FBI veteran caught spying for Russians

FBI veteran caught spying for Russians
REUTERS

WASHINGTON, FEB 20: A 27-year veteran of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia for the past 15 years, the FBI said on Tuesday.

FBI spokeswoman Jill Stillman said FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen was arrested on Sunday at his home outside Washington after he allegedly dropped off a package of classified information at a park in northern Virginia.

“He was arrested for espionage,” Stillman told Reuters, adding that Hanssen was due to appear in federal court at 11 am EST (1600 GMT) in Alexandria, Virginia.Money motivated Hanssen to spy for Russia, FBI officials said.

“The damage is significant,” one US official said on condition of anonymity. “The kinds of things he compromised involved documents, sources, operations.” Among the secrets Hanssen, a counter-terrorism expert, allegedly disclosed were methods the United States uses to conduct electronic surveillance, the FBI said.

Neighbors of Hanssen in Vienna, Virginia, described him as a composed, dedicated, hard-working man who went to church every Sunday with his wife and six children.

FBI Chief Louis Freeh was due to give a news conference at 1745 GMT on Tuesday to provide details about the arrest and Hanssen’s alleged spying activity.

In Moscow, spokesmen for both the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Intelligence Service said they had no details on the case and that they did not comment on matters of this type.

The FBI said Hanssen also may have confirmed for the Russians information originally given to them by convicted American super spy Aldrich Ames, a veteran officer for the Central Intelligence Agency who betrayed many U.S. Agents in the former Soviet Union. Hanssen was initially suspected of being a spy for Russia several months ago after an internal intelligence audit revealed the presence of a mole in the FBI. The United States then secretly obtained Russian documents that led them to suspect Hanssen, the FBI said.

Hanssen’s most recent job has been working out of FBI headquarters in Washington. His previous posts included performing surveillance on Russian government missions to the United States.

He was also assigned to helping the State Department resolve a string of recent security problems, including the discovery of a listening device in a conference room that was monitored by a Russian agent in his car nearby.It is unclear whether Hanssen was involved in any of the security breaches at the State Department.

He becomes the third FBI agent in history to be arrested on charges of spying for the Russians. The others were Richard Miller, in the mid-1980s, and Earl Pitts, a lawyer who was convicted in the late 1990s.

Hanssen’s neighbor, Nancy Cullen, said she was surprised by the arrest and had never suspected he was anything but a “dedicated, hard-working guy”.

“We are all in shock this morning,” said Cullen.

“They are just the best of neighbors,” she said in an interview with CNN.

Cullen said the Hanssens did not appear to have any financial problems and did not live beyond their means.

“None of our houses are very fabulous ... They’ve had the same van for 10 or 12 years. I said “Bonnie get yourself a new van’,” said Cullen of her conversation recently with Hanssen’s wife Bonnie.

Cullen described the couple’s children as very polite, well-schooled people. “It’s just all so sad,” she said.