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Robert Philip Hanssen

On February 18, 2001, Robert Philip Hanssen, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Supervisory Special Agent, was arrested and charged with committing espionage on behalf of the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, the intelligence service of the former Soviet Union) and its successors. Hanssen was the most damaging spy in FBI history. His espionage began in November 1979 – three years after he joined the FBI – and continued until his arrest, just two months before his mandatory retirement date.

Over more than 20 years, Hanssen compromised some of this nation’s most important intelligence and military secrets, including the identities of dozens of human sources, at least three of whom were executed. Hanssen gave the KGB thousands of pages of highly classified documents and dozens of computer disks detailing U.S. strategies in the event of nuclear war, major developments in military weapons technologies, information on active espionage cases, and many other aspects of the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Soviet counterintelligence program. On July 6, 2001, Hanssen pled guilty to espionage charges, and on May 10, 2002, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Hanssen's espionage spanned three separate time periods: 1979-81, 1985-91, and 1999-2001. Over more than 20 years, Hanssen compromised some of this nation's most important counterintelligence and military secrets, including the identities of dozens of human sources, at least three of whom were executed. Hanssen gave the KGB thousands of pages of highly classified documents and dozens of computer disks detailing US strategies in the event of nuclear war, major developments in military weapons technologies, information on active espionage cases, and many other aspects of the U.S. Intelligence Community's Soviet counterintelligence program.

During his 25 years with the FBI, Hanssen was a mediocre agent who exhibited strong technical abilities but had weak managerial and interpersonal skills. Despite his failings as a supervisor, Hanssen was on the FBI's promotional track for much of his FBI career, and he generally received average to favorable performance evaluations. While Hanssen's day-to-day behavior did not suggest that he was engaged in espionage, he continually demonstrated an unwillingness to properly handle classified information. His indiscretions and security violations were largely ignored and wholly undocumented, however, and he was allowed to remain in positions offering him broad access to highly sensitive counterintelligence information.

Hanssen encountered few security checks at the FBI. He was never asked to submit to a polygraph examination or to complete a financial disclosure form. Hanssen was subject to only one background investigation during his 25-year career at the FBI, and that issues raised during this investigation regarding his finances and contacts with a Russian defector were never pursued or resolved. The reinvestigation did little more than complete a “checklist” of items before making a favorable security determination; it did not substantively analyze Hanssen’s risk.

While Hanssen came to the FBI with serious personal insecurities, low self-esteem, and a fascination with espionage, these characteristics did not emerge during the application process. In the time period between 1976, when Hanssen joined the FBI, and 1985, when he completed his first tour in the Soviet Analytical Unit at FBI Headquarters, Hanssen's first espionage - conducted on behalf of the GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye, the Soviet Union's military intelligence arm) - took place between 1979 and 1981. The FBI's investigation of Soviet-related penetration leads during this time period was minimal. Early in his career, Hanssen demonstrated significant initiative and organizational skills, developing, for example, a case prioritization system that remains in use today at the FBI.

In the early 1980s, Hanssen served in the Budget Unit and in the Soviet Analytical Unit at FBI Headquarters. In the Soviet Analytical Unit, Hanssen gained access to the FBI's most sensitive human assets and technical operations against the Soviet Union. He also began a noticeable pattern of mishandling classified information, primarily by disclosing the existence of Soviet sources and investigations to people with no "need to know," such as FBI employees in other divisions and personnel from other agencies.

Between 1985 - when Hanssen became the supervisor of an FBI technical surveillance squad in New York and volunteered to the KGB - and 1992, Hanssen's FBI career progressed normally. These years constituted his most active period of espionage. With respect to the penetration issue, both the CIA and the FBI suffered catastrophic and unprecedented losses of Soviet intelligence assets in 1985 and 1986, which suggested that a mole was at work in the Intelligence Community. The FBI conducted several analytical efforts - including a major joint project with the CIA - that were unsuccessful at determining the cause of these compromises.

Hanssen delivered thousands of pages of highly classified documents and dozens of computer disks to the KGB detailing U.S. strategies in the event of nuclear war, major developments in military weapons technologies, identities of active and historical U.S. assets in the Soviet intelligence services, the locations of KGB defectors in the United States, analytical products from across the Intelligence Community, comprehensive budget and policy documents, and many other aspects of the Soviet counterintelligence program. He passed some of the most damaging information within his first two months of espionage, including the true names of the FBI's most significant Soviet sources at the time, KGB officers Sergey Motorin and Valeriy Martynov. Other significant operations that Hanssen compromised during this period included the FBI's espionage investigation of Felix Bloch, a senior State Department official suspected of providing information to the KGB, and an FBI analytical report regarding possible Soviet penetrations. Hanssen's second period of espionage contributed to the execution of at least three human sources - including Motorin and Martynov - and caused hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damage to U.S. intelligence programs.

