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A 100-page FBI affidavit, filed in connection with the
charges, and interviews with neighbors, relatives and law enforcement sources
paint a contradictory picture: On the surface, Hanssen was a suburban dad, toiling
at his government job, joining with his wife, Bonnie, to raise six children
in the Washington suburbs, putting them through Catholic schools and colleges,
and making the payments on a Ford Taurus, an Isuzu Trooper and a fast-fading
Volkswagen van.
But at the same time, the government says, Hanssen was
something else entirely — a spy for the Soviet Union and its successor,
the Russian Federation. They were the sworn enemies of his team, FBI counterintelligence,
and, in the case of the U.S.S.R., of his seemingly beloved church.
Officials say Hanssen was a spy who profited from his activities,
collecting more than $600,000 in cash, about $50,000 in diamonds and the promise,
which he never took seriously, of another $800,000 in a Russian bank account.
But in court documents unsealed Tuesday, the government
says he also harbored the quaint fantasy of retiring from the FBI and relocating
to Moscow to teach college courses and train future spies. His boyhood hero,
he told his Russian keepers, was the British intellectual-turned-Soviet mole
Kim Philby. In the Cold War of the 1950s, Philby did exactly that — escaped
to Moscow.
"Want me to lecture in your 101 course in my old age? I
would be a novelty attraction," Hanssen wrote to a Russian contact last November.
"I'd decided on this course when I was 14. ... I read Philby's book."
That echoed the thought Hanssen expressed in November 1985,
after first approaching KGB agents in Washington and volunteering to supply
information. He would work, Hanssen wrote the KGB, for money, a few diamonds
for his children and "good will."
"So that when the time comes, you will accept (m)y senior
services as a guest lecturer," read the note, found by federal investigators
last fall.
"Eventually, I would appreciate an escape plan. (Nothing
lasts forever.)"
Policeman's son
Hanssen was born April 18, 1944, in Chicago, the son of
a policeman who rose to the rank of lieutenant. He was educated at Knox College,
a small and selective liberal-arts college in Galesburg, Ill., then studied
dentistry and accounting before landing at the FBI.
Hanssen's late start — he was nearly 32 when the bureau
swore him in — meant he was more mature than many recruits. But the age
difference left him with disdain for many he would serve with, bureaucratic
types who, he once told the Russians, went "all wet" when faced with a decision
they had to make by themselves.
In October 1985, Hanssen made just such a decision, the
government says, selling Russian intelligence the names of three American-based
KGB agents who were secretly working for the FBI. Hanssen had come by the information
when working at FBI headquarters in Washington. But he waited until being transferred
to New York City before approaching the Russians.
The three KGB agents, who had previously been betrayed
by rogue CIA agent Aldrich Ames, were recalled to Moscow, where two were executed
and the third given a prison sentence.
In 1987, he and the family returned to Vienna, Va., in
the Washington suburbs, and have lived there since.
By all appearances, their lives were solid and unremarkable.
Those who know the Hanssens describe them as a close family.
They attended Mass weekly. Four of the children attended Our Lady of Good Counsel
Catholic School, which now covers kindergarten through eighth grade, in Vienna.
Only two of the children remain at home, a comfortable brown frame house with
a basketball hoop on the side of the house.
Bernadette "Bonnie" Hanssen, who turns 55 this month, was
raised in Park Ridge, Ill., in a family that included eight children. Her father,
Leroy Wauck, was a professor at Loyola University in Chicago, a Jesuit institution,
where Bonnie earned a bachelor's degree in sociology. She teaches nearly full
time at Oakcrest School in McLean, Va., a small Catholic girls' school .
Robert and Bonnie met while they were both working in the
Chicago area, Wauck said. An acquaintance who spoke to her Tuesday described
Bonnie Hanssen as "in shock" after the arrest. She had no notion, the acquaintance
said, that her husband was even under suspicion of spying.
