From: Date: Fri Mar 2, 2001 7:24am Subject: Ex-Russian secret service boss doubts Hanssen case Ex-Russian secret service boss doubts Hanssen case MOSCOW, March 2 (Reuters) - A former Russian spy chief cast doubt on Friday on allegations that FBI agent Robert Hanssen sold secrets to Moscow for more than $1 million, saying it did not have that kind of money. Hanssen was arrested on February 18 and accused of selling secrets to the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia for $1.4 million in money and diamonds since 1985. "I view this as a provocation from the FBI," said Nikolai Kovalyov, a former head of the FSB domestic security service and now deputy chairman of the State Duma lower house of parliament's security committee. "The astronomical size of the payments also makes me cautious," he told a news conference. "Russia simply does not have that sort of money." He said such spy cases were part of efforts by U.S. President George W. Bush to strengthen his own domestic position after his slim and contested election victory. Kovalyov said recent U.S. and British air raids on Baghdad and the U.S. desire to create a national anti-missile defence shield, opposed by Russia, were part of the same phenomenon. He said Hanssen had been in no position to harm U.S. national interests as his job, uncovering foreign agents in the United States, had not given him access to damaging secrets. The United States alleges that Hanssen compromised technical operations, including electronic surveillance and monitoring techniques, and intelligence targets. Kovalyov also saw no signs that Russia's secret services had embarked on an internal witch-hunt for spies, despite a number of recent espionage cases, including that of U.S. citizen Edmond Pope and of Russian researcher Igor Sutyagin. "As for spy mania, I would say the secret services are acting in a totally restrained and balanced fashion," he said. Pope was sentenced to 20 years in jail for trying to obtain secrets on an underwater missile but was pardoned by President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB spy and former FSB boss. Sutyagin, a researcher for the USA and Canada Institute, a respected thinktank, is still on trial on charges of passing secrets to Western handlers. He denies the charges. 2613 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:28am Subject: Why Call It 'Intelligence?' Why Call It 'Intelligence?' By Pavel Felgenhauer Thursday, Mar. 1, 2001. Page 9 The Moscow Times http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/03/01/009.html Last week FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested in the United States and charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for the last 15 years. A spokesman for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, Boris Labusov, told Russian State Television: "We never comment on whether any specific person has or has not a relation to Russian special services." While speaking Labusov noticeably smirked and added that "the greatest achievements of intelligence services become public knowledge only after an exposure." If Russian officials are trying to hide their alleged connection with Hanssen, they are doing a pretty lousy job of it. In fact, they seem to be quite proud of the idea that they had such an agent. In the '80s and '90s, the Russians apparently managed to operate two highly successful moles, one in the FBI and one in the CIA: Hanssen and Aldrich Ames. Moscow obtained quite a lot of sensitive information from Ames and, allegedly, from Hanssen as well. It's also virtually certain that Ames and Hanssen were not the only well-placed moles that Russia had in the West. Soviet intelligence was not only highly professional, but also remarkably successful. So why then did Moscow lose the Cold War? A retired Russian intelligence official once told me that in the late '70s, Russian military intelligence managed to acquire a package of highly secret documents revealing the true maximum production capacity of all U.S. heavy arms-making industrial plants. It turned out that the United States could not grossly expand tank and other heavy-weapons production even if the economy were put on a war footing and that the Soviet Union had a towering advantage in this field. The spies who came up with this important intelligence were expecting bunches of medals, but were harshly reprimanded by their superiors instead. The documents were suppressed by the military chiefs and never reported to the Politburo. The Soviet military-industrial chiefs were at that time conjuring a massive Western military threat in order to frighten the Kremlin into spending more on defense. They were deliberately fabricating yarns about U.S. military might and did not need any true information about American weaknesses. The same thing was happening on the other side of the Cold War divide. At the end of the '80s, the CIA estimated Soviet gross domestic product as almost 60 percent of America's. The agency portrayed Moscow not only as a military superpower - which it was in many aspects - but also as a modern industrial power, which it was not. As a result of such intelligence, the sudden political, military and industrial implosion of the Soviet empire came as a total surprise to the West. Throughout the Cold War, both countries spent billions of dollars recruiting moles that were used to find and "neutralize" enemy moles, while truly important information was shoved aside as insignificant. In 1995, for instance, the CIA produced a report that stated that no "rogue" state could develop intercontinental ballistic missiles within 15 years, and that if a threat of rogue ICBMs did develop, U.S. intelligence would detect it years in advance. This report disturbed many Washington decision-makers, so Congress formed a special commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld, who is now secretary of defense. The purpose of this commission was to conjure a rogue ICBM threat out of thin air. In 1999, the Rumsfeld commission concluded that "North Korea and Iran will have an ICBM force to attack the U.S. in five years" and Iraq will have an ICBM force ready to attack the U.S. in 10 years or sooner. Now, almost two years later, it's obvious that the Rumsfeld report is a sham and that the original CIA estimates are correct. But who cares? Rumsfeld was appointed defense secretary because he is a good apparatchik who knows that the truth is whatever the party says it is. For almost a year now, the Moscow elite has been anticipating, in accordance with intelligence reports, that the new Bush administration would be Russia's best friend no matter what happened here. At the same time, the West is still waiting for President Vladimir Putin to reveal himself as the true liberal that he must be at heart. By now, though, both East and West must have disappointedly returned to the drawing board to think up new policies - which no doubt are based on the latest reports of their respective intelligence services. Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent, Moscow-based defense analyst. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2614 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:28am Subject: Fraud case drama of CIA agent Fraud case drama of CIA agent http://www.thisisjersey.com/news/news2.html PART of a drama which began with a CIA agent being jailed in the United States for disclosing US secret information and money laundering through Jersey companies was played out in the Royal Court yesterday. The fraud and money laundering admitted by Texan Dennis Earl McMahan were discovered by an FBI investigation into his activities. This also looked into an unauthorised disclosure of US information that he had as a CIA agent. McMahan has been indicted in the USA and is now in prison in Dallas. In court yesterday were some of the parties who have become embroiled in a civil action which has its roots in McMahan’s fraud and the deposit of cash in Jersey-registered companies. The civil action began two years ago. McMahan had been working for the plaintiffs of the original action, ED & F Man Liquid Products Ltd and its subsidiary, Westway Trading Corporation, with the purpose of building contacts in the Ukraine to sell alcohol and molasses. In the course of this employment McMahan told his employers that each contract could only be made if there was a fee paid for ‘logistical and marketing services’. These were paid into accounts held by Kovzac Ltd and Clifton Resources Ltd, run by Bayard Trust Company Ltd in Jersey, all defendants in the civil action brought by ED & F Man and Westway. In 1998 Royal Court injunctions were put in place to ensure that any money which could be due at the conclusion of the civil case was recoverable by remaining in this jurisdiction. Yesterday the attorney representing Kovzac Ltd, Alexander Glotov, who had travelled from the Ukraine with his client and Kovzac’s beneficial owner, Oleg Dolotiy, attempted to get the injunctions against Kovzac lifted. Mr Glotov claimed that the plaintiffs had failed to make a ‘full and frank disclosure’ to the Royal Court when the injunctions were granted. He accused ED & F Man of having no claim to any funds because they had been aware that ‘logistical and marketing services’ meant that McMahan was going to use the money to bribe Ukrainian officials. He also cited telephone conversations and letters which he said made it clear that ED & F Man knew what was being asked of them but had not explained these to the court when the injunctions were made. He suggested that because the intention to bribe is illegal, it should preclude the plaintiffs from recovering any money paid to Kovzac and Clifton under the direction of McMahan. Mr Glotov said that Mr Dolotiy had been frank in the disclosures that he had made, and his client was one man up against Man’s corporate structure. Acting for Man and Westway, Advocate Ashley Hoy said that Kovzac Ltd and Clifton Resources Ltd, as Jersey companies, had used Jersey banks to deposit the fraudulently gained funds and that the injunctions should remain in place. Between £100,000 and £150,000 are held in a US$ account in Kovzac’s name. He said that the plaintiffs were still attempting to gain further evidence from the FBI in relation to the fraud. The FBI had some 10,000 hours of surveillance material, including communications between McMahan, Mr Dolotiy and Bayard Trust Company to which the plaintiffs were trying to gain evidence. Advocate Hoy told the court that if the injunctions were lifted it was likely that the money would disappear from this jurisdiction and his clients would be unlikely ever to be able to claim restitution. The other defendants cited in the order of justice brought by ED & F Man are the Royal Bank of Scotland International Ltd, Barclays, and Barclays Bank International. In his skeleton argument to the court yesterday, Advocate Hoy stated that in the 1999 affidavit of an FBI special agent it was suggested that Mr Dolotiy himself had been implicated in the original fraud, together with McMahan. Both Advocate Hoy and Mr Glotov denied that there had been any wrongdoing by their clients or the intention to take part in any illegal activity. Mr Glotov said that to date, and two years on since the legal proceedings began, the plaintiffs had not been able to prove their claim against any of the defendants, except McMahan, and that keeping the defendant’s property in Jersey was unfair and unreasonable in all the circumstances. Advocate Hoy said that the claim made was against Kovzac Ltd and not Mr Dolotiy personally. ED & F Man has already recovered funds from an account held at Merrill Lynch in the USA in the name of Kovzac Ltd. Court Commissioner Philip Le Cras granted the lifting of the injunction against Kovzac due to the failure of the plaintiffs to make full disclosure at the time the injunctions were made in 1998 – but at the end of yesterday’ s hearing he announced that the court had decided to reimpose them with new conditions which oblige Advocate Hoy’s clients to move on with the proceedings. Mr Le Cras was sitting with Jurats Le Ruez and Bullen. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2615 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:28am Subject: FEDS TO OFFER FBI 'MOLE' SING-OR-DIE DEAL FEDS TO OFFER FBI 'MOLE' SING-OR-DIE DEAL http://www.nypostonline.com/news/nationalnews/23464.htm By NILES LATHEM WASHINGTON - The feds are ready to dangle a life-preserver in front of accused FBI mole Robert Hanssen: They won't seek the death penalty if he tells all about his spying, The Post has learned. Two officials close to the espionage case said prosecutors plan to open negotiations with Hanssen's high-powered Beltway lawyer, Plato Cacheris, in the next few weeks. In a replay of the 1994 Aldrich Ames case, their priority is getting a complete account of how much damage was done by Hanssen during the 15 years he allegedly sold secrets to the Russians. Cacheris previously represented Ames, who cooperated with probers in exchange for a life sentence and leniency for his co-conspirator wife so she could raise their son. As part of his plea bargain, the money-grubbing double-agent forfeited his government pension, half-million-dollar Virginia home, luxury car and life savings. In Hanssen's case, the feds could seize the $60,000-a-year pension he was five weeks away from collecting, as well as the Virginia home where his wife and six kids live - or sweeten a plea-bargain pot by letting him keep them. "He has a lot riding on this. His family, basically, is being left with nothing," said Paul Moore, a former FBI counterintelligence agent and close friend of Hanssen. "But the question is, what compartment of his life is he in right now? Is he Bob Hanssen, the good Catholic family man? Or is he Bob Hanssen, the spy?" Because Hanssen had broad access to operational secrets for such a long period of time, intelligence officials face the prospect of reviewing virtually all operations since 1985. At the most damaging end of the spectrum, investigators are worried that Hanssen compromised the Special Collection Service program, a joint operation of the CIA and National Security Agency. The "black budget" - or top-secret - program oversees the bugging of overseas embassies and government installations, using the most exotic technologies available. Hanssen shared offices with NSA agents at the State Department, and may have picked up details of the operation there and passed them on to Moscow. A former intelligence official familiar with the program said such a scenario would be "a disaster," allowing other countries to circumvent U.S. bugs or use them to feed disinformation. Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee grilled Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Louis Freeh and CIA chief George Tenet about the security breach yesterday. After three hours behind closed doors, Ashcroft pledged to cooperate with all inquiries and "to do what is possible to avoid this kind of breach in the future." Senators said there were sharp questions about FBI procedures, including why the bureau didn't start administering random polygraph tests, as other agencies do, after the Ames scandal. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2616 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:28am Subject: FBI: COMPUTER FLAWS HELPED ACCUSED SPY FBI: COMPUTER FLAWS HELPED ACCUSED SPY http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/printedition/article/0,2669,SAV-0103010336,FF.html Washington Bureau March 1, 2001 WASHINGTON -- Flaws in the FBI's computer security compounded damage done by accused double agent Robert Hanssen, FBI Director Louis Freeh told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. According to a source familiar with testimony Freeh gave in a closed session, Hanssen was able to use FBI computers to gain access to a much broader range of highly sensitive intelligence secrets than bureau officials realized was possible for an agent in his position. Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence agent proficient in computer technology, is accused of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for 15 years without being detected. During that time, he held a series of high-level counterintelligence positions at the FBI's Washington headquarters and at its New York field office, a center of counterespionage operations. He is accused of revealing the identities of numerous American double agents within the Russian intelligence agencies and of compromising U.S. electronic eavesdropping efforts. The alleged espionage raises the troubling possibility that significant portions of U.S. intelligence gathered in the past 15 years may be deliberate Russian disinformation. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) described the damage done to the nation's security as "very, very grave." Several senators questioned Freeh on an incident in which Hanssen acknowledged hacking into a superior's computer, said a source familiar with the committee proceedings. Hanssen told superiors he was demonstrating vulnerabilities in the computer system and the incident was noted in his personnel file, but it set off no alarm bells, Freeh responded. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2617 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:28am Subject: FBI's choice for spy probe chided FBI's choice for spy probe chided http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/national/digdocs/071838.htm Critics: Ex-director Webster failed to root out double agents BY LENNY SAVINO Herald Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- As FBI Director Louis Freeh on Friday considered expanding the use of polygraph tests to root out possible spies, some criticism arose over his earlier choice of former FBI and CIA director William Webster to tell him what went wrong. Webster headed the FBI when alleged spy Robert Hanssen began his espionage career for Moscow, and the CIA while convicted spy Aldrich Ames worked there undetected, critics noted. So he may be as much to blame as anyone, they say, and ill-suited to take an impartial look at the FBI's security lapses. ``How can you appoint the guy who was in charge of the FBI when Hanssen began to spy, and who failed to catch him during his subsequent four years as head of the CIA,'' asked Colin Thompson, a retired CIA officer who spent more than 25 years in counterintelligence. PRESIDENTIAL SUPPORT Webster, 76, a former St. Louis federal judge, headed the FBI between 1978 and 1987 and the CIA from 1987 to 1991. According to court papers, Hanssen started spying in 1985. The FBI watches for spies and counterspies operating in the United States, including CIA double agents. CIA agents, mistrustful rivals of the FBI, watch the FBI for double agents. Webster, who declined through his secretary to be interviewed, enjoys President Bush's firm support. Bush, at a news conference Thursday, praised Webster's selection and said he expected him to come up with a series of recommendations to close holes in the FBI's counterspy procedures. Steve Cimbala, a Penn State professor and expert on counterintelligence, said the key question facing Webster's review is ``how high and wide the responsibility for the Hanssen case will be examined.'' ``The review should be a careful examination of the system that allowed Hanssen to go undetected,'' Cimbala said. ``Not just finding one or two scapegoats.'' The case clearly was not the result of an immediate supervisor's shortsightedness, Cimbala said. ``Spies are expected to be clever,'' he said. ``You're supposed to have a plan to deal with that.'' ALOOF APPOINTEE Former CIA officer Thompson described Webster, during his tenure at the spy agency, as an aloof political appointee uninterested in the details of counterespionage. When Webster arrived at the CIA in 1987, the agency was roiled by the mysterious disappearances and subsequent executions of about a dozen Soviet agents who had been spying for the United States. The idea that a Soviet agent had infiltrated the FBI was hard to resist, and an investigation to ferret out the spy began. The investigation continued but Thompson said it lost momentum by the time Webster left four years later. ``It died when it should have been a high priority,'' Thompson said. ``It became the bad news you didn't want to know.'' The CIA's stalled investigation was detailed in David Wise's book, Nightmover. Oliver ``Buck'' Revell, the FBI's top counterspy during Webster's tenure there, defended his former boss stoutly. ``Bill Webster never impeded or diverted or attempted to obstruct any investigation,'' said Revell. ``If I wanted to fix the system, that's the kind of guy I'd want.'' -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2618 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:28am Subject: Accused spy's KGB links glimpsed Accused spy's KGB links glimpsed http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/national/digdocs/019676.htm FBI affidavit reveals a 15-year odyssey Accused spy Robert Philip Hanssen fooled American spy hunters for 15 years. In an odyssey that began in 1985, when he wrote an anonymous letter to a Soviet intelligence agent volunteering to work for the KBG, he allegedly delivered a steady stream of important national security secrets. Included were the identities of clandestine U.S. intelligence resources within the Russian system, at least two of whom were later executed. One served a prison sentence. Hanssen, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was charged Tuesday with spying for Moscow. He is also accused of providing what amounted to an ongoing tutorial for Moscow's intelligence agencies in how to penetrate U.S. security systems and avoid the FBI's counterintelligence, some of which he himself helped to design and administer. For all that, the FBI says in court papers filed secretly before he was arrested, Hanssen got some $600,000 in cash and diamonds -- plus an additional $800,000 supposedly set aside for him in a Russian bank. The following are edited excerpts from an FBI affidavit filed in the spying case against Hanssen. The excerpts consist mostly of letters written by Hanssen, who called himself B, and letters written to him by his KGB contacts: OCT. 4, 1985 A KGB political officer in Washington, Viktor M. Degtyar, received an envelope by mail, at his residence in Alexandria, Va. Inside was an envelope marked: ``Do not open. Take this envelope unopened to Viktor I. Cherkashin.'' Cherkashin was the foreign counterintelligence chief at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Inside the inner envelope was an unsigned typed letter from B. Dear Mr. Cherkashin: Soon, I will send a box of documents to Mr. Degtyar. They are from certain of the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. intelligence community. All are originals to aid in verifying their authenticity. Please recognize for our long-term interests that there are a limited number of persons with this array of clearances. As a collection, they point to me. I trust that an officer of your experience will handle them appropriately. I believe they are sufficient to justify a $100,000 payment to me. I must warn of certain risks to my security of which you may not be aware. Your service has recently suffered some setbacks. I warn that Mr. Boris Yuzhin, Mr. Sergei Motorin and Mr. Valery Martinov have been recruited by our ``special services.'' The letter further stated: Details regarding payment and future contact will be sent to you personally. . . My identity and actual position in the community must be left unstated to ensure my security. . . I will add 6 (you subtract 6) from stated months, days and times in both directions of our future communications. OCT. 24, 1985 Degtyar received by mail a typed message from B in an envelope postmarked New York, N.Y. It gave details of a ``drop'' and included the following instructions on signals for the drop: My signal to you: One vertical mark of white adhesive tape meaning I am ready to receive your package. Your signal to me: One horizontal mark of white adhesive tape meaning drop filled. My signal to you: One vertical mark of white adhesive tape meaning I have received your package. The drop site is located in Fairfax County, Va. On Saturday, Nov. 2, 1985, the KGB dropped off $50,000 in cash. NOV. 8, 1985 Mr. Degtyar and Mr. Cherkashin received a typed letter from B: Thank you for the 50,000. I also appreciate your courage and perseverance in the face of generically reported bureaucratic obstacles. I would not have contacted you if it were not reported that you were held in esteem within your organization, an organization I have studied for years. . . JUNE 30, 1986 Mr. Degtyar received a typed letter from B at his residence that read in part: If you wish to continue our discussions, please have someone run an advertisement in The Washington Times during the week of 1/12/87 or 1/19/87, for sale, ``Dodge Diplomat, 1971, needs engine work, $1,000.'' Give a phone number and time of day in the advertisement where I can call. I will call and leave a phone number where a recorded message can be left for me in one hour. I will say: ``Hello, my name is Ramon. I am calling about the car you offered for sale in The Times.'' You will respond: ``I'm sorry, but the man with the car is not here. Can I get your number?'' The number will be in area code 212. I will not specify that area code on the line.'' JULY 15, 1988 >From B to the KGB: My security concerns may seem excessive. I believe experience has shown them to be necessary. I am much safer if you know little about me. Neither of us are children about these things. Over time, I can cut your losses rather than become one. MAY 7, 1990 >From the KGB to B: Dear Friend: We attach some information requests which we ask your kind assistance for. We are very cautious about using your info and materials so that none of our actions in no way causes no harm to your security. With this on our mind we are asking that sensitive materials and information (especially hot and demanding some actions) be accompanied by some sort of your comments or some guidance on how we may or may not use it with regard to your security. APRIL 15, 1991 >From the KGB to B: Dear Friend: Time is flying. As a poet said: What's our life, If full of care You have no time To stop and stare? You've managed to slow down the speed of your running life to send us a message. And we appreciate it. . . Enclosed in our today's package please find $10,000. Thank you for your friendship and help. We attach some information requests. We hope you'll be able to assist us on them. Take care and good luck. MARCH 14, 2000 B wrote a letter to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service: I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you, and I get silence. I hate silence. . . Conclusion: One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I'd answer neither. I'd say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There is insanity in all the answers. JUNE 8, 2000 >From B to his contacts: The U.S. can be errantly likened to a powerfully built but retarded child, potentially dangerous, but young, immature and easily manipulated. But don't be fooled by that appearance. It is also one which can turn ingenious quickly, like an idiot savant, once convinced of a goal. The Japanese (to quote General Patton once again) learned this to their dismay. . . -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2619 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: CIA, FBI can't please panel CIA, FBI can't please panel http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/national/digdocs/006276.htm Spy case stirs security plan BY LENNY SAVINO Herald Washington Bureau WASHINGTON -- Dissatisfied with FBI Director Louis Freeh's explanation of the Robert Hanssen spy case, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee called Wednesday for a new strategy to prevent more security lapses. ``We're not satisfied with anything at this point,'' said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, which is investigating the case. ``From what we've learned, what we've been told, this is a very, very grave, serious case.'' Hanssen, 56, a 27-year FBI counterintelligence agent, was charged last week with selling 6,000 pages of classified documents, including the names of at least three Soviet double agents, for $600,000 in cash and diamonds and $800,000 his handlers said was deposited in a Moscow account for him. According to court papers, Hanssen spied for the Russians for 15 years before his arrest. Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, the ranking Democrat on the committee, told reporters that the panel urged Freeh, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft, both of whom also testified at the closed hearing, to develop a better strategy to prevent national security leaks. MANY TOOLS Graham said polygraphs are just one of many tools. Others include internal studies of agents' lifestyles, computer surveillance and personal financial audits, he said. If all these methods were used together they might sound alarms, he said. ``I don't think there's any silver bullet to do one thing and solve [the] problem,'' said Graham, speaking with Shelby after the hearing. As a matter of policy, the CIA and Defense Department test their counterintelligence operatives every five years. The FBI under Freeh and past directors including William Webster -- who is conducting an internal investigation of the Hanssen case -- has been reluctant to make agents take polygraph tests regularly. Freeh began requiring agent applicants to pass a polygraph exam in 1994. LIKELY TO DETER Graham said polygraph tests are not foolproof, but would be helpful. ``I would personally describe the polygraph as being like the metal detector at the airport,'' he said. ``It's more likely to deter someone.'' Freeh declined to discuss issues raised in the hearing, but at least one FBI official hinted Wednesday that plans to use more polygraph testing and more computer surveillance were imminent. Shelby went from saying he had ``a lot of confidence'' in Freeh at the start of the news conference to saying he had ``some confidence'' at the end. ``This committee is going to hold Director Freeh, the director of the CIA [and] the attorney general . . . accountable,'' he said. ``They're working with us and what we're interested in is stopping this as much as we can,'' Shelby said. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2620 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: Letter among new details released in FBI-spy case Letter among new details released in FBI-spy case http://www.miami.com/herald/content/news/national/digdocs/073213.htm WASHINGTON -- (AP) -- Federal prosecutors on Tuesday released new details of accused spy Robert Philip Hanssen's activities, including a letter in which Hanssen warned his alleged Russian handlers on the day of his arrest that ``something has aroused the sleeping tiger.'' Weapons and ammunition were found in Hanssen's home in Vienna, Va., including an AK-47 and 13 handguns and pistols, according to the results of a search warrant. According to a new affidavit, the FBI recovered a computer disk from a package that Hanssen dropped at a Virginia park Feb. 18 that contained a coded letter. In the letter, Hanssen seems to signal that his relationship with the Russians was at an end because he had received a new FBI position excluding him from obtaining sensitive documents, the document alleged. SIGNED BY `RAMON' ``It seems . . . that my greatest utility to you has come to an end, and it is time to seclude myself from active service,'' said the letter, signed ``Ramon Garcia,'' detailed in the affidavit. The FBI has alleged that Hanssen's code name was Ramon Garcia. ``Ramon'' said he detected radio signal bursts in his car, arousing his suspicions. ``Amusing the games children play . . . something has aroused the sleeping tiger. Perhaps you know better than I,'' said the letter released by prosecutors. Investigators were searching for ``large amounts of United States and foreign currency . . . precious metals, jewelry and other items of value,'' according to a search warrant released Tuesday. A list of items found did not include those items. Also being sought: passports, licenses and visas in fictitious or alias identities and records reflecting property sales and purchases both within the United States and abroad. ITEMS FOUND Investigators found in Hanssen's 1997 Ford Taurus seven floppy disks, computer equipment, a folder marked ``Hong Kong,'' a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and two photos of actress Catherine Zeta Jones. Two envelopes marked ``secret'' and addressed to Stapleton Roy also were found in the car. Roy was director of intelligence at the State Department who resigned in December after one of his deputies was reassigned in a dispute over a missing laptop computer that contained classified information. The FBI has alleged that Hanssen, 56, received more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and $800,000 more had been set aside for him in an overseas escrow account. The search warrant says the money and valuables are ``illicit proceeds . . . from multiple years of engaging in espionage for pay from the Soviet Union and successor Russian Federation and their intelligence services.'' ACCOUNTS FOUND Investigators also found records of financial accounts that were Hanssen's but in phony names or aliases. Account statements from Credit Suisse and Bank Leu were found. Hanssen is scheduled for his preliminary appearance at a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Va., on Monday. The nine-page affidavit was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia in support of search warrants for Hanssen's offices at the FBI and the State Department. Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran and counterintelligence expert, was arrested Feb. 18 and charged with espionage. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2621 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: FBI's vulnerability to Russian mole demands answers. http://www.miami.com/herald/content/opinion/editorials/digdocs/090927.htm FBI's vulnerability to Russian mole demands answers. Published Monday, February 26, 2001, in the Miami Herald There's good reason why federal law permits the death penalty for convicted spies. Spying is treachery of the worst kind: It costs millions of dollars and often results in death for exposed agents. Then why did the FBI fail for 15 years to unmask an alleged master spy within its ranks? That's a critical question that must be answered. This week, U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., will conduct a closed hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which he co-chairs, into the botched safeguards that preceded Robert Philip Hanssen's arrest last week. Those hearings should help to spur changes in the bureau's procedures that appear to be desperately needed. Mr. Hanssen, a counterintelligence expert, is believed to have passed thousands of pages of highly classified documents to the Soviets before 1989, and then to the Russians until he was arrested in a Virginia park. The toll of his betrayal, if proven true, is mind-boggling. He is believed to have turned over listening technologies, programs describing U.S. intelligence-gathering techniques and names of U.S. double agents. The data may have cost the United States hundreds of millions of dollars and is strongly linked to the deaths of at least two counterintelligence Russian agents. As damaging as Mr. Hanssen's betrayals may have been, the Justice Department's reaction seems almost casual. Attorney General John Ashcroft last week appointed former FBI director William Webster to review the bureau's internal procedures. Although Mr. Webster served honorably under Presidents Carter and Reagan, a more independent, reform-minded examination may be needed. The FBI cannot become known more for the cases it bungles rather than the ones that it solves. It hasn't yet recovered from its handling of the case against nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee, which a federal judge forced the prosecution to drop. Despite being warned for years to tighten its internal security, the FBI until now has rejected suggestions that it give periodic polygraph tests to veteran agents, although it does so with new agents. The CIA does so with all its operatives. Such lax procedures in a game of such high stakes can't continue. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2622 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: US spy bosses hunt for second 'mole' [Moderates Note: Wake up Louis Freeh, No intelligence agency uses just one spy against the opposition, and it is well known that long term spies always come in sets. There are also a plethora of simple, inexpensive, and effective methods to very quickly ferret the remaining spies out. ] US spy bosses hunt for second 'mole' http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_225718.html?menu= A second spy may have infiltrated America's security services to betray its secrets to the Russians. The New York Post reports the FBI and CIA believe double agent Robert Hanssen, who was arrested last month, may not have worked alone. Hanssen is alleged to have compromised operations in the US and abroad by selling confidential information he received as a senior counter-intelligence official. He now faces death if convicted of the crime. The newspaper says the inquiry into Hanssen is focusing on why Russian agents did not pick up classified documents he left in a public park near Washington, a drop which led to his arrest. "The question is why didn't the Russians show up and collect the documents," an unnamed intelligence official told the paper. "We know Hanssen was surprised when he was arrested. Were they warned off by someone else?" The FBI had been watching Hanssen for weeks and arrested him when he dropped the documents - which included a letter telling his handlers he believed he was under surveillance and he was ending his spying. They left the documents in place and waited for 24 hours for the Russians to arrive, but they did not show and the intelligence agency was forced to admit they had arrested Hanssen as the news leaked out in Washington. The newspaper reported some of Hanssen's messages to his handlers referred to "old friends" and recruiting other Americans as spies. And some operations which were found to have been compromised could not have been linked to the mole, the paper reported. Agents are now set to undergo polygraph lie detector tests in a bid to find the suspected second traitor, a move backed by the chairman of the Senate's intelligence committee. Last updated: 13:49 Friday 2nd March 2001 -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2623 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: Spy-Case Indictment Postponed Spy-Case Indictment Postponed http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9977-2001Mar1.html Two Sides Cooperating; Suspect Gets Access to Evidence By Brooke A. Masters and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, March 2, 2001; Page A08 Prosecutors and attorneys for accused spy Robert P. Hanssen have reached an agreement that will postpone indictment of the FBI counterintelligence expert for at least two months and give his lawyers early access to evidence. The government, under a joint motion filed in U.S. District Court in Alexandria yesterday, now has until May 21 to hold a preliminary hearing or indict Hanssen, a veteran FBI agent who could face execution if convicted of revealing the names of two Soviet intelligence officers working secretly with the FBI who later were executed. The agreement shows that the two sides are cooperating and gives the defense a chance to see whether it can question the government's evidence, including the authenticity of documents that supposedly came from Russian intelligence archives, sources said. Hanssen, a Vienna father of six, has been accused of passing more than 6,000 pages of documents to Moscow in exchange for $1.4 million. In a filing yesterday, prosecutors said that at the time of his Feb. 18 arrest, Hanssen was carrying his passport and a current Swiss bank account statement in his briefcase. "This is a spy who remained active until handcuffed," Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy I. Bellows wrote. "There were essentially no limits on what Hanssen was willing to do." Yesterday's agreement to take a timeout from public hearings gives the defense a chance to interview Hanssen at length and review government documents. It also reflects the unusual dynamic of espionage cases, lawyers with experience in these cases said. By the time the government arrests a suspected spy, prosecutors generally have spent months or years building a detailed and damning case, using secret searches, clandestine operations and confidential informants. But at the same time, federal officials generally prefer not to expose their sources in open court. In fact, the agreement postpones an evidentiary hearing that had been scheduled for Monday. Hanssen also agreed not to contest detention. