This article reads more like a story than an encyclopedia entry. To meet Wikipedia's quality standards and conform to the neutral point of view policy, please help to introduce a more formal style and remove any personally invested tone. (October 2011)

Robert Hanssen
Robert Hanssen 2001 photo
Born	(1944-04-18) April 18, 1944 (age 68) Chicago, Illinois, United States
Alias(es)	Ramon Garcia, Jim Baker, G. Robertson, Graysuit, "B",
Charge(s)	18 U.S.C. § 794(a) and 794(c)[1] (Espionage Act)
Penalty	Life imprisonment (without parole)
Status	Incarcerated
Occupation	Former FBI agent and spy for the Soviet Union and later Russia
Spouse	Bernadette "Bonnie" Wauck Hanssen

Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) is a former American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States for 22 years from 1979 to 2001. As of 2012, he is serving a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

Hanssen was arrested on 18 February 2001 at Foxstone Park^[2] near his home in Vienna, Virginia, and was charged with selling American secrets to Russia for more than US$1.4 million in cash and diamonds over a 22-year period.^[3] On 6 July 2001, he pleaded guilty to 13 counts of espionage in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.^[4][5] He was then sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. His activities have been described by the U.S. Department of Justice's Commission for the Review of FBI Security Programs as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history."^[6]

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a family of mixed Danish-Polish and German descent. His father, a Chicago police officer, was emotionally abusive to Hanssen during his childhood.^[7] Hanssen lived in the Norwood Park community in Chicago.^[8] For unknown reasons, Howard Hanssen arranged for his son to fail a driver's test. In later life, Robert Hanssen speculated that his father had done this in order to 'toughen him up'. The elder Hanssen constantly disparaged his son and said that Robert would never make anything of his life.^[9]

Hanssen graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1962 and went on to attend Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1966. While at Knox, he took an interest in Russian through elective courses. It was also at this time when Hanssen applied for a cryptographer position in the NSA but was rebuffed due to budget setbacks. Originally set to become a doctor, Hanssen took the opportunity to enroll in the dental school at Northwestern University.^[10] He did well academically, but said that he "didn't like spit all that much".^[11] He switched his focus to business after three years,^[12] and received an MBA in accounting and information systems in 1971. After graduating, he took a job with an accounting firm but quit to join the Chicago Police Department as an internal affairs investigator, specializing in forensic accounting. Hanssen left the department after four years, joining the FBI in January 1976.^[7]

Hanssen met Bernadette "Bonnie" Wauck while he was attending dental school in Chicago. Bonnie was one of eight children from a staunchly Roman Catholic family. The couple married in 1968. After Hanssen married, he converted from Lutheranism to his wife's Catholicism, becoming a fervent believer and being extensively involved in Opus Dei.

FBI career and first espionage activities (1979–1981)[link]

Hanssen joined the FBI as a special agent on 12 January 1976 and was transferred to the Bureau's Gary, Indiana, field office. In 1978, Hanssen and his growing family (of three children and eventually six) moved to New York when the FBI transferred him to its field office there.^[13] The next year, Hanssen was moved into counter-intelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the Bureau. It was then, in 1979, only three years after joining the FBI, that Hanssen began his career as a Soviet (and later a Russian) spy.

That year, Hanssen approached the GRU (the Soviet military intelligence agency) and offered his services. Hanssen never indicated any political or ideological motive for his activities, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was the money.^[14] During his first espionage cycle, Hanssen told the GRU a significant amount, including information on FBI bugging activities and Bureau lists of suspected Soviet intelligence agents. His most important leak of information was the betrayal of Dmitri Polyakov, code named TOPHAT. Polyakov was a CIA informant for more than 20 years before his retirement in 1980, and passed enormous amounts of information to American intelligence while he rose to the rank of General in the Soviet Army. For unknown reasons, the Soviets did not act on their intelligence about Polyakov until he was betrayed a second time by CIA mole Aldrich Ames in 1985. Polyakov was arrested in 1986 and executed in 1988. Ames was officially blamed for giving Polyakov's name to the Soviets, and Hanssen's role remained unknown until after his arrest in 2001.^[15]

Hanssen was nearly exposed in 1981, when Bonnie Hanssen caught her husband in their basement writing a letter to the Soviets. Hanssen admitted to her that he had been giving information to the Soviets for monetary gain and that he had received US$30,000 as payment. However, Hanssen falsely claimed that he was only passing along false intelligence. Hanssen stopped spying for the Soviet Union until 1985.

FBI counterintelligence unit, further espionage activities (1985–1991)[link]

"Ellis" dead drop site in Foxstone Park used by Hanssen, including on the day of his arrest.

Hanssen was transferred to the Washington, D.C. office in 1981 and moved to the suburb of Vienna, Virginia. His new job in the FBI's budget office gave him access to information involving many different FBI activities. This included all the FBI activities related to wiretapping and electronic surveillance, which were Hanssen's responsibility. He became known in the Bureau as an expert on computers.^[16]

In 1983, Hanssen transferred to the Soviet analytical unit, which was directly responsible for studying, identifying, and capturing Soviet spies and intelligence operatives in the United States. Hanssen's section was in charge of evaluating Soviet agents who volunteered to give intelligence to the U.S., to determine if they were genuine or double agents.^[17] In 1985, Hanssen was again transferred to the FBI's field office in New York, where he continued to work in counter-intelligence against the Soviets. It was after the transfer, while on a business trip back to Washington, that he resumed his career in espionage. This time, he became an operative for the KGB.

On 1 October 1985, he sent an anonymous letter to the KGB offering his services and asking for US$100,000 in cash. In the letter, Hanssen gave the names of three KGB agents in the United States secretly working for the FBI: Boris Yuzhin, Valery Martynov, and Sergei Motorin. Unbeknownst to Hanssen, all three had already been exposed earlier that year by another mole, CIA employee Aldrich Ames.^[18] Martynov and Motorin were executed, and Yuzhin was imprisoned for six years, and eventually emigrated to the United States.^[19] Since the FBI attributed the leak to Ames, the trail to Hanssen was diverted. The 1 October letter was the beginning of an active, long espionage period for Hanssen. He remained busy with KGB correspondence over the next several years.

