When the Spy Who Loved You Was Also Lying to You, Things Can Get Ugly

When Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested two weeks ago and charged with spying for Moscow, his FBI colleagues were astonished that the alleged espionage had gone undetected for 15 years.

They weren’t the only ones.

By all accounts, Bonnie Hanssen--his wife of nearly 30 years--didn’t find out until agents reported catching her husband climbing under a footbridge in a park near their home, secret documents in hand.

That morning, the 54-year-old Bonnie lived a quiet life as a deeply religious housewife and mother of six. By bedtime, she was the newest member of the sorrowful sorority of accused spies’ wives.

“Everything you’ve ever known suddenly is not true,” said Paula Hill, whose first husband, Richard W. Miller, was the first FBI agent ever accused of espionage. “My husband, my church, my government--everything was thrown up in the air, and I had to go put the puzzle pieces back together.”

For Bonnie Hanssen, the pieces may now not seem to have ever fit together. According to correspondence released by federal law enforcement officials, the man who faithfully attended church by her side was at the same time pledging fidelity to the godless Soviet government half a world away.

Now she may lose not only her husband but also his paycheck and his future retirement income, which would be forfeited if he is convicted of espionage. She could even lose her home, cars and other assets if the government can show they were paid for by spy income.

That could leave Bonnie Hanssen, who works only part time at the Catholic girls’ school that her youngest child attends, in dire straits.

Though the government alleges that Robert Hanssen, 56, received $1.4 million in cash and diamonds from Moscow for betraying U.S. secrets, neighbors say the Hanssens did not lead a lavish life. They drove older cars and lived in a split-level house where their children shared bedrooms. Summer vacations were usually road trips to Florida to see the paternal grandparents. Bonnie Hanssen, they say, was traditional to the point of standing out, a throwback to days when wives deferred to their husbands.

Other than an appearance at her husband’s arraignment Feb. 20--during which the two did not speak--Bonnie Hanssen has remained in seclusion and has not spoken publicly. But her mother knows what she is going through.

“My daughter has suffered a crushing blow,” Frances Wauck said. “We’ve known this man for 35 years. It’s just absolutely awful. We are in shock.”

As her husband’s lawyers seek the best defense for the 25-year FBI veteran, Bonnie Hanssen has had to get legal counsel of her own. Even if she is cleared of any involvement--as her lawyer says she will be--the fallout for Bonnie and her six children, two of them still in high school, will last a lifetime.

No one, say the women who have lived through similar nightmares, will have a harder time than Bonnie Hanssen herself in struggling with this question: How, assuming her husband’s guilt, could she not have known?

Psychologists say the side of himself that Hanssen appears to have kept from his wife may not have been difficult to conceal.

“This would be easier to keep secret than when one partner is having an affair,” said Steve Brody, a psychologist in private practice in Northern California. “If there is already this assumption that you don’t ask questions about his job, it wouldn’t be hard for him to avoid at all. How is anybody supposed to know he is a double spy?”

Hanssen’s job, said Carl Mumpower, a North Carolina-based clinical psychologist who has done extensive research on post-traumatic stress disorder, created “an aura of unique privilege.”

“I’m sure he established the privilege early on--and the boundaries were probably always there,” Mumpower said. “Your normal FBI agent has to live a double life to the extent to which they have to keep such a large part of what they do a secret.”

If, as friends and family have said, Bonnie Hanssen had no idea that something was amiss with her husband, she would be rare among the wives of accused spies. Although Paula Hill was blindsided by charges that her first husband was involved in a sexual affair with a female Soviet agent, she was well aware of his struggles at work.

“I knew he was a terrible agent and I knew that he had moral failings,” said Hill, who had eight children younger than 18 when her husband was arrested in 1984. “He was a stumblebum. But I never believed he did what they accused him of doing.”

Miller was sentenced in 1986 to 20 years for trading secrets for sex and the promise of $65,000. The sentence was later reduced, and he spent only eight years in prison.

