Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America (36 page)

On November 22, Gallagher received his first briefing on the contents of the file. The mystery package had still not been opened, but the voice on the tape had been recognized and the documents analyzed.

It was, clearly, time to shift gears. “We thought we had Kelley,” a senior FBI official admitted. Now everything had changed.

All the evidence made it plain that the mole was Robert Hanssen. Even aside from the voice on the tape, and the Patton quote, the analysis of the KGB file was persuasive. The mole’s first letter to the KGB
was dated October 1, 1985, and mailed from a Washington suburb. Although Hanssen had been assigned to New York by then, FBI records showed he was in Washington on that day. The mole had said in May 1990 that he would be going on more trips, and that was the year that Hanssen began his travels as an agent in the inspection division, including his jaunt to Hong Kong with Priscilla Sue Galey. In November 1991, Hanssen had been promoted to unit chief at higher pay; in December he told the Russians he had received a salary increase and more authority. There were the references to Chicago, Hanssen’s birthplace, and the mole’s admiration of Mayor Daley. There were many other clues that made it plain who the betrayer was, and that it was not the CIA’s Brian Kelley.

Within the next forty-eight hours,
GRAY DECEIVER
was no longer the target of the investigation. Now there was a new code name:
GRAYDAY
.

There could no longer be any doubt about the identity of the mole.
GRAYDAY
was Robert Hanssen.

Within the small contingent of mole hunters,
GRAY DECEIVER
had often been referred to in shorthand as simply “GD.” By designating Hanssen as
GRAYDAY
, the agents could still informally speak of the new target as “GD.” That would give the impression that they were still talking about
GRAY DECEIVER
. The decision to keep the same initials was deliberate, so that even the official cryptonym,
GRAYDAY
, would be tightly held.

There was good reason for this. If Hanssen learned that the bureau had suddenly locked onto a new target in its search for the mole and given the suspect a new code name, there was always the risk that he might flee. He had, after all, asked for an escape plan in his first year as a spy for the KGB. In his briefcase, he carried a current passport.

By mid-December, the Russian was safely in the United States. Some members of his family had also gotten out. And the $7 million was his, to be paid out over a period of time.
^*

The FBI was now able to open the last package, the one that the source had cautioned not to unwrap.

The former KGB man explained the significance of the mystery package. Inside was an ordinary black plastic trash bag, of the kind
that suburban homeowners use to dispose of leaves or garbage. When Hanssen filled a dead drop, he would wrap the documents and disks in a plastic trash bag and tape it up to waterproof it and protect it from the elements. Then he would wrap the whole package in a second plastic bag.

The Russian said that under normal procedure, someone else had opened the bags. He would then receive a pile of documents that had been handled first by others. “Only once did they drop off the outer bag with the documents,” an FBI official said. “When he removed the outer bag, he assumed that the only persons who had touched the inner bag were himself and Ramon. So he carefully put the inner bag in an envelope.” The plastic bag was to prove one of the most vital items in the file that the Russian removed from Yasenevo.

When the package was opened, the bag inside was taken to the FBI lab and processed. Two latent fingerprints were found on the bag. They belonged to Robert Philip Hanssen. And they were the only identifiable prints in the entire file.

The plastic bag sealed
GRAYDAY’S
fate. There had been no question for several weeks that the mole was indeed Bob Hanssen, but now the bureau had solid forensic evidence. It would have been difficult for even the most dexterous defense lawyer to explain what Hanssen’s prints were doing on a plastic bag that had been reposited in a secret file inside the KGB in Moscow.

The FBI had followed a false trail for three years, stumbling in the dark, but now it had pulled off an impressive and unprecedented counterintelligence feat. There had been defectors and walkins over the years who had provided valuable information, but nothing had ever happened like this. The bureau had engineered the source’s travel to New York and had managed to pull off the seemingly impossible—to extract a file on the most damaging mole in the history of the FBI from the most guarded building in Russia.

Gallagher put it this way: “The FBI was able to reach into the KGB back room and bring out what is usually the most difficult part of any espionage case, the evidence. Because the evidence is usually gone. In this case we were able to bring it out of Russia. We were proactive, it didn’t just happen.”

Although Gallagher would not talk about the money that the FBI had paid for the file, he indicated the source was happy with the outcome.
“He was very satisfied with the financial arrangement. And a lot of security-related issues were taken care of. We have covered his financial security and his personal security and assisted him in the transition.”

The CIA kept silent about its part in getting the file out of Moscow, but Gallagher credited the intelligence agency with playing an important role. Historically the two agencies, with different missions, have often clashed. It took six years before they formed the joint task force in 1991 that resulted, three years later, in the arrest for espionage of the CIA’s Aldrich Ames.

“This was different from Ames; they worked with us on all aspects of the investigation,” Gallagher said. “They handled a lot of the resettlement. They also worked with us on the recruitment effort and the success of the operation.”

