Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America (14 page)

One of the intriguing questions about Robert Hanssen was how he reconciled his religion with his treachery. By all accounts from close friends and colleagues, he was not merely religious; he was devout.

Hanssen went to mass almost every day, often at Our Lady of Good Counsel before work, and on Sundays at St. John’s, both near his home in northern Virginia. But to take Holy Communion, as Hanssen did, to become one with the body and blood of Christ, Catholics are required to go to confession to unburden themselves of any serious sins to a priest, who will ordinarily absolve them if they show genuine contrition. They will be told to do penance, usually in the form of prayer. This cycle of sin—which, after all, is part of the human condition—confession, and absolution, or forgiveness, is a familiar and basic element of the Catholic tradition.

Hanssen told at least two persons who visited him in prison that he regularly confessed his espionage over a period of more than two decades. It is possible he did so obliquely, of course, in vague or general terms. There is no question that he disclosed his spying outright to priests at least twice, and almost certainly more often.

But Hanssen was confident that his secret would hold; confession is an inviolable sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church. Under the church’s canon law, a priest who reveals what is said in confession faces excommunication. The priests to whom Hanssen confessed were under no formal obligation to advise him to stop spying, or to turn himself in, although they were free to suggest those options.

According to Professor Chester Gillis of Georgetown University, a
leading theologian, it is possible for a penitent to confess the same sin many times. “Technically you can go back as many times as you want and forgiveness is without end in the Catholic tradition. Provided the sacrament is valid and there is true contrition on the part of the penitent, then if it is a repetitive act and the person asks for forgiveness again, he or she will be granted forgiveness again.

“This can be as simple as masturbation in pubescent youths, to murder. The gravity of the offense doesn’t really matter.
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If Hanssen confessed to espionage he would get absolution. If he said he intends to continue doing it, the priest has the right to refuse absolution. It would be rare.

“The priest might or might not ask about the details. The priest might not probe too deeply. For some people the sacrament takes place face-to-face. So the priest knows who it is, but he would never break the bond.”

Superficially, Hanssen’s religion might appear to have made it easier for him to spy, since he could confess and be granted absolution for his crime. But in reality his religion may have made his espionage more difficult, since he surely knew he had sinned and could not easily escape his burden of guilt. “A person in a state of grace can receive the Eucharist,” Gillis said. “If a person is in a state of sin, he is not in a state of grace. Being in a state of grace means you have confessed a serious sin and been given absolution. In a state of grace means you are in a proper relationship with God. But if Hanssen’s conscience was finely honed, he may have realized internally he was not in a state of grace. He might have felt he was juridically, but not internally.”

After Hanssen, a twenty-four-year-old Lutheran, married into Bonnie Wauck’s family, he become a convert to Catholicism. The family was deeply involved with the church. Not only was Bonnie’s brother John Paul a priest of Opus Dei, but her uncle Robert Hagarty, her mother’s brother, was a monsignor, and both her parents were active, as Bonnie was, in “the work,” as Opus Dei was sometimes called by its members. Another of Bonnie’s brothers, Mark A. Wauck, although an FBI agent, found time to translate the entire New Testament from the
original Greek, a volume approved by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
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Surrounded as he was by vigorously enthusiastic Catholics, Hanssen’s decision to become a convert was, if the term may be used, predestined. But he was strongly influenced, he told at least one close friend, by long conversations with his fatherin-law, Professor Leroy Wauck, who later invited and accompanied Hanssen to his first Catholic retreat at Shelburn, Indiana.

Once Hanssen had converted, he became, to all appearances, a true believer who wore his faith on his sleeve and never lost an opportunity to urge people to go to mass or, if they were lapsed Catholics, to return to the fold. He also persuaded many of his friends to attend one or more Opus Dei “evenings of recollection” at the Tenley Study Center in Washington.

“He always tried to get me to church,” said James Bamford, the author of two bestselling books about the National Security Agency who met Hanssen while working as an investigative journalist for ABC News. “One night he took me to an Opus Dei meeting at Tenley. There were prayers and some priest got up and talked about how to support the bishop. The priest talked about other church-type stuff. I couldn’t wait to leave. It was like being back in Sunday school. I’m Catholic but I’ve gotten away from it. He really wanted to get me back in the church.”

Similarly, Hanssen persuaded Tom Burns, a fellow Catholic and his boss during his first tour in the FBI’s Soviet analytical unit, to accompany him to Opus Dei meetings. “At Hanssen’s invitation, I spoke at Opus Dei at Tenley. They get people in to speak on various subjects. I had done a paper for the Army War College on terrorism in Western Europe. At Bob’s invitation I spoke on that subject at the Opus Dei meeting. I did not join Opus Dei. I just didn’t have the luxury of the time.”

The Hanssens attended church at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Great Falls, Virginia, for a while. Burns was a member of the parish and Hanssen, first as a visitor, had been impressed with Father Jerome Fasano, the charismatic priest who was the pastor at the time. “That’s why Hanssen came to St. Catherine’s,” Burns said.

But the Hanssens had problems at the church. In 1997, Father Franklyn M. McAfee became the new pastor. Reviewing the membership the following year, he noticed, as he wrote to Hanssen, that there
had been “no activity financially.” The family was invited, politely but firmly, to return to their own parish.
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Bonnie Hanssen wrote back for the family, asking to rejoin.

