Cash, Diamonds--and Secrets

As if out of nowhere, on a fall day 15 years ago, came a letter to a Soviet KGB agent.

The writer, identifying himself simply as “B,” was promising to send a box of documents from “the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. intelligence community.” For his services, “B” wanted $100,000.

Thus began, according to his supervisors, the eventual undoing of FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen.

Hanssen--a career agent for a quarter century, a father of six with three cars and a home in the Washington suburbs--on Tuesday was named in a 100-page federal indictment and charged with trading secrets for cash and jewels in one of Washington’s biggest spy cases since Aldrich H. Ames betrayed the CIA.

So involved was Hanssen at times, the indictment alleged, that he often referred to his Russian handlers as his “dear friends” and told them that, if caught, he would say the diamonds came from his grandmother.

He also sought to impress them with how he had dreamed of a life in espionage since his youth in Chicago. And yet by last year he had became so neurotic that he rambled about his own sanity and the death penalty because, he wrote once: “I do take some risk.”

In one lengthy, exasperating letter to his handlers last November, he reached out with the plea, “I ask you to help me survive.”

According to FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, the arrest of the 56-year-old Hanssen “should remind us all” that the efforts to sell U.S. classified information are “as intense today as they have ever been.”

Hanssen is expected to maintain that he is not guilty.

But the indictment filed against him in federal court in Alexandria, Va., outlined a 15-year clandestine operation in which Hanssen allegedly reaped more than half a million dollars in cash and diamonds--and saw a special escrow fund in a Moscow bank grow to nearly $1 million more.

The case is built on telephone recordings, letters Hanssen allegedly sent, material seized at his home in Vienna, Va., and “information provided by former KGB/SVR personnel” who had worked with the Soviet Union’s intelligence-gathering network dating back to the Cold War.

Freeh declined to say how the FBI found out about the case or to specify sources of the letters and other material released Tuesday.

With all of Hanssen’s angst last year, he might have been tipped off that he was in serious trouble just last month--when his bosses abruptly transferred him out of his field of expertise, working top-secret intelligence, and plunked him down at a newly created and basically mundane desk job inside FBI headquarters here.

Hanssen had worked as an accountant and, later, as a financial investigator for the Chicago Police Department before joining the FBI on Jan. 12, 1976. Exactly 25 years and one day later--Jan. 13--he was transferred to the desk job.

As one who had studied Russian in college, Hanssen moved deftly up the ranks at the bureau, specializing in intelligence and counterintelligence operations.

At the time of his transfer, he was the head of an interagency counterintelligence group and also served as the FBI’s liaison to the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. At that time, his desk was in a block of suites at the State Department.

But even as his career blossomed, according to the indictment, so did his life in the shadows. His alleged letters to the Russians at times bragged that he had snookered the United States but also warned that America was a force to be reckoned with.

“The U.S. can be errantly likened to a powerfully built but retarded child, potentially dangerous, but young, immature and easily manipulated,” said one letter that, like much of his writing, was filled with misspellings.

“But don’t be fooled by that appearance. It is also one which can turn ingenius [sic] quickly, like an idiot savant, once convinced of a goal.”

Letter Sets $100,000 Price for Documents

The indictment laid out an extensive case against Hanssen.

That first unsolicited letter from “B,” dated October 1985, went to Viktor M. Degtyar, a KGB officer, at his home in Alexandria, Va. It was addressed to Degtyar’s boss, Viktor Ivanovich Cherkashin, at the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

Speaking of the documents he was willing to sell for $100,000, he wrote: “As a collection they point to me. I trust that an officer of your experience will handle them appropriately.”

In addition, “to further support my bona fides,” he provided specific, closely held information on then-recent Soviet defectors. He also outlined a series of procedures for future transfers of documents and cash.

He said the Russians should add six months to any dates and times mentioned in communiques. He was specific about drop locations, such as “please leave your package for me under the corner [nearest the street] of the wooden foot bridge located just west of the entrance to Nottoway Park.”

He was equally precise about package preparation, writing “use a green or brown plastic trash bag and trash to cover a waterproofed package.”

And as for signals, nothing was left to the imagination.

“My signal to you: One vertical mark of white adhesive tape meaning I am ready to receive your package.

“Your signal to me: One horizontal mark of white adhesive tape meaning drop filled.

“My signal to you: One vertical mark of white adhesive tape meaning I have received your package.”

So the transfers began, officials said--packages of documents for money.

The materials included a host of classified data on U.S. intelligence operations, “entire” technical programs and information on numerous people used by the United States in its own espionage efforts.

“Three of these sources,” the indictment said, “were compromised by both Hanssen and former CIA officer Aldrich Ames, resulting in their arrest, imprisonment and, as to two individuals, execution.”

The cash ranged from as low as $10,000 a drop to diamonds valued at $50,000.

The indictment also said that Hanssen used three other aliases--Ramon Garcia, Jim Baker and G. Robertson.

