Lis Wiehl - A Spy in Plain Sight : The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert Hanssen—Americas Most Damaging Russian Spy

A Spy in Plain Sight

The Inside Story of the FBI and Robert HanssenAmericas Most Damaging Russian Spy

Lis Wiehl

New York Times Bestselling Author

For Dani and Jacob. I love you to the moon and back.

Mom

Dear Reader,

As the daughter of an FBI agent and a third-generation federal prosecutor, I grew up believing the men and women of the FBI were always the good guys, combating crime and working hard toward the ultimate goal of keeping us all safe. My father was that kind of FBI agent, and so were the people I worked with.

But all the while my father and other FBI agents were working to keep Americans safe, Robert Hanssen was working just as hard to betray the agency he had sworn allegiance to and the people and country he had sworn to protect. His selling of national secrets to the Russians cost lives and gutted operations critical to national security. In the process, he also besmirched the reputation of the FBI and branded it in ways that echo stillas an agency under siege, one unable to regulate itself from within.

I was compelled to dig deeper into the Robert Hanssen story because I believed that there were secrets yet to be uncovered. Whats more, I believed that the uncovering of those new details would further a richer understanding of the facts behind the story and a more robust discussion of how we can assure the FBI never again cultivates another treasonous character like Robert Hanssen within its ranks.

After more than twenty years of selling America out to the Soviets and later Russians, Robert Hanssen was finally arrested on February 18, 2001. He was still being processed when reporters began digging into his past and barely behind bars before book deals were being signed. Before the year was out, Adrian Havill (The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold) and David A. Vise (The Bureau and the Mole) had brought their accounts to market, followed the next year by Ann Blackman and Elaine Shannon (The Spy Next Door), Lawrence Schiller (Into the Mirror), and David Wise (Spy: The Inside Story). Schillers book, written with Norman Mailer, is the outlier in this crowda blend of fact and speculation. The others are all solid journalistic accounts that do their authors proud. Wises Spy is even better than that.

But all these early books struggled to a greater or lesser degree to put Hanssens actions into the context of the organization he so egregiously betrayed. The March 2002 report by the Commission for the Review of FBI Security Programscommonly known as the Webster Commission after its chairman, former FBI and CIA director William Websterhelped a bit with that and was available to some of the later authors. But the full examination of how Hanssen was able to hide in plain sight arrived in August 14, 2003, when the Justice Departments Office of the Inspector General issued its Review of the FBIs Performance in Deterring, Detecting, and Investigating the Espionage Activities of Robert Philip Hanssen. That document was devastating to the Bureau and incredibly enlightening for those trying to understand how such a traitor could have been in operation all those years. The report also enraged some of those closest to the Hanssen case and has gradually loosened their tongues in the decades since.

Victor Cherkashins 2004 memoir Spy Handler threw an entirely new perspective into the mix. A Washington-based KGB agent, Cherkashin was Hanssens handler. In theory, the book was a rare chance to see Americas star traitor through the eyes of his Soviet master, and the book is occasionally revealing if not always trustworthy. At least two FBI agents I interviewed told me they thought Cherkashins memoir was part of a disinformation campaign, and I have been wary of it accordingly.

The most recent print addition to the Hanssen libraryEric ONeills Gray Day (2019)focuses on a thin slice of the story. ONeill was sent undercover to be Hanssens office assistant for the six weeks before his arrest, and he recounts his experience in lively detail that centers around his own contribution. More valuable but far harder to access is David Wises second crack at telling the story. The Seven Million Dollar Spy (2018) provides rich detail on Hanssens eventual takedown, but Wise took ill while working on it, and his book was published posthumously and is available only as an audio book.

Meanwhile, the fifteen years between Cherkashins questionable account and ONeills narrow one have been filled with revealing bits and pieces of this incredibly complex story, and I have tried to take full advantage of them all. Mike Rochford, the FBI agent most responsible for running Hanssen to ground; David Major, Hanssens champion at the Bureau for much of his career; and David Charney, the psychologist who has spent more time with Hanssen post-arrest than any other mental-health professional, have all spoken at great length about the case in appearances at the International Spy Museum in downtown Washington, DC, and elsewhere. Ive followed up on those talks with extensive interviews, especially with Rochford and Charney.

Bonnie Hanssen, still Bob Hanssens wife, although he languishes in a federal prison from which he will never be released, refuses to meet with writers and reporters, but I have spent numerous hours communicating with her brother Mark Wauck, also an FBI agent. Mark granted me access to extensive email communications with the now-deceased Brian Kelley, the CIA officer who was psychologically brutalized by the CIA while under suspicion for the crimes Hanssen committed. Kelleys son, Barry, and widow, Patricia McCarthy, also opened up in heartbreaking ways and led me to explore in detail the full scope of collateral damage that accompanies crimes as heinous as Hanssens.

Maybe most hauntingly, Hanssens best friend since high school, Jack Hoschouer, laid himself bare for this accountan act of raw courage for which I will be forever grateful and a kind of expatiation for actions that Jack is still struggling to understand.

Where feasible Ive given many of these principal characters space to tell key parts of the story in their own words. They were there and deserve to be heard.

Bob Hanssen is where he should be, in jail for the rest of his life, but still at large are questions about his motives, his psyche, and the damage he caused; whether the FBI has blinded itself to the lessons it should have learned; and whether we are any better protected today from a new Bob Hanssen than we were from the actual one who ripped the guts out of Americas secrets. Thats where this book ends. But Hanssens story will continue to wind through American history for years to come.

Even in a mature democracy, the rule of law can hang by a slim thread. An FBI that fails to police itself adequately or allows its mission to become subverted or its vast investigative powers to be abused could be the only difference between government of, by, and for the people and government by a tyrannous few.

Lis Wiehl

F or FBI director Louis Freeh, this evenings keynote address should be sheer pleasure. The event is almost a family affair, the annual father-son banquet at his sons school. Justin, the youngest of the Freehs four children, is by his side.

The venue is a friendly one, too. Located in a nicely wooded campus just off busy Seven Locks Road, in Potomac, Maryland, the Heights School lacks the panache of more established DC-area private schools such as St. Albans, Georgetown Preparatory, and Sidwell Friends, but the Heights has a unique value proposition that fits comfortably with Louie and Marilyn Freehs own beliefs. The all-male school, grades 3 through 12, was founded in 1969 by a group of Catholic laymen associated with Opus Dei.