Hanssen May Have Told Russians of Spy Tunnel

Accused spy Robert Philip Hanssen may have alerted Moscow to a secret tunnel built under its embassy here, a published report says.

Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran and counterintelligence expert arrested last month and charged with spying for Moscow since 1985, “compromised an entire technical program of enormous value, expense and importance to the United States government,” according to an FBI affidavit filed in the Hanssen case.

That program referred to the tunnel, the New York Times reported Sunday, also citing sources as saying it was unclear whether the operation produced any useful intelligence. The tunnel’s existence had not been known publicly.

The tunnel operation, estimated to have cost several hundred million dollars, was run by the FBI and the National Security Agency as part of a sophisticated eavesdropping operation to track first Soviet--and later Russian--facilities and personnel in the United States, the Times reported.

The embassy complex was built in the 1970s and 1980s but not fully occupied because of a dispute with the United States over claims that U.S. Embassy buildings in Moscow had been bugged.

Maynard Anderson, who used to oversee counterintelligence programs at the Department of Defense, said the operation was “innovative. I’m sorry we got caught.”