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft said yesterday that the FBI will expand its use of lie-detector tests in the wake of the Hanssen case, despite reservations about the effectiveness and accuracy of polygraphs. But Ashcroft and other officials declined to provide details of the new program, or to say how many FBI employees it might affect. One Justice Department official said polygraphs will be given to "individuals who by nature of their assignment have access to sensitive information," but the official could not say what kind of information that would include. Polygraphs have been conducted on all new agents and other employees at the FBI since 1994 and on some agents with access to sensitive information. However, Hanssen, who had access to some of the nation's most sensitive intelligence secrets, was never required to take a lie-detector test. Eventually, prosecutors could offer not to seek the death penalty in exchange for interviews with Hanssen to learn exactly what he turned over to the Russians for the past 15 years. But sources said that kind of talk is premature for two reasons: The Bush administration has no established procedure for considering potential capital cases, and the defense may be able to convince a judge that Hanssen's alleged crimes don't fit the legal requirements for the death penalty. "There have been no plea discussions whatsoever," said Preston Burton, one of Hanssen's attorneys. "We've not initiated it, and they have not initiated it." Prosecutors have filed a 109-page affidavit describing dozens of exchanges in which Hanssen allegedly received $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and escrowed money for turning over dozens of highly classified documents. FBI officials said Hanssen was arrested leaving classified documents for his handlers at a Northern Virginia park. The affidavit also says Hanssen "compromised . . . technical operations of extraordinary importance and value." Among other things, sources said, Hanssen allegedly gave Moscow information about highly sophisticated overseas bugging operations run by the super-secret Special Collection Service. "I think the government has a pretty strong hand here," said former U.S. attorney Joseph diGenova, who prosecuted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. "You want a damage assessment, but there isn't very much the government is going to be willing to give up . . . except execution." But other analysts note that the Hanssen affidavit is silent about the period from 1992 to mid-1999, suggesting that there may be significant holes in the government's knowledge. Analysts said that Hanssen's help in filling that gap could give his attorneys bargaining power. A life-for-information deal would be irrelevant if Hanssen's attorneys can convince a judge that the death penalty should not apply. Congress did not revive the death penalty for espionage until after the 1994 case of Aldrich H. Ames, and then limited it to spies who reveal nuclear secrets or cause the death of American agents. Hanssen allegedly betrayed two Russian double agents in 1985, well before the law changed. The Constitution prevents most laws from being applied retroactively, but the U.S. Supreme Court has made an exception for certain kinds of death penalty statutes, lawyers said. The espionage statute has never been tested. The capital case also carries risks for the government because prosecutors would have to call Russian informants to connect Hanssen directly to the executions of KGB officers Sergey Motorin and Valeriy Martynov, some experts said. "You would have to show not only a chain of custody for the letters, but also show [Hanssen] received the money," said Georgetown University law professor Paul Rothstein. If the death penalty gets taken off the table, prosecutors would have to find another stick with which to pressure Hanssen. In Ames's case, they threatened to put his wife in prison for decades, but then worked out a deal in which she would serve five years if Ames accepted a life sentence and cooperated with investigators. But there is no indication that Hanssen's wife, Bonnie, knew anything. "Mrs. Hanssen was not involved. Neither she nor anyone in the family had any knowledge," said her attorney, Janine Brookner. In other spy cases, prosecutors and defense attorneys have haggled over the length of the prison sentence. But Bellows wrote in yesterday's filing that Hanssen faces a "true life sentence" because he passed "Top Secret" documents. Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report. © 2001 The Washington Post Company -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2624 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: To Find a Spy To Find a Spy http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11684-2001Mar1.html By Jeffrey H. Smith Friday, March 2, 2001; Page A25 The arrest of FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen raises once again the painful question of how to catch a spy. FBI Director Louis Freeh has wisely asked former FBI and CIA director William Webster to conduct an independent review of what went wrong, why it took the bureau some 15 years to discover Hanssen's alleged espionage and what steps must be taken to make sure it doesn't happen again. When Aldrich Ames was arrested in 1994, it sent shock waves through the CIA and led to a number of reforms. Now it's the FBI's turn. The FBI is under pressure to make changes, particularly to make greater use of the polygraph. But before reaching hasty conclusions, we should take a deep breath and consider which of the post-Ames changes worked and which didn't. Many in the CIA simply did not believe there could be a spy in their midst. Fortunately, a few determined officers always believed there could be a mole, and they finally got their man. But the great damage done by Ames and the fact that it took some nine years to find him led to a public outcry for reform. The CIA resisted some of the reforms, and some were adopted only after Congress enacted specific legislation. Other changes were adopted only after a bitter interagency struggle -- for example, putting an FBI agent in charge of the counterespionage effort at the CIA. Many of the changes made after the Ames case did improve counterintelligence efforts. Chief among these was greater cooperation between the CIA and FBI -- and a recognition that the CIA was not immune to having a spy in its midst. These changes proved their worth when Harold Nicholson, another CIA officer, was arrested in 1996, some two years after he volunteered his services to the Russians. But the post-Ames efforts also had a dark side. Unlike FBI agents, CIA officers have been routinely polygraphed -- even before the Ames affair. According to reports in The Post, in the wake of the Ames case the FBI and CIA reviewed the polygraph records of a large number of CIA employees and identified many who seemed to have problems. Under procedures required by a newly adopted law, those cases were referred to the FBI, where criminal investigations were opened. In some cases, serious problems were identified and dealt with by the CIA. In many other cases, there was nothing in the record other than a "significant physiological response" to a question on the polygraph. Most of these cases languished for an unconscionably long time at the FBI -- in some cases years -- before being returned to the CIA, where the officer could finally get on with his or her career. While the CIA felt that there could never be a spy at the agency, in large part because of the polygraph, the FBI felt there was never a need to polygraph all agents because they were special. Both were wrong. Now we have to get it right. The polygraph is far from a perfect tool. Honest people have "failed" polygraph examinations and dishonest people have "passed" them. It is a rather simple instrument that measures certain physiological responses -- e.g., breathing, heart rate and galvanic skin reaction, in response to a set of questions asked by an examiner. The basic theory is that when a person knowingly lies, he or she will have a measurable physiological response. Maybe so. But the polygraph is intrusive and can be abused. Secretary of State George Shultz was a hero to the State Department when he refused to let the department's officers be polygraphed as a condition of getting access to our most highly classified intelligence information. If the FBI chooses to use the polygraph, it must do so wisely. The polygraph is only one tool in an effective counterintelligence program. It can help, but if misused it can also cause morale to plummet and ruin innocent careers. Perhaps more important, it can lead to overconfidence -- as it did at the CIA prior to the arrest of Ames. The key to a good polygraph program is that the examiner must be a trained and experienced investigator. Too frequently, that is not the case. Agencies that choose to use the polygraph must ensure that examiners are adequately trained, that they have long-term career opportunities and, most important, that vigorous safeguards are in place to protect the rights and dignity of all employees. A fundamental principle must be that no adverse personnel action should be taken solely on the basis of the results of a polygraph examination. Effective counterintelligence is hard work. The Clinton administration developed a plan, known as "CI21," for Counterintelligence in the 21st Century, that seeks to address counterintelligence in a comprehensive fashion. Recent news reports that the Bush administration intends to implement the plan vigorously are encouraging. Furthermore, it's hard to find good counterintelligence and security officers. Too often, they are not widely admired within their agencies, and bright young men and women are not encouraged to pursue a career in these fields. That must change. Finally, the number of people with knowledge of sensitive counterintelligence investigations goes far beyond those CIA and FBI officers working on the matter. Justice Department lawyers, officials at other agencies and in the armed forces, and the White House/National Security Council staff are often kept informed. Certain members of Congress and the senior staff of the congressional intelligence oversight committees are, by law, kept "fully and currently informed" of these investigations. If we believe that polygraphs are going to solve our counterespionage problems, it's difficult to conclude that these individuals should not also be polygraphed. The polygraph is the classic two-edged sword. It can help preserve our security, but at a cost. In a free society, our goal must be to make that cost -- in terms of innocent lives harmed -- zero. The writer is an attorney and former CIA general counsel. © 2001 The Washington Post Company -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2625 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: FBI Expands Lie-Detector Tests [Moderators Note: Polygraphs are only useful when the subject is gullible and it is useful as a preventative measure to "keep honest people, honest", but they are fairly worthless for ferreting out spies or a seasoned subject.] FBI Expands Lie-Detector Tests http://dailynews.muzi.com/ll/english/1052686.shtml [LatelineNews: 2001-3-2] WASHINGTON - The FBI is expanding employee lie-detector tests and monitoring of worker access to sensitive information in response to allegations that a veteran counterintelligence agent spied for Moscow for 15 years, AP reported. Attorney General John Ashcroft said Thursday there is evidence that polygraphs do not always work to deter internal security breaches. But he said that ``because of the national security involved,'' he and FBI Director Louis Freeh agreed that more polygraphs should be conducted following the arrest of Robert Philip Hanssen, a 25-year veteran agent accused of spying for Russia and the Soviet Union. ``There have been cases in the past that polygraphing did not work on,'' Ashcroft said at a news conference. ``Nevertheless, I believe that there are applications for polygraph that are important.'' ``The director and I have agreed that because of the national security involved and the very important consequences of the breaches, that we should elevate the use of polygraph in certain cases,'' said Ashcroft. The FBI would not comment. The FBI also is changing the way it audits access to information to catch workers who improperly seek data, Ashcroft said. FBI agents are given polygraph tests when they apply to join the bureau but usually are not tested again unless they need a higher level of clearance. Justice Department officials said that policy would be expanded; they declined to elaborate. Ashcroft said the additional polygraphs are an interim step while the FBI's internal security procedures are reviewed by former CIA and FBI director William Webster, who will recommend how to tighten security. Meanwhile, federal prosecutors asked a judge to keep Hanssen jailed pending further action on his case. In a proffer filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., the government said the risk that Hanssen will flee the country and the gravity of his alleged crimes mean that he should not be released. ``No conditions of release will reasonably assure either his appearances in court or the safety of our country,'' according to the filing signed by U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey. Among the evidence cited to support its request, the FBI said it had recovered statements from Hanssen's Swiss bank account and letters in which the Russians and Hanssen allegedly discuss how to hide money in a Swiss bank account. The FBI alleged that, in exchange for providing top secret information, Hanssen had received more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and an additional $800,000 had been set aside for him in an overseas escrow account. Investigators also found in locked safes in Hanssen's office at the State Department a file entitled ``Russian Espionage'' containing 20 to 30 documents on Felix Bloch and a sensitive classified technical intelligence collection program, an affidavit showed. The FBI has alleged that Hanssen tipped off the KGB to the FBI's secret investigation of Bloch, a foreign service agent suspected of spying for Moscow in 1989, but never arrested. A detention and preliminary hearing were scheduled for Monday. Federal prosecutors and Hanssen's attorney have asked a federal magistrate to postpone the hearing until May 21 to allow both sides more time to prepare the case. Both sides agree that the facts of the case ``are unusual and complex.'' They also agreed to ask for an extension of time for filing an indictment until May 21. Hanssen's lawyers did not immediately return telephone messages Thursday. The government has alleged that Hanssen passed along to Soviet and later Russian agents 6,000 pages of documents on secret programs that described how the U.S. gathers intelligence, technologies used for listening, people who work as double agents and other highly sensitive matters. Also Thursday, the State Department confirmed that Hanssen carried secret intelligence documents regularly between the State Department and FBI headquarters. >From 1995 until January, Hanssen was assigned by the FBI to the department's office of foreign missions, which monitors foreign diplomats. