Read Online Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America by David Wise - Free Book Online
Authors: David Wise
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normal, in fact, that more than one acquaintance compared them to June and Ward Cleaver, the stereotyped suburban couple in the classic 1950s TV show
Leave It to Beaver
.
Vienna, Virginia, where the Hanssens lived, was a leafy bedroom community of well-kept lawns and watchful neighbors. Once a year, Bob and Bonnie and the children drove down to Florida to visit his parents. When Hanssen’s father left the police force, he and his wife could not really afford the old neighborhood in Chicago anymore. After one big snowstorm, Howard developed bursitis in both shoulders. That did it; Howard and Vivian Hanssen retired to Venice, Florida. Bonnie’s parents remained in Park Ridge, even after her father retired from the university.
Friends did notice how little Bob Hanssen seemed to spend, how careful he was about parting with his money. “They had three mortgages and drove used cars,” said one. “The Hanssens never spent money, never went out to eat, except McDonald’s on the way to Florida to see his parents.”
To supplement her husband’s FBI salary, Bonnie Hanssen taught religion and church history at Oakcrest, an Opus Dei Catholic school, which the couple’s girls could attend with low tuition. The boys went to the Heights, another Opus Dei school in Potomac, Maryland.
Occasionally the Ohlsons, or Paul Moore and his wife, were invited for dinner. “When he lived out in Vienna we had dinner in each other’s homes,” Moore said. “He had this houseful of kids.”
Hanssen seldom missed a day going to mass. Sometimes he would duck in for the noon mass at the chapel in the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington, not far from FBI headquarters. The mass there was celebrated by the center’s director, Father C. John McCloskey, an Opus Dei priest who knew both the Hanssens.
And once a month, Hanssen would go to the “evenings of recollection” at the Opus Dei Tenley Study Center on Garrison Street, just off upper Wisconsin Avenue in northwest Washington. The modern, redbrick building, formerly the high school of the Heights, houses aCatholic youth center “dedicated to the character development of young men,” its brochure explains, to help them become “committed to live by Christian principles.”
The evenings of recollection were men-only events. According to Frank Byrne, the center’s administrator, “Typically a priest delivers a meditation, talking for half an hour, perhaps on some point of doctrine, then the men repair to the living room for readings, perhaps the works of Ronald Knox, * then they return to the chapel and the priest gives the benediction.” Sometimes guest speakers were invited as well. Twice, Hanssen persuaded Paul Moore to talk at the Tenley Center about his work for the FBI.
One night on the way to the Tenley Center, Hanssen had a serious automobile accident. “Some young guy made a left turn in front of him,” Moore said. “Bob was badly hurt. I think his elbow was broken. He ended up with a very awkward cast, with his left arm out at an angle, and a rod sticking out. He couldn’t drive.
“I lived in Arlington. I called him up and said, ‘How are you getting into work?’ He said, ‘The car is wrecked, we have only the one car.’ But he thought that God would provide.”
A more secular solution ensued; Moore offered to drive Hanssen to headquarters. “It turned out I picked up not only Bob but his two girls in their high school outfits, saddle shoes and tartan skirts, and drove down Chain Bridge Road into Georgetown. At the time Oakcrest, the girls’ school, was on MacArthur Boulevard. We dropped them off, and then we went downtown to the bureau.”
And at work, Hanssen was gaining access to more and more sensitive material. In the analytical unit, Hanssen now sat on the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence technical committee, which coordinated all of the division’s electronic surveillance operations.
By late summer of 1985, Hanssen’s headquarters time
Leave It to Beaver
.
Vienna, Virginia, where the Hanssens lived, was a leafy bedroom community of well-kept lawns and watchful neighbors. Once a year, Bob and Bonnie and the children drove down to Florida to visit his parents. When Hanssen’s father left the police force, he and his wife could not really afford the old neighborhood in Chicago anymore. After one big snowstorm, Howard developed bursitis in both shoulders. That did it; Howard and Vivian Hanssen retired to Venice, Florida. Bonnie’s parents remained in Park Ridge, even after her father retired from the university.
Friends did notice how little Bob Hanssen seemed to spend, how careful he was about parting with his money. “They had three mortgages and drove used cars,” said one. “The Hanssens never spent money, never went out to eat, except McDonald’s on the way to Florida to see his parents.”
To supplement her husband’s FBI salary, Bonnie Hanssen taught religion and church history at Oakcrest, an Opus Dei Catholic school, which the couple’s girls could attend with low tuition. The boys went to the Heights, another Opus Dei school in Potomac, Maryland.
Occasionally the Ohlsons, or Paul Moore and his wife, were invited for dinner. “When he lived out in Vienna we had dinner in each other’s homes,” Moore said. “He had this houseful of kids.”
Hanssen seldom missed a day going to mass. Sometimes he would duck in for the noon mass at the chapel in the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington, not far from FBI headquarters. The mass there was celebrated by the center’s director, Father C. John McCloskey, an Opus Dei priest who knew both the Hanssens.
And once a month, Hanssen would go to the “evenings of recollection” at the Opus Dei Tenley Study Center on Garrison Street, just off upper Wisconsin Avenue in northwest Washington. The modern, redbrick building, formerly the high school of the Heights, houses aCatholic youth center “dedicated to the character development of young men,” its brochure explains, to help them become “committed to live by Christian principles.”
The evenings of recollection were men-only events. According to Frank Byrne, the center’s administrator, “Typically a priest delivers a meditation, talking for half an hour, perhaps on some point of doctrine, then the men repair to the living room for readings, perhaps the works of Ronald Knox, * then they return to the chapel and the priest gives the benediction.” Sometimes guest speakers were invited as well. Twice, Hanssen persuaded Paul Moore to talk at the Tenley Center about his work for the FBI.
One night on the way to the Tenley Center, Hanssen had a serious automobile accident. “Some young guy made a left turn in front of him,” Moore said. “Bob was badly hurt. I think his elbow was broken. He ended up with a very awkward cast, with his left arm out at an angle, and a rod sticking out. He couldn’t drive.
“I lived in Arlington. I called him up and said, ‘How are you getting into work?’ He said, ‘The car is wrecked, we have only the one car.’ But he thought that God would provide.”
A more secular solution ensued; Moore offered to drive Hanssen to headquarters. “It turned out I picked up not only Bob but his two girls in their high school outfits, saddle shoes and tartan skirts, and drove down Chain Bridge Road into Georgetown. At the time Oakcrest, the girls’ school, was on MacArthur Boulevard. We dropped them off, and then we went downtown to the bureau.”
And at work, Hanssen was gaining access to more and more sensitive material. In the analytical unit, Hanssen now sat on the FBI’s foreign counterintelligence technical committee, which coordinated all of the division’s electronic surveillance operations.
By late summer of 1985, Hanssen’s headquarters time
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