In 1987, Hanssen was recalled yet again to Washington. He was given the task of making a study of all known and rumoured penetrations of the FBI in order to find the man who had betrayed Martynov and Motorin. This meant that he was looking for himself. For obvious reasons, Hanssen ensured that he did not unmask himself with his study, but in addition, he also turned over the entire study, including the list of all Soviets who had contacted the FBI about FBI moles, to the KGB in 1988.^[20] Also in 1987, Hanssen, according to a government report, "committed a serious security breach" by revealing secret information to a Soviet defector during a debriefing. The agents working underneath him reported this security breach to a supervisor, but no action was taken.^[7]

In 1989, Hanssen handed over extensive information about American planning for Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT), an umbrella term for intelligence collected by a wide array of electronic means, such as radar, underwater hydrophones for naval intelligence, spy satellites, and signal intercepts.^[21][22] When the Soviets began construction on a new embassy in 1977, the FBI dug a tunnel beneath the Soviet embassy, right under their decoding room. The FBI planned to use it for eavesdropping, but never did for fear of being caught. Hanssen disclosed this detailed information to the Soviets in September 1989 and received a US$55,000 payment the next month.^[23] On two occasions, Hanssen gave the Soviets a complete list of American double agents.^[24]

In 1989, Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation of Felix Bloch. Bloch was a State Department official who had served all over the world for more than 30 years when he came under suspicion in 1989. Bloch was seen by French intelligence agents meeting a known KGB operative and giving him a black bag. Bloch was a stamp collector and tried claiming that the bag contained stamp albums. In May 1989, eight days after the meeting of Bloch with the KGB operative, Hanssen warned the KGB that Bloch was under investigation. In June, the operative called Bloch and said that he could not see Bloch anymore, specifically saying, "A contagious disease is suspected". The FBI believed that the call was a veiled warning. Felix Bloch maintained his innocence through an aggressive investigation that continued for months afterward. The FBI was unable to produce any hard evidence, and as a result, Bloch was never charged with a crime (although the State Department later terminated Bloch's employment and denied pension to him). The failure of the Bloch investigation, and the FBI's suspicion of how the KGB found out about the Bloch investigation, drove the mole hunt that eventually led to the arrest of Robert Hanssen.^[25]

In 1990, Hanssen's brother-in-law, Mark Wauck, who was also an FBI employee, recommended to the bureau that Hanssen be investigated for espionage. This was because Bonnie Hanssen's sister Jeanne Beglis had found a pile of cash sitting on the Hanssens' dresser in 1990 and then told Wauck. Five years earlier in 1985, Bonnie had told her brother that her husband once talked about retiring in Poland, then part of the Eastern Bloc and under Soviet domination. Wauck also knew that the FBI was hunting for a mole and so after some hesitation, Wauck spoke with his supervisor, who took no action.^[7][26]

Later FBI career, continued espionage activities (1992–2001)[link]

When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, Hanssen, possibly worried that he could be exposed during the ensuing political upheaval, broke off communications with his handlers that same month and was out of contact for a time.^[27] He resumed his spying activities in 1992, this time for the newly-formed Russian Federation.

Hanssen made a very risky approach to the GRU, with whom he had not been in contact since his initial foray into espionage in 1979–1981. Hanssen, who in the past had always taken care to keep his face and his name hidden from the Russians, this time went in person to the Russian embassy and physically approached a GRU officer in the embassy's parking garage. Hanssen, carrying a package of documents, identified himself by his Soviet codename, "Ramon Garcia", and described a "disaffected FBI agent" who was offering his services as a spy. The Russian officer, who evidently did not recognize Hanssen's codename, got into his car and drove off. The Russians then filed an official protest with the State Department, believing Hanssen to be a double agent. Despite showing his face, giving away his code name, and revealing his FBI affiliation, Hanssen escaped arrest when the Bureau's investigation didn't go anywhere.^[28]

Hanssen continued to take risks in 1993. That year, he hacked into the computer of a fellow FBI agent, Ray Mislock, printed out a classified document from Mislock's computer, and took the document to Mislock, saying, "You didn't believe me that the system was insecure." This prompted an internal investigation by superiors. However, FBI officials believed him when he told them that he was merely demonstrating flaws in the FBI's security system. Mislock has since theorized that Hanssen actually went into his computer to see if the FBI was investigating him, and invented the document story to cover his tracks.^[29]

In 1994, Hanssen expressed interest in a transfer to the new National Counterintelligence Center, which coordinated counter-intelligence activities. However, when a superior told him that he would have to take a lie detector test to join, Hanssen changed his mind.^[30] Three years later, convicted FBI mole Earl Edwin Pitts told the Bureau that he suspected Hanssen due to the Mislock incident. Pitts was the second FBI agent to mention Hanssen by name as a possible mole, but the FBI simply wrote this off as a reference to the Mislock incident. No action was taken.^[31]

Hanssen was sent in 1995 to the Office of Foreign Missions at the State Department as the senior FBI liaison, with the task of coordinating travel by foreign diplomats in the United States.^[7][32] On his weekly visits back to FBI headquarters he frequently visited Johnie Sullivan, Chief of the National Security Division's (NSD) Intelligence Information Services (IIS) Unit. Hanssen mostly wanted to chat about his interest in computer security technology and the new Intelink-FBI network that Sullivan's unit was building and installing throughout the Bureau's major field offices.

In 1997, IT personnel from the IIS Unit were sent to investigate Hanssen's FBI desktop computer following a reported failure. Johnie Sullivan, NSD's IIS Unit Chief, ordered the computer impounded after it appeared to have been tampered with. A digital investigation by Sullivan and his IT staff found that an attempted hacking had taken place using a password cracking program installed by Hanssen, which caused a security alert and lockup. Following confirmation by the FBI CART Unit, Sullivan filed a report with Office of Professional Responsibility requesting further investigation of Hanssen's attempted penetration of the Bureau's high-security network operated by the National Security Division. Hanssen claimed all he wanted to do was connect a color printer to his computer, but needed the password cracker to get around the administrative password. The FBI believed his story and Hanssen was let off with a warning never to do it again.^[33] However, Sullivan felt that Hanssen's story was grossly inconsistent with the evidence and refused to withdraw the security violation report. The report was first ridiculed and later ignored by the NSD Security Countermeasures Unit.

During the same time period, Hanssen would go onto the FBI's internal computer case record and search to see if he was under investigation. He was indiscreet enough to type his own name into FBI search engines. Finding nothing, he decided to resume his spy career after eight years without contact with the Russians. He established contact with the SVR (the successor to the Soviet-era KGB) in the fall of 1999. He continued to perform highly incriminating searches of FBI files for his own name and address.^[34] In November 2000, he sent his last letter to the Russians.

