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What made the American turncoat tick?

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Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen  


(CNN) -- While he acted the patriot and family man, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was selling his country's most classified information and planting a camera in his bedroom so another man could watch Hanssen and his wife during their most intimate moments.

Hanssen's betrayal of the United States may have helped Osama bin Laden, the man accused of masterminding the September 11 attacks, according to David Vise, the author of "The Bureau and the Mole."

Hanssen sold the Russians software the United States used to track enforcement of intelligence cases. An individual Russian -- not the Russian government -- sold that software to the al Qaeda terrorist network, Vise said. Bin Laden may have used that software to evade detection and monitoring by the United States for years.

In July of last year, just months before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Hanssen signed his plea agreement to avoid the death penalty and serve life in prison instead.

President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft had argued for a death sentence, but Vice President Dick Cheney and the intelligence community argued he was worth more alive than dead, according to Vise.

Vise also said Hanssen increased the risk of nuclear war by giving the KGB the U.S. plan to protect the president and other top government officials should the Soviets attack. Court documents indicate he also handed over U.S. plans for retaliation against any attack.

"We are talking about the most prolific and damaging spy in U.S. history. Secrets sold, not only from the FBI where he worked, but also from the CIA, the White House, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency," said Vise.

'I wanted to get a little money'

Some of the first information Hanssen offered the Soviets in 1985 were the names of three Soviet agents who were working for the United States, according to a statement of facts signed by Hanssen. At least two of those men were later executed. Hanssen told the Soviets he thought the information was worth at least $100,000.

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After he was caught on February 18, 2001, Hanssen told his U.S. interrogators, "I could have been a devastating spy, I think, but I didn't want to be a devastating spy. I wanted to get a little money and get out of it."

Over the years, Hanssen collected quite a large amount of money -- an estimated $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. At first, he told his KGB handlers that he couldn't accept a lot of cash because it would trigger drug money warnings and said the diamonds were to secure his children's future. However, he later traded some of the jewels for cash, some of which went to buy a car for a stripper he had befriended.

But money was not the motive according to his friend Paul Moore, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who has known Hanssen for 20 years. Hanssen's ultimate goal was "to play the spy game better than anybody's ever played it before. He wants to be the best spy ever."

Hanssen himself told the Russians that he "decided on this course when I was 14 years old. I'd read Philby's book," a reference to British traitor Kim Philby who was arguably the most successful and damaging Soviet double agent of the Cold War period.

'Blood on his hands'

Hanssen learned to conceal what he was thinking and feeling while he was a child and being physically and emotionally abused by his Chicago police officer father, according to Vise. That ability to compartmentalize his emotions was a skill that came in handy as a double agent.

"He is able for more than 20 years -- without the Russians ever learning his identity -- to be a spy, to be a solid FBI analyst, to be a patriotic American, to commit treason, to be a church-going man and to have blood on his hands," Vise said.

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From left: U.S. Attorney Randy Bellows, Hanssen attorney Plato Cacheris and Robert Hanssen.  

The veteran FBI agent kept his identity from his handlers by using the alias "Ramon" when he contacted them by letter, avoiding all face-to-face meetings and passing his information at so-called dead drops -- where he would drop off a package at a prescribed time and place, put out a signal and later return to pick up his rewards.

Hanssen was a spycraft snob. When the FBI was investigating U.S. diplomat Felix Bloch, who was suspected of -- but never charged with -- passing secrets to the Soviets in the late 1980s, Hanssen warned this handlers and handed over details of that investigation. But he later told the Soviets that "Bloch was such a shnook ... I almost hated protecting him."

Hanssen, who admired the legendary FBI of J. Edgar Hoover, was disappointed by the reality he encountered as an agent. Vise said he lacked the social skills to get ahead in the bureau, where other agents mocked him, calling him "Dr. Death" and "the Mortician" behind his back.

"He felt like an outsider," Vise said. "He felt angry, and he felt his brilliance was being overlooked. And he felt much smarter than the people around him."

That may have been part of his motivation to become a double agent and outsmart his colleagues for 20 years. The Russians were careful to praise his intelligence and skills and to thank him profusely for whatever he gave them.

He later became petulant with his Russian handlers when he thought he was being under-appreciated, warning them not to patronize him and not to ignore him.

"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," Hanssen wrote in one of his last communications.

The spy described himself once in a commuique as "insanely loyal" to his Russian handlers. But it was someone in Russian intelligence who tipped off the United States that there was a spy within the FBI.

'Daily Mass ... nightly betrayal'

Hanssen, a church-going and devout member of the conservative Opus Dei Catholic organization, once chastised fellow FBI agents for planning a farewell party at a topless bar.

"He was tremendously against that, absolutely sincere: 'You should not go to these places. It's wrong if you go to the places. It's a sin if you go to the places,'" Moore remembers Hanssen saying.

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Authorities arrested Hanssen in February 2001 after he dropped classified documents in a 'dead box' for Russian agents to retrieve.  

Vise described Hanssen's life story as a tale of "daily Mass, weekly confession and nightly betrayal."

"Hanssen put a secret camera in the bedroom in his home so that his best friend Jack could sit in the den and watch on the big TV screen while Robert Hanssen had sex with his wife Bonnie," said Vise.

The author theorized that Hanssen loved his wife so much "that in his own warped view, he wanted to share her with his best friend."

In their new book, "Into the Mirror: The Life of Master Spy Robert Hanssen, " Lawrence Schiller and Norman Mailer quote Hanssen's friend Jack Hoschauer saying the spy even suggested giving Bonnie an illegal date rape drug and then letting his friend rape her. The friend demurred.

Hanssen's wife has forgiven her husband for his espionage she believes was caused by some psychological illness. While she visits him weekly and prays for him, she also has cooperated with investigators and will receive the survivor's portion of his government pension while he spends the rest of his life in prison.

-- CNN National Security Correspondent David Ensor contributed to this report



 
 
 
 


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