Spy the Flaws as ’60 Minutes’ Tries to Peer Into the Mind of a Mole

It’s as twisted and foreboding in here as an Al Qaeda cave.

Very crowded too, for many have gravitated to this remote spot, hoping to understand the former FBI senior counterintelligence agent’s reasons for betraying his country to the Soviet Union and later Russia.

Squeezing in now are famed novelist Norman Mailer and author-filmmaker Lawrence Schiller. “Betrayal was at the very core of his soul,” Mailer proclaimed about Robert Philip Hanssen in the lead segment of Sunday’s “60 Minutes” on CBS, with Schiller giving thumbs up.

How were Mailer and Schiller able to gain access to Hanssen’s mind and make their way through its complex warrens to “the very core of his soul”? They didn’t say, and if “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl knew, she also wasn’t talking, instead reporting only that the pair had “spent the last 10 months investigating the Hanssen case” for a Schiller book and CBS movie, whose screenplay will be written by Mailer.

Oh, a CBS project is in the mix. Then all this must be on the level.

You sense here the genesis of another of those classic docudramas that are sometimes fun to watch but suspect as history in critical areas while providing facile insights into moral ambiguity.

TV’s history courses are often flawed, sweeping away archives with the broom of dramatic license as if the only alternative were boring viewers with a dry dissertation.

That happened most recently with “The Day Reagan Was Shot,” a Showtime movie defended by its writer-director, Cyrus Nowrasteh, but vigorously attacked as “fantasy and sheer fabrication” by Richard V. Allen, President Reagan’s national security advisor who took part in White House crisis management the day the president was critically wounded by a John Hinckley bullet.

Nor are Mailer and Schiller infallible as auteurs of TV-depicted history. They collaborated just last year on “American Tragedy,” a vacant chunk of CBS melodrama that sought to codify rumor and speculation surrounding the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson on charges of murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. That too was a promised insider account that Mailer adapted for TV from a Schiller book.

As for their latest subject, if a CBS News program such as “60 Minutes” lacked circumspection in “The Secret Life of Robert Hanssen” segment it fed nearly 16 million viewers Sunday, what can be expected from CBS Entertainment when the movie is made?

Hanssen, who is said to have revealed more secrets than anyone in FBI history, avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy in an agreement that imprisons him for life without possibility of parole.

“60 Minutes” did feature someone else who had visited Hanssen’s mind. “He is driven by demons, he is driven by thoughts--unwanted thoughts,” diagnosed psychiatrist Alen Salerian, identified by Stahl as a psychiatrist “hired by Hanssen’s legal defense team.”

The logical question from “60 Minutes” was why the FBI had not detected Hanssen’s strangeness and instability.

The question you might consider is how Mailer and Schiller were able to speak with such knowledge and clarity about the intimate behaviors and psychological makeup of someone they didn’t know. There were no sources Sunday for their titillating scenario, not even a trail of bread crumbs for viewers to follow.

In contrast to Mailer and Schiller, Salerian had actually interviewed Hanssen. What Stahl did not mention to viewers--who may have seen Salerian’s TV comments as possibly violating doctor-patient privilege--was that he left the defense team in a dispute. Hanssen’s attorney, Plato Cacheris, said Salerian was fired for speaking to the media about his client. The psychiatrist said he departed in a clash over defense strategy.

Back to mind-melding Schiller and Mailer, whose colorful hypothesis that Hanssen is “crazier than crazy,” Stahl hung on without once asking on camera for attribution. That was curious, for “60 Minutes” is known for tough interviewing and not usually letting provocative statements slip by unchallenged.

It may be that Mailer and Schiller are acutely on point about Hanssen being a perverse weirdo in addition to a traitor. Although he received a fortune in cash and diamonds from Moscow, his motivations do remain blurry.

But this was no book or prime-time movie; this was CBS News. So sources should have been required of these two. Was one Salerian? Or “The Spy Next Door,” a new book about Hanssen that reportedly parallels much of what Mailer and Schiller are alleging? Or “The Bureau and the Mole,” a new book by David A. Vise that contains examples of sexual kinkiness on the part of Hanssen based on grand jury testimony?

Surely their 10-month investigation yielded more than the Hanssen “family album” that Stahl said Mailer and Schiller used “for their research.”

“60 Minutes” viewers had only Schiller and Mailer’s word Sunday that Hanssen took nude photos of his wife, Bonnie, and sent them to a friend. How do they know this? Don’t ask.

Schiller said that Hanssen set up a secret TV camera to capture himself making love with Bonnie and offered voyeuristic peeks to the same friend he let ogle the photos. How does he know? Don’t ask.

“By the way,” Mailer added, “he adored her, he worshiped her, he loved her ... [but] he also had to betray her. You see, what you find there is that next to his most noble and loving emotions are his most evil emotions, and they alternate.” Sounds like a pretty hot movie.

Mailer also said Hanssen went out with a stripper, and Schiller added, “She made a pass at him, but he never made a pass at her. He wanted to convert her.”

Stahl: “He rejected her?”

Schiller: “Yes.”

How do they know? From the stripper? Don’t ask.

Schiller said Hanssen also tried to convert other strippers to Catholicism and may have succeeded with one.

The glib summation from Stahl: “He, the exhibitionist, was trying to save an exhibitionist.”

Hanssen’s plea agreement also provides for his wife to receive much of his FBI pension. And what about her?

“We’re told,” Stahl said, “that she still loves him and completely forgives him.” Told by whom, a little bird? A psychic? Bonnie Hanssen herself? Perhaps Mailer and Schiller are inside her mind too.

You’ll find out one of these days by watching the movie.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted via e-mail at howard. rosenberg@latimes.com.