Investigation and arrest[link]

The existence of two moles working simultaneously – Aldrich Ames at CIA and Hanssen at FBI – complicated counterintelligence efforts in the 1990s. Ames was arrested in 1994, and his capture explained many of the asset losses American intelligence suffered in the 1980s, including the arrest and execution of Martynov and Motorin. However, two cases stuck out and remained unsolved. For one, the Felix Bloch case remained a mystery. Ames had been stationed in Rome at the time of the Bloch investigation and the mysterious telephone warning. Authorities were satisfied that Ames had no knowledge of the case, as he did not work for the FBI and is not thought to have had access to the case files. In addition, the exposure of the tunnel under the Russian embassy in Washington was a second intelligence failure that could not be blamed on Ames.^[35][36]

In 1994, after Ames, the FBI and CIA formed a joint mole-hunting team to find the suspected second intelligence leak. They formed a list of all agents known to have access to cases that were compromised. The codename of the FBI for the suspected spy was Graysuit. Some promising suspects were cleared, and the mole hunt found other penetrations such as CIA officer Harold James Nicholson, but Hanssen escaped being noticed.^[37]

By 1998, using FBI criminal profiling techniques, the hunters had zeroed in on the wrong man: Brian Kelley, a CIA operative. Kelley had identified the very KGB agent who took the bag from Felix Bloch, but now found himself suspected to be the leak who had blown the case to the Soviets. The CIA and FBI searched his house, tapped his phone, and put him under surveillance. In November 1998 they had a man with a foreign accent come to Kelley's door, warn him that the FBI knew he was a spy, and tell him to show up at a metro station the next day in order to escape. Kelley instead reported the incident to the FBI. In 1999 the Bureau even called Kelley in for questioning and directly accused him of being a Russian spy. Over the next two days the FBI interrogated his ex-wife, two sisters, and three children. Kelley and his family denied everything, and his CIA career was badly damaged. He was eventually placed on administrative leave, where he remained, falsely accused, for nearly two years, until after Robert Hanssen was arrested.^[7][38]

A full year after interrogating Brian Kelley, and having failed to either bring a case against him or find another suspect, the FBI decided on a new tactic – buying the mole's identity. They searched for possible candidates to buy off and found one – a Russian businessman and former KGB agent whose identity remains classified to this day. An American company cooperated by inviting him to the United States for a business meeting. He came to New York and the FBI offered him a large sum of money if he would give the name of the mole. The Russian responded that he did not know the name, but that he could get the actual KGB/SVR file, which he had secretly taken out of headquarters. The file covered the mole's correspondence with the KGB from 1985 to 1991 and even included an audiotape of the voice of "Ramon Garcia". The FBI agreed to pay US$7 million for the file and set up the KGB officer and his family with new identities in the United States. In November 2000 the FBI finally obtained the file, consisting of a package the size of "a medium-sized suitcase". Among the host of documents and computer disks was an audiotape of a July 21, 1986 conversation between the mole and a KGB agent.

When the FBI listened to the tape, they expected to hear the voice of Brian Kelley, still the prime suspect. However, the voice on the recording was definitely not Kelley. FBI agent Michael Waguespack, listening to the tape, recognized the voice as familiar but could not remember who it was. Rifling through the rest of the file, they found notes of the mole using a quote from General George S. Patton about "the purple-pissing Japanese".^[39] FBI analyst Bob King remembered Robert Hanssen using that same quote. Waguespack listened to the tape again and recognized it as the voice of Robert Hanssen.

The FBI finally had its man. Once the name was known, everything else fell into place – locations, cases, dates, references to Chicago and Mayor Daley, etc. All these factors were a perfect match with Hanssen's activities during the time period. Also in the file was one of Hanssen's original packages for the KGB, complete with trash bag and with two fingerprints on it, which when tested were shown to be Hanssen's. The weight of evidence against Hanssen was overwhelming and conclusive.^[40][41][42]

Hanssen's mug shot, taken on the day of his arrest.

The FBI placed Hanssen under round-the-clock surveillance and soon discovered that he was again in contact with the Russians. In order to bring him back to FBI headquarters, where he could be monitored and kept from sensitive data, they promoted him in December and gave him a new job supervising FBI computer security. In January, Hanssen got an office and an assistant, Eric O'Neill, who was actually a young FBI employee assigned to watch Hanssen. O'Neill ascertained that Hanssen was using a Palm III PDA to store his information. When O'Neill was able to obtain Hanssen's PDA briefly and have agents download and decode its encrypted contents, the FBI had its "smoking gun".^[43][44][45]

Hanssen realized in his final days with the FBI that something was wrong. In early February, he asked a friend of his at a computer technology company for a job. Hanssen also believed he was hearing noises on his car radio that indicated his car was bugged, although the FBI was later unable to reproduce the noises Hanssen claimed to have heard. In the last letter he ever wrote to the Russians, which was picked up by the FBI when he was arrested, Hanssen said that he had been promoted to a "do-nothing job ... outside of regular access to information", and that "Something has aroused the sleeping tiger."^[46]

However, his suspicions did not stop him from making another drop. After dropping a friend at the airport on February 18, 2001, Hanssen drove to Virginia's Foxstone Park. He placed a white piece of tape on a park sign, which was a signal to his Russian contacts that there was information at the dead drop. He then followed his usual routine, taking a package that consisted of a sealed garbage bag full of classified material and taping it to the bottom side of a wooden footbridge over a creek. The FBI, having caught him in the act, swooped in and arrested Hanssen on the spot.^[47] Upon the arrest, Hanssen realized his espionage days against the FBI were over, and said, "What took you so long?" The FBI waited two days for any of Hanssen's SVR handlers to show up at the Foxstone Park site. When they failed to do so, the Justice Department announced the arrest on February 20.^[48]

Guilty plea and imprisonment[link]

United States Penitentiary, Florence ADX, where Hanssen is incarcerated.

With the representation of Washington lawyer Plato Cacheris, Hanssen negotiated a plea bargain that enabled him to escape the death penalty in exchange for cooperating with authorities.^[4] On July 6, 2001, he pleaded guilty to fifteen counts of espionage in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.^[4][5] Hanssen was then sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. (Parole in federal sentencing was abolished by Congress in the 1980s). His wife, along with their six children, received the survivor's part of Hanssen's pension, $38,000 per year.

Hanssen is Federal Bureau of Prisons prisoner #48551-083. He is serving his sentence at the Federal Bureau of Prisons Administrative Maximum facility in Florence, Colorado.^[49][50]

Modus operandi[link]

Hanssen never told the KGB or GRU his identity and refused to meet them personally, with the exception of the abortive 1993 contact in the Russian embassy garage. The FBI believes the Russians never knew the name of their source.^[51] He went by the alias "Ramon" or "Ramon Garcia" when corresponding with the Soviets.^[52] He passed intelligence and received payments through an old-fashioned dead drop system where Hanssen and his KGB handlers would leave packages in public places and place unobtrusive but visible marks in the area to let the other party know that a package was waiting.^[53]

In the words of David Major, one of his superiors at the FBI, Hanssen was "diabolically brilliant". He refused to use the dead drop sites that his handler, Victor Cherkashin, suggested and instead picked his own. He also designated a code to be used when dates were exchanged. Six was to be added to the month, day and time of a designated drop time, so that, for example, a drop scheduled for January 6 at 1 p.m. would be written as July 12 at 7 p.m.^[54]

Despite these efforts at caution and security, he could at times be reckless. He once said in a letter to the KGB that it should emulate the management style of Mayor Richard J. Daley – a comment that easily could have led an investigator to look at people from Chicago.^[55] He took the risk of recommending to his handlers that they try to recruit his closest friend, a colonel in the Army.^[56] In an early letter to Cherkashin, he claims, "As far as the funds are concerned, I have little need or utility for more than the $100,000."^[57]

Personal life[link]

According to USA Today, those who knew the Hanssens described them as a close family. They attended Mass weekly and were very active in Opus Dei. Robert Hanssen's three sons attended The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland, an all-boys preparatory school.^[58] His daughters attended Oakcrest School for Girls, an independent Roman Catholic school. Both schools are associated with Opus Dei. Hanssen's wife, Bonnie, taught religion at Oakcrest.