The Hanssens' son Mark is a politics major at the University
of Dallas in Irving, Texas, and their son John attends law school at the University
of Notre Dame. One of their daughters is married and has at least one child,
said Nancy Cullen, a neighbor of Hanssen.
Devoted mother
Bonnie is universally described as a devoted and skillful
mother who even recorded a commercial tape about activities a family can do
together.
"They're a wonderful family. They've been so concerned
about raising their children well," said Mary Ann Budnik, CEO of R.B. Media,
the company that sells Bonnie Hanssen's tape. "The more I think about it, the
more I think he's being framed."
Two of Bonnie's sisters live nearby with their husbands
and children. One, Jeanne Beglis, lives just a few doors down the street .
Wauck said his son-in-law didn't complain about his job.
"It just doesn't make sense," he said. "No one anticipated anything like this."
The charges read like a continuous drumbeat:
- Hanssen is accused of sending 27 letters and 22 packages to the KGB and
its successor agency, the SVR. They left 33 bundles, stuffed with thousands
of old dollar bills, for him.
- Because of him, operations were blown, including the 1989 investigation
of foreign service officer Felix Bloch, suspected of spying for the Russians.
Hanssen is accused of tipping off the Russians; officials believe that the
KGB passed the information on to Bloch. And officials say Hanssen passed along
names of potential recruits, including a boyhood friend.
Amid these events, bits of Hanssen's personality can be
spied.
He was obsessive about security, blowing off one document
drop when the Russians were three minutes late.
He had contempt for his colleagues, and even for some fellow
spies. Bloch, he wrote in one letter to the Russians, is a "shnook" whom he
saved only because he was a "friend" of Russia's intelligence community.
He had advice for his Russian buddies: Study the methods
of the late mayor Richard J. Daley, the boss of Chicago, to learn how to run
a government. And technical tips, too. Though he used a Palm III organizer,
he told the Russians in March 2000, the VII version comes with built-in wireless
internet capability. "Could be quite effective" in spying, Hanssen said.
He could be humorous. Overconfidence, he warned the Russians,
can lead "cocksure officers" to "step in an occasional cowpie."
"Message to the translator," Hanssen wrote in November
2000. "Got a good word for cowpie ?"
And salty. In December 1991, when a promotion and a new
job temporarily sidetrack his spying, he quoted Patton to show the Russians
that he was anxious to keep working for them.
"As General Patton said, 'Let's get this over with so we
can go kick the (expletive deleted) out of the (expletive deleted) Japanese,'
" Hanssen wrote.
Occasionally, Hansen enjoyed chatting, spy to spy, with
his Russian handlers. That $800,000 set aside for him in the MOST bank in Moscow?
He understood, he wrote in November, that it was only an "accounting notation"
that may or may not be paid "at some uncertain future."
No hard feelings, he said. "We do the same."
But the job could be frustrating. "You waste me!" he complained
when the Russians failed to keep in touch. Last year, he told his Russian keepers,
he knew all about the discovery of a Russian bug planted in the State Department
but had "no effective way" of tipping them off quickly.
And dangerous. His biggest fear, Hanssen confided, was
"someone like me" — an agent on the Russian side with knowledge of Hanssen's
spying who decided to work for the Americans. A former CIA counterintelligence
expert, Vincent Cannistraro, suspects that that is what happened.
Sometimes the work just seemed to be getting to Hanssen.
He could get the death penalty if caught, he said. Sometimes, the Russians didn't
seem to appreciate the risks he takes.
"I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing
myself for you," he wrote in March 2000.
"Conclusion: One might propose that I am either insanely
brave or quite insane. I'd answer neither. I'd say, insanely loyal. Take your
pick. There is insanity in all the answers."
Some former colleagues are saddened but not shocked that
Hanssen may have led a secret life.
"He was kind of a loner, introverted, didn't laugh easily,"
I.C. Smith recalled. "I could never figure out how he hung on as a headquarters
supervisor."
Contributing: Edward T. Pound, Kevin Johnson, Toni Locy
and Barbara Slavin.
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