According to the indictment, from the outset, the relationship seemed more personal, more courteous, than strictly professional. Just five months into the activity, Hanssen suggested to his handlers that he was not doing it just for the money.

“I have little need or utility for more than the $100,000,” he wrote. “It merely provides a difficulty since I cannot spend it, store it or invest it easily without triping [sic] ‘drug money’ warning bells.

“Perhaps some diamonds as security to my children and some good will so that when the time comes, you will accept by [sic] senior services as a guest lecturer.

“Eventually I would appreciate an escape plan. (Nothing lasts forever.)”

Other times he came up with other ways to communicate. Once he had them place a used-car ad in the Washington Times newspaper. It said:

“DODGE--’71, Diplomat, needs engine work, $1,000. Phone. . . . Call next Mon., Wed., Fri. 1 p.m.”

Under his instructions, he was to call the number and say, “Hello, my name is Ramon. I am calling about the car you offered for sale in The Times.”

They were to respond, “I’m sorry, but the man with the car is not here. Can I get your number?”

He was then to give a number with a New York area code of 212--the final password.

All went according to plan. Later, in another phone call, Hanssen and Aleksandr Kirillovich Fefelov, a KGB officer assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, reveled in how easily it had gone down.

A transcript of that call:

B: “I believe it should be fine and thank you very much.”

Fefelov: “Heh-heh. Not at all. Not at all. Nice job. For both of us. Uh, have a nice evening, sir.”

B: “Do svidaniya (Russian for goodbye).

Fefelov: “Bye-bye.”

Sometimes Hanssen seemed to believe that his handlers were pushing him too far or seeking to change his prescribed procedures.

“Dear friends,” he wrote once. “It must be on my original terms or not at all. I will not meet abroad or here. I will not maintain lists of sites or modified equipment. I will help you when I can. . . . “

Other times he was highly complimentary of an individual handler.

“Excellent work by him has ensured this channel is secure for now,” he wrote. “My regards to him and to the professional way you have handled this matter.

“Sincerely, Ramon.”

When the Russians sought to change drop locations, he resisted. “My friends,” he wrote. “I am not a young man, and the commitments on my time prevent using distant drops such as you suggest.”

Another time he was perplexed when he went to a drop site and found no cash envelope awaiting him.

“Possibly I had the time wrong. I work from memory,” he wrote.

He worried about being caught. “Because of my work [at the FBI], I had to synchronize explanations and flights while not leaving a pattern of absence or travel that could later be correlated with communication times. This is difficult and expensive.”

He also sought some distance from his handlers. “I am much safer if you know little about me,” he wrote. “Neither of us are children about these things. Over time, I can cut your losses rather than become one.”

The Soviets were grateful. At one point in 1989, the KGB presented awards to their officers involved in the “B operation.” Handed out were the coveted Order of the Red Banner, the Order of the Red Star and the Medal for Excellent Service.

Hanssen’s FBI career also was on the upswing, and his counterparts took notice. “Dear Friend,” they wrote him, capitalizing their references to him. “Congratulations on Your promotion. We wish You all the very best in Your life and career.”

But as the years wore on, and the Berlin Wall came down with the end of the Cold War, Hanssen was drifting in and out of service to the Russians.

“You’ve managed to slow down the speed of Your running life to send us a message,” they wrote him in 1991, slipping $10,000 into the envelope.

” . . . we hope You’re OK and Your family is fine too. We are sure You’re doing great at Your job.”

Poem Allegedly Sent as Encouragement

To further encourage him, they added that “Time is flying” and included this poem:

“What’s our life,

“If full of care

“You have no time

“To stop and stare?”

They also continued to assure him that “your security goes first.”

According to the indictment, most of the transfers were over by 1991. Nearly a decade later, in March 2000, he wrote the Russians that “I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you, and I get silence. I hate silence.”

He seemed frustrated that the Russians were not responding to his signals. Then he began to ramble.

“One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I’d answer neither. I’d say insanely loyal. Take your pick. There is insanity in all the answers.”

He said, “I have come as close to the edge as I can without being truly insane.” He said, “Only I can lose.”

He spoke of his youth, and his admiration for Kim Philby, a British intelligence officer who became the most successful Soviet double-agent of the Cold War period.

“I decided on this course when I was 14 years old. I’d read Philby’s book. Now that is insane, eh?”

He concluded, “It’s been a long time my dear friends, a long and lonely time.”

In June, he wrote again. He accused the Russians of ignoring him. “You waste me,” he complained.

His final letter came in November.

“Dear friends. Bear with me,” he began. “ . . . Recent changes in U.S. law now attach the death penalty to my help to you as you know, so I do take some risk. On the other hand, I know far better than most what minefields are laid and the risk.”

He hit the minefield on Sunday night, when he was arrested after allegedly dropping off yet another package near his home in return for what was supposed to be yet another $50,000.