The priest at the Oakcrest School said that Hanssen had regularly attended a 6:30 a.m. daily mass for more than a decade.^[59] Opus Dei member Father C. John McCloskey III said Hanssen also occasionally attended the daily noontime Mass at the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington, D.C. After going to prison, Hanssen claimed he periodically admitted his espionage to priests in confession. He urged fellow Catholics in the Bureau to attend mass more often, and denounced the Russians as "godless", even though he was spying for them.^[60]

However, there was a second side to Hanssen's private life much as there was a second side to his professional life. Unbeknownst to his wife, and at Hanssen's suggestion, a friend would watch the Hanssens having sex through a bedroom window. He also began to secretly videotape their sexual encounters and shared the videotapes with him. Later, Hanssen hid a video camera in the bedroom that was connected to a closed-circuit television line so that his friend could observe the Hanssens from his guest bedroom.^[61] He also explicitly described the sexual details of his marriage on Internet chat rooms, giving information sufficient for those who knew them to recognize the couple.^[62]

Hanssen frequently visited D.C. strip clubs, and spent a great deal of time with a Washington, D.C., stripper named Priscilla Sue Galey. She went to Hong Kong with Hanssen on a trip and on a visit to the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia.^[63] He gave her money, jewels and a used Mercedes, but cut off contact with her before his arrest, when she fell into drug abuse and prostitution. Galey claims that although she offered to sleep with him, Hanssen declined, saying that he was trying to convert her to Catholicism.^[64]

In popular culture[link]

He is talked about in Ronald Kessler's book "The secrets of the FBI" in chapter 15, "Catching Hanssen," and chapter 16, "Breach". The story of Eric O'Neill's role in the capture of Robert Hanssen was dramatized in the 2007 film Breach, in which Chris Cooper played the role of Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe played O'Neill.

The 2007 documentary Superspy: The Man Who Betrayed the West describes the hunt to trap Robert Hanssen. Hanssen also was the subject of a 2002 made-for-television movie, Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story, written by Norman Mailer and starring William Hurt as Hanssen. Robert Hanssen's jailers allowed him to watch this movie, but Hanssen was so angered by the film that he turned it off.^[65]

Notes[link]

References and further reading[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Hanssen

• FBI application for arrest warrant for Hanssen
• USA Today: FBI portrays Robert Hanssen's double life
• The secret PROMIS software Robert Hanssen leaked to Russia
• Eric O'Neill and Billy Ray Discuss 'Breach' on Fresh Air
• USA vs. Robert Hanssen, The Smoking Gun
• Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story – CBS TV Movie
• ROBERT PHILIP HANSSEN: THE SPY WHO STAYED OUT IN THE COLD
• To Catch A Spy: Probe To Unmask Hanssen Almost Ruined Kelley

Robert Christian Hansen (born on February 15, 1939) is an American serial killer. Between 1980 and 1983, Hansen murdered between 17 and 21 women near Anchorage, Alaska.

Early life[link]

Hansen was born in Estherville, Iowa to Christian and Edna Hansen. Throughout childhood and adolescence, Hansen was described as being quiet and a loner, and had a dysfunctional relationship with his domineering father. He was frequently bullied at school for his perpetual acne and his severe stutter.^[1]:5 In 1957, Hansen enlisted in the United States Army Reserve and served for one year before being discharged. He later worked as an assistant drill instructor at a police academy in Pocahontas, Iowa. In Pocahontas, Hansen began a relationship with a late adolescent girl and married in the summer of 1960.

On December 7 of that year, he was arrested for burning down a Pocahontas County Board of Education school bus garage, for which he served 20 months of a three-year prison sentence. His wife filed for divorce against him while he was incarcerated. Over the next few years, he was jailed several times for petty theft. In 1967, he moved to Anchorage, Alaska with his second wife, whom he had married in 1963. In Anchorage, he was well liked by his neighbors and was famed as a local hunting champion. He even broke several records, documented in the Pope & Young's book of world hunting records.^[1]:5 However, these records were nullified after Hansen's conviction^{[citation needed]}.

In 1977, he was imprisoned for theft of a chainsaw, diagnosed with bipolar disorder and prescribed lithium to control his mood swings. He was never officially ordered to take the medication, however,^[1] and was released from prison after serving a year. Father of two children by then, Hansen opened a bakery after his release.

Discovery[link]

On June 13, 1983, 17-year-old Cindy Paulson escaped from Robert Hansen while he was trying to load her into his Piper Super Cub. She told police that she had been offered $200 to perform oral sex, but when she got into the car Hanson pulled a gun on her and drove her to his home in Muldoon where he held her captive torturing, raping and sexually assaulting her. She mentioned that, after being chained by the neck to a post in the house's basement, Hansen took a nap on a nearby couch. When he awoke he put her in his car and took her to Merrill Field airport where he told her that he intended to "take her out to his cabin" (although, he did not really have a cabin-- it was instead a meat shack in the Knik River area of the Matanuska Valley accessible only by boat or bush plane). Paulson (with her wrists cuffed in front of her body and crouching in the back seat of the car) waited until Hanson was busy loading the airplane's cockpit to make a run for it. While Hansen's back was turned, Paulson crawled out of the back seat and opened the driver's side door and took off running toward nearby 6th Avenue. She told police that she'd left her blue sneakers on the passenger side floor of the sedan's backseat as evidence that she'd in fact been in the car. Hanson panicked and ran after her, but Paulson made it to 6th Avenue first and managed to flag down a passing truck. The driver, alarmed by her disheveled appearance, stopped and picked her up. He drove her, upon request, to the Mush Inn where she jumped out of the truck and ran inside. While she pleaded with the clerk to phone her boyfriend at the Big Timber Motel, the truck driver continued on to work where he called the police to report the barefoot, handcuffed woman. When Anchorage Police Department officers arrived at the Mush Inn they were told that the young woman had taken a cab to the Big Timber Motel. APD officers arrived at room 110 of the Big Timber Motel and found Cindy Paulson, still handcuffed, and alone. She was taken to APD headquarters where she identified Hansen as the perpetrator. ^[2] Hansen, when questioned by APD officers, denied the accusation stating that Paulson was just trying to cause some trouble because he wouldn't pay her extortion demands. Although Hansen had had several prior run-ins with the law, his meek demeanor and humble occupation as a baker, along with a strong alibi from his friend John Henning kept him from being considered as a serious suspect, and the case fell cold.

