The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History
by David A. Vise
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Book Summary Information
Author: David A. ViseEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Published)
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2002-01
ISBN: N/A
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Book Reviews of The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History
Book Review: Well-Researched
Summary: 4 Stars
One cannot read David Vise's book without wanting an answer to one central question: Why would an ordinary man who seemingly had everything - intellect, education, an adoring wife, beautiful children, and a house in the Washington D.C. suburbs - risk it all to subvert our government and place our nation in great jeopardy? Thanks to Vise's comprehensive research and reporting, The Bureau and the Mole goes a long way toward offering several plausible answers, the most obvious of which is that Robert Philip Hanssen is anything but ordinary.
Exceedingly bright (perhaps even genius-level IQ), Hanssen compensates for his many perceived inadequacies and personal failings by probing for and exploiting the weaknesses in our national security apparatus. We learn from reading The Bureau and the Mole that this man derives a sort of perverse pleasure from penetrating the very system he swore an oath to protect. But it is far too easy to explain Hanssen's behavior with theories of psychopathology and self-aggrandizing behavior to which the author generously alludes - i.e., he did it because his father mistreated him as a child, etc., etc.
A much better explanation is that Hanssen perpetrates serious breaches in national security mainly for revenge. Retaliating against his superiors for not recognizing his strengths and promoting him, Hanssen lashes out by providing the KGB with ever more damaging information. He steadily and in premeditated fashion ratchets up the stakes knowing full well that what he is doing is wrong. He betrays his own country, a country that handed him every opportunity.
An unintended consequence of his actions, Hanssen destroys the very lives of those he supposedly so dearly loves - his compassionate and deeply religious family. Just tragic.
What is perhaps most fascinating about this story is that, for all his intelligence, Hanssen appears utterly oblivious to the KGB's carefully calculated manipulation. What he views as a sort of high stakes game of chess, his KGB handlers view as a ruthlessly cold business. Recognizing, for instance, that he has a pathological need for validation, his handlers engage in an odd sort of carrot and stick machination, all the while cajoling him to bring them specific documents. (They appear to be putting together a puzzle and are using him to acquire each and every piece.) Alternately smarmy and assertive, these creeps push Hanssen's buttons over some two decades.
Interestingly, though they repeatedly (and deliberately) undervalue the national security secrets he provides them, Hanssen does not seem to mind. So, after his arrest, the FBI agents view his claim that he was 'only in it for the money' with a jaundiced eye. It is this reader's opinion that while he may have netted many thousands of dollars in cash and diamonds, financial gain was not Hanssen's motive.
By claiming cash as his inducement to spy, Hanssen is simply 'gaming' the system by ensuring that his case is open and shut. Incredibly, during the long interrogation process he still insists on withholding information, and it is unclear from Vise's book whether he ever does provide a full accounting of all the secrets he stole and sold. Many have speculated that Hanssen shrewdly withheld some information to ensure he would have bargaining chips down the road that he could use from prison should he need them. Now that would make for an interesting book!
Without question, Hanssen's motives for spying against the U.S. were extraordinarily complex. It would have been serious enough a breach had he not been personally responsible for Soviet double agents' deaths at the hands of the KGB's counterintelligence apparatchiks back in Moscow. By fingering these operatives to his handlers, he becomes essentially an accessory to murder.
Hanssen's inscrutable behavior extends to his family relationships as well. Yes, in addition to betraying his country and KGB agents working on behalf of the U.S., he repeatedly deceives his loving and devoutly Catholic wife and engages in what can only be described as bizarre sexual behavior.
To say that Hanssen is a troubled man is far too generous. Evil found a resting place in this man's soul and was able to flourish there. Most poetic about this story is that Hanssen indeed found the notoriety that he so desperately craved. Though it would take the form of shame and ignominy was of perhaps little concern to him for his character defects left him unable to discern right from wrong.
But what Hanssen left in his wake - physical and emotional carnage, irreparable damage to U.S. national security - is no less devastating because of his piteously tortured psyche and poor character. It is fair to say that he has finally found the peace that so often eluded him, and he will have the balance of his life (in Federal prison) to savor it.
The Bureau and the Mole is a good book - not a great one. While the story of Hanssen's espionage makes for a fascinating read, there are other books available that document Hanssen's story equally well, if not better. The detailed research, particularly that related to what Hanssen actually divulged to the KGB and his unusual, if not brilliant, espionage methods make the book worthwhile. However, the many pages devoted to Hanssen's sexual behavior and fantasies were gratuitous and wholly unnecessary. More important, they add a salacious quality to what is otherwise serious reporting.
Well-researched.
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Summary of The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History
Robert Philip Hanssen was one of the FBI's most trusted agents, a twenty-five-year veteran who was a devout Catholic and devoted suburban family man, who attended the same church and sent his children to the same school as his boss, bureau director Louis J. Freeh. But as he rose up the ranks to become one of America's foremost counterintelligence experts, he was also leading another life as a devilishly clever spy for the Russian government, selling secrets that would destroy billions of dollars of painstaking intelligence work and compromise a host of America's most closely guarded national security secrets, including the names of clandestine operatives and the top-secret-survival plan in the event of nuclear attack. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David A. Vise untangles Hanssen's web of deceit to tell the story of how he avoided detection for decades while becoming the most dangerous double agent in FBI history -- and how Freeh and the FBI eventually brought him down. Vise probes Hanssen's personal history to uncover how a seemingly all-American boy ultimately became the perfect traitor by employing the very sources and methods his own nation had trusted him with -- from covert drop sites to cryptography to the use of seemingly innocuous markings on telephone poles and signs -- to jeopardize America's national security for over fifteen years. Drawing from a wide variety of sources in the FBI, the Justice Department, the White House, and the intelligence community, Vise also interweaves the narrative of how Freeh led the government's desperate search for the betrayer among its own ranks, from the false leads to the near misses to its ultimate, shocking conclusion. Fascinating, gripping, and provocative, The Bureau and the Mole is a harrowing tale of how one man's treachery rocked a fraternity built on fidelity, bravery, and integrity -- and how the dedicated perseverance of another brought him to justice. This edition includes an index and epilogue bringing the book up-to-date with the sentencing of Robert Hanssen.Book Subjects
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