Among the intelligence agencies, “resettlement” is the term used to arrange for a new life and a new identity for defectors, such as the Russian who provided the mole file. The CIA’s National Resettlement Operations Center (NROC) makes these arrangements from its secret location near Washington.
^*

The FBI was careful to say little about the KGB man. But officials confirmed that he lives somewhere in the United States and is well protected. And rich.

The SVR would have figured out fairly quickly who stole its file—certainly after Hanssen’s arrest, if not before. FBI director Freeh, in announcing the arrest on February 20, 2001, disclosed that the FBI had obtained “original Russian documentation.” By that time, the Russian source was long gone from Moscow. Since presumably only a limited number of KGB and SVR officers would have had access to such a sensitive file, the Russians could have ascertained who among them had suddenly left town—and had not been seen since. (Even months after Hanssen’s arrest, some FBI officials still were clinging to the thought that it was possible, if not likely, that the SVR was still trying to figure out who had absconded with the file.)

One of the unanswered questions in all this is whether the SVR ever realized, until Hanssen was apprehended, that its file was missing.
^*
Because the file obtained from the Russian ends in December 1991, it is possible that it had been archived around that time. And the SVR may have had no cause to search for the file because Hanssen did not contact the KGB again for eight years after the Soviet Union collapsed.

“Some of what we got was closed files, older files,” Gallagher pointed out. “They may not have known they were missing if they had no reason to look for them.”

But they know now, he said. “There is an empty space where the file should be.”

* * *

Hanssen, still assigned to the Office of Foreign Missions at the State Department, was placed under surveillance. It had to be done cautiously, since he was, after all, a trained counterintelligence agent and might detect any watchers. But the surveillance was done by the Gs, the FBI’s Special Surveillance Group, and they were good at their jobs.

It would be much easier to track Hanssen if he could be lured back to FBI headquarters, but the problem was how to do that without arousing his suspicions. Hanssen’s interest in computers provided the answer. He prided himself on his computer skills, which were considerable, and the counterspies decided to exploit that fact and offer him a promotion and a job in computers.

Mike Waguespack called Hanssen in to headquarters in December. Hanssen seemed extremely tense at their meeting. Waguespack thought he knew the reason:
he’s thinking this is it, and that’s why I called him in
.

When Waguespack, a deputy assistant director of the National Security Division, offered Hanssen a cushy job in the Senior Executive Service, the elite corps of the federal government, at higher pay, he visibly
relaxed. Waguespack explained that Hanssen’s new responsibility would be to ensure that as the bureau developed new computer programs they would be secure.

A few days later, Hanssen met with Gallagher, the division chief, for the final job interview. “I asked him to take the special assignment,” Gallagher said. “It promoted him into SES. It recognized him for his computer expertise. We were playing on his ego.” And Gallagher had one more inducement to throw in the pot. “Since he was approaching fifty-seven, the retirement age, I said we would extend him if he wanted to.”

Hanssen was delighted. It was about time the bureau, even belatedly, was recognizing his brilliance. The senior levels of the intelligence division were finally taking notice. He would be back at headquarters after his long exile at State, with a parking spot in the FBI garage.

In the meantime, he could not neglect his other duties. On December 12, he was seen driving four times past Foxstone Park, the site of dead drop
ELLIS
. It was a significant moment because, for the first time, the bureau now knew that Hanssen was an active spy. It is much harder to prove the case against a spy who has gone dormant; now there was a chance that
GRAYDAY
could be caught in the act.

The day after Christmas, he cruised by the park again three times, looking for the taped signal. Late in the afternoon, he stopped his car for several seconds, studying the park sign, then drove off. Then, just before 9
P.M.
, he parked near the park entrance, walked over to the signal site, and swept the beam of his flashlight up and down the wooden posts near the sign. He must have found nothing, because he turned and walked away, raising his arms in exasperation. He got back in his car and drove to a nearby Tower Records store.

Half an hour later, he was back. He stopped his car again in front of the Foxstone Park sign for a few seconds and then drove off. Again, there was no signal from the Russians.

After New Year’s, he had to wrap up his work at the State Department and get ready for the new job. On January 12, Tom Burns, his boss and former FBI colleague, presided over a going-away party for Hanssen. The affair was held at the China Garden restaurant, in the mall area of the Gannett Building, then the home of
USA Today
, just across the river in Arlington, Virginia.

His colleagues turned out to wish Hanssen well. “There were fifteen to twenty people there,” Burns said. “As his superior, I made the
usual perfunctory remarks—we’ll miss you, don’t be a stranger—and I thanked him for his efforts.” He added wryly: “The full extent of which, of course, I didn’t know.”

There was no plaque. But the State Department office controls the distinctive red, white, and blue license plates issued to foreign diplomats, a familiar sight in the capital, and when a colleague left, he would traditionally be given a unique souvenir. “Usually what we would do would be to give a diplomatic license plate with his name on it, mounted on a wood background,” Burns explained. “But it had not been struck yet at the firm where we have the plates done.”

So Hanssen would have to wait a bit for the special license plate with the name
BOB
in big letters. It would not be ready for another month.