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Hanssen acted as a liaison ``helping transmit documents, move documents and information back and forth between the two agencies.'' Printer-friendly version Muzi.com News http://latelinenews.com -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2626 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:27am Subject: FBI HUNTS 2ND SPY IN ITS RANKS FBI HUNTS 2ND SPY IN ITS RANKS http://www.nypostonline.com/news/nationalnews/25228.htm Friday,March 2,2001 By NILES LATHEM WASHINGTON - Spycatchers who strongly suspect Robert Hanssen wasn't the only Russian mole inside the U.S. intelligence community have begun grilling dozens of government employees. The hunt for a second traitor moved forward as the FBI announced new security measures, including polygraph tests for agents, to catch spies in its ranks. The efforts to find other moles feeding secrets to Moscow intensified after Hanssen's Feb. 18 arrest - because Russian agents never showed up to collect classified documents the FBI veteran left in a Virginia park, sources said. "The question is why didn't the Russians show up and collect the documents?" said an intelligence official connected to the case. "We know Hanssen was surprised when he was arrested. Were they [the Russians] warned off by someone else?" The FBI, which had Hanssen under surveillance for weeks, arrested him on a Sunday afternoon after he dropped off documents, including a coded letter expressing fears he was under suspicion. Agents left the documents in place and waited 24 hours for Russian agents, but they never appeared, sources said. With news of the arrest starting to leak and Hanssen's family hiring high-powered lawyer Plato Cacheris, the FBI had no choice but to announce the arrest earlier than intended, officials close to the probe said. The mysterious Russian no-show is one of several clues pointing to the specter of another American double agent. Hanssen's communiqués with his Russian handlers contain references to "old friends" and exchanges about recruiting other Americans as spies. Investigators also say there are some intelligence operations in this country and overseas that were compromised but cannot be linked to Hanssen. The possibility that America's most closely guarded secrets are still at risk was raised by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee this week after a briefing from FBI Director Louis Freeh, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft. "You know there will probably be other spies. Don't be surprised," committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said. After the meeting, Ashcroft and Freeh decided "We should elevate the use of polygraph in certain cases" as an interim security measure, the attorney general said. The prospect of more spies at U.S. intelligence agencies is one reason prosecutors are anxious to move on a plea deal with Hanssen. They may drop the death penalty and allow Hanssen's family to keep his pension in exchange for Hanssen spilling the beans, including the identity of other moles. The FBI has already interviewed and cleared a handful of people close to Hanssen, including his wife Bonnie and retired Army Col. Jack Hoschouer. The Washington Times reported probers believe the Russians tried to recruit Hoschouer in the early 1990s at Hanssen's recommendation, but he spurned the approach. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2627 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:40am Subject: Ratcheting Up Security Ratcheting Up Security http://more.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/dailynews/spy010228.html FBI Director Louis Freeh is planning new measures to improve internal security in the wake of the Hanssen spy probe - including random and periodic lie detector testing of employees, ABCNEWS has learned. The polygraph tests will initially focus on agents and personnel who have access to the bureau's most sensitive data, particularly national security information, but it may be expanded to the entire bureau, a senior FBI source said. Nearly 400 FBI personnel were given polygraph examinations before they were allowed to work on the Hanssen case, ABCNEWS has learned. The move to expanded polygraphing is significant, since it has long been opposed by bureau rank-and-file. Employees question the viability of the tests - even though the CIA and NSA regularly use them. Freeh has been criticized for not implementing the tests earlier. Currently, polygraphing is used primarily on potential employees and people being brought into sensitive investigations. The announcement was made internally at the bureau on Wednesday, sources said, but it was not clear when the testing would begin. FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen, arrested earlier Feb. 18 on charges of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia after a 25-year career in the agency, was apparently never subjected to a lie detector test. Hanssen's colleagues say he was well-positioned to pose a serious threat to national security. "From '87 to June of 1990, he is really at the heart of the Soviet program because he is deputy chief of analysis," said David Major, a former counterintelligence official. "You have to have a few people who know everything, and so in that position all the collection and all the activity that was going would filter into his unit." Checking for the Checking The FBI will also implement enhanced computer security measures, including an expanded audit system, sources told ABCNEWS. The audits will focus on a number of areas, including: flagging instances when an agent repeatedly checks his or her own name to see if he or she is under investigation - something Hanssen apparently did - and notifying supervisors when an agent is perusing sensitive, classified material that is not directly related to their work. The revelations come after Freeh appeared in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday afternoon, to answer questions on why it took so long to uncover the case of Hanssen, who has been accused of spying for Moscow over 15 years. The FBI says Hanssen sold secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in money and diamonds. He is accused of passing information on U.S. surveillance methods and the names of double agents - two of whom were executed. ABCNEWS' Pierre Thomas at the Justice Department contributed to this report. Copyright © 2001 ABC News Internet Ventures. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2628 From: Date: Sat Mar 3, 2001 11:26pm Subject: U.S. thinks Hanssen told Soviets of tunnel - paper U.S. thinks Hanssen told Soviets of tunnel - paper WASHINGTON, March 3 (Reuters) - The United States built a secret tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington, but investigators believe the operation was betrayed by the FBI agent arrested last month on charges of spying for Moscow, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials. The secret tunnel operation, which officials indicated was run jointly by the FBI and the National Security Agency, was part of a broad U.S. effort to eavesdrop on Soviet -- later Russian -- facilities and personnel operating in the United States, the paper wrote in its Internet edition on Saturday. Spokesmen at the FBI and the White House declined to comment to the Times on the tunnel operation. Current and former U.S. officials estimated that the tunnel construction and related intelligence-gathering activities cost several hundred million dollars, apparently making it the most expensive clandestine intelligence operation that the agent, Robert Hanssen, is accused of betraying, the Times said. The tunnel was reportedly designed as part of a sophisticated operation to eavesdrop on communications and conversations in the Soviet Embassy complex, which was built in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s, at about the time the tunnel operation was under way, the United States and the Soviet Union argued bitterly over their respective embassies in Moscow and Washington, with the United States accusing Moscow of spying at both locations, the paper said. The U.S. government has never publicly disclosed the existence of the tunnel, but in an FBI affidavit in the Hanssen case, the government said that Hanssen "compromised an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States government," the Times report said. The Times said officials told them that that referred to the tunnel operation and related intelligence activities. U.S. News & World Report magazine reported in its March 12 issue, out on newsstands on Monday, that officials blamed Hanssen for compromising at least two highly sensitive FBI counterintelligence programs. Hanssen, arrested on Feb. 18, has been accused of spying for Moscow since 1985. He has been accused of giving Moscow secrets that included names of double agents, as well as U.S. electronic surveillance methods. The Times said it could not be determined when the government believed Hanssen betrayed the tunnel operation. 23:20 03-03-01 2629 From: Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 0:11pm Subject: No comment from US on Russian embassy tunnel claim No comment from US on Russian embassy tunnel claim WASHINGTON, March 4 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday he couldn't say whether the United States built a secret tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington, which officials believe was revealed to the Russians by the FBI agent arrested last month on charges of spying for Moscow. But while declining to confirm a report by The New York Times, Cheney said he believed there were grave implications to the case of accused spy Robert Hanssen, who may have caused considerable damage to U.S. security. "I believe so," Cheney told the CBS "Face the Nation" program. "I assume, given the nature of his responsibilities and the length of time he worked for the Russians, which looks like about 15 years, that in fact it was very serious." A spokeswoman for the FBI also declined to comment on the report, which cited current and former intelligence officials as saying the tunnel operation, run jointly by the FBI and the National Security Agency, was revealed to Moscow by Hanssen. Cheney said that if the report were true he "couldn't talk about it anyway," but an assessment would have to be made to determine the full extent of the damage caused by Hanssen. "Then we'll have a good fix on exactly how much was in fact compromised," he said. The secret tunnel operation was reportedly part of a broad U.S. effort to eavesdrop on Soviet -- later Russian -- facilities and personnel operating in the United States, the Times said. Cheney told CBS the United States had not heard from the Russians about the revelation. "Not in any official sense, no," he said. Current and former U.S. officials estimated the tunnel construction and related intelligence-gathering activities cost several hundred million dollars, apparently making it the most expensive clandestine intelligence operation Hanssen is accused of betraying, the Times said. The tunnel was reportedly designed as part of a sophisticated operation to eavesdrop on communications and conversations in the Soviet Embassy complex, which was built in the 1970s and 1980s. The U.S. government has never publicly disclosed the existence of the tunnel, but in an FBI affidavit in the Hanssen case, the government said that Hanssen "compromised an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States government." U.S. News & World Report magazine reported in its March 12 issue, published on Monday, that officials blamed Hanssen for compromising at least two highly sensitive FBI counterintelligence programs. Hanssen, arrested on Feb. 18, has been accused of spying for Moscow since 1985. He has been accused of giving Moscow secrets that included names of double agents, as well as U.S. electronic surveillance methods. 17:20 03-04-01 2630 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 10:04pm Subject: Russia couldn't afford FBI agent, says ex-spy chief Saturday, March 03, 2001, 12:00 a.m. Pacific Russia couldn't afford FBI agent, says ex-spy chief http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/SeattleTimes.woa/wa/gotoArticle?zsection_id=268448413&text_only=0&slug=hanssen03&document_id=134271578 by The Associated Press MOSCOW - A former Russian security chief said yesterday that the country was too broke to afford the services of alleged FBI spy Robert Hanssen and accused Washington of seeking to discredit Russia by claiming he was Moscow's agent. According to the FBI, Hanssen received more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and an additional $800,000 had been set aside for him in an overseas escrow account as payment for 15 years of spying. "Russia simply does not have that kind of money," said Nikolai Kovalyov, a former chief of Russia's Federal Security Service. According to the FBI, Hanssen began spying for the Soviet Union in 1985, when the Communist government spent lavishly on its intelligence operations and agents. Kovalyov, whose agency is the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, did not deny Hanssen had worked for Moscow, saying only that the FBI's evidence was too flimsy to justify the investigators' conclusions. "His employers could have been anyone. Why is this assigned to Russia?" Kovalyov said at a news conference. Kovalyov claimed the Hanssen case was part of an elaborate plan by the Bush administration to make Americans forget about his turbulent election victory and expand his support base at home. Kovalyov cited Washington's insistence on building a national missile-defense system - which Moscow opposes - as another manifestation of the same plan. "All these steps ... are steps by the new U.S. president aimed at strengthening his position in the country," Kovalyov said. Hanssen is accused of passing to Soviet and later Russian agents 6,000 pages of secret documents that contained information about how the U.S. gathers intelligence, technologies used for listening, people who work as double agents and other highly sensitive matters. