Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America (10 page)

Until then, the bureau agents watching the Soviet Mission to the United Nations would write down when employees entered and left the mission, the date and time, their names if known, and whether they were alone or accompanied. But the system was cumbersome; if the FBI agents needed to check on the time and date that a Russian IO had left the mission, it might take two days of painstaking searches through the handwritten sheets to get the answer.

Hanssen wrote a software program on his Mac at home that allowed the agent in the observation post to record the date, time, name, place, and whether it was an entry or exit. Then, with one click of a mouse, the five fields were entered into the database. Each day the data would be downloaded from the laptop of the agent on surveillance duty to the New York field office. From there, it was relayed to Washington.
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Normally a program of this kind would be designed by the FBI’s computer experts, but they recognized the usefulness of Hanssen’s work and adopted the program he wrote. It was then used by FBI agents watching not only the Soviet mission but Amtorg and other Soviet offices as well. Hanssen had once again proven his skill with computers.

Listening in on the Russians at Amtorg, the FBI agents working for Hanssen would sometimes hear them exchanging jokes. Hanssen instructed his squad to collect them. Ohlson learned this when he visited Hanssen in New York in 1986. “The idea was it would shed light on what the Russians were thinking. I remember one he told me. Two Russian women are talking. One asks the other, ‘Do you like sex or New Year’s better?’ The other answers, ‘Obviously New Year’s—because it comes more often.’ ”

* * *

After seven months in New York, Hanssen was ready to sell more FBI secrets to the Soviets. On June 30, 1986, he sent another letter through the KGB’s Viktor Degtyar, warning that the NSA had discovered a vulnerability in Soviet satellite transmissions and was exploiting the loophole. That information was classified
TOP SECRET/SCI
.

Always alert to threats to his own security, Hanssen was worried about a reference to Viktor Cherkashin that he had seen in the debriefing of a Soviet defector, Victor Gundarev. Gundarev, the chief of counterintelligence and security for the KGB “residentura,” its station in Athens, had defected to the CIA five months earlier, in February.
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David Forden, the CIA station chief, had arranged to spirit Gundarev out of Greece to the United States.

In his letter Hanssen explained his concern to the KGB:

In some way, Hanssen had managed to see a classified report of the debriefing of Gundarev dated March 4, 1986, only three weeks after Gundarev had been whisked out of Athens. The FBI report noted that the bureau’s agents had shown Gundarev a photo of Cherkashin and asked if he knew him. Hanssen was clearly worried that the FBI was somehow on to the money trail from Moscow—which could lead straight to him. How Hanssen, relegated to wiretapping Amtorg in New York, had been able to read a report from headquarters on the debriefing of a KGB defector was not clear, but he had.

With Hanssen working in Manhattan, his access to drop sites around Washington was limited to those times when he either visited headquarters on FBI business or could slip out of New York on his own time. Communications with the KGB and exchanges of documents and money were obviously more difficult with Hanssen away from the capital.

In the same letter, he proposed an elaborate new scheme to resume contact with the Soviets. “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, $1000.’

“Give a phone number and time-of-day in the advertisement where I can call,” Hanssen instructed. “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.”

Hanssen had now revealed he was in New York, but provided no other clues to his identity.

On July 14—the KGB subtracted six months from Hanssen’s dates—an ad ran for four days in the classified pages of
The Washington Times:
“DODGE – ’71, DIPLOMAT, NEEDS ENGINE WORK, $1000. Phone (703) 451-9780 (CALL NEXT Mon., Wed., Fri. 1
P.M.)”

The number given in the ad was that of a pay telephone near a shopping center in northern Virginia. On Monday, July 21, Hanssen called the pay phone. The call was answered by Aleksandr K. Fefelov, a KGB officer working out of the Soviet embassy in Washington. Hanssen gave the number 628-8047. As arranged, he did not include the New York area code.

An hour later, Fefelov telephoned the New York number and told Hanssen that the KGB had loaded dead drop
PARK
. But two weeks after the phone conversation, Hanssen sent another note to Degtyar saying that he had not found the package at the dead drop and would call the pay phone again on August 18.

Spies make mistakes; as it turned out, the KGB agent who had stashed the package put it under the wrong corner of the wooden footbridge. When the KGB realized what had happened, it corrected its mistake.

On August 18, Fefelov was waiting by the phone. Hanssen called and the conversation was recorded by the KGB. Fourteen years later, this tape fell into the hands of the FBI when it obtained the KGB file on Robert Hanssen:

As a trained KGB operative, Fefelov was talking as cryptically as possible, to preserve security in case anyone overheard their conversation. He was trying to sound like an American businessman, with double-talk about “our company,” papers, a meeting, “a substantial discount,” and so on. Hanssen realized this but could not resist saying goodbye in Russian—spoiling the whole effect. One can almost visualize Fefelov shaking his head in despair, sighing, and then, determined to carry on like a good soldier, saying “Bye-bye” in English.

The KGB then put back the package containing $10,000 in cash in the
PARK
dead drop. Included with the money was a letter that proposed two more drop sites and a new accommodation address, a place to which it was felt Hanssen could safely send letters, codenamed
NANCY
. The accommodation address was the home in Alexandria of Boris M. Malakhov, who was listed as second secretary of the Soviet embassy and was about to replace Degtyar as the embassy’s press secretary. In fact, his true job was that of a KGB Line PR officer. As an additional measure of security, Hanssen was told to misspell Malakhov’s name as
“Malkow.” The package also contained a plan to enable Hanssen in an emergency to contact the KGB in Vienna, Austria.

Hanssen retrieved the money on August 19, the morning after the taped phone conversation.
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He sent a letter to Degtyar the same day with a return address of Ramon Garcia, 125 Main St., Falls Church, VA, a fictitious street number. Inside the envelope was a handwritten note: “RECEIVED $10,000. RAMON.”

In using the name “Ramon Garcia” with the KGB, Hanssen was trying to send a subtle message to the Russians. He hoped that the last three letters of Garcia would mislead the KGB into thinking that he worked at the CIA. But the hint was so subtle, there is no evidence that the Russians ever understood it.
^†

Hanssen’s complicated communication plan, involving the ad for a mythical used Dodge, had worked. For the next year, however, he stayed below the radar and did not contact the KGB again. He had, after all, over a seven-year period revealed
TOPHAT
to the GRU, betrayed Valery Martynov, Sergei Motorin, and Boris Yuzhin to the KGB, and warned the Russians how the NSA was intercepting their satellite communications. He could afford to rest a bit.