Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America (13 page)

“In March of eighty-four he went to Guyana. From there, he was making calls to the SMUN—the Soviet Mission to the United Nations. Instead of saying, ‘Hey, guys, it’s Gennady,’ he was using his full name.” Platt was convinced that Vasilenko, knowing the FBI was listening, was trying to indicate to Platt where he was.

In October 1987, Platt flew to Guyana, and with an FBI agent met with Vasilenko, once more trying to recruit the KGB man, who was happy to see his friend but again turned him down. Platt did not give up; he said he would return to Guyana and they arranged to meet there again in February, on Platt’s birthday.

In the files of the CIA, Vasilenko was designated with the code name
GTGLAZING
. In addition, as is customary, the CIA and the FBI gave him a joint cryptonym,
MONOLITE
.
^*

A copy of Platt’s October cable to CIA headquarters reporting on his encounter with Vasilenko in Guyana fell into Hanssen’s hands, but he erroneously reported to the KGB that the Russian was working for American intelligence. By misinterpreting the cable and passing it to the KGB, Hanssen had placed yet another life at risk.

This was so because Vasilenko could not afford to report his encounter with Platt to Moscow headquarters. He had become entirely too friendly with Platt. When a KGB officer is pitched by the CIA, he is required to report it—and then is almost always recalled to Moscow to remove him from temptation. To avoid a recall, and perhaps to sidestep having to explain his actions to the KGB, Vasilenko never reported the meeting.

But Hanssen had. In January 1988, two months after Hanssen put Platt’s cable in the dead drop, Vasilenko was told to go to Havana for a KGB meeting. There he was jumped by two KGB goons who broke his arm and accused him of treason. He was sent back to Moscow, thrown into Lefortovo prison, and interrogated for about six months. Finally, he was released for lack of evidence but fired from the KGB.
^*

Hanssen in the same November package also provided a summary of the secrets divulged to the CIA by Vitaly Yurchenko during his three-month interlude as a defector two years earlier. Since Aldrich Ames had been one of Yurchenko’s debriefers, the KGB already knew what secrets the defector had revealed; still, it was nice to get the information from a second mole.

Also included in Hanssen’s package was a technical document describing COINS-II, the internal Internet used by the U.S. intelligence community to exchange information.
^†
In return, the KGB left $20,000 in cash for Hanssen and a letter of best regards from the KGB chief, Vladimir A. Kryuchkov. The Russians also assured Hanssen that another $100,000 had been deposited for him in a Moscow bank at 6 to 7 percent interest.

Early in February 1988, Hanssen and the KGB exchanged documents and money once more at the
PARK
drop site, which the KGB, perhaps in recognition of its frequent use, had now renamed
PRIME
.
Hanssen’s letter, in addition to acknowledging the $20,000, provided detailed information about Victor Sheymov, an important Soviet defector to whose file he had access. He promised “a full report” on Sheymov “as soon as possible.”

The CIA had smuggled Sheymov out of Moscow in 1980—“exfiltrated” him, in the agency’s jargon for clandestinely spiriting someone across a border to safety. Sheymov, a communications expert, had worked for the KGB’s eighth chief directorate, the Soviet equivalent of the NSA. He was a troubleshooter for the directorate, traveling frequently in the Communist bloc to unravel problems involving the security of codes and ciphers.

Hanssen told the KGB that he could read the Sheymov file because a special project involving the defector was about to begin. At the time, Hanssen was reviewing the file to prepare to take part in a series of debriefings of Sheymov. After meeting Sheymov, Hanssen became a personal friend of the Russian and stayed in close touch with him. Their families often socialized together. Sheymov, of course, did not realize his good friend in the FBI was reporting back to the KGB about him.

In the same exchange, Hanssen also identified a KGB illegal in the United States, an officer operating without diplomatic cover, who had been recruited as a double agent by the FBI. Once again, Hanssen had placed a bureau source in great jeopardy.

In his package, Hanssen also included certain secret details about U.S. communications intelligence, describing just what Soviet traffic the NSA was unable to read. Along with several classified documents on paper, Hanssen for the first time enclosed a computer floppy disk on which he had downloaded additional secrets.

In return, the KGB gave Hanssen $25,000 in cash and another letter of thanks from Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB chairman, for the information about
M
—Gennady Vasilenko. The KGB asked for more information about M and about the FBI’s operations in New York.

In March, Hanssen mailed three more computer disks to the KGB. Once during that month, when the Russians tried to clear the newly named
PRIME
drop site, they could not, because there were too many people in the park. When the exchange finally took place, Hanssen included a particularly sensitive
TOP SECRET
report entitled “The FBI’s Double Agent Program.” The document was a detailed description of the FBI’s double agent operations worldwide over a ten-year period, including joint operations with other U.S. intelligence agencies. The report
would have included everything learned by every American double agent over a decade. It would also have helped the KGB to weed out any fake walkins floated by the bureau to offer their services to the Russians.

The KGB’s package contained another $25,000 in cash and a letter saying it had been unable to read some of the computer disks. The letter also asked Hanssen for information about codes, submarines, and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), President Reagan’s proposed antimissile system, better known as Star Wars.