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2631 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 10:04pm Subject: FBI 'MOLE' SAYS NO TO PLEA DEAL FOR HIS LIFE FBI 'MOLE' SAYS NO TO PLEA DEAL FOR HIS LIFE http://www.nypostonline.com/news/nationalnews/25338.htm Saturday,March 3,2001 By NILES LATHEM and ANDY GELLER Accused FBI spy Robert Hanssen has this answer to the feds' sing-or-die offer: no deal for now. "I will not indulge in plea negotiations at this time," Plato Cacheris, Hanssen's high-powered Beltway lawyer, told The Post last night. Eager to find out how much damage Hanssen had done, the feds are ready to dangle a life preserver in front of him: They won't seek the death penalty if he comes clean about his spying. But sources close to the defense say the Justice Department's case has "holes in it" and they intend to pursue a not-guilty plea. In 1994, Cacheris worked out a deal for Aldrich Ames, who pleaded guilty to spying for the KGB for nine years. In return for cooperating with investigators, Ames got a life sentence and leniency for his co-conspirator wife so she could raise their son. The feds were eager to strike a quick deal with Hanssen so they could assess the damage he did during the 15 years he allegedly spied for Moscow - and find out if there are other moles in U.S. intelligence operations. To that end, they released an extraordinarily detailed 100-page affidavit when Hanssen was arraigned last week, hoping to convince him they had an airtight case. And every official who discussed the case mentioned the death penalty. Earlier this week, both sides agreed to delay the legal proceedings to give Cacheris a chance to assess the evidence. Prosecutors are hoping that once he does, he may go for a deal. As the maneuvering goes on, the State Department is warring with the Justice Department, the CIA and the FBI over whether to expel Russian diplomats in retaliation for the Hanssen case. The State Department says no, fearing the move would exacerbate tensions with Russia. But the other three agencies favor it, arguing that it would disrupt Russian intelligence operations. Meanwhile, former Russian security chief Nikolai Kovalyov said Moscow did not have enough money to pay Hanssen what the FBI charges he got. The FBI says Hanssen received more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and an another $800,000 was set aside for him in an overseas escrow account. "Russia simply does not have that kind of money," claimed Kovalyov, a former chief of Russia's Federal Security Service. Kovalyov, whose agency is the main successor to the KGB, did not deny Hanssen had worked for Moscow. He said only that the evidence is too flimsy to justify the FBI's conclusions. "His employers could have been anyone. Why is this assigned to Russia?" Kovalyov said. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2632 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 10:05pm Subject: Deal May Be Best Bet in Spy Case Deal May Be Best Bet in Spy Case http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010303/t000018790.html Espionage: Telling all might help Hanssen avoid a death sentence, experts say. A plea bargain would also protect sensitive national security data. By ERIC LICHTBLAU, ROBERT L. JACKSON, Times Staff Writers WASHINGTON--Against what prosecutors call "overwhelming" evidence of his wrongdoing, suspected spy Robert Philip Hanssen's best hope for avoiding a possible death sentence may be to strike a deal and tell all to the government, according to legal and espionage experts. A plea bargain could prove attractive to prosecutors as well, providing a clean and relatively quick way to avoid a public airing of sensitive national security information surrounding what has become the worst spy scandal in the FBI's history. And such a tack, common in spy cases, would allow intelligence officials to plunge more quickly into the laborious task of debriefing Hanssen and figuring out exactly what secrets he may have given the Russians, experts said. "Espionage cases are often very difficult to try. The paramount reason is that you don't want to do more damage during the trial than during the commission of the espionage," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who prosecuted the infamous case of FBI spy Richard W. Miller in Los Angeles a decade ago. "Whatever information Hanssen may have passed on to the Russians you don't want transmitted to the rest of the world," Schiff said in an interview. Compromise Possible in Hanssen Case Hanssen, a former FBI counterintelligence agent, stands accused of espionage for allegedly passing secrets to the Russians over a period of 15 years in exchange for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. As politicians hold briefings and consider long-term security reforms, Justice Department criminal lawyers are beginning the more immediate task of poring over the voluminous evidence in the case and litigating the charges against Hanssen. Hanssen intends to plead not guilty. While lawyers on both sides decline to discuss strategy and insist it is still too early to speculate about a plea bargain, they have already shown a willingness to compromise. Earlier this week, the defense and the prosecution reached an agreement putting off Hanssen's next court date until May 21. That gives the defense more time to examine the prosecution's evidence, while agreeing not to fight for Hanssen's pretrial release. "The case against him is overwhelming," federal prosecutors wrote this week. "If convicted, he faces either life in prison or the death penalty." After the apprehension of CIA spy Aldrich H. Ames in 1994, Congress toughened espionage penalties to allow the death sentence to be imposed even in peacetime if a suspect had caused the death of U.S. agents or compromised nuclear secrets. Prosecutors are still considering whether to seek the death penalty against Hanssen, according to officials familiar with the case. The chief argument for doing so would be the FBI's belief that Hanssen helped the Russians unmask several "moles," leading to the execution of two double agents working for the United States. But a lawyer familiar with the defense's thinking said Hanssen's lawyers are prepared to attack this claim by arguing that the CIA's Ames was responsible for the executions of double agents Sergey Motorin and Valeriy Martynov. Ames disclosed their identities to the Russians in 1985, months before Hanssen allegedly confirmed the names. Although the death penalty has never been imposed against a spy in the post-Cold War era, observers say it is a prospect that Hanssen and his lawyers must take seriously in light of the intense reaction the spy case has generated in the last two weeks. "If I were his attorney and the evidence was strong, that's certainly something I would be concerned about," said Joel Levine, a Los Angeles lawyer who has defended accused spies and, in the case that inspired the film "The Falcon and the Snowman," prosecuted them. Deals Struck in Ames, Other Espionage Cases Public reaction can be a driving influence. "Because of the nature of these [espionage] cases, it's difficult to get jurors who are not biased against your client. After all, you're talking about treason," said Fred W. Bennett, who represented John A. Walker Jr., a retired Navy warrant officer who pleaded guilty in 1985 to charges of masterminding a family spy ring that furnished secrets to the Soviet Union. Walker agreed to plead guilty to espionage charges and to cooperate with prosecutors because he wanted to spare a life sentence for his son, also a Navy spy. Because of his father's cooperation, Michael Walker got a 25-year sentence, while John Walker received a life term. The CIA's Ames also struck a deal in one of the most damaging espionage cases in U.S. history. He agreed to a life term in exchange for leniency for his wife, Rosario, who was a partner in his espionage. In exchange for Ames' cooperation, she was allowed to serve only a five-year sentence before returning to Latin America to care for their small child. One convicted spy who did not agree to cooperate with prosecutors was Larry Chin, the first American ever convicted of spying for China. Facing two life sentences after his 1986 conviction, Chin killed himself in prison weeks before he was to be sentenced. Because of the toughened sentencing imposed against spies after the Ames case, the threat of the death penalty now provides prosecutors with a powerful hammer, but it can also be abused. In the case of Wen Ho Lee, the computer scientist who was suspected of passing nuclear secrets to the Chinese, one FBI agent asked Lee during a 1999 interrogation: "Do you know who the Rosenbergs are?" referring to the husband-wife Soviet spy team from the 1950s. "The Rosenbergs are the only people that never cooperated with the federal government in an espionage case," the agent said. "You know what happened to them? They electrocuted them, Wen Ho." Russians Source of Some Hanssen Data? FBI Director Louis J. Freeh later acknowledged that such intimidation was inappropriate. The case against Lee largely collapsed, and he agreed to plead guilty last year to a single felony count of mishandling nuclear secrets at Los Alamos National Laboratory and to cooperate with investigators. FBI agents have debriefed Lee at length to determine what happened to the nuclear secrets he downloaded from his computer. In Hanssen's case, history and mutual interests point to the strong prospect of a plea bargain, legal and espionage experts said. "If the primary goal of Hanssen's lawyers right now is in seeing that he's not executed, the primary goal of the government should be in seeing that they prepare their case strongly, convict him and get his cooperation," said John L. Martin, who headed the Justice Department's espionage investigations unit throughout the spy-crazed 1980s. Hanssen has some clear leverage going into possible negotiations, experts said. Federal prosecutors filed a remarkably detailed set of allegations against Hanssen--information that many observers believe must have come at least in part from Russian intelligence sources. If Hanssen seeks to push the case to trial, that could put the U.S. government in the awkward spot of having to divulge how it got that information, Martin said. The government would also have to consider what secrets it could risk airing in public to prosecute Hanssen. Although there are provisions allowing sensitive information to be heard "in camera," or in private before a judge, that is not assured. Said Schiff, the prosecutor in the Miller spy case: "Depending on how the FBI has gathered its evidence against Hanssen, it may be too costly to the FBI to divulge." More than anything else, a plea bargain securing Hanssen's cooperation could provide the FBI with answers to critical questions: * What exactly did he give the Russians? * How did he avoid detection? * What was he doing during a blackout period from 1992 to 1999, when the FBI has found little evidence of communications between him and the Russians? "The government wants very much to know the extent to which national security was compromised," Schiff said, "and Hanssen obviously is in a unique position to do that." -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2633 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 10:06pm Subject: 'Spy Mania' Overblown, Russian Says 'Spy Mania' Overblown, Russian Says http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010303/t000018789.html Secrets: A former espionage chief says his country is not returning to its Cold War ways. By JOHN DANISZEWSKI, Times Staff Writer MOSCOW--There's one espionage suspect on trial, a U.S. Fulbright scholar was branded a spy in training and held on drug charges, and the United States is accusing Russia of buying surveillance secrets from a high-level FBI agent. Into this ferment, Russia's former spymaster emerged Friday from semi-retirement to say that all the "spy mania" is overblown. In a break with Moscow rules, former spy agency chief Nikolai Kovalyov presented the closest thing yet to an official response from Russia's espionage establishment to the arrest of FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen in the United States last month and the recent rash of spy-vs.-spy stories. He argued that Russian spy catchers have not returned to a Cold War footing and have been "totally restrained and balanced" in their pursuit of Western spies on Russian soil. Kovalyov, who served as director of the main successor to the KGB under former President Boris N. Yeltsin, dismissed the importance of any secrets that his agency might have obtained from Hanssen. The spy agency, the Federal Security Service, is known as the FSB. At a news conference, Kovalyov calmly urged Americans to take a detached view of the events. "Unfortunately, scandals of this kind are not the first, and I am afraid not the last," he said. "In my view, it is a mistake to elevate such scandals and incidents to the political level." In particular, he said he hoped that the conflict would not escalate. "The biggest mistake that the United States' leaders could make would be to expel Russian representatives from the United States. Clearly, retaliatory steps would be taken--absolutely adequate ones," he said. "Neither side is interested in this." The FBI has accused Hanssen--arrested near his suburban Washington home Feb. 18--of betraying his country for 15 years and passing on the identities of three Russian double agents working in the United States, leading to the execution of two of them. They have also said that Hanssen may have provided Russia with top-secret information about how and where the United States has planted its most sophisticated overseas eavesdropping devices. Kovalyov sought to cast doubt on the U.S. accusations against Hanssen, saying it might all turn out to be an "FBI provocation." For one thing, he said, he couldn't believe claims of U.S. investigators that Hanssen was paid $600,000 in cash and diamonds and had an additional $800,000 deposited in Russian bank accounts during the course of his alleged espionage since 1985. "Russia simply doesn't have that much money," he said. "As somebody who has worked with the special services for a long time, I tell you that all the problems that have afflicted the country--financial and economic--afflicted the special services too." Kovalyov, 52, who now serves as deputy head of the Security