Hanssen Robert - Gray day: my undercover mission to expose Americas first cyber spy

December 10, 2000Sunday

Phones should not ring on Sunday mornings. I rolled across the bed, scooped my battered Nokia from the nightstand, and burrowed back under the covers. Our English basement apartment reminded me of winter camping trips Id gone on as a Boy Scout. The single-pane windows trapped about as much heat as a canvas tent.

Juliana peered at me over the thick comforter. Her eyes were glazed with sleep, and her blond hair was piled around her head like windblown thistle. Wed been married four months, and each morning I woke beside her was a revelation. I checked the time8:00 a.m. I was about to slap the phone down on the receiver when the voice on the other end made me freeze. All thoughts of a lazy morning flushed out of my mind. It was Supervisory Special Agent Gene McClelland.

Dont bother getting dressed up, he said. Just lace up your shoes. Im parked out front.

As I fumbled for my pants, my mind raced through possible scenarios, all of them grim. It was unheard-of for an FBI supervisor, the man in charge of my entire squad, to show up at a private residence on a Sunday morning. To put this into perspective, imagine your bossthe president or manager of your companyarriving at your house early one weekend morning. If you are the boss, imagine the chairman of your board parked in your driveway. If you are the chairman, imagine POTUS himself dropping by, waiting for you to appear. This was worse than any of that.

FBI supervisors never come to you. They summon. Gene showing up at my apartment could only mean something was wrong. I pulled a George Washington University Law sweatshirt over my head and took a deep breath. No idea whats going on, but Gene is parked outside. The concern on Julianas face made me pause. Ill be right back. Then I swallowed my hollow words and turned to leave.

I eased through the front door out onto the sparse lawn. Number 626 was only a few steps away from E Street, and a quick jog away from the US Capitol Building. Our building squatted between expensive town houses like an ugly sibling in a family portrait. The crammed one-bedroom sometimes felt like a closet, and wed found mold behind the walls and in the lone heater, but it was all we could afford.

As the wind hit my face, I looked up. No one on the surrounding rooftops or balconies. I did a quick lateral scan and saw the red splash of a cardinal light upon a telephone wire. A runner huffed his Spandexed way down E Street, and the distant noise of traffic droned from nearby Pennsylvania Avenue like waves on a beach. Only one car I didnt recognize was parked on the street. Gene.

Each step away from the building made me wince, but no SWAT vans came crashing around the corner, sirens blazing. Instead, the window of the idling sedan rolled down. Get in, Gene said.

I slid into the passenger seat and closed the door against the December chill.

Gene didnt bother with niceties. Have you ever heard of Robert Hanssen?

I hadnt. Should I have? I asked.

No, Gene smiled. Thats good.

I nodded.

Thats why we chose you.

I stayed silent, trying to parse the insult from the compliment. The only certainty was that Id been left in the darkagain. For months now, I hadnt been able to pursue any of my normal, high-priority targets for the FBI. Id been slapped on the wrist, shuffled into the minor league. Not because Id messed up a lead or bungled a case, but because Id married Julianaa German national.

No one had told me that FBI operatives with high security clearance are required to fill out a permission form before proposing to the love of their life. The FBI had instituted the policy after a few agents married into the mob. Meet the perfect girl, marry her, and then learn that her father is an FBI organized-crime target. Not the brightest moments for the universes premier investigative agency.

Still, imagine my shock when I bounced into the office to let my team know that Id proposed marriage to the most wonderful girl, and my supervisor asked after my engagement form.

Then imagine me telling the FBI brass that my new bride hailed from Brandenburg, Germany. Faces that were rarely cheerful turned to stone. You should have reported contact with an East German national, they said.

Dont you mean German national? I asked. Havent you heard of reunification? There is no more East Germany.

Not to us.

The FBI benched me while the FBI legat, or legal attach office, in Germany investigated my in-laws. Think of a whale trapped on a sandy beach desperate to get back into the water. That was me. I sat in the office day after day with a suspended security clearance, working on a target-acquisition database Id developed, until the FBI convinced itself that Juliana was not a spy. The investigation into Julianas family occurred before I had a chance to meet them, and Im still pretty convinced my in-laws think Im Stasi. They arent far off.

By this point Id been in the FBI nearly five years working as an investigative specialist, otherwise known as an investigator, but better known as a ghost. Not too many years before I typed up my FBI application, the agency realized that Russian targets could run circles around special agents, who focused on criminal investigations and technological and research-based counterintelligence. This was especially the case just after World War II, when a target could look over his shoulder and see a legion of buzz-cut, well-suited white males swarming him. Not exactly subtle. Without specialized surveillance and undercover investigative training, the agents were at a constant disadvantage: the Russians had more operatives and better tradecraft. The FBI was stuck solving crimes after the fact, when what it needed to do was stop the spies before they committed those crimes.