Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America by David Wise Page B
Authors: David Wise
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hour in the bureau gym. “He would get into games with guys from records and fingerprinting,” Paul Moore said. “He’s a thirtysomething going up against these young guys from the ident division. He got injured a lot, he got some bad injuries doing that sort of stuff.”
Bob King was a veteran foreign counterintelligence (FCI) analyst. He had come to the bureau from the CIA, a relatively rare progression that led to some good-natured needling in the Hoover building. “I used to accuse him of being a CIA penetration of the FBI,” Moore said. In his previous work at the CIA, King had also been a Soviet analyst. Dark-haired and bespectacled, he was a heavy smoker who quit cold turkey when his doctors got after him. Milburn and King were both friendly, accessible types, Moore said.
“Oddly, both Hanssen and Milburn had kidney stones. They each had these big clear plastic water pitchers on their desks, they were supposed to be drinking a lot of water. One afternoon I found them both lying on the floor to get relief from these attacks.” Moore could not resist a gibe at the sight of his two prone colleagues. “It’s more expensive at the Harrington Hotel,” he cracked, “but you’d have more privacy.”
The two analysts assigned to the mole study, and Hanssen himself, had the advantage over the others in the unit. Most analysts looked at specific targets, such as the various KGB lines, and did not know much outside their own specialized areas, Moore explained. “But a few people did ‘all source,’ and that was Milburn, King, and Hanssen.” Within the Soviet analytical unit, in other words, Hanssen was one of the very few entitled to know all the FBI’s sources and secrets.
Or as David Major, the former FBI counterintelligence official, put it, “He was at the center of the hourglass, he saw everything.”
* * *
The penetration problem had begun long before, with UNSUB DICK .
The story was a secret buried so deep within the FBI that it is revealedhere for the first time. * UNSUB DICK —the UNSUB stood for “unknown subject”—was the first suspected KGB mole inside the FBI. Any history of penetrations of the bureau must start with him. The study by Hanssen, Milburn, and King would certainly have focused on this long-secret case.
The search for the penetration began early in 1962 when Aleksei Isidorovich Kulak, a KGB officer undercover at the United Nations, walked into the FBI office on East Sixty-ninth Street in Manhattan and offered his services as a spy. He said he was discontent with his lack of progress in his KGB career. The FBI gave him the code name FEDORA; the CIA called him SCOTCH .
Kulak, then thirty-nine, married and accompanied by his wife in New York, was a short, stocky man whose name meant “wealthy farmer” in Russian. “We called him Fatso,” said an FBI man who worked the case. Kulak specialized in collecting scientific and technical secrets. He had a doctorate in chemistry and had worked as a radiological chemist in a Moscow laboratory. At the UN, he was a consultant to a committee on the effects of atomic radiation.
By walking into the FBI’s office in Manhattan, Kulak had taken a big risk; the KGB might have had the building under surveillance. The FBI agents who met with FEDORA challenged him on this point. “We said aren’t you worried they may be watching the FBI building?” one of the agents recalled. “He said he was not worried because all of our [KGB] people are out covering a meeting with your guy, ‘Dick.’ ”
Uh-oh. This was the first time that the FBI had heard the name “Dick.” FEDORA was clearly saying that the FBI harbored a mole. But he said he did not know the man’s true identity.
FEDORA’S revelation touched off an intense, long-running secret mole hunt within the FBI. “It went on for years; it drove us crazy,” the FBI man said.
Not long after, another KGB officer in New York, Valentin Lysov, also warned U.S. intelligence of a mole in
Bob King was a veteran foreign counterintelligence (FCI) analyst. He had come to the bureau from the CIA, a relatively rare progression that led to some good-natured needling in the Hoover building. “I used to accuse him of being a CIA penetration of the FBI,” Moore said. In his previous work at the CIA, King had also been a Soviet analyst. Dark-haired and bespectacled, he was a heavy smoker who quit cold turkey when his doctors got after him. Milburn and King were both friendly, accessible types, Moore said.
“Oddly, both Hanssen and Milburn had kidney stones. They each had these big clear plastic water pitchers on their desks, they were supposed to be drinking a lot of water. One afternoon I found them both lying on the floor to get relief from these attacks.” Moore could not resist a gibe at the sight of his two prone colleagues. “It’s more expensive at the Harrington Hotel,” he cracked, “but you’d have more privacy.”
The two analysts assigned to the mole study, and Hanssen himself, had the advantage over the others in the unit. Most analysts looked at specific targets, such as the various KGB lines, and did not know much outside their own specialized areas, Moore explained. “But a few people did ‘all source,’ and that was Milburn, King, and Hanssen.” Within the Soviet analytical unit, in other words, Hanssen was one of the very few entitled to know all the FBI’s sources and secrets.
Or as David Major, the former FBI counterintelligence official, put it, “He was at the center of the hourglass, he saw everything.”
* * *
The penetration problem had begun long before, with UNSUB DICK .
The story was a secret buried so deep within the FBI that it is revealedhere for the first time. * UNSUB DICK —the UNSUB stood for “unknown subject”—was the first suspected KGB mole inside the FBI. Any history of penetrations of the bureau must start with him. The study by Hanssen, Milburn, and King would certainly have focused on this long-secret case.
The search for the penetration began early in 1962 when Aleksei Isidorovich Kulak, a KGB officer undercover at the United Nations, walked into the FBI office on East Sixty-ninth Street in Manhattan and offered his services as a spy. He said he was discontent with his lack of progress in his KGB career. The FBI gave him the code name FEDORA; the CIA called him SCOTCH .
Kulak, then thirty-nine, married and accompanied by his wife in New York, was a short, stocky man whose name meant “wealthy farmer” in Russian. “We called him Fatso,” said an FBI man who worked the case. Kulak specialized in collecting scientific and technical secrets. He had a doctorate in chemistry and had worked as a radiological chemist in a Moscow laboratory. At the UN, he was a consultant to a committee on the effects of atomic radiation.
By walking into the FBI’s office in Manhattan, Kulak had taken a big risk; the KGB might have had the building under surveillance. The FBI agents who met with FEDORA challenged him on this point. “We said aren’t you worried they may be watching the FBI building?” one of the agents recalled. “He said he was not worried because all of our [KGB] people are out covering a meeting with your guy, ‘Dick.’ ”
Uh-oh. This was the first time that the FBI had heard the name “Dick.” FEDORA was clearly saying that the FBI harbored a mole. But he said he did not know the man’s true identity.
FEDORA’S revelation touched off an intense, long-running secret mole hunt within the FBI. “It went on for years; it drove us crazy,” the FBI man said.
Not long after, another KGB officer in New York, Valentin Lysov, also warned U.S. intelligence of a mole in
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