Committee of Russia's lower house of parliament but still carries an FSB passport, argued that Hanssen's role as a counterespionage agent within the FBI meant that whatever information he had was not vital to U.S. national interests. "Even if one assumes for the sake of argument that Hanssen worked for Russia . . . what could he have conveyed?" he asked. But his comments appeared to stop short of denying outright that Hanssen was allegedly employed by Russia's spy handlers. At one point, he said, "not a single country will forgo an attempt to get advance information on possible threats to it by another country." The espionage trial last year of U.S. businessman Edmond D. Pope, accused of trying to obtain plans for a sophisticated Russian torpedo, and the current trial of a nuclear arms expert, Igor V. Sutyagin, have led to charges that the FSB is emulating the old KGB--including show trials to dissuade Russians from having contact with foreigners. A regional FSB spokesman in Voronezh this week alleged that a 24-year-old Fulbright scholar arrested on marijuana charges was in fact an espionage trainee in Russia to perfect his language skills. But the FSB stressed in a subsequent statement that it did not intend to charge the scholar, John Edward Tobin, with espionage. Kovalyov said such cases are signs only that the FSB is doing its routine work. He was dismissive of suggestions that the FSB is turning back the clock to the days before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, when it was at war with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. "I think that while we may not be friends yet, we are already equal partners" with the U.S. intelligence services, he said. He cited intensive cooperation in recent years in the fight against international terrorism, arms trafficking and organized crime. "A return to the past is simply impossible," he said. "We are a different country. . . . Everything has changed totally." -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2634 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 10:07pm Subject: US offers deal on spy plea US offers deal on spy plea http://www.smh.com.au/news/0103/04/national/national14.html By Padraic Murphy Australian Jean- Phillipe Wispelaere, who is awaiting trial on espionage charges in the US, has been offered 12 years in prison to be served in Australia and America, according to his lawyer, Ivan Himmelhoch. Under the plea-bargain deal brokered by his US lawyer Nina Ginsberg and US prosecutors, Wispelaere would serve 10 years in an American prison and the remaining two years in an Australian prison if he pleads guilty. If he maintains a not guilty plea, Wispelaere faces a mandatory life sentence with no parole if found guilty by a trial judge. Wispelaere has until the end of next week to accept the deal, a tactic described as bullying by Australian-based Mr Himmelhoch. Wispelaere is accused of attempting to sell American satellite photos of Malaysia and Pakistan to Singaporean officials in Thailand. He was lured to the US by FBI officials and arrested at Washington Airport in May 1999. Mr Himmelhoch said his client would not accept the deal, and would start court proceedings in the next fortnight on the issue of jurisdiction. "These charges should not be heard in the US. This is a real threat to our sovereignty," Mr Himmelhoch said. "The crime, if any, was committed in Australia." Mr Himmelhoch said he would take the matter of jurisdiction to the United Nations if American courts rejected arguments that the case be heard in Australia. But it is understood that US intelligence officials are furious about the ease that Wispelaere, a junior employee at the Australian Defence Intelligence Organisation, was able to allegedly steal 900 documents containing US satellite photos and will fight any attempt to have the case heard in Australia. A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Daryl Williams said: "Wispelaere was arrested in the US and charged in the US and a US court should therefore hear the trial." The Sun-Herald -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2635 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 10:08pm Subject: A Spy's Secret World A Spy's Secret World http://www.msnbc.com/news/535672.asp Exclusive: To his neighbors, Robert Hanssen was a devout dad. To his FBI colleagues, he could be controlling and moralistic. To the Russians, he was ‘B’ and ‘Ramon’­a long-term mole in the American government. His mind and motives. By Evan Thomas, NEWSWEEK "The full extent of the damages is yet unknown," said FBI Director Louis Freeh. "We believe it was exceptionally grave." March 5 issue ­ In his long fight against the forces of evil, FBI Director Louis Freeh has always drawn on his deep faith. The director is regarded in the bureau as pure and relentlessly upright. Under the glass on Freeh’s desktop, along with snapshots of his wife and six kids, is a photo of the late Cardinal John O’Connor. AT LEAST ONE OF FREEH’S CHILDREN attends The Heights, a small, all-male school in Potomac, Md., affiliated with a powerful and secretive Roman Catholic order, Opus Dei. So imagine Freeh’s discomfort last fall when he showed up to give a speech at his son’s school and was greeted by another school parent and fellow FBI agent, Robert Hanssen, who was at that moment under surveillance for turning traitor as a Russian spy. When Freeh returned to his office the next day, he wearily told a colleague how difficult it had been to give a speech on ethics and morality, all the while knowing that Hanssen­a 25-year bureau veteran, father of six and member of the righteous and anti-communist Opus Dei­had betrayed everything that Freeh held dear. The director is trying to put a brave face on the spy scandal, the worst since CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames was caught working for the Russians in 1993. Last week Freeh claimed that arresting Hanssen on charges of espionage was a “counterintelligence coup.” From some kind of unidentified “sources” U.S. intelligence obtained what seemed to be virtually the KGB’s entire file on Hanssen’s case. Sources tell NEWSWEEK the bureau was able to identify the turncoat­who used code names like “B” and “Ramon”­from his fingerprints on the packages he allegedly sent to his Russian handlers. “It was a eureka moment,” said a top bureau official. Nonetheless, this week Freeh will have the difficult task of explaining to the Senate Intelligence Committee how such a mole could have gone undetected by the FBI for 15 years. In some ways, Hanssen, who is expected to plead not guilty, is a throwback to the cold-war game of spy vs. spy, when the FBI and CIA and their Soviet rivals in the KGB (now renamed the SVR) busily tried to recruit each other’s agents. Clearly, the game still goes on: Hanssen was arrested in a Vienna, Va., park a mile from his home as he dropped off classified documents, wrapped in a plastic garbage bag, for his Russian handlers. And the gumshoe’s high-tech methods are harbingers of the spy game of the future. A computer whiz, Hanssen was allegedly able to steal secrets from the U.S. intelligence community by hacking into its secret databases. In one correspondence with his Russian handlers, Hanssen proposed that, rather than bother with risky rendezvous in the muddy woods, he just send Moscow encrypted stolen documents via his Palm pilot (he wanted to upgrade from a Palm III to a Palm VII). ASSESSING THE DAMAGE The damage done will take months, if not more, to sort out. Over the years the FBI mole delivered to Moscow 6,000 pages of documents and 26 computer disks detailing the bureau’s “sources and methods,” including its latest techniques for electronic eavesdropping. As a counterintelligence expert at the FBI, he had unusually broad access to the bureau’s files. But the most elusive and intriguing question about Hanssen is his motivation: why would a God-fearing family man who ardently and even tediously denounced “godless communism” secretly sell out to the Kremlin? Greed may be only part of the answer. True, he may have worried about tuition payments for his six Catholic-school-educated children, but, unlike other alleged traitors, he did not throw money around on booze or women. According to the FBI’s affidavit, the Russians paid Hanssen more than $600,000 in cash and diamonds, plus the promise of $800,000 more awaiting him in Moscow for his “retirement.” Still, Hanssen lived the life of a frugal family man in the Virginia suburbs, driving a ’97 Ford Taurus. Some of Hanssen’s colleagues surmise that he simply liked to tempt fate. “He wanted to touch the wire,” said David Major, a section chief in the bureau’s intelligence division who worked across the hall from Hanssen. “It was like he was wondering, ‘Can I do it?’ ” A quirky, quietly brilliant man whose career never quite lived up to his own expectations, Hanssen may have been led into temptation partly by the boring, deadening work of spying in the real world, which involves far more waiting and paper shuffling than sleuthing in dark alleys. The forces driving Hanssen were likely complex and possibly unknowable. He seems to have been on some kind of strange quest, lurching between religions and ideologies and careers without finding relief, except perhaps in the thrill of spying. Still, it is possible, from the 100-page affidavit released by the FBI and interviews with his friends and colleagues, to begin to piece together clues to the puzzle, to gain the first insights into the twisted mind of a spy. He is described by those who knew him­who readily acknowledge that he was hard to truly know­as a brooding, controlling figure, fascinated by secrecy and obsessed by purity. He was, for much of his 56 years, a seeker of black-and-white certainty and higher truth who nonetheless plunged into the gray, morally compromised world of espionage. He is, in a perverse way, Louis Freeh’s doppelganger, a would-be scourge of evil who ended up collaborating with the very demon he was trying to exorcise. Hanssen’s own explanation to his Moscow handlers for his secret life, laid out in the bureau affidavit, was at once cryptic and grandiose: “I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I’d answer neither. I’d say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There is insanity in all the answers,” he wrote the SVR in 1999. In the same rambling letter, Hanssen went on, “I decided on this course when I was 14 years old. I’d read Philby’s book. Now that is insane, eh!” TAKING AFTER PHILBY H.A.R. (Kim) Philby is an interesting and provocative role model. Himself the son of a spy who turned traitor, Philby was an arrogant, self-loathing aristocrat recruited by the Soviets at Cambridge University in the early 1930s. Philby wanted to overthrow what he saw as the corrupt, class-ridden establishment and replace it with a Marxist utopia. Rising to head the Soviet division in the British spy service in the early days of the cold war, he led the mole-hunters on a merry chase until he fled to Moscow in 1963. Philby did not publish his memoir, “My Silent War,” until 1968, when Hanssen was 24, not 14. Hanssen may just have been flattering his handlers­or himself­by dropping the name of Moscow Center’s greatest catch. But Hanssen’s sense of intrigue­and his fascination with spying as a moral battleground­started young. With FBI colleagues, Hanssen would boast that his father had been a Red hunter, a member of the Chicago police force’s Red Squad, which tried to track down subversives in the 1950s and ’60s. An only child, regarded as a loner and something of a cipher in high school and college (where he studied Russian), Hanssen as a 21-year-old nurtured an ambition to join the supersecret National Security Agency and become a code breaker. He also imagined going to med school and becoming a psychiatrist. He ended up at dental school. His classmates there remember him as quiet, imperturbable, almost invisible­always neatly dressed in a coat and tie­yet odd. He worked on the weekends at a state mental facility and enjoyed interviewing the patients, as if he were a real psychiatrist. Occasionally, he would invite a friend out to the hospital to watch him perform. “He loved showing people the control he had over the patients, who were mostly bonkers. He liked to show off for his friends, putting these people through their paces. He wasn’t mean to the inmates; he just quietly interrogated them,” said John Sullivan, a classmate. Hanssen had another quirk, said Sullivan: he repeatedly described a dream, in which he was sitting on a throne, “like Emperor Ming in ‘Flash Gordon’,” passing final judgment on his enemies. “Guard!” Hanssen would imagine himself commanding. “Take them away!” Hanssen could laugh, a deep rumble, but he never opened up about his own family. A dutiful son, he regularly visited his mother. Yet he was searching for­or escaping from­something deep within himself. Bored with dentistry, he dropped out, got a degree in accounting and became, like his father, a policeman. But not just any cop: he volunteered for an elite squad that investigated other cops suspected of corruption. The C5 unit was despised by most Chicago police officers, who viewed the undercover cops as traitors. “It didn’t seem to bother him at all,” said his supervisor, John Clarke. Hanssen arrived full of insinuating questions about the regime of Mayor Richard Daley, Chicago’s all-powerful boss. Indeed, Hanssen started asking so many questions that Clarke began to secretly suspect that the rookie was actually working undercover for the federal government. “He looked like an altar boy,” said Clarke. “But I was always very suspicious of him.” VOLUNTEER SPYCATCHER Before long, Hanssen was openly working for the Feds­as an FBI agent. Joining the bureau in 1976, Hanssen showed little interest in the normal duties of a junior G-man, standing in the cold writing down the license-plate numbers of suspected mobsters. He volunteered to be a spycatcher, to enter the arcane world of counterintelligence operations against the KGB, which was working hard to penetrate the U.S. government and steal military, political and industrial secrets. