To his Russian handlers, he referred to himself as “Ramon” and “Roman Garcia” and gladly accepted from them over $1.2 million, jewels and attention. In exchange, Robert P. Hanssen shared over 6,000 pages of classified documents and identified numerous human sources within the Soviet Union/Russia being handled by U.S. intelligence. On this date, February 18, 2001, Hanssen was arrested in Vienna, Virginia. A few days later, he was arraigned and charged with espionage and on July 6, 2001 he entered a guilty plea. After months of debriefing interviews, on May 7, 2002, he was sentenced to life in prison. He is now 77 years of age and sits for the remainder of his life in federal prison in Florence, CO, where he carries prisoner registration number 48551-083.
Hanssen’s success and the United States counterintelligence and counterespionage failure to detect his subterfuge over the course of 20-plus years provide to us many lessons.
Robert Hanssen: Top 5 lessons learned
It is important to understand that the Soviet KGB and subsequently the Russian SVR/FSB and the GRU, never recruited Hanssen to be a clandestine source, he volunteered to be a spy and betray his allegiance to his country. Additionally, the fact that he was able to operate on and off again over the course of 20 years serves to demonstrate how a mediocre special agent within the FBI, utilizing a modicum of tradecraft was able to avoid being detected by the insider threat programs of the 1980s and 1990s.
The review of the FBI handling of the investigation of Robert Hanssen conducted by the FBI’s Office of the Inspector General and published in August 2003, highlights some of the shortcomings. The OIG reviewed over 368,000 pages of material from the FBI, CIA, NSA, State Department, and Justice Department, and conducted over 200 interviews of individuals involved and the OIG interviewed Hanssen extensively.
1. Danger of Confirmatory Bias
The FBI limited their investigation to that which fit their “scenario”.
The realization that the compromises of U.S. intelligence sources included individuals about which Aldrich Ames, Edward Lee Howard, nor Harold Nicholson had access, highlighted the importance of a continued counterespionage effort. The fact these three individuals, who also volunteered to betray their country and volunteer to the Soviet/Russians were all CIA officers, set the table for the FBI’s bias in their investigation to find the individual responsible.
The FBI search, which was limited to the CIA, went on to disrupt and damage a number of Agency case officers’ lives and careers as they were wrongly accused. Often overlooked is the warning which was provided to the FBI in 1997 which named Hanssen as a suspected spy for the Russians. The tip came from Earl Pitts during his own debriefings, following his having been arrested in December 1996 for espionage on behalf of the Russians.
The review exposed that there had been others who had knowledge or suspicion prior to Pitts uttering his words of suspicion.
If it was not for the tape recording provided by a U.S. penetration of the Russian intelligence apparatus which contained the “voice of Ramon,” the investigation of Hanssen as the prime suspect may have been delayed for a considerable amount of time. His voice was heard by his colleagues and those colleagues, as chagrined as they may have been, identified Hanssen, one of their own, as the voice on the tape.
2. Value of Continuous Vetting of Individuals in Positions of Trust
The aftermath of Hanssen’s treachery cut a path wide and destructive. As a result of the Hanssen case, the FBI adjusted their internal vetting of their own officers. The OIG review characterized Hanssen as “a mediocre agent who exhibited strong technical abilities but had weak managerial and interpersonal skills. Despite his failings as a supervisor, Hanssen was on the FBI’s promotional track for much of his FBI career and generally received average to favorable performance evaluations.” The review goes on to describe Hanssen as a train-wreck in the day-to-day handling of classified materials and his security violations should have been red flags.
Furthermore, his lifestyle, which included visiting strip clubs, providing expensive gifts to a specific stripper, videotaping sexual encounters with his spouse, and having his male friend watch, may have percolated to the surface if ongoing vetting and lifestyle and counterintelligence background investigations and polygraphs were the norms. Hanssen was never polygraphed during his tenure as an FBI special agent.
3. Security Starts with You
The review noted that the FBI was lax when it came to handing out security violations, exercises which are designed to remind the individual making the error of the need to protect national security information more appropriately, and also their colleagues, that protecting secrets is of significant import.
In 1981 his wife discovered him reviewing GRU communications in their home. He confessed to her and then confessed to his priest. The priest absolved him of his sin and told him he didn’t have to turn himself in, and that he should donate the money he received to charity.
In 1990, his brother-in-law, also an FBI Special Agent, reported that his sister, Hanssen’s spouse, had told him that her husband (Hanssen) had $5,000 in unexplained cash in his dresser. There was no follow-up on the brother-in-law’s report, his supervisor sat on the information, as there was “no policy or procedure mandating that he pass the information on for analysis and possible investigation.”
The Hanssen case caused a change to be effected within the FBI.
“The Hanssen case also highlighted the absence of a centralized reporting program for security violations at the FBI, as well as the absence of a unit at FBI Headquarters responsible for collecting derogatory information concerning FBI employees, particularly in the counterintelligence context.”
4. Insider Threat – The Motivation to Break Trust
Hanssen’s espionage can be broken down into three time periods: 1979-81, 1985-91, and 1999-2001. In each instance, it was Hanssen who initiated contact. It was Hanssen who was motivated, again and again to volunteer to be a clandestine source within the FBI, and specifically within the FBI’s counterintelligence efforts focused on Soviet/Russian espionage activities in the United States. His motivation was greed and hubris, he viewed money as a means to measure his worth, and hubris as he was most assuredly smarter than his colleagues gave him credit.
In the first period – his motivation is characterized as “low self-esteem and desire to demonstrate intellectual superiority.” He thought he could get away with espionage and he did. He volunteered to the GRU in New York, the period of espionage lasted two years until discovered by his spouse.
In the next period, Hanssen volunteered to the KGB in Washington D.C. He dropped a letter to the KGB using his Ramon or Ramon Garcia alias. He referred to this second voluntary segment of espionage as feeding his addiction to espionage and wanting to be in the midst. He had done it before. The feelings he had remained and like the serial criminal – he did it once, he could do it again. This period ended in 1991 and coincided with the demise of the Soviet Union.
The third and last period of espionage has Hanssen motivated by money. His personal finances were in the worst shape of his professional life. In addition to his salary, the espionage money, Hanssen was also receiving an allowance from his mother, who in 1997 told him she had to stop after having provided him more than $94,000 in the mid-1990s. This period ended with his arrest.
5. Importance of Compartmentation and Need to Know
The review highlights how Hanssen “exploited serious weaknesses in the FBI’s documents and information security. He was able to collect information on cases about which he had no need to know, but was able to access and become knowledgeable.” This knowledge was then exploited by Hanssen, “he walked out of the FBI with copies and originals of some of the U.S. government’s most sensitive classified materials.” The KGB/SVR/FSB/GRU wasted no time neutralizing and, in some instances, killing the assets he identified.
Furthermore, during his period of time at the State Department, he was able to query the FBI’s case system for keywords which would provide him an early warning that his activities may have passed through the threshold of disinterest to that of causing the FBI to look more closely.
Access controls, compartmentation, and strict need to know policies followed the Hanssen experience.
While the aforementioned discusses five of the areas where recommendations were made and remedies invoked, the 2003 FBI OIG report resulted in 21 separate recommendations. These recommendations were designed to correct the internal processes and procedures that allowed an insider to conduct espionage without being detected.
Years of going undetected by Hanssen, the insider, leaves a mark.