Mary Pitts, the wife of Earl Pitts, an FBI agent sentenced in 1997 to 27 years in prison for spying for Moscow, harbored horrible suspicions about her husband. Torn about her duties as a wife and as an American, she confided her fears to another FBI agent.

That agent, who had been the best man at the Pittses’ wedding, waved her off. What she didn’t find out until much later was that the FBI already had both her and her husband under surveillance for months.

Although the surveillance showed no active role by Mary Pitts, it took years for her to put her life back together.

“We had to fight and petition for everything,” said her lawyer, Washington-based Richard Hauser, referring to her household possessions. “The struggle that we had to try to put her back in some semblance of order took a long time.”

Caught Between Family and Country

William Cummings, the first court-appointed lawyer for Rosario Ames, the wife of convicted spy and former CIA agent Aldrich H. Ames, said the government doesn’t ignore the wife’s plight out of cruelty. “But their job is to pursue the criminal defendant, not to think of the family,” Cummings said.

Wives of other men who have been accused of espionage have had to make difficult choices between loyalty to family and loyalty to country. Mary Howard helped her husband, Edward Lee Howard, flee the country by propping up a dummy in the passenger seat of her car after the former CIA agent slipped out of the vehicle.

Mary Howard, who was not charged for her actions, later helped federal investigators determine the extent of her husband’s espionage by grilling him in phone conversations the two had after he escaped to the Soviet bloc. “In my own view, Mary Howard probably did the right thing, first as a wife to help her husband, and then as an American to help her country,” said David Wise, the only Western journalist to interview Howard after he fled in 1985.

The whole incident, Wise said, left the family shattered. Mary Howard, who had a 2-year-old child when her husband escaped, divorced him rather than join him in Moscow.

For Paula Hill--who heard the news of Hanssen’s arrest on the car radio on her way to her job teaching at a Utah high school--Bonnie Hanssen’s circumstances brought a flood of bad memories.

“All the kids, even the van, it seems just like us,” she said. “I thought, ‘Here we go again.’ The night the FBI came to the house, I thought Richard was just bringing his boss home for dinner. The two of them show up at the door with all these agents in jumpsuits. I served them chicken and rice while the other agents took my house apart.”

She went through the motions, all the while knowing something was seriously wrong.

“That was Saturday. All day Sunday I laid on the bed and looked at my little stucco ceiling, every peak and nook, and ate myself alive,” she said. “Tuesday, Richard’s boss came to me and said: ‘Your husband has been terminated and arrested. You will get one more paycheck.’ I knew, of course. I’d been sick to my stomach. I sat there and went through the want ads looking for a job.”

In the months that followed, Hill’s eldest son, Paul Miller, then 18, worked as a waiter at a local country club, bringing home the only paycheck. She went on welfare for six months until Mormon Church officials provided financial help.

Stunned by Accusations Against a Loved One

For Bonnie Hanssen’s family--a large, close-knit group that includes seven brothers and sisters--the news was impossible to comprehend. Although alerted ahead of time that federal officials would make an announcement about Hanssen, extended family members were unaware of the scope of the charges.

They had reason to believe they knew their in-law well. Like his wife’s family, Hanssen was active in Opus Dei, a conservative religious group within the Roman Catholic Church. His commitment to his own spiritual growth, family members say, made the accusations particularly difficult for them to comprehend.

“If it’s true, it seems inconsistent with his whole life,” said Brian Finnerty, the U.S. spokesman for Opus Dei. “He seems to have been a good Catholic, a good husband and a good father.”

Bonnie Hanssen’s family members say it is too soon for them to talk openly about the man who has been part of their family since he was in his early 20s. The accusations, they say, have left his wife “devastated” and the entire family reeling.

Paula Hill said she is one of the few who can understand what it must be like. If she could, she said, she would try to comfort Bonnie Hanssen.

“I would put my arm around her and I would say: Protect your children, protect your children,” said Hill, her voice catching. “The years have passed, but it never goes away. The sins of the father on the heads of the children. And it’s still there. Sixteen years later, my children are still dealing, still grappling with it.”