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, with the cold war deepening again after a period of detente, he could easily imagine the struggle against the “Evil Empire” as a grand stage worthy of his intellectual powers and zeal. The spy-vs.-spy game that swirled around the United Nations in New York had been described as a “war” by its veterans, but it could be a dreary, deadening pastime for an FBI agent trying to support a large and growing family in the city’s pricey environs. Agents in the New York office of the FBI at the time complained of low pay and lower morale. After a while the duties of a counterintelligence officer­such as reviewing the expense accounts of businessmen who traveled to Moscow­may have seemed as dull as dental school to Hanssen. He may also have been going through some personal crisis at the time. According to family friends, his wife, Bonnie, was having periodic miscarriages between giving birth to their six children. The real cause of Hanssen’s deep disquiet may never be known. But in October 1985, a month before the Geneva summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signaled the beginning of the end of the cold war, Hanssen took a step from which­as he well knew­there is no turning back. According to the FBI affidavit, he offered his services to the Kremlin, in a letter sent through the regular mail to the Virginia home of a KGB agent stationed in the Soviet Embassy in Washington. As a kind of down payment, Hanssen handed over the names of three KGB agents who were secretly working for the Americans. It was a deadly gift. Two of the agents­Valery Martynov and Sergei Motorin­were later executed in Moscow, while the third, Boris Yuzhin, was sent to prison. (These double agents were doubly unlucky: they were earlier betrayed by the CIA mole, Aldrich Ames.) Hanssen may also have been protecting himself by eliminating sources who might finger him to the CIA. The counterintelligence expert took the usual precautions. The FBI affidavit reads like a how-to manual of good “tradecraft.” He communicated with the KGB through “dead drops.” In order to avoid surveillance, he never met directly with the Soviets. Rather, he would post a signal­a piece of tape on a tree­alerting his handlers that he was leaving a package at a predetermined site. They would leave behind further marching orders in the same spot­and a reward. Hanssen was careful not to ask for too much. In one of his first messages, on Nov. 8, 1985, he wrote Moscow, “As far as funds are concerned, I have little need or utility for more than the 100,000 [dollars]. It merely provides a difficulty since I can not spend it, store it, or invest it easily without triping [sic] ‘drug money’ warning bells. Perhaps some diamonds as security to my children and some good will so that when the time comes, you will accept by [sic] senior services as a guest lecturer. Eventually, I would appreciate an escape plan. (Nothing lasts forever.)” ‘NEITHER OF US ARE CHILDREN’ Hanssen may have been thinking of his model, the master spy Philby, who ended his days as a Hero of the State (though a depressed drunk), lecturing fledgling KGB officers in Moscow. Shrewdly, Hanssen never revealed his true identity to the KGB, using code names instead. He repeatedly refused requests to meet a Moscow agent at home or overseas. “Neither of us are children about these things,” he chided his KGB handler at one point. “Over time, I can cut your losses rather than become one.” As the chief of a counterintelligence unit in New York, then as a fairly high-ranking analyst of Soviet spying back at FBI headquarters in Washington, Hanssen was in a position to know a great deal about the FBI’s spycatching operations. Intelligence experts say that Hanssen probably told the Russians how, where and when U.S. intelligence agencies, like the eavesdroppers at the NSA, were listening in on Russian communications. The true cost to national security is hard to determine. During the 15 years when Hanssen was operating as a mole, the crumbling Soviet Union and its chaotic successor, the Russian Republic, was not much of a real threat to the United States. Oleg Gordievsky, a Soviet spy who defected to Britain in 1985, suggests that the Russians might have given or sold information turned over by Hanssen to scarier enemies­rogue states like Iraq and Libya, or terrorist groups in the Middle East. But a senior FBI official interviewed by NEWSWEEK was doubtful. He observed that Moscow’s paranoid and clannish SVR has always been reluctant to share secrets even with its Russian military counterpart, the GRU. Hanssen seems to have been satisfied by his secret life for a time. According to the affidavit, his handlers cleverly nurtured him with cash and stroking and even snatches of poetry. His correspondence with the KGB is full of salutations to “dear friends.” The chairman of the KGB himself, Vladimir Kryuchkov, sent along his personal congratulations. But by the end of that year, Hanssen had gone to ground. His next contact with the Russians, it appears, was not for seven years. BUSY MOLE-HUNTERS Hanssen may have felt a need to lie low. Aldrich Ames was exposed as a Soviet agent in 1993, and the mole-hunters were busily searching for other turncoats. Some serious security lapses could not be explained by Ames’s perfidy. FBI and CIA officials wondered why some of the intelligence community’s listening devices were going deaf. And they still couldn’t explain how the Russians had been able in 1989 to tip off a State Department official, Felix Bloch, who was under surveillance for spying. (According to the FBI affidavit, it was Hanssen who warned the Russians that the noose was tightening around Bloch. “Bloch was such a shnook,” Hanssen wrote his handlers, “I almost hated protecting him.”) In the mid-’90s, the spycatchers did snare a couple of lesser moles, the CIA’s Harold Nicholson and the FBI’s Earl Pitts. But they remained suspicious. When Hanssen was arrested on Feb. 18, as many as half a dozen American intelligence officials were under close scrutiny at the time. Their fates remain uncertain. There were complaints last week that longtime FBI agents had been exempted from taking lie-detector tests, unlike CIA officials, who­especially in the wake of Ames case­were routinely “fluttered.” But even if Hanssen had been strapped to a polygraph machine, that might not have incriminated him. Investigating his home life would not have revealed a hint of wrongdoing. According to neighbors, he got home every night at 5:30; the kids were doing their homework and dinner was on the table within a few minutes. Wife Bonnie is described as a “cute, pixie, Doris Day-like person,” her home “as neat as a pin.” The dog’s name is Sunday, as in church. The Hanssens are devoutly religious. Although Hanssen rarely mentioned religion while growing up (he was at least nominally a Lutheran), he became an ardent Catholic, like his wife, in the mid-1970s. His attachment to Opus Dei stands in stark and perplexing contrast to his work for the Kremlin. Officials of the order hotly dispute descriptions of Opus Dei (Work of God) as a secret sect. Its followers are supposed to live a godly life while here on earth, but fellow Catholics sometimes find Opus Dei members to be a little spooky and holier-than-thou. Hanssen’s colleagues regarded him as a moralizer. He refused to attend a going-away party at a girlie bar near FBI headquarters, calling the party “an occasion of sin.” Riding home one night with another FBI official, he bridled when an NPR commentator remarked that “the implied social contract is the basis for morality.” Turning off the radio in disgust, Hanssen muttered, “The basis of morality is God’s law.” THE LUGUBRIOUS DR. DEATH At bureau headquarters, Hanssen was known for dressing in black and for a somewhat lugubrious manner, which some compared to that of an undertaker. To investigative journalist James Bamford, he handed windy assessments of the evils of communism, long after communism had collapsed. He was called, behind his back, Dr. Death. Speaking in low tones, smiling little, he had few real friends. He may have missed his Russian handlers. “A spy is one of the loneliest people in the world,” says Dr. David Charney, a psychiatrist who has spent 20 hours interviewing Earl Pitts about his career as a spy. “He is completely dependent on his handler.” In late 1999, Hanssen allegedly renewed contact with Russian intelligence, which was gearing up again under President Vladimir Putin, an old KGB hand who is eager to revive some the Soviet Empire’s glory days. “Dear friend: welcome!” began a letter to Hanssen from the SVR on Oct. 6. “We express our sincere joy on the occasion of resumption of contact with you.” Yet there was a new, panicky note on Hanssen’s end. “I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you, and I get silence,” he petulantly wrote the SVR in March of last year. “I hate silence.... I hate uncertainty. So far I have judged the edge correctly. Give me credit for that.” He seemed to know that the end was coming near. “Please,” he begs his handler, “at least say goodbye. It’s been a long time my dear friends, a long and lonely time.” Then, more sardonically, “Want me to lecture in your 101 course in my old age?” He was worried that he faced the death penalty if he got caught by the mole-hunters, but he didn’t really believe that a welcome suite awaited him in Moscow if he bolted. As for the $800,000 supposedly set aside for his retirement, he scoffed, “we do both know that money is not really ‘put away for you’ except in some vague accounting sense. Never patronize me at this level,” he warned. “It offends me, but then you are easily forgiven. But perhaps I shouldn’t tease you. It just gets me in trouble.” THE OFFER OF A BIG OFFICE Big trouble was just around the corner. In October, after receiving the case file of the SVR agent known as “B,” the FBI had little trouble zeroing in on Hanssen. A senior FBI official said the top brass was stunned when the fingerprints on the packaging materials turned out to belong to one of their own. Hanssen was immediately put under round-the-clock surveillance. Perhaps sensing the dogs circling, he was beginning to talk to his FBI bosses about retirement. He was offered instead a nice big office at headquarters, NEWSWEEK has learned. When he went over for a look, the FBI bugged his old office. The gumshoes were waiting when Hanssen went to a northern Virginia park to visit a dead drop in the gloom of a February late afternoon. He walked into the woods and placed an inch-thick package under a footbridge. As he turned to go to his car, agents yelled, “Freeze! FBI!” The long wait was over. Hanssen did not resist or even say anything. His brokenhearted wife hired one of the best criminal-defense lawyers in Washington, Plato Cacheris, who said the government’s case may not be as solid as it seems. If history is a guide, Hanssen will cut a deal. To avoid the death penalty, he will have to help the FBI figure out just how much damage he did. Repairing the harm done his family may be harder. Hanssen’s children are assuming the allegations against their father are true, said Hanssen’s sister-in-law Liz Rahimi. “They just think there was something wrong with their dad, and they didn’t know,” she said. Hanssen’s mother-in-law, Fran Wauck, told NEWSWEEK, “The family is devastated. We don’t even know who he is.” It’s not clear that anyone ever really knew Bob Hanssen, perhaps not even himself. ------------ With Eleanor Clift, Michael Isikoff, Mark Hosenball and Donatella Lorch in Washington, Dirk Johnson, Flynn McRoberts and Karen Springen in Chicago and Christian Caryl in Moscow © 2001 Newsweek, Inc. -- ======================================================================= Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" - George Orwell ======================================================================= James M. Atkinson Phone: (978) 546-3803 Granite Island Group Fax: (978) 546-9467 127 Eastern Avenue #291 http://www.tscm.com/ Gloucester, MA 01931-8008 jmatk@t... ======================================================================= The First, The Largest, The Most Popular, and The Most Complete TSCM, Technical Security, and Counterintelligence Site on the Internet. ======================================================================= 2636 From: James M. Atkinson, Comm-Eng Date: Sun Mar 4, 2001 10:09pm Subject: U.S. thinks FBI agent told Soviets of secret tunnel U.S. thinks FBI agent told Soviets of secret tunnel Sunday March 4, 2:03 PM http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010304/3/j2ad.html WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States built a secret tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington, but investigators believe the operation was betrayed by the FBI agent arrested last month on charges of spying for Moscow, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing current and former intelligence and law enforcement officials. The secret tunnel operation, which officials indicated was run jointly by the FBI and the National Security Agency, was part of a broad U.S. effort to eavesdrop on Soviet -- later Russian -- facilities and personnel operating in the United States, the paper wrote in its Internet edition on Saturday. Spokesmen at the FBI and the White House declined to comment to the Times on the tunnel operation. Current and former U.S. officials estimated that the tunnel construction and related intelligence-gathering activities cost several hundred million dollars, apparently making it the most expensive clandestine intelligence operation that the agent, Robert Hanssen, is accused of betraying, the Times said. The tunnel was reportedly designed as part of a sophisticated operation to eavesdrop on communications and conversations in the Soviet Embassy complex, which was built in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1980s, at about the time the tunnel operation was under way, the United States and the Soviet Union argued bitterly over their respective embassies in Moscow and Washington, with the United States accusing Moscow of spying at both locations, the paper said. The U.S. government has never publicly disclosed the existence of