Accused FBI spy Robert Hanssen was denied bail at his hearing on Tuesday, sending the accused traitor back to prison to await trial.
Hanssen, according to the FBI, CIA, NASA and all the mainstream press did "unimaginable" damage to the United States by passing classified government documents over to the Russians for at least 15 years.
According to the government, Hanssen is alleged to have supplied the Russians with "an eye-popping wealth" of information about U.S. intelligence gathering operations, including details about our own spy efforts against the Russians.
The Russians now apparently have Hefty trash bags full of details on America's own double agent programs. Each intelligence agency in the United States runs its own stable of "double agents." Double agents are spies from the other side that we caught. Instead of prosecuting or deporting captured spies, intelligence agencies often attempt to "turn" the enemy agents, supplying them with useless information for the double-agents to pass on to their own governments, while obtaining information from their side and passing it back to us.
Intelligence work relies as much on disinformation and smoke and mirrors operations as it does on hard intelligence. It's a world of shadows so complicated that even explaining it is like trying to describe color to the blind.
Now herein is the main problem I have with all of this. The most difficult part of running a "double agent" is determining the reliability of his information. It takes enormous effort and resources to correlate information from a "double agent" to establish which information is reliable and which is not.
So why in effect is FBI Director Louis Freeh doing Russia's work for them? He is confirming specifics of Hanssen's information for them. "Spying course 101" teaches that you never help the enemy by confirming the damage a spy may have done. Even a "rookie" in the agency knows this.
The sheer volume of damage being attributed to Hanssen's spy effort raises some serious questions about the whole thing. WorldNetDaily's Paul Sperry did an investigative piece on Hanssen that yielded more questions that it answered. Not because Sperry got it wrong, but more likely, because he got it right.
Sperry points out that Hanssen left clues everywhere; letters to his Russian handlers left on electronic media in his FBI office; repeated searches of the FBI system to see if they were on to him, leaving classified documents in the trunk of his car. And his drop sites were hardly secret. Hanssen allegedly would leave Hefty bags filled with sensitive documents under a bridge in a park in full view of several homes. I find it odd that nobody reported him for littering.
Sperry goes on to quote colleagues who say Hanssen was "arrogant" in his spy activities, and that criminal profilers identify Hanssen as "yearning to be caught." But he wasn't. Indeed, to listen to our government, he was above suspicion.
Sperry's report was done immediately after Hanssen's arrest. It was fascinating to see the spin NBC's "Dateline" put on the story one week later. Many of the opinions fellow agents had about Hanssen are contradicted by those of his neighbors who were stunned and shocked by his arrest. This adds to the confusion and doubt about wherein lies the real truth.
FBI Director Freeh says Hanssen's activities were "extremely damaging" and that the information passed to the Russians did considerable damage to our national security.
So how come nobody ever picked up on the signals? The FBI points out that Hanssen never underwent a polygraph test in his entire career, although some counterespionage and national security assignments require agents to undergo polygraphs as a matter of routine. Just not Hanssen.
The FBI conducts background checks on agents every five years. In Hanssen's case, nothing raised any red flags.
In espionage, there are lots of ways to confuse the enemy. Hanssen operated without suspicion for 15 years, says Freeh. What an incredibly damning admission to make! It raises all kinds of suspicions that we are nowhere near as sophisticated as we would like the Russians to believe.
All of this doesn't just smell, it stinks. First, Hanssen managed to fool everybody, despite the obvious red flags the FBI said they never saw. Hanssen had a reputation for being "arrogant." An arrogant spy would be a useless spy. The most effective espionage operatives look like William Colby. I met him several years ago. He wouldn't have stood out in an accountant convention. He was slight, quiet, unassuming and tended to fade into the wallpaper.
It was hard to believe that he was a former OSS agent who worked behind enemy lines during WWII or that he was a CIA station chief in Vietnam operating one of the most ruthless espionage and black bag operations in U.S. history. He looked much more like a man whose hands would be stained with ink than stained with the blood of many enemies. That is what made him effective, his absolute lack of color.
Now we have Hanssen. Arrogant, careless, unpopular and loud. Yet, if the official line is to be believed, he is one of the most effective double agents for the other side in U.S. history for 15 long years.
It seems incomprehensible that he could have gotten away with it that long. And once caught, it would be logical for the U.S. to deny he had access to real secrets or to suggest the FBI had been running him behind the scenes feeding false information to the Russians. Especially if he had indeed been giving away the candy store. The standard operating procedure would demand they minimize the damage, if real, by pretending the information was useless.
But instead, the various spymasters seem to be competing to see who could fall on his sword first. The FBI immediately admitted it missed all the clues. The CIA began talking in public about a secret tunnel under the Russian embassy. Even if Hanssen did pass that tidbit on to Moscow, why tell the world? Unless it was to convince the Russians that Hanssen's information really was as valuable as it seemed on the surface. Why would we do that?
The government effort at damage control seems to consist of confirming to the Russians that the ultimate in damage had been done. Hanssen is getting the full treatment at the hands of the government -- no bail, talk of the death penalty and reams of publicly released data outlining the damage done.
The Russians seem to believe they got the right stuff. According a headline in The Moscow Times, "U.S. Spy at FBI Had Virtually Unlimited Access to State Secrets."
But, if Hanssen really did turn over all this valuable information, why confirm it to the Russians? Why would the U.S. intelligence agencies immediately and unflinchingly take the blame for allowing it to happen?
No doubt the Russians are asking themselves the same questions. Was Hanssen a real spy, like the U.S. admits? Or was he being used to feed the Russians false information?
Thanks to the way the Hanssen case was publicized, a strong argument can be made for either scenario. Meaning the Russians can't be sure, either.
We are faced with two distinct possibilities, if the public information about the Hanssen case is accurate. Either we have the most incompetent espionage network since Don Adam's Maxwell Smart, or else that's what we want the Russians to think. Rest assured some of our best "spinmeisters" are involved.
A drop of doubt can ruin a lake of information. If we're not sure, then neither are the Russians. And that may be the whole point.