Detective Glenn Flothe of the Alaska State Troopers had been part of a team investigating the discovery of several bodies in and around Anchorage, Seward and the Matanuska-Susitna Valley area. The first of the bodies was found by construction workers near Eklutna Road. The body, dubbed "Eklutna Annie" by investigators, has never been identified. Later that year, the body of Joanna Messina was discovered in a gravel pit near Seward, and in the year following (1982) the remains of 23 year old Sherry Morrow were discovered in a shallow grave near the Knik River. Flothe now had 3 bodies and what looked like one killer. He contacted Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Roy Hazelwood and requested help with a criminal psychological profile based on the three recovered bodies. Hazelwood theorized that the killer would be an experienced hunter with low self-esteem, have a history of being rejected by women, and would feel compelled to keep "souvenirs" of his murders, such as a victim's jewelry. He also suggested the assailant might stutter. All of these qualities, and the fact that he owned a plane, lead Flothe right to Cindy Paulson's attacker, Robert Hansen.

Supported by Paulson's testimony and Hazelwood's profile, Flothe and the APD secured a warrant to search Hansen's plane, cars and home. On October 27, 1983 investigators uncovered jewelry belonging to some of the missing women as well as an array of firearms ^[1]- in a corner hideaway of Hansen's attic, but the biggest find was an aviation map with little x marks on it hidden behind Hansen's headboard.

When confronted with the overwhelming evidence found in his home Hansen became irate. He denied it as long as he could, but eventually, after starting to feel trapped, he began to blame the women and tried to justify his motives. Eventually, confessing to each item of evidence as it was presented to him, he admitted to a spree of attacks against Alaskan women starting as early as 1971. In a strange twist (and unlike his "justifications"), Hansen's earliest victims were young women, usually between 16 and 19, and not the prostitutes and strippers who led to his discovery. Hanson's cravings for torture and power had landed him in jail many times before, but he continually slipped through the system. It has never been confirmed that Hansen would "hunt" his victims although in the cases of Sherry Morrow and Sue Luna both women were shot in the back while running, leading some to suggest this. However, Hansen was clumsy and often underestimated the extent his victims would go to survive. When in doubt, he shot to kill, but didn't necessarily seem to hunt his human victims.

Imprisonment[link]

Spring Creek Correctional Center, where Hansen is incarcerated

Robert C. Hansen raped and assaulted over 30 Alaskan women. He is responsible for the murder of at least 17, ranging in age from 16 to 41 they were:

• Lisa Futrell, 41 (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• Malai Larsen, 28 (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• Unknown Jane Doe (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• Sue Luna, 23 (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• Tami Pederson, 20 (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• Angela Feddern, 24 (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• Teresa Watson (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• DeLynn "Sugar" Frey (acknowledged, body found with Hansen's help)
• Paula Goulding (acknowledged, body found)
• Andrea "Fish" Altiery (admitted, body found with Hansen's help)
• Sherry Morrow, 23 (admitted, body found)
• "Eklutna Annie" (admitted, body found)
• Joanna Messina (admitted, body found)
• Roxanne Eastland, 24 (acknowledged, body not found)
• Ceilia "Beth" Van Zanten, 17 (denies, but suspected because of x on aviation map, body found)
• Megan Emerick, 17 (denies, but suspected because of x on aviation map, body not found)
• Mary Thill, 23 (denies, but suspected because of x on aviation map, body not found)

Of these 17 women, Hansen has only formally been charged with the murder of 4; Sherry Morrow, Joanna Messina, Eklutna Annie and Andrea Altiery, as well as the kidnapping and rape of Cindy Paulson.

When arrested, Hansen was charged with assault, kidnapping, multiple weapons offenses, theft and insurance fraud; the last charge was related to his filing a claim with the insurance company over alleged theft of some trophies with the funds being used to purchase the Super Cub (at trial he claimed he later recovered the trophies in his backyard but forgot to inform the insurer). Only after ballistics tests returned a match between bullets found at the crime scenes and Hansen's rifle, did he enter into a plea bargain. He pled guilty to the four homicides the police had evidence for (Marrow, Messina, Altiery & Eklutna Annie) and provided details about his other victims in return for serving his sentence in a federal prison along with no publicity in the press. Another condition of the plea bargain included his full participation in deciphering the markings on his aviation map and locating his victim's bodies. He confirmed police theory of how the women were abducted, adding that he would sometimes let a potential victim go if she convinced him that she wouldn't report him to police, and indicated that he began killing in the early 1970s. He showed investigators a total of 17 grave sites, 12 of which were unknown to investigators, in and around Southcentral Alaska. However, there remained marks on his map that he refused to give up, including 3 in icy Resurrection Bay (authorities suspect two of these marks belong to the graves of Mary Thill and Megan Emrick, women Hansen refused to admit to because they were not strippers or street girls, and admitting to their murders would compromise his magical thinking). The remains of 11 (of a probable 21) victims were exhumed by the police and returned to their families. Hansen was sentenced, by jury, to 461 years in prison.

Hansen was first imprisoned at the United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1988, he was returned to Alaska and was briefly incarcerated at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau.^{[citation needed]} He is currently imprisoned at Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward.^[3]

In Film, TV and Literature[link]

Actor John Cusack is set to portray Hansen in the upcoming film The Frozen Ground. He will work opposite Nicolas Cage as Alaska State Troopers Sergeant Jack Halcombe and Vanessa Hudgens as Cindy Paulson. ^[4] The film is scheduled for release in December 2012.^[5]

An episode of the Discovery Channel TV series The FBI Files entitled "Hunter's Game" and an episode of the Investigation Discovery TV series "Alaska: Ice Cold Killers"^[6] have depicted his murderous rampage. A 2012 episode of the Travel Channel series Hidden City on the city of Anchorage covered the Robert Hansen case. Two episodes of the CBS TV series Cold Case, entitled "Mindhunters" and "The Woods," depicted a serial killer called George Marks with a very similar Modus Operandi to Hansen's. The Hansen case served as inspiration for the action thriller Naked Fear (2007) starring Danielle De Luca as a dancer stalked by a maniacal hunter in the uninhabited regions of New Mexico. The episode of the NBC TV series "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit", entitled "Hunting Ground," depicted a serial killer who hunted prostitutes ranging in age from 16 on up. The man called Brewster would hunt these girls in the wilderness until they wore themselves out, kill them and then dump their bodies at a beach. At least 11 were found, one girl got away and another was rescued.

Biologist and author Lynn Schooler's memoir, Blue Bear (Harper Collins, 2002), deals in part with the death of a female friend who was murdered by Hansen.

