Read Online Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America by David Wise - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: David Wise
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was coming to a close. For the FBI, it was an eventful year; an astonishing number of espionage cases were wrapped up by the bureau with a series of arrests, so many that the news media dubbed 1985 the Year of the Spy.
The extraordinary series of spy cases had actually begun the previous year with the arrest in October of Richard Miller, the first FBI agent ever to be charged, and later convicted, of espionage. Miller, seriously overweight and bumbling, was working as a counterintelligence agent in the Los Angeles FBI office when he began an affair with Svetlana Ogorodnikov, a Soviet émigré woman whom he was supposed to be watching. Instead, she persuaded him to spy for the KGB, promising him $65,000 and a Burberry trench coat. *
Officials at FBI headquarters, greatly embarrassed by Miller’s arrest, closely followed developments in the case, nowhere more so than in the intelligence division. Richard Miller’s first trial opened August 5, 1985, a little more than six weeks before Robert Hanssen was to report to New York for a second tour in the city.
So Hanssen was well aware of the Miller case, and of the highly publicized arrest by the FBI a few months earlier, on May 20, 1985, of John A. Walker, Jr., the former Navy chief warrant officer who headed a family ring of Navy spies. Walker, who sold U.S. codes to the KGB, had spied for eighteen years. †
On August 1, 1985, as Hanssen also knew, Vitaly Yurchenko, a senior KGB official, had defected to the CIA in Rome, and information he provided led the FBI to place a former CIA officer, Edward Lee Howard, under surveillance. But Howard, aided by skills he had learned in the CIA, escaped into the New Mexico desert on September 21 and turned up in Moscow, a fugitive on espionage charges.
On the day that Howard escaped from the FBI, Hanssen was beginning his new assignment in New York, this time as a supervisor of a counterintelligence squad.
The march of espionage cases continued in rapid succession as Hanssen settled into his new job. On November 21, Jonathan Jay Pollard,a U.S. naval intelligence analyst, was arrested as a spy for Israel. * Only one day later FBI agents arrested Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a former CIA broadcasting analyst who had passed secrets to Chinese intelligence for thirty-three years, for which he received about $140,000. † Three days after that, on November 25, Ronald W. Pelton, a former NSA employee who sold that agency’s secrets to the Soviets, was arrested as a result of clues provided by Vitaly Yurchenko. ‡
Sometime before leaving Washington, in the months that Hanssen worked in the Soviet analytical unit, the decision to resume his career as a spy that had been forming within him became final. He knew by then of the arrests of Richard Miller and of the Walkers, the defection of Vitaly Yurchenko, the escape of Edward Lee Howard, and the fact that his counterintelligence colleagues were working overtime to close in on more spies. In the single year 1985, in fact, eleven persons were arrested for espionage and fourteen persons were convicted.
None of this deterred Hanssen in the least. His mind was made up. This time, he decided, he would play in the majors. Despite the risks, he would volunteer his services to a different branch of Soviet intelligence: the KGB.
* The FBI’s intelligence division was divided into operational sections, such as the Soviet (now Eurasian) section responsible for counterintelligence operations, and the analytical sections. As the names implied, the operational sections supervised operations; the analytical sections analyzed.
* Ronald Knox, the English author and theologian, was an Anglican who converted to the Catholic Church and served as chaplain of Oxford University in the years before World War II. Although known for his translation of the Bible, he also wrote popular detective stories.
* Miller’s first trial ended in a hung jury on November 6, 1985. Convicted in a second trial, he was sentenced to life
The extraordinary series of spy cases had actually begun the previous year with the arrest in October of Richard Miller, the first FBI agent ever to be charged, and later convicted, of espionage. Miller, seriously overweight and bumbling, was working as a counterintelligence agent in the Los Angeles FBI office when he began an affair with Svetlana Ogorodnikov, a Soviet émigré woman whom he was supposed to be watching. Instead, she persuaded him to spy for the KGB, promising him $65,000 and a Burberry trench coat. *
Officials at FBI headquarters, greatly embarrassed by Miller’s arrest, closely followed developments in the case, nowhere more so than in the intelligence division. Richard Miller’s first trial opened August 5, 1985, a little more than six weeks before Robert Hanssen was to report to New York for a second tour in the city.
So Hanssen was well aware of the Miller case, and of the highly publicized arrest by the FBI a few months earlier, on May 20, 1985, of John A. Walker, Jr., the former Navy chief warrant officer who headed a family ring of Navy spies. Walker, who sold U.S. codes to the KGB, had spied for eighteen years. †
On August 1, 1985, as Hanssen also knew, Vitaly Yurchenko, a senior KGB official, had defected to the CIA in Rome, and information he provided led the FBI to place a former CIA officer, Edward Lee Howard, under surveillance. But Howard, aided by skills he had learned in the CIA, escaped into the New Mexico desert on September 21 and turned up in Moscow, a fugitive on espionage charges.
On the day that Howard escaped from the FBI, Hanssen was beginning his new assignment in New York, this time as a supervisor of a counterintelligence squad.
The march of espionage cases continued in rapid succession as Hanssen settled into his new job. On November 21, Jonathan Jay Pollard,a U.S. naval intelligence analyst, was arrested as a spy for Israel. * Only one day later FBI agents arrested Larry Wu-Tai Chin, a former CIA broadcasting analyst who had passed secrets to Chinese intelligence for thirty-three years, for which he received about $140,000. † Three days after that, on November 25, Ronald W. Pelton, a former NSA employee who sold that agency’s secrets to the Soviets, was arrested as a result of clues provided by Vitaly Yurchenko. ‡
Sometime before leaving Washington, in the months that Hanssen worked in the Soviet analytical unit, the decision to resume his career as a spy that had been forming within him became final. He knew by then of the arrests of Richard Miller and of the Walkers, the defection of Vitaly Yurchenko, the escape of Edward Lee Howard, and the fact that his counterintelligence colleagues were working overtime to close in on more spies. In the single year 1985, in fact, eleven persons were arrested for espionage and fourteen persons were convicted.
None of this deterred Hanssen in the least. His mind was made up. This time, he decided, he would play in the majors. Despite the risks, he would volunteer his services to a different branch of Soviet intelligence: the KGB.
* The FBI’s intelligence division was divided into operational sections, such as the Soviet (now Eurasian) section responsible for counterintelligence operations, and the analytical sections. As the names implied, the operational sections supervised operations; the analytical sections analyzed.
* Ronald Knox, the English author and theologian, was an Anglican who converted to the Catholic Church and served as chaplain of Oxford University in the years before World War II. Although known for his translation of the Bible, he also wrote popular detective stories.
* Miller’s first trial ended in a hung jury on November 6, 1985. Convicted in a second trial, he was sentenced to life
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