreed that his debrief would be a “lifetime commitment” that would include answering questions; turning over all writings, documents, and materials relating to his espionage; and submitting to polygraph examinations. Hanssen ended up getting his first FBI polygraph shortly after his arrest.

  The government agreed not to collect on a $1,437,000 forfeiture judgment against Hanssen that represented the proceeds of his espionage, including the $50,000 the FBI found under the Long Branch Nature Center pavilion at the Lewis drop site. Bonnie would keep a survivor’s annuity portion of Hanssen’s retirement pay (about $40,000 per year), the house she and Hanssen shared, and the three cars they owned. She would also learn that her husband had dishonored every aspect of their marriage. Hanssen had posted strange and vivid sexual stories about Bonnie on public message boards, installed a camera in their bedroom so that his friend Jack could watch the couple in their most private moments, and gave money and a car to an exotic dancer he met during frequent trips to a popular downtown DC strip club. On the balance sheet of their lives, Hanssen did their marriage far more harm than good.

  When the magnitude of Hanssen’s betrayal became public, the FBI faced a hailstorm of questions, recriminations, and finger-pointing. As Ashcroft and Freeh prepared to explain to the inspector general how the FBI had failed to identify Hanssen as the mole for so long, I was coming to understand the beauty of Hanssen’s law. The FBI couldn’t catch Hanssen because they were looking in all the wrong places. It wasn’t until the FBI thrust me into Room 9930 with Hanssen that they introduced an unknown variable that broke Hanssen’s OODA loop and beat him at his own game. Meanwhile, Hanssen taught me to be a better spy.

  In May 2001, I took a deep breath and walked away from the FBI. I considered completing my law degree and returning as a special agent or Justice Department attorney, but I knew that if I were to remain in that world, only undercover operations would fulfill me. I chose Juliana, our marriage, and a career that would keep us together, not tear us apart. I improved my grades, polished my résumé, and applied to law firms.

  I never forgot Hanssen’s law.

  In the aftermath of the investigation, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the attorney general asked the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to review the FBI�
�s performance in the Hanssen case and make recommendations for reforms that would, hopefully, prevent another breach. The OIG made twenty-one recommendations. By September 2007, the FBI had implemented the majority of them, and it went on to make sweeping changes to internal security. Today, the FBI’s internal counterintelligence and computer security programs hunt spies from within as voraciously as the men and women of the bureau investigate external threats. The counterintelligence walls that Hanssen dismantled over twenty-two years of espionage are now bulwarks of defense that leave few places for future moles to hide.

  Most important, the FBI leapt into the computer age. Programs to detect improper computer usage and to enforce “need to know” when accessing information prevent the abuse of databases that thrilled Hanssen. The FBI’s systems now audit access to critical cases in real time and sound an alarm when someone dips fingers where they don’t belong. The security exploits and self-name searching in the ACS that Hanssen routinely abused are things of the past. Finally, the FBI remembered that in every organization, employees are the best security surveillance system. All FBI personnel must now graduate from security-education-and-awareness training to help them spot violations.

  These changes would ensure that no spy from within the FBI ever surpassed Hanssen as the worst spy in the FBI’s history. But what about the spies from without?

  * * *

  In December 2015, I opened a letter from the Office of Personnel Management. The OPM oversees all policy created to support federal human resources departments, with all that entails: overseeing health-care and insurance programs, administering retirement and benefit services, assisting federal agencies in hiring new employees, providing federal investigative services for background checks, and creating leadership training programs. If you’ve ever been a federal employee or applied for a federal job, the OPM probably has a file on you. Mine included my Social Security number; address; date and place of birth; residency, educational, and employment history; foreign travel history; and information about immediate family and personal acquaintances. The letter informed me that all of this personal information could have been stolen in a security breach that was later traced to hackers affiliated with the Chinese government. Following the letter’s instructions, I signed up for the free credit-monitoring service OPM had offered as an olive branch. Numb fingers typed my information into yet another database that the US government could allow to be compromised.