Spy Suspect: Normally, a Quiet Presence

As she does each day, 13-year-old Hadley Greene planned to cut through her best friend’s backyard Tuesday to get to her own home in this quiet Washington suburb.

This time, however, it was surrounded by yellow police tape marking the scene of an investigation--one that the nation’s top law enforcement officials say is uncovering one of the “most traitorous actions imaginable.”

For Greene and other neighbors here, news of the arrest of Robert Philip Hanssen, 56, on charges of espionage came as a shock. The Hanssens--Bob, Bonnie and their six children--have lived an unostentatious lifestyle on Talisman Drive for years, ever since moving from another Vienna neighborhood so that Bonnie could live next door to her sister.

Many of the Hanssens’ neighbors, unaware of the arrest when they left for work and school Tuesday morning, came home in the early evening to find news crews and satellite trucks parked on the block.

“It’s amazing. I can’t believe it,” said Hadley’s mother, Fritzie Greene, 41. “There is no way Bonnie knew about this. No way. She is extremely naive to the point that she almost stuck out. Very, very nice but very, very traditional--like a ‘50s housewife.”

While her daughter sat on the driveway hugging her knees and listening to music through headphones, Greene said she was very upset and worried for Hanssen’s wife and children.

“I just can’t imagine it,” she said.

On a street where most residents know each other through their children, neighbors said Bob Hanssen was a quiet presence, someone who might say hello while walking the family dog but wouldn’t linger. And in a town heavily populated with government employees--many of whom work for the CIA in nearby Langley, Va.--most people said they knew not to ask Hanssen too much about what he did for a living.

“We knew he worked for the FBI; that wasn’t a big deal,” said Hank Franklin, who lives across the street. “But when the guys got together, we didn’t talk about it. And those guys don’t say anyway.”

At the Hanssens’ brown split-level house, the chaos began about 8:30 in the morning as news of the arrest became public and the suspect’s name was released. Federal agents spent most of the day inside the home, searching, with the drapes pulled shut and cloth hanging even from the small garage window.

Some in the neighborhood had wondered what was going on the day before, when the street was lined with more cars than usual.

“I looked out the window and I wondered: Why do we have all these cars with D.C. license plates, with the telltale red and blue lines on them?” said Mary Evans, describing the familiar government plates. “But I never thought it would be something like this.”

People who knew the Hanssens for years said that nothing about the family ever raised their suspicions. Unlike Aldrich H. Ames, whose lifestyle seemed well beyond his means, the Hanssens were known for being frugal. Bonnie Hanssen baked her own bread and loved to cook. The family went to church together every Sunday in their aging van. Everyone who knew them well said Bonnie was very religious, a devout Roman Catholic whose older children attended a local Catholic school and whose two youngest were in private Catholic schools in nearby Potomac, Md.

“We sometimes wondered how they did it with all those kids, with private school and everything,” Greene said. “But it was something of a joke. We just thought they were careful with their money.”

The family’s wood-shingled house is part of an older development and backs onto tree-filled open space. Like other houses on the block, the driveway leads up to a single car garage and has a stand-alone basketball hoop. On the other side of the street, new brick homes still are being built on the site of an old nursery.

The house is a few blocks from the park where investigators allege Hanssen dropped the classified information to be sold to the Russians.

Neighbors, who call the park with jogging trails and a children’s playground “bunny field” because of the large rabbit population there, said it seemed bizarre that the park could be the setting of espionage.

When all six of the Hanssen children--three boys and three girls--lived at home, they shared rooms, neighbors said. Only the two youngest remain at home.

One room, however, was off-limits. Ryan Bennett, 14, who was friends with the two Hanssen children still living at home, said the room where the door was nearly always closed had a couple of computers in it and a sink.

“I haven’t been in it in a very long time,” he said. Bennett said that while Mrs. Hanssen was very friendly and nice, Mr. Hanssen was harder to get to know.

“I called him Bob once when I was younger, and he let me know not to do it again,” he said.