Early in April, the KGB received a letter from “Jim Baker” with a note that said: “use 40 TRACK MODE. this letter is not a signal.” Hanssen, the computer whiz, was explaining to the KGB that he had formatted the floppy disks in a mode that hid the data on specific tracks. The disk would appear blank to anyone who did not use the correct codes to decrypt it.

Two days later, Hanssen sent another note, with another disk, explaining in greater detail how to decrypt the computer disks. The new disk included more information about Victor Sheymov, as well as details about another KGB officer and about two Soviet FBI recruitments.

Hanssen also renewed his request to be paid in diamonds, a subject he had raised early on with the KGB, in 1985. All that spring of 1988, he continued to funnel secrets to the KGB.

It was on Monday, May 30, that the KGB got its only fleeting glimpse of Robert Hanssen. A KGB officer arrived at the
PRIME
dead drop at 9:03
P.M.
, three minutes after the time that the exchange was scheduled to take place. In the dark, the KGB officer saw a man remove the signal, get into his car, and drive away.

It was mid-July before Hanssen made contact again, with a letter grumbling about arrangements. A spy’s life, he seemed to be saying, was not easy, so please shape up:

On July 18 the exchange took place at
PRIME
, and this time the KGB received a truly enormous haul of secrets—more than 530 pages of documents, including a CIA analysis, classified
TOP SECRET
, of Soviet intelligence-gathering aimed at U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities. The CIA report evaluated how much Moscow knew about America’s early warning systems and about the nation’s ability to retaliate against a massive nuclear attack.

Hanssen also turned over an even more highly classified 1987 document, prepared for the director of central intelligence, entitled “Compendium of Future Intelligence Requirements: Volume II.” This was a wish list of what the CIA wanted to know about the military strength of the Soviet Union and other countries, which thus amounted to a road map of what the CIA did
not
know. Hanssen also passed to the KGB a March 1988 CIA study classified
SECRET
and entitled “The Soviet Counterintelligence Offensive: KGB Recruitment Operations Against CIA.”

The study of recruitment efforts aimed at the CIA contained a warning notice that read: “Intelligence Sources or Methods Involved (WNINTEL). National Security Information. Unauthorized Disclosure Subject to Criminal Sanctions.”

Finally, Hanssen turned over the pièce de résistance, the study of Soviet penetrations of the FBI that he had personally directed and prepared with the assistance of Jim Milburn and Bob King. The KGB could now enjoy the product of this intensive effort by the FBI’s Soviet analytical unit. The study, classified
TOP SECRET
, identified the sources that had hinted at moles in the bureau, and exactly what each had said.

In exchange, the KGB gave Hanssen another $25,000 in cash, and asked for data on several fronts, including FBI surveillance techniques and recruitment operations. The Russians also proposed two new dead drops near Hanssen’s home in Vienna. Both were under footbridges in parks, one designated
BOB
—were the Russians trying to tell him something?—and the other
CHARLIE
.

On the last day of July, Hanssen mailed the KGB another computer disk, this one with information about the bureau’s technical surveillance operations, which of course Hanssen knew a great deal about, details of a new recruitment in New York City, and the identities of several other Soviets the FBI had targeted for recruitment attempts. The following month, the KGB informed Hanssen that another $50,000 had been placed in his Moscow bank account.

This extraordinary pace of spying continued through the rest of the year. The last Monday in September brought another exchange, this time at
BOB
. Hanssen hid a package with about three hundred pages of material, including FBI documents and a verbatim transcript of a meeting of the Counterintelligence Group.
^*

Perhaps sensing from the tone of Hanssen’s letters that their super-spy was a man who needed a great deal of stroking, the Russians left yet another letter from KGB chairman Kryuchkov expressing his deep gratitude. They also advised Hanssen that by way of thanks another $50,000 had been deposited in his escrow account.

But business is business. The letter also discussed communications procedures and security measures and once again pushed for a personal meeting. Ever hopeful, the KGB included a discussion of passports.

It also asked Hanssen to provide information about the CIA’s secret wiretap operations in the Soviet Union, details about agent networks, intelligence sources of U.S. allies, various FBI programs, and past spy cases. Up to this point, much, although by no means all, of the information Hanssen provided was about the spy wars between U.S. and Soviet
intelligence—recruitments, targets, double agents, and the like. But this time, Moscow asked for data about missile technology.

Hanssen obliged, with a Christmas present for the KGB. On Monday, December 26, 1988, after celebrating the holiday with his wife and children and exchanging gifts in the warmth of his home on Talisman Drive, Hanssen hid another sort of package at dead drop
CHARLIE
.

Included with a floppy disk and 356 pages of material were six recent National HUMINT Collection Plan (NHCP) documents. The acronym stands for human intelligence—information gathered by spies, as opposed to that collected by electronic or other technical means.

Since the KGB wanted to know about missiles, Hanssen was certain they would be interested in the highly secret U.S. assessment and projection of Moscow’s nuclear missile arsenal, including the number, strength, and details of its ICBMs and warheads. He gave them a document entitled “Soviet Armed Forces and Capabilities for Conducting Strategic Nuclear War Until the End of the 1990s.”

Hanssen’s neighborhood in northern Virginia was festooned with Christmas lights. The carolers on his quiet street had serenaded Hanssen in the frosty air with “O, Little Town of Bethlehem” and the other songs of the season of peace on earth. But Hanssen was following another star, passing secrets in the night that dealt with the unimaginable destruction of his own country.