“They were reinstated,” McAfee said. “They still didn’t give anything. When they came back they made a pledge to the building fund, which they didn’t have to do, and didn’t act on that.” Bonnie’s letter also pledged to give St. Catherine a minimum of forty dollars a month. “They did not keep the commitment,” McAfee said. The Hanssens, nevertheless, were not disinvited by the church a second time, and attended mass there some Sundays.

Father C. John McCloskey III, the Opus Dei priest and director of the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington, knew Bonnie Hanssen well, through her involvement in Opus Dei. But he also got to know Hanssen when the FBI man, often accompanied by his oldest son, Jack, would occasionally go to noon mass at the center’s chapel.

Normally, Father McCloskey celebrated the mass and heard confessions before and afterward. “He would take Holy Communion,” McCloskey said. “If he did confession, I would not know because I would not see him. I hear confession in a confessional which preserves anonymity.”

McCloskey had an unusual background for a priest. He had worked for five years on Wall Street, then decided to leave the stock market for the seminary. “I was a lay member of Opus Dei for many years,” he said. “A small percentage are called to the priesthood.” McCloskey was ordained in Spain in 1981, then did pastoral work in New York, Princeton, and Washington before becoming director of the Catholic center that brought him into contact with Hanssen.

He had strong feelings about Hanssen’s espionage and did not hesitate to express them. “You cannot be a good Catholic and also be a traitor. It’s one thing to commit an act of treason, confess it, repent it, and change your life. But to continually act in a traitorous sort of way is inconceivable. It is moral schizophrenia to try to live a life dedicated to God and at the same time compartmentalizing your life to that extent. The whole point of Christianity and Catholicism is
not
to lead a double life, but to be transparent.

“I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I’m a Catholic priest, but I have a lot of experience dealing with souls. There must be some deep psychological trauma, there is something radically wrong. To be able to conceal that from his friends and family, in addition to the moral flaw, there must be some deep hurts and problems.”

Hanssen was able to carry this compartmentalization to extraordinary lengths. Often, to his friends and colleagues, he denounced the Soviets, to whom he was selling his soul and his secrets, as “godless.” David Major, for one, remembered Hanssen using precisely that term. “He used to say to me the Soviets will lose because they are run by godless Communists. He said, ‘You’ve got to have Christ in your life or you’re never going to get anywhere.’ ”

Hanssen carpooled with his friend Paul Moore after he returned to Washington in 1987 to rejoin the Soviet analytical unit and direct the mole study. “One day,” Moore recalled, “with just the two of us in my yellow Mercedes, we drove past the White House and somebody came on NPR talking about the implied social contract that is the basis of morality. He reached over and turned off the radio. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said. ‘The basis of morality is not an implied social contract. It’s God’s law.’

“He made it clear he would be pleased if I became a more active Catholic, but he never said ‘Let’s go to church.’ When I had trouble one time, he said, ‘Have you ever thought about trying to bring God into the equation?’ He said, ‘Look, I know these guys in McLean who run a retreat center. Father Dan.’ He gave me the phone number the next day.

“I asked him about Opus Dei. He said it is a lay group of people within the church who were married but potentially some of them would take vows. There are some lay people who take a vow of chastity. There are various vows in the church, and seven steps to priesthood. The purpose of Opus Dei, he said, is to help people lead holier lives, to make Catholic faith a more living faith. It has its own priests assigned to it.”

Hanssen was repeating to Moore the fairly standard Opus Dei description of its goals. But he also told Moore something he had not revealed to others. “He said he had a disagreement with them over finances. They like to review your finances and say, ‘Contribute this amount.’ He said he didn’t have that amount to give.” In retrospect, Moore thought the exchange ironic: “He was probably already working for the Russians.”

For the most part, however, Hanssen extolled the virtues of Opus Dei, a group that has often been criticized as too secretive, too conservative, too powerful within the Vatican, and too intrusive in the life of its members.

One somewhat disenchanted Opus Dei member who had been active at the same Tenley Center in Washington as Hanssen recalled that the organization had strong ties to the Reagan administration. “Half of the Reagan White House would come to the meetings at Tenley House,” he said. “Opus Dei is very strong on recruiting people, and once they have you they don’t let go. They’re all over you. ‘Do you have a problem getting to church? We’ll drive you.’ The members will not say much about it to outsiders. They are strict and conventional Catholics, and therefore comfortable with Pope John Paul II.”

Hanssen was always encouraging his friends to learn more about Opus Dei. He gave his FBI colleague Jim Ohlson a copy of
The Way
, a book by the founder of Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer. The slim paperback volume is a collection of homilies to guide the faithful on their way along the path of life. For example, the first teaching admonishes: “1. Don’t let your life be sterile. Be useful. Blaze a trail. Shine forth with the light of your faith and of your love.”
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Josemaria Escriva, whose movement so captured Hanssen’s imagination, was a Spanish priest who founded Opus Dei in Madrid in 1928. The organization has always had strong roots in Spain; under dictator Franco, ten Opus Dei members served at various times as cabinet ministers. After Escriva’s death in 1975 at the age of seventy-three, his supporters urged his beatification, the first step toward sainthood.