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Name: Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America: Wise, David: 9780375507458: Amazon.com: Books
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Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America Hardcover – October 22, 2002

by David Wise (Author)

4.5 898 ratings

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Spy tells, for the first time, the full, authoritative story of how FBI agent Robert Hanssen, code name grayday, spied for Russia for twenty-two years in what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history”–and how he was finally caught in an incredible gambit by U.S. intelligence.

David Wise, the nation’s leading espionage writer, has called on his unique knowledge and unrivaled intelligence sources to write the definitive, inside story of how Robert Hanssen betrayed his country, and why.

Spy at last reveals the mind and motives of a man who was a walking paradox: FBI counterspy, KGB mole, devout Catholic, obsessed pornographer who secretly televised himself and his wife having sex so that his best friend could watch, defender of family values, fantasy James Bond who took a stripper to Hong Kong and carried a machine gun in his car trunk.

Brimming with startling new details sure to make headlines, Spy discloses:

-the previously untold story of how the FBI got the actual file on Robert Hanssen out of KGB headquarters in Moscow for $7 million in an unprecedented operation that ended in Hanssen’s arrest.

-how for three years, the FBI pursued a CIA officer, code name gray deceiver, in the mistaken belief that he was the mole they were seeking inside U.S. intelligence. The innocent officer was accused as a spy and suspended by the CIA for nearly two years.

-why Hanssen spied, based on exclusive interviews with Dr. David L. Charney, the psychiatrist who met with Hanssen in his jail cell more than thirty times. Hanssen, in an extraordinary arrangement, authorized Charney to talk to the author.

-the full story of Robert Hanssen’s bizarre sex life, including the hidden video camera he set up in his bedroom and how he plotted to drug his wife, Bonnie, so that his best friend could father her child.

- how Hanssen and the CIA’s Aldrich Ames betrayed three Russians secretly spying for the FBI–including tophat, a Soviet general–who were then executed by Moscow.

-that after Hanssen was already working for the KGB, he directed a study of moles in the FBI when–as he alone knew–he was the mole.

Robert Hanssen betrayed the FBI. He betrayed his country. He betrayed his wife. He betrayed his children. He betrayed his best friend, offering him up to the KGB. He betrayed his God. Most of all, he betrayed himself. Only David Wise could tell the astonishing, full story, and he does so, in masterly style, in Spy.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Four previous books have attempted to unravel the mystery of how and why FBI staffer Robert Hanssen was able to sell secrets to the KGB for almost 22 years. None, however, have been as penetrating as this account by veteran spy author Wise (The Invisible Government), whom Hanssen himself reportedly called "the best espionage writer around." Using a career's worth of contacts in the FBI and CIA, as well as exclusive access to Hanssen's defense psychiatrist, Wise presents a comprehensive portrait of Hanssen's life as a spy and the government's quest to uncover and prosecute him. Further, Wise reveals that the FBI's problems with internal traitors began as far back as 1962, with a tip from a KGB informant; that mole was never found. Years later, the FBI identified another internal spy, but bungled its surveillance; that spy was quietly "eased out" of the bureau and the entire affair kept out of the newspapers. And in the Hanssen case, a certain CIA agent was wrongly identified as the mole and suspended from duty for almost two years. By contextualizing Hanssen and providing an insider's account of the hunt that finally apprehended him, Wise covers aspects of the case that have been largely neglected to date. Well researched and ably written, this book is, so far, the definitive account of Hanssen's betrayal of the United States.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Many books about FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Hanssen have already been published, including David A. Vise's The Bureau and the Mole and Elaine Shannon's The Spy Next Door. While the story of how Hanssen was tracked down is certainly interesting, it is even more intriguing to speculate why this conservative Catholic with a modest lifestyle would betray us to the Soviets. Journalist Wise, who wrote The Spy Who Got Away, a similar book about escaped CIA traitor Edward Lee Howard, interviewed Hanssen's case psychiatrist and thus provides considerable informed discussion about motive. Was it for the money to support his big family, the thrill of playing a dangerous game, or to get back at a never-satisfied father? Hanssen apparently walked right into a Soviet office in 1979, which leads to the question whether the CIA and FBI were watching this office-and if not, why not? Recommended for the espionage collections of public and academic libraries. (Photos and index not seen.)-Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Praise for David Wise

Molehunt

“David Wise is a master at penetrating the invisible government. We won’t read a better book about this aspect of the Cold War.” –Seymour M. Hersh

“A brilliant, fascinating account of the CIA’s greatest trauma–whether it had been penetrated by agents of the KGB. It tied the Agency into knots for two decades, but the evidence outlined by David Wise now reveals that it was only a phantom. Paranoia is sometimes said to be the prerequisite for good counterintelligence–but the CIA’s history suggests that it can become its Achilles’ heel as well.” –William E. Colby

The Spy Who Got Away

“The most important book on intelligence since The Invisible Government . . . with the suspense and tension-building that you expect in John le Carré’s fiction.” –Ronald L. Ostrow, Los Angeles Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap

Spy tells, for the first time, the full, authoritative story of how FBI agent Robert Hanssen, code name grayday, spied for Russia for twenty-two years in what has been called the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history and how he was finally caught in an incredible gambit by U.S. intelligence.

David Wise, the nation s leading espionage writer, has called on his unique knowledge and unrivaled intelligence sources to write the definitive, inside story of how Robert Hanssen betrayed his country, and why.

Spy at last reveals the mind and motives of a man who was a walking paradox: FBI counterspy, KGB mole, devout Catholic, obsessed pornographer who secretly televised himself and his wife having sex so that his best friend could watch, defender of family values, fantasy James Bond who took a stripper to Hong Kong and carried a machine gun in his car trunk.

Brimming with startling new details sure to make headlines, Spy discloses:

-the previously untold story of how the FBI got the actual file on Robert Hanssen out of KGB headquarters in Moscow for $7 million in an unprecedented operation that ended in Hanssen s arrest.

-how for three years, the FBI pursued a CIA officer, code name gray deceiver, in the mistaken belief that he was the mole they were seeking inside U.S. intelligence. The innocent officer was accused as a spy and suspended by the CIA for nearly two years.

-why Hanssen spied, based on exclusive interviews with Dr. David L. Charney, the psychiatrist who met with Hanssen in his jail cell more than thirty times. Hanssen, in an extraordinary arrangement, authorized Charney to talk to the author.

-the full story of Robert Hanssen s bizarre sex life, including the hidden video camera he set up in his bedroom and how he plotted to drug his wife, Bonnie, so that his best friend could father her child.

- how Hanssen and the CIA s Aldrich Ames betrayed three Russians secretly spying for the FBI including tophat, a Soviet general who were then executed by Moscow.

-that after Hanssen was already working for the KGB, he directed a study of moles in the FBI when as he alone knew he was the mole.

Robert Hanssen betrayed the FBI. He betrayed his country. He betrayed his wife. He betrayed his