Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader (75 page)

SUMMING IT UP

In the years that Hanssen spied for the Russians, he handed over thousands of America’s most important military and intelligence secrets. He revealed the identities of scores of secret Russian sources, at least three of whom were executed, and he caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to American intelligence programs. Hanssen also sold computer software to the Russians that allowed them to track CIA and FBI activities. Someone in Russia then sold it to Al-Qaeda, which may have used it to track the CIA’s search for Osama Bin Laden.

Hanssen was paid $600,000 for his efforts (and promised that another $800,000 was waiting for him in a Russian bank). He is the most damaging spy in FBI history and possibly in the history of the United States.

Scarier than they sound: Banana spiders are considered by some the deadliest in the world.

FAILING GRADE

After Hanssen’s arrest, the inspector general of the Justice Department launched an investigation into how the mole hunt had gone so wrong and how Hanssen had been able to spy for so long without attracting suspicion.

In August 2003, the inspector general issued a scathing report condemning the FBI mole hunters for focusing on the CIA without seriously considering the possibility that the mole might be in the FBI, especially since most of the biggest secrets known to have been compromised had come from the FBI. (The mole hunters’ explanation for how CIA agent Brian Kelley could have known so many FBI secrets: they thought he was seducing female FBI employees and selling
their
secrets to the Soviets.)

THE HONOR SYSTEM

The inspector general’s report also faulted the FBI for “decades of neglect” of its own internal security. Before Hanssen’s arrest, the Bureau operated on what was effectively the honor system: in his 25-year career, Hanssen never once had to take a lie detector test or submit to a financial background investigation, which might have turned up the KGB cash he was depositing in banks near FBI headquarters in his own name.

Hanssen had virtually unlimited access to the FBI’s most sensitive material—over the years he handed over thousands of original, numbered documents to the Soviets and no one had noticed they were missing. He also had unrestricted, unmonitored access to the ACS computer system, which gave him access to thousands more documents. The ACS software did have an audit feature that would have revealed Hanssen’s searches for classified information or for references to himself, but the audit feature was rarely, if ever, used. Hanssen knew it and felt secure enough to conduct thousands of unauthorized and incriminating searches over the years.

AFTERMATH

• The FBI
. No one involved in the Kelley/Hanssen mole hunt was disciplined or fired from the FBI, although several agents were promoted. The FBI says it has tightened security since the Hanssen arrest. The Bureau’s ACS computer system was scheduled to be replaced by a new $170 million software program called Virtual Case File in 2003. As of January 2005 only 10 percent of the system was in place, and the system was so flawed that the FBI was weighing whether to scrap the entire project and start over again.

World’s smallest police station: A phone booth in Carabelle, Florida.

• Robert Hanssen
. On July 6, 2001, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, and conspiracy; he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was supposed to cooperate with U.S. investigators, but he flunked a lie detector test when he was asked, “Have you told the truth?” So instead of being sent to a high-security prison, where he would have had some freedom of movement, he was assigned to a “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, where he is confined to his soundproof 7' x 12' cell for 23 hours a day.

• Bonnie Hanssen
. Because she cooperated with investigators and passed a lie detector test that showed she had no knowledge of her husband’s espionage after 1981, Bonnie Hanssen was allowed to collect the widow’s portion of her husband’s pension and to keep their three cars and family home.

• Brian Kelley
. After Hanssen’s arrest, Kelley was completely exonerated. He returned to the CIA and received an apology from the FBI. He did, however, lose his covert status when his identity was revealed by an investigative reporter writing a book about the Hanssen case. At last report he was still working at the CIA, teaching spy catchers how to avoid making the same mistakes that were made when he was targeted by the mole hunters.

After Kelley’s identity was revealed in 2002, he went public with his concern that nothing had changed at the FBI and that the same mistakes could happen again. The mole hunters “were so overzealous, so myopic,” he told the
Hartford Courant
in 2002. “If these abuses happen to us, what chance does the average citizen have to protect their civil liberties?”

*        *        *

A Sandwich Is Born
. During World War II, Americans soldiers stationed in Europe found three items in their ration kits: peanut butter, jelly, and bread. One day, legend has it, some soldier put the three together. Proof? There is no written record of the PB&J sandwich before the war, and after the war sales of peanut butter and jelly skyrocketed in America.

The Pacific Ocean holds about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water.

SMUDGERS & SLEEPERS

A few more bits of top-secret spy lingo
.

•
Terminated with extreme prejudice:
When a spy agency executes one of its own spies for betraying the agency. (As opposed to just firing—terminating—them.)

•
Fumigating:
Searching a home or office to remove or neutralize any listening devices, or “bugs.”

•
The British disease:
A reference to several members of the British upper classes who betrayed their country by becoming spies for the USSR after World War II.

•
Sleeper:
A dormant spy; sometimes an employee of a government agency who won’t begin spying until he or she is promoted to a position with access to classified information.

•
Smudger:
A photographer.

•
Case of the measles:
An assassination made to look like a death from accidental or natural causes.

•
Shopworn goods:
Spy information so old or out of date that it’s completely useless.

•
Jack in the box:
A fake torso, sometimes inflatable, that’s put in a car to fool surveillance teams about how many people are riding in it.

•
Backstopping:
Creating fake background material (employers, phone numbers, etc.) to enhance the credibility of a spy’s cover.

•
Spy dust:
Invisible powder the KGB sprinkled on door knobs, inside cars, etc., so that they could track diplomats and suspected spies as they moved around Moscow.