References[link]

• Bernard Du Clos Fair Game ISBN 978-0-312-92905-3
• Walter Gilmour, Leland E. Hale Butcher, Baker: A True Account of a Serial Murder ISBN 978-0-451-40276-9

External links[link]

• Gather.com Serial Killer Series: Article 7: Robert Hansen August 7 2007
• ExploreNorth Robert Hansen A Serial Killer in Alaska by Murry Lundburg

Eric O'Neill
O'Neill giving a speech to the junior and senior classes of Hermitage High School, Richmond, Virginia.
Born	(1973-03-03) March 3, 1973 (age 39)
Education	Auburn University The George Washington University Law School
Employer	FBI
Known for	Helping to investigate and capture spy Robert Hanssen

Eric Michael O'Neill (born March 3, 1973) is a former American FBI operative. He worked as an Investigative Specialist with the Special Surveillance Group (SSG) and played a major role in the arrest and life imprisonment conviction of FBI agent Robert Hanssen for spying on behalf of the Soviet Union and Russia.

Early life[link]

O'Neill graduated from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. in 1991 and earned a B.A., with honors, in political science and psychology from Auburn University in 1995, where he was a brother of Theta Xi fraternity.^[1]

Career[link]

With the F.B.I.[link]

O'Neill was assigned to work as Hanssen's assistant: his true role, kept secret from Hanssen, was part of the effort to learn as much as possible about which secret information Hanssen had revealed, and to ensure his successful capture and prosecution. Ultimately, investigators made a dramatic move to obtain a "smoking gun". While others briefly disrupted Hanssen's routine and confidence, maneuvering him into relaxing his rigid control of his Palm Pilot,^[2] O'Neill, under intense time pressure, secretly had its encrypted contents copied and returned it apparently undetected, despite forgetting which pocket of Hanssen's briefcase he had taken it from. O'Neill has speculated that, had Hanssen detected the disturbance of his device, he would have realized that all his hope of continued freedom was lost and that Hanssen might have shot O'Neill dead on the spot.^[3][2]

Hanssen was arrested on 18 February 2001 at Foxstone Park near his home in Vienna, Virginia, charged with selling American secrets to Russia for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds over a 22-year period. O'Neill's subterfuge had apparently deceived Hanssen, as part of the dead drop contained an evaluation of O'Neill's possibly replacing Hanssen as a mole when he retired. On July 6, 2001, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage.^[4][5] Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison. His treason has been described as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history".^[6]

Post-F.B.I.[link]

Following his FBI years, O'Neill earned a J.D., with honors, from The George Washington University Law School in 2003. He has been admitted to the bar in Maryland and in the District of Columbia. After graduating from law school, O'Neill joined DLA Piper US LLP as a Senior Associate in the Government Contracts Group. In December 2008, O'Neill left DLA Piper and accepted a position as General Counsel of CHF International, a global humanitarian relief non-profit organization.^{[citation needed]}

In February 2009, O'Neill founded The Georgetown Group, an investigative and risk management company. ^[7]

Media portrayals[link]

O'Neill is played by Ryan Phillippe in the 2007 docudrama thriller Breach, which depicts O'Neill's role in the investigation and capture of Hanssen. The feature-length commentary track on the Universal Studios DVD features O'Neill with director Billy Ray. There O'Neill expands on the film, offering additional background and details as well as noting where actual events were changed on the film for dramatic purposes.^[8][9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Eric O'Neill's Official Site
• NPR audio interview with O'Neill and Billy Ray
• Eric O'Neill and Billy Ray Discuss 'Breach'
• ABC 20/20 Report on Eric O'Neill, Dec. 27, 2002
• CNN, Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees, October 1, 2003
• Ryan Phillippe discusses working with Eric O'Neill on the Breach Movie Set
• About.com interview with O'Neill and Billy Ray (director)
• The Georgetown Group Official Site

Aldrich Ames
Aldrich Ames
Born	(1941-05-26) May 26, 1941 (age 71) River Falls, Wisconsin, United States
Charge(s)	18 U.S.C. § 794(c)[1] (Espionage Act)
Penalty	life imprisonment (without parole)
Status	Incarcerated
Occupation	former CIA officer and analyst and agent for the Soviet Union and later Russia
Spouse	Nancy Segebarth(div.) Rosario Dupuy
Parents	Carleton Cecil Ames Rachel Aldrich Ames

Aldrich Hazen Ames (born May 26, 1941) is a former Central Intelligence Agency counter-intelligence officer and analyst, who, in 1994, was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Until the arrest of Robert Hanssen seven years later, Ames compromised more CIA assets than any Soviet mole in American history.

While spending nine years working in CIA counter-intelligence, he declared an annual income of $60,000 but his plastic spending of up to $30,000 a month funded a lifestyle that included a new Jaguar and a $540,000 house (2011 value: $800,000) paid for in cash. ^[2]

Biography[link]

Early life and work[link]

Aldrich Ames was born in River Falls, Wisconsin, to Carleton Cecil Ames and Rachel Ames (née Aldrich). His father was a college lecturer, his mother a high school English teacher. Aldrich was the eldest of three children and the only son. In 1952 Carleton Ames began working for CIA's Directorate of Operations in Virginia, and in 1953 he was posted to Southeast Asia for three years accompanied by his family. Carleton received a "particularly negative performance appraisal" in part because of a serious drinking problem and spent the remainder of his career at CIA Headquarters.^[3]

Ames attended high school at McLean High School in McLean, Virginia. Beginning in 1957, following his sophomore year, Ames worked for the CIA for three summers as a low-ranking (GS-3) records analyst, marking classified documents for filing. In 1959, Ames entered the University of Chicago planning to study foreign cultures and history, but his "long-time passion" for drama resulted in failing grades, and he did not finish out his sophomore year. Ames worked at the CIA during the summer of 1960 as a laborer/painter. He then became an assistant technical director at a Chicago theater until February 1962. Returning to Washington area, Ames took full-time employment at the CIA doing the same sort of clerical jobs he had performed in high school.^[4]

CIA career[link]

Five years later, Ames completed a bachelor's degree in history at George Washington University. Ames did not originally plan to make his career with the CIA, but after attaining the grade of GS-7, and having received good performance appraisals, Ames was accepted into the Career Trainee Program despite several alcohol-related brushes with the police.^[5]

In 1969 Ames married fellow officer Nancy Segebarth, whom he had met in the Career Trainee Program. When Ames was assigned to Ankara, Turkey, Nancy had to resign from the CIA because of a rule that prohibited married partners from working as officers from the same office.^[6]

Ames' job in Turkey was to target Soviet intelligence officers for recruitment, and he succeeded in infiltrating the Communist DEV-GENÇ organization through a roommate of student activist Deniz Gezmiş.^[7] In spite of this success, Ames' performance was rated only "satisfactory," and Ames, discouraged by the critical assessment, considered leaving the CIA.^[8]