After learning that its two most important KGB assets had been arrested, the FBI formed a six-person task force to determine how they had been compromised and whether an FBI mole was responsible. In the course of its review, the Task Force discovered that because of poor document controls and violations of the "need to know" principle it was impossible to determine who within the FBI had had access to the Motorin and Martynov cases. Accordingly, no FBI employee with knowledge of these assets was investigated. Nonetheless, in September 1987 the Task Force issued a final report stating that there was no evidence of a Soviet spy in the FBI.

Between 1987 and 1991, the FBI suffered continuing losses of Soviet human assets and technical operations that it could not explain. During this period, the FBI conducted two analytical studies that considered the penetration issue, but neither study led the FBI to investigate the possibility of an FBI mole. The first study was a two-year effort aimed at resolving historical allegations of an FBI penetration. The project proceeded chronologically, and by late 1988 the team had analyzed leads only from the 1950s and 1960s. In an interim report, the team concluded that two penetrations of the FBI existed before 1964, but the team never reached the time period relevant to the FBI's more recent and unprecedented losses. The project was abandoned in the summer of 1989.

The second study systematically examined more than 50 FBI operations that had been compromised since 1986, including human assets, technical operations, double agent programs, and recruitment operations. The final report, issued in November 1988, described the continuing, across-the-board problems within the FBI's Soviet operations, but was equivocal with respect to the possibility of an FBI mole. The report suggested that a CIA penetration was a more likely explanation for the FBI's losses. Hanssen compromised most of the significant operations discussed in the report.

In January 1992, Hanssen became the Chief of the National Security Threat List Unit at FBI Headquarters, the highest ranking position he held at the FBI. While in the NSTL Unit, Hanssen committed two serious and flagrant security breaches. First, he hacked into the FBI's computer system and accessed highly sensitive Soviet counterintelligence documents located on the hard drives of his colleagues and supervisors in the National Security Division. Hanssen grew nervous about what he had done and decided to report it to FBI management in the guise of revealing a flaw in the FBI's computer security. Hanssen's ruse succeeded, and no one questioned his breach of computer security. Hanssen's second significant breach occurred when, in direct contravention of a decision made by FBI management, he disclosed to the British intelligence service information about a highly sensitive FBI investigation.

Hanssen's failings as a supervisor and his inability to properly handle classified information led the FBI to remove Hanssen from his Unit Chief position, and he was subsequently detailed to the State Department as the FBI liaison to the Office of Foreign Missions (OFM). He served for six years in the OFM, until shortly before his arrest. With respect to espionage, Hanssen made a clumsy and aborted approach to the GRU in 1993 and then successfully re-volunteered to the KGB in 1999.

Hanssen started at the Office of Foreign Missions (OFM) at the State Department in February 1995 and remained at the State Department for the next six years. Hanssen's espionage - which during this period relied heavily on his improper use of the FBI's Automated Case Support (ACS) computer system - continued until his arrest in February 2001. The ACS system gave Hanssen access to thousands of internal FBI classified documents for which he had no "need to know." To determine whether he was under investigation by the FBI, Hanssen also frequently searched the ACS system for references to his own name and address. In addition, he successfully mined the system for information concerning the FBI's most sensitive espionage investigations. While the ACS system had audit capability, Hanssen's improper searches went undetected because the FBI did not conduct audit trail reviews absent an allegation of wrongdoing.

While searching the ACS system in the spring of 1999, Hanssen stumbled upon the FBI's most significant ongoing Russian espionage investigation. This case was a search for the KGB mole who turned out to be Hanssen. At the time, however, the FBI's investigation was focused on a CIA officer.

The FBI's penetration-related investigations increased dramatically in the 1992 to 2001 period. The FBI substantially increased the resources it devoted to the penetration issue and successfully identified and prosecuted several individuals who spied for Russia, including CIA officer Aldrich Ames. The most significant espionage investigation that the FBI pursued after the 1994 arrest of Ames, however, was the search for the penetration of the U.S. Intelligence Community who was later determined to be Hanssen.

