ESPIONAGE Risking his life for cash: a look at an American spy

New book tells the life story of Robert Hanssen, the seemingly normal American turned double agent.
By ROB STOUT
SPECIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
'The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History,' by David A. Vise (Atlantic Monthly Press, $25).
Robert Hanssen's 1962 high school yearbook photo shows a gangly kid with close cropped hair and wearing an awkward looking suit, similar in appearance to other young men of his age and time.
But unlike most contemporaries, he already had aspirations of being a double agent and devoting himself to the most complicated and treacherous form of espionage.
Fast forward 25 years to a similarly deceptive portrait of a modest, church going family man trained as an accountant and living in split-level suburbia. By the mid-1980s, Hanssen was all this as well as a well-placed counterintelligence officer for the FBI, and just beginning a secret life as the most damaging Soviet agent employed by the U.S. government.
Washington Post reporter David Vise attempts to explain the paradox of Robert Hanssen in an alternately confusing and compelling & quot;inside story & quot; based largely on court transcripts and interviews with a variety of people who knew him.
Much of Hanssen's 15-year betrayal is, by now, well known. The highly publicized affidavit filed by the government after his arrest rivaled fiction, complete with its long clich & eacute;d dead drops, code names and Swiss bank account.
Using this as an outline, Vise fills in many of the missing blanks with a number of his own revelations, the most important being that Hanssen's wife, several priests and a brother-in-law, Mark Wauck, were aware of these activities.
Vise further contends that Wauck, an FBI agent in Chicago, informed his superiors as early as 1990 that Hanssen & quot;was hiding thousands of dollars in cash, & quot; but the bureau did nothing. Hanssen continued to pass state secrets for cash and diamonds while using his expertise to avoid detection for 10 more years.
More than secrets: What set Hanssen apart from other moles, namely CIA agent Aldrich Ames, is the amount and quality of information passed on to the Russians.
He didn't just give away secrets, but entire information systems that in turn compromised numerous technical operations, counterintelligence techniques, sources and methods. Add to that the identities of three men working as double agents within the ranks of the KGB (two of whom were executed) and you have what one intelligence official described as & quot;megaton damage. & quot;
Of course, the interest level in this particular spy story is heightened not so much by the disabling of the nation's security apparatus, but the salacious details of Hanssen's other proclivities which included Internet pornography (detailed word for word in an appendix titled & quot;The Sexual Fantasies of a Spy & quot;), a closed circuit bedroom camera and his failed relationship with a stripper.
A mole's identity: All of which leads the reader to ask: Who was Robert Hanssen and why did he turn to spying? Those questions still remain unanswered. Vise's pat psychological make-up first attributes his actions to a verbally and physically abusive father. Later, the & quot;disgruntled employee & quot; argument finds its way into the text with such sweeping statements as & quot;Hanssen's rage at the FBI erupted each time he was passed over for promotion. He fought back by attempting grand, daring feats of espionage. & quot;
& quot;Grand, daring feats & quot; may be closer to reality than anyone cares to imagine. Besides the general strangeness and instability that emerges from between the lines of Hanssen's correspondence with KGB (and later SVR) handlers, one cannot help but to hear the James Bond theme buzzing through his head.
& quot;One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane, & quot; he tells them at one point, or evoking images of Pierce Brosnan running through the darkness in formal wear, & quot;recognize that I am dressed in a business suit and cannot slog around in inch-deep mud. & quot;
It all seems to support the observation of a former colleague who put it another way, & quot;he was in it for the game, not the gain.