In 1972, Ames returned to CIA headquarters where he spent the next four years in the Soviet-East European (SE) Division. His performance reviews were "generally enthusiastic," apparently because he was better at managing paper work and planning field operations than at agent recruiting. Nevertheless, his excessive drinking was also noted, and two "eyes only" memorandums were placed in his file.^[9]

In 1976 Ames was assigned to New York City where he handled two important Soviet assets. His performance was excellent, and Ames received several promotions and bonuses and was ranked above most operations officers in his pay grade, although his tendency to procrastinate in submissions of financial accounting was noted. Ames' inattention to details also led him to make two important security violations, including once leaving a briefcase of classified operational materials on the subway. Ames apparently received only a verbal reprimand.^[10]

In 1981 Ames accepted a posting to Mexico City while his wife remained in New York. His evaluations in Mexico were mediocre at best, and he also engaged in at least three extramarital affairs. In October 1982 Ames began an affair with María del Rosario Casas Dupuy, a cultural attaché in the Colombian Embassy and a CIA informant. Despite CIA regulations, Ames did not report his romance with a foreign national to his superiors, even though some of his colleagues were well aware of it. Ames' lackluster performance reviews were in part the result of heavy drinking. At a diplomatic reception in Mexico City, Ames got into a loud, drunken argument with a Cuban official that "caused alarm" among his superiors.^[11]

Nevertheless, in September 1983, the CIA assigned Ames back to the SE division in Washington, placing him "in the most sensitive element" of the Department of Operations because it was responsible for Soviet counterintelligence activities. Ames had access to all CIA plans and operations against the KGB and the GRU, Soviet military intelligence.^[12]

In October he formally separated from his wife, and in November, he submitted an "outside activity" report to the CIA noting his romantic relationship to Rosario. As part of his divorce settlement, Ames agreed to pay the couple's debts plus provide his wife monthly support for three-and-a-half years, a total of about $46,000. Ames thought the divorce might bankrupt him, and he later said that this financial pressure first led him to consider spying for the Soviet Union.^[12] Rosario also proved to be a heavy spender—after her arrest the FBI discovered in the Ames' house sixty purses, more than five hundred pairs of shoes, and 165 unopened boxes of pantyhose.^[13]

Espionage[link]

Ames routinely assisted another CIA office that assessed Soviet embassy officials as potential intelligence assets. As part of this responsibility, and with the knowledge of both the CIA and the FBI, Ames began making contacts within the Soviet Embassy. In April 1985, Ames provided information to the Soviets that he believed was "essentially valueless" but that would establish his credentials as a CIA insider. He also asked for $50,000, which the Soviets quickly paid.^[14]

Ames later claimed that he had not prepared for more than the initial "con game" to satisfy his immediate indebtedness, but once having "crossed a line," he "could never step back." Ames soon identified more than ten top-level CIA and FBI sources who were reporting on Soviet activities. Not only did Ames believe that there was "as much money as [he] could ever use" in betraying these intelligence assets, but their elimination would also reduce the chance of his own espionage being discovered.^[15]

By 1985, the CIA's network of Soviet-bloc agents began disappearing at an alarming rate. The CIA realized something was wrong, but was reluctant to consider the possibility of an agency mole. Initial investigations focused on possible breaches caused by Soviet bugs or by a broken code.^[16]

The CIA then blamed asset losses on another former CIA agent, Edward Lee Howard, who had also been passing information to the Soviets. But when the CIA lost three other important sources of information about whom Howard could have known nothing, it was clear that the arrests (and executions) originated from another source.^[17]

As one CIA officer put it, the Soviets "were wrapping up our cases with reckless abandon," which was highly unusual because the "prevailing wisdom among the Agency's professional 'spy catchers'" was that suddenly eliminating all the assets known to the mole would put him in danger. In fact, Ames' KGB handlers apologized to him but said the decision to immediately eliminate all American assets had been made at the highest political levels.^[18]

Meanwhile, Ames continued to meet openly with his contact at the Russian embassy, Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin, and for a time, Ames summarized for the CIA and FBI the progress of what he portrayed as an attempt to recruit the Soviet. In fact, Ames received $20,000-50,000 every time the two had lunch.^[19] Ultimately, Ames received $4.6 million from the Soviets, which allowed him to enjoy a lifestyle well beyond the means of a CIA officer.^[16]

When, in August 1985, Ames's divorce became final, he immediately married María del Rosario. Understanding that his new wealth would raise eyebrows, he developed a cover story that his prosperity was the result of money given him by his Colombian wife's wealthy family.^[20]

Ames was posted to Rome in 1986. There his performance once again ranged from mediocre to poor, and included evidence of problem drinking. Nevertheless, in 1990-91, Ames was reassigned to the CIA's Counterintelligence Center Analysis Group, providing him with access to "extremely sensitive data," including information on U.S. double agents.^[21]

CIA response[link]

Replacement of the mailbox used by Ames: a horizontal chalk mark above the USPS logo would signal a needed meeting. 37th and R Sts. NW. Original in the Spy Museum.

By 1990, the CIA was certain that there was a mole in the agency. Recruitment of new Soviet agents came to a virtual halt from fear that the agency could not protect its current assets.^[16]

Prior to this, in November 1989, a fellow employee reported that Ames seemed to be enjoying a lifestyle well beyond the means of a CIA officer and that his wife's family was less wealthy than he had claimed. Nevertheless, the CIA moved slowly. When the investigator assigned to Ames's finances began a two-month training course, no one immediately replaced him.^[22] Investigators were also diverted by a false story from a CIA officer abroad who claimed that the Soviets had penetrated the CIA with an employee born in the USSR.^[23]

In 1986 and 1991, Ames passed two polygraph examinations while spying for the Soviet Union and Russia, respectively. Ames was initially "terrified" at the prospect of taking the test, but he was advised by the KGB "to just relax."^[24] Ames's test demonstrated deceptive answers to some questions but the examiners passed him, perhaps in the later opinion of the CIA because the examiners were "overly friendly" and therefore did not induce the proper physiological response.^[25]

The CIA finally focused on Ames after it realized that on a $60,000 salary, Ames was able to afford these expenses:

• A $540,000 house in Arlington, Virginia, paid for in cash;^[26]
• A $50,000 Jaguar automobile;^[27]
• Home remodeling and redecoration costs of $99,000;^[26]
• Monthly phone bills exceeding $6,000, mostly calls by Ames's wife to her family in Bogotá, Colombia;
• Tailored suits that replaced Ames's former 'bargain basement' clothes, conspicuously finer than those of his CIA colleagues; and
• Premium credit cards whose minimum monthly payment exceeded his monthly salary.^[28]

Arrest[link]