•
Cover:
The fake identity that a spy assumes to blend in with his or her surroundings.

•
Overhead:
Planes or satellites that spy from the sky.

•
Cannon:
Spies are sometimes paid large sums of cash. A cannon is a professional thief hired by an intelligence agency to steal the money back.

•
The Farm:
Camp Peary, the 10,000-acre facility near Williamsburg, Virginia, where CIA agents get their spy training.

No takeout? Polar bears roam an average 5,500 miles every year in search of food.

VIVA LA REBELLION!

You know about the colonists’ revolt against British rule in 1776, and the Confederate secession from the United States in 1861, but what about some of America’s lesser-known coups and rebellions?

T
HE WHISKEY REBELLION (1794)
Background:
Staggering under a huge national debt after winning the Revolutionary War, the federal government looked for any revenue source they could find…including a tax on liquor. The large distilleries had well-established political connections, ensuring that their taxes remained low—six cents a gallon (about a dollar in today’s money). Small distillers and farmers, however, had no such connections and had to pay a tax of nine cents for every gallon of whiskey they produced.

Rebellion:
At the time, western Pennsylvania was the frontier, so far from civilization that the only way for farmers to get their grain to market was to distill it into spirits. Furthermore, most farmers couldn’t have paid even if they’d wanted to—they had very little money. Result: “revenooers” in the western counties were harassed, beat up…and seldom paid.

Result:
President George Washington conferred with his treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton. Keeping in mind the chaos of Shays’ Rebellion (
page 269
), they decided to draw a line in the sand in Pennsylvania and make an example of those farmers. Washington summoned the protesters to federal district court; they responded by setting up camps in the Monongahela Valley near Pittsburgh. Faced with several thousand armed tax protesters, Washington temporarily became a general again, leading 13,000 troops from several states’ militias to western Pennsylvania accompanied by Hamilton and General “Lighthouse Harry” Lee. It was the largest army ever commanded by Washington, and it was the first and last time that a sitting president would personally command an army in the field.

In the face of that kind of force, the tax protesters backed down. Two of the leaders of the revolt were convicted of treason, but were pardoned by Washington. The tax? Although it stayed on the books until 1802, the government gave up trying to enforce it.

There are about 6 million miles of paved roads in the U.S.

DENMARK VESEY’S INSURRECTION (1822)

Background:
In 1800 Denmark Vesey of Charleston, South Carolina, became much luckier than most slaves: he won $1,500 in a street lottery ($22,000 today), enough to buy his freedom and still have enough left over to open a carpentry shop. But despite his new freedom, Vesey still identified with the enslaved. He founded a Black Methodist church in 1816 (it had 3,000 members), only to have it closed by white authorities for teaching the Bible story of Moses’ Egyptian slave rebellion.

Rebellion:
Inspired by the slave revolt that created the nation of Haiti in 1804, Vesey began plotting. He amassed arms from Haiti and, drawing on his standing in the black community, recruited former members of his congregation for a massive slave revolt. About 9,000 slaves and freed blacks were ready for the revolution. On July 14, 1822, they would seize armories, bridges—and guardhouses—and kill all of Charleston’s whites.

Result:
What is most surprising is how long the conspiracy progressed without being discovered. As the day approached, though, a slave betrayed the plot to his master, and Charleston was suddenly overrun with white soldiers. Vesey, knowing all was lost, released his followers and burned his lists of names. He and hundreds of other blacks were arrested. The trial stunned and terrified white South Carolinians, who were convinced that they were beloved by their slaves. Testimony indicated that virtually all of the slaves who were approached pledged cooperation, even though it meant killing the families they worked for.

After the trial, 43 conspirators were deported, 35—including Vesey—were hanged, and laws were passed to further restrict the freedom of slaves and free blacks. Accounts of the plot and trial were suppressed in the South for fear of giving other slaves ideas, but the word still got out. Over the following decades, the Vesey Insurrection inspired several other slave revolts, and even the battle cry of the first black regiment to fight in the Civil War: “Remember Denmark Vesey of Charleston!”

THE DORR REBELLION (1841–42)

Background:
Thomas Wilson Dorr holds a unique place in Rhode Island history: he was elected governor, charged with treason and jailed, yet ultimately managed to convince his opponents that he’d been right all along.

Hi neighbor: There are 4.5 million people and 2 million alligators living in Louisiana.

The son of a wealthy family, Dorr was elected as a Whig to the state legislature in 1834. Although not directly affected by them, he fought for liberalization of the state’s voting laws, which stated that only white males who owned $134 worth of land were eligible to vote. At one time most of the state’s residents had been farmers, but with industrialization, people flocked to the cities, and eventually only 40 percent of white men were qualified to vote.

Rebellion:
Dorr was convinced that this was unfair and unconstitutional. Other states had adopted universal suffrage for white men by 1840…except Rhode Island. Convinced that the existing power structure would never change the law of its own volition, Dorr called a “People’s Convention.” The convention had no legal authority, but in short order it drafted a new (illegal) constitution allowing white men to vote after a year’s residency, held its own statewide (illegal) election, and elected a new (illegal) state government with Dorr as governor.

Result:
When word reached Governor Samuel Ward King that Dorr was claiming the governorship, he declared martial law and accused Dorr of treason. Dorr’s reformers attempted to raid an armory in Providence, but were repelled by loyalists, including Dorr’s father and uncle. Somehow a cow got shot in the confusion (the only casualty), and Dorr’s forces retreated…and then fell apart. Governor King issued a warrant and $5,000 reward for Dorr’s arrest. Dorr fled the state.