Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America by David Wise

Author:David Wise
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Robert, Chinese - United States - History, Asia, Intelligence & Espionage, Political Science, Espionage, Political Freedom & Security, Intelligence Officers, True Crime, Intelligence Service - United States - History, Spies, China, Spies - Russia (Federation), Intelligence Agents - United States, Hanssen, Russia (Federation), International Relations, Law Enforcement, United States, Military, Intelligence Agents, History, Chinese, Intelligence, General, Intelligence Service, Intelligence Service - China - History, Biography & Autobiography, Biography
ISBN: 9780375758942
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2002-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

*Lichtenberg agreed to meet with the author to recount her story although she was still employed by the FBI in a sensitive position in the intelligence division, now the National Security Division. She expressed some concern that her criticism of how the bureau dealt with her case might cause problems in her job, but she was willing to speak out anyway.

19

Hibernation

Although Hanssen had gone into his hibernation mode at the end of 1991 as the Soviet Union collapsed, he volunteered his services to the Russians again in 1993, a fact that the FBI learned to its surprise only when it debriefed him after he had pleaded guilty to espionage.

For most of the 1990s, Hanssen the spy was dormant, having abruptly cut off his contacts with the KGB. But in 1993 he revolunteered to the GRU, the Russian military intelligence arm for which he had spied in 1979, when he had received the $30,000 that he later told Bonnie Hanssen he had sent to Mother Teresa.

Hanssen explained to his FBI and CIA debriefers that his reemergence in 1993 was the result of overwhelming curiosity, to which he succumbed. It was a curiosity about what had happened to information he had previously passed to Moscow.

At least twice, Hanssen had provided the KGB with a complete roster of the FBI’s double agent (DA) cases. Typically, in these operations, an American military enlisted man or officer under FBI control would offer secrets to Soviet military intelligence. One frequent goal would be to see what secrets the Russians asked the double agent to obtain. That in turn would indicate what Moscow did not know. Conversely, the questions that were not asked might suggest what the Russians already knew. It was these double agent operations that led to Hanssen’s fleeting, risky attempt to recontact the GRU, because it was the GRU that the FBI had targeted in these cases.

“It was almost an academic curiosity,” one senior intelligence official explained. “He had given up a lot of DA cases that the FBI and the military ran with the GRU as the target. They were joint ops. Hanssen sees them continue to operate and wonders why. Is the KGB not sharing his information with the GRU? Why are these cases still going on?” It was beginning to drive Hanssen up the wall; he had to know the answer.

“So he makes an approach to a GRU officer stationed in the Russian embassy in Washington. He has a package of documents with him that he was ready to give to the GRU guy. He approaches him early one morning in the garage of the apartment building where the GRU man lives and introduces himself. ‘I am Ramon Garcia,’ he says.

“The GRU man thinks it is a trap, gets into his car, and drives away. It apparently stunned Hanssen. He may have thought that all of Soviet intelligence would know by now about the famous Ramon Garcia.”

Hanssen’s risky move then took an astonishing turn. The Russians, convinced that the episode was a ploy by U.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.