Ames' mug shot, taken on the day of his arrest

Finally in March 1993 the CIA and FBI began an intensive investigation of Ames that included electronic surveillance, combing through his trash, and a monitor installed in his car to track his movements.^[29] From November 1993 until his arrest, Ames was kept under virtually constant physical surveillance. When in early 1994 he was scheduled to attend a conference in Moscow, the FBI believed it could wait no longer, and he and his wife were arrested on February 21, 1994.^[30] At arrest, Ames told the officers, "You're making a big mistake! You must have the wrong man!"^[31]

On February 22, 1994, Ames and his wife were formally charged by the United States Department of Justice with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. Ames could have faced the death penalty because his betrayal had resulted in the deaths of a number of CIA assets.^[32] However, he pleaded guilty on April 28 and received a sentence of life imprisonment. His wife received a 5-year prison sentence for tax evasion and conspiracy to commit espionage as part of a plea-bargain by Ames.^[33]

In court, Ames admitted that he had compromised "virtually all Soviet agents of the CIA and other American and foreign services known to me" and had provided the USSR and Russia with a "huge quantity of information on United States foreign, defense and security policies."^[34] It is estimated that information Ames provided to the Soviets led to the compromise of at least a hundred U.S. intelligence operations and to the execution of at least ten U.S. sources.

Ames said he was not afraid of being caught by the FBI or CIA but was afraid of Soviet defectors, saying, "Virtually every American who has been jailed in connection with espionage has been fingered by a Soviet sources." Additionally, when asked about the polygraph tests, Ames said, "There's no special magic...Confidence is what does it. Confidence and a friendly relationship with the examiner... rapport, where you smile and you make him think that you like him. ^[35]

Post sentence[link]

Ames is Federal Bureau of Prisons prisoner #40087-083, serving his sentence in the high-security Allenwood U.S. Penitentiary near Allenwood, Pennsylvania.^[36]

The CIA was criticized for not focusing on Ames sooner, given the obvious increase in his standard of living;^[16] and there was a "huge uproar" in Congress when CIA director James Woolsey decided that no one in the CIA would be dismissed or demoted at the agency. "Some have clamored for heads to roll in order that we could say that heads have rolled," Woolsey declared. "Sorry, that's not my way." Woolsey was forced to resign.^[37]

Ames's attorney, Plato Cacheris, had threatened to litigate the legality of FBI searches and seizures in Ames's home and office without traditional search warrants, although Ames's guilty plea made the threat moot. Congress then passed a new law giving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that specific power.^[38]

Ames' story is dramatized in the 1998 movie Aldrich Ames: Traitor Within, starring Timothy Hutton as Ames. Ames was also included as a character in the 1997 Frederick Forsyth novel Icon, in which he betrays several Soviet agents recruited by the United States.^[39]

Some CIA sources betrayed[link]

• Vitaly Yurchenko was a KGB officer in the Fifth Department of Directorate K, "the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to defect to the United States".^[40] In August 1985, he defected via Rome to the US,^[41] only to repatriate to the Soviet Union three months later.^[42] Ames was privy to all information that Yurchenko gave to the CIA and was able to transmit it to the KGB, which allowed easy cover-ups of lost information.^[43] Yurchenko returned to the Soviet Union in 1985 and was re-assigned to a desk job within the FCD, a reward for helping to keep Ames' spying a secret.^[44]

• In the mid-1980s, Major General Dmitri Polyakov was the highest ranking figure in Soviet military intelligence (GRU) giving information to the CIA. He was executed in 1988 after Ames exposed him.^[45] He was probably the most valuable asset compromised by Ames. One CIA official said of Polyakov, "He didn't do this for money. He insisted on staying in place to help us."^[46]

• Colonel Oleg Gordievsky was the head of the London rezidentura (residency) and spied for the SIS (MI6). Ames handed over information about Gordievsky that positively identified him as a traitor,^[47] although he managed to escape to the Finnish border where he was extracted to the United Kingdom via Norway by the British SIS before he could be detained in Russia.

• Valery Martynov was a Line X (Technical&Scientific Intelligence) officer at the Washington rezidentura. Martynov revealed the identities of fifty Soviet intelligence officers operating out of the embassy plus technical and scientific targets that the KGB had penetrated.^[48] Ames turned over Martynov's name to the KGB, and he was executed.^[49]

• Major Sergei Motorin was a Line PR (Political Intelligence) officer at the Washington rezidentura whom the FBI tried to blackmail into spying for the US. He eventually cooperated for his own reasons.^[50] Motorin was one of two moles at the rezidentura betrayed by Ames and then quickly executed.^[49][51]

• Colonel Leonid Polishchuk was a Line KR (Counter-intelligence) agent in Nigeria. He too was betrayed by Ames. His arrest was attributed to a chance encounter where KGB agents had observed a CIA agent loading a dead drop. After some time, Polishchuk was seen removing the contents.^[52]

• Sergey Fedorenko was a nuclear arms expert assigned to the Soviet delegation to the United Nations. In 1987, Ames was assigned to handle him, and Fedorenko betrayed information about the Soviet missile program to Ames. The two men became good friends, hugging when Fedorenko was about to return to Moscow. "We had become close friends," said Ames. "We trusted each other completely."^[53] Ames was initially hesitant to betray his friend, but soon after handing over the majority of the information, he decided to also betray Fedorenko to "do a good job" for the KGB.^[51] Back in the USSR, Fedorenko used political connections to get himself out of trouble. Years later, Fedorenko met his friend Ames for an emotional reunion over lunch and promised to move to the U.S. for good. Ames promised to help. Shortly after lunch, Ames betrayed him to the KGB for a second time.^[51] Fedorenko escaped arrest, defected, and is currently living in Rhode Island.^[54]

See also[link]

Biography portal

Other Agents in place in the U.S. Government or Military who worked as a Mole for either the KGB or the SVR, include:

• James Hall III - An Army warrant officer and intelligence analyst in Germany who sold eavesdropping and code secrets to East Germany and the Soviet Union from 1983 to 1988.
• Robert Hanssen - Arrested for spying for the Soviet Union and Russia for more than 15 of his 27 years with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
• Earl Edwin Pitts - An FBI agent charged with providing Top Secret documents to the Soviet Union and then Russia from 1987 until 1992.
• Harold James Nicholson - A senior-ranking Central Intelligence Agency officer arrested while attempting to take Top Secret documents out of the country. He began spying for Russia in 1994.
• George Trofimoff - A then retired Army Reserve colonel, charged in June 2000 of spying for the KGB and the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (or SVR) for over 25 years.
• William Kampiles - A CIA clerk who sold a KH-11 spy satellite manual to the Soviet Union.
• David Henry Barnett - A CIA officer convicted of spying for the Soviet Union in 1980. He volunteered to spy in 1976.
• John Anthony Walker - A Navy Warrant Officer convicted of providing massive amounts of classified information to the USSR during his Naval career. Several members of his family were involved in his spying activities as well.

References[link]