The years between 1993 and 2001 marked one of the most active and productive periods for espionage investigations in the FBI's history. The FBI greatly expanded its counterespionage effort and successfully apprehended a number of significant Russian spies. This period was dominated, however, by the search for a KGB mole who was reportedly more damaging than Ames. The FBI poured enormous resources into this search. The FBI believed early on, however, that the mole was a CIA employee and did not change that view.

The FBI was on the wrong track from the beginning, because the mole the FBI was looking for was Hanssen, an FBI employee. The FBI believed early on that the mole worked at the CIA and subsequently pursued a lengthy investigation of a CIA employee. This was due in part to the suspect's ambiguous and sometimes suspicious behavior and in part to a belief that this individual had emerged as the lead suspect as the result of an objective and scientific process.

From the outset the FBI was focused on the wrong suspect at the wrong agency. The FBI never opened even a preliminary inquiry on any FBI employee in connection with the search for the mole ultimately identified as Hanssen. This was true even though the FBI had access to information suggesting that the mole might be an FBI employee, and believed that the mole had compromised certain FBI assets and operations. The squad responsible for the case was so committed to the belief that the CIA suspect was a mole that it lost a measure of objectivity and failed to give adequate consideration to other possibilities. Although several senior FBI managers had serious doubts that the CIA suspect was the correct target, and expected the Justice Department to decline prosecution for a lack of evidence, the Investigative Report was written as if the FBI had no doubt that the CIA suspect was a KGB mole who was the most damaging spy since Ames.

In late 2000, the FBI identified Hanssen as a spy and lured him back to FBI Headquarters - where he could be more easily monitored - with the offer of a temporary Senior Executive Service position involving computer security. Hanssen began his new position on January 13, 2001. On February 12, 2001, the FBI discovered a package containing $50,000 that the KGB had left for Hanssen in a dead drop site. Six days later, on February 18, 2001, after Hanssen had left a package for the KGB in a different dead drop site, he was arrested and charged with espionage offenses.

Much of Hanssen's conduct when committing espionage was reckless. For example, Hanssen (1) set up an FBI camera on a drop site he used for exchanges with the GRU during his first period of espionage; (2) used an FBI telephone line and answering machine for communications with the KGB in 1986; (3) deposited much of the KGB's cash directly into a passbook savings account in his name in the late 1980s; (4) suggested to his Russian handlers in 1991 that they attempt to recruit Jack Hoschouer, his best friend; (5) directly approached a GRU officer in 1993 and revealed that he was an FBI agent who had previously committed espionage for the KGB - an approach that led to a diplomatic protest from the Russians and an FBI investigation that could have identified Hanssen as a mole; and (6) searched the FBI's computer system, during his last period of espionage, for references to his own name, address, and drop and signal sites - conduct that would have been difficult to explain if the FBI had utilized the computer system's audit feature.

The ACS system remained insecure and vulnerable to misuse. The audit program relied on case agent review rather than third-party auditing. Moreover, the program had only retroactive effect; case agents did not receive real-time notice when someone seeks unauthorized access to their cases. The "need to know" principle is not adequately applied in the computer context within the Counterintelligence Division. The FBI reported in July 2003 that "attempting technical changes to improve ACS security would not be a smart business decision" in light of plans to implement a new automated case system known as the Virtual Case File (VCF).

The FBI's lax approach to personnel and information security also was apparent in its handling of security violations. Hanssen's career was replete with security breaches, none of which were documented in his personnel or security file or (with one exception) reported to the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility, the Security Programs Manager, the NSD's Security Countermeasures Section, the Justice Department Security Officer, or any other central location for review and consideration of appropriate disciplinary action.

Before Hanssen's arrest, the FBI's security program was based on trust. Historically, the FBI had not been in compliance with Executive Orders, Justice Department regulations, and Intelligence Community standards regarding internal security. Rather than taking the sort of proactive steps adopted by other Intelligence Community components - such as requiring regular counterintelligence polygraph examinations, financial disclosures, and meaningful background reinvestigations, and utilizing audit functions regarding computer usage - the FBI trusted that its employees would remain loyal throughout their careers.

Hanssen's initial decision to commit espionage arose from a complex blend of factors, including low self-esteem and a desire to demonstrate intellectual superiority, a lack of conventional moral restraints, a feeling that he was above the law, a lifelong fascination with espionage and its trappings and a desire to become a "player" in that world, the financial rewards he would receive, and the lack of deterrence - a conviction that he could "get away with it."