Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America by David Wise
Authors: David Wise
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intercepting their satellite communications. He could afford to rest a bit.
* Hanssen’s squad was close by because of budget constraints. With the technology available at the time it was too costly to run the phone lines used for wiretaps over many blocks. “In those days, if you moved out of the area of a central telephone office, it was expensive,” one FBI man recalled.
* Riverdale was the main target for MEGAHUT ,” said one FBI man. “We worked with NSA. Before they built Riverdale, they lived in hotels, the Excelsior, the Esplanade on the west side, and it was easy for us to go after them. We could be next door or on the floor above. We could talk to the manager, the neighbors. Then in the late seventies they [the Soviets] rounded them up and put them all in one complex in Riverdale.” As secret as MEGAHUT was, at least some New Yorkers were aware that the FBI had a clandestine hideaway in their midst, even if the exact purpose remained mysterious. “Everybody in the neighborhood knew,” the FBI man said. “We had ‘No Parking’ signs. That was the giveaway; the bureau really likes its cars.”
* Today, the surveillance data is downloaded directly to Washington from the laptop, one of Hanssen’s curious legacies.
* Three years later, the author became personally involved in the fallout from the affair when Victor Gundarev called to complain about his treatment by the CIA. Gundarev, given a new identity and resettled in the United States by the CIA, said the agency had stalled in providing green cards for himself and his family and had tapped his telephone. He was so disillusioned, he said, he was thinking of redefecting. I wrote an op-ed piece for
The New York Times
, later expanded into a magazine article for the newspaper, warning that the agency might have another Yurchenko case on its hands. As a result of the publicity and Gundarev’s complaints, the CIA instituted certain reforms in its defector program. See “Another Soviet Defector Threatens to Go Back,”
The New York Times
, July 9, 1989, Section 4, p. 27, and “It’s Cold Coming Out,”
The New York Times Magazine
, September 17, 1989, p. 36ff.
* The KGB tape did not indicate Hanssen’s or Fefelov’s names; they are included here for the sake of clarity. A transcript of the conversation appears in the FBI affidavit seeking a court warrant for Hanssen’s arrest, a document made public when the FBI announced the arrest on February 20, 2001.
* That the exchange went off as scheduled was a small miracle. The beginning of the conversation was not recovered by the FBI and parts of the tape were unintelligible. Near the start of the tape was the phrase “tomorrow morning,” so Hanssen must have understood that is when he was to go to the drop. But Fefelov set the time and date as February 13 at 1 P.M . In his first letter to the KGB in 1985 Hanssen seemed to propose that in future communications the sender would add six to the month, date, and time, and the recipient would subtract. If Hanssen subtracted six from the month, date, and time, as he and the Russians had apparently agreed, the exchange would have taken place on August 7 at 7 A.M. , an impossibility, since it was already August 18. Conversely, if he added six, the exchange would have occurred on August 19, at 7 P.M . In order to get it right and show up at 7 A.M . the next day, “tomorrow morning,” August 19, Hanssen would have had to add six to the month and date but
subtract
six from the time. Somehow he must have figured out what Fefelov meant, because he got the money.
† When Hanssen was debriefed by the FBI after his guilty plea, he disclosed his attempt to send the KGB this subliminal, albeit false, coded message.
9
Anybody Here Seen a Mole?
Washington, which was built on a swamp, can be ghastly in the dog days of summer. Yet in the first week of August 1987, Robert Hanssen voluntarily returned to FBI headquarters. He had a facile explanation for his colleagues
* Hanssen’s squad was close by because of budget constraints. With the technology available at the time it was too costly to run the phone lines used for wiretaps over many blocks. “In those days, if you moved out of the area of a central telephone office, it was expensive,” one FBI man recalled.
* Riverdale was the main target for MEGAHUT ,” said one FBI man. “We worked with NSA. Before they built Riverdale, they lived in hotels, the Excelsior, the Esplanade on the west side, and it was easy for us to go after them. We could be next door or on the floor above. We could talk to the manager, the neighbors. Then in the late seventies they [the Soviets] rounded them up and put them all in one complex in Riverdale.” As secret as MEGAHUT was, at least some New Yorkers were aware that the FBI had a clandestine hideaway in their midst, even if the exact purpose remained mysterious. “Everybody in the neighborhood knew,” the FBI man said. “We had ‘No Parking’ signs. That was the giveaway; the bureau really likes its cars.”
* Today, the surveillance data is downloaded directly to Washington from the laptop, one of Hanssen’s curious legacies.
* Three years later, the author became personally involved in the fallout from the affair when Victor Gundarev called to complain about his treatment by the CIA. Gundarev, given a new identity and resettled in the United States by the CIA, said the agency had stalled in providing green cards for himself and his family and had tapped his telephone. He was so disillusioned, he said, he was thinking of redefecting. I wrote an op-ed piece for
The New York Times
, later expanded into a magazine article for the newspaper, warning that the agency might have another Yurchenko case on its hands. As a result of the publicity and Gundarev’s complaints, the CIA instituted certain reforms in its defector program. See “Another Soviet Defector Threatens to Go Back,”
The New York Times
, July 9, 1989, Section 4, p. 27, and “It’s Cold Coming Out,”
The New York Times Magazine
, September 17, 1989, p. 36ff.
* The KGB tape did not indicate Hanssen’s or Fefelov’s names; they are included here for the sake of clarity. A transcript of the conversation appears in the FBI affidavit seeking a court warrant for Hanssen’s arrest, a document made public when the FBI announced the arrest on February 20, 2001.
* That the exchange went off as scheduled was a small miracle. The beginning of the conversation was not recovered by the FBI and parts of the tape were unintelligible. Near the start of the tape was the phrase “tomorrow morning,” so Hanssen must have understood that is when he was to go to the drop. But Fefelov set the time and date as February 13 at 1 P.M . In his first letter to the KGB in 1985 Hanssen seemed to propose that in future communications the sender would add six to the month, date, and time, and the recipient would subtract. If Hanssen subtracted six from the month, date, and time, as he and the Russians had apparently agreed, the exchange would have taken place on August 7 at 7 A.M. , an impossibility, since it was already August 18. Conversely, if he added six, the exchange would have occurred on August 19, at 7 P.M . In order to get it right and show up at 7 A.M . the next day, “tomorrow morning,” August 19, Hanssen would have had to add six to the month and date but
subtract
six from the time. Somehow he must have figured out what Fefelov meant, because he got the money.
† When Hanssen was debriefed by the FBI after his guilty plea, he disclosed his attempt to send the KGB this subliminal, albeit false, coded message.
9
Anybody Here Seen a Mole?
Washington, which was built on a swamp, can be ghastly in the dog days of summer. Yet in the first week of August 1987, Robert Hanssen voluntarily returned to FBI headquarters. He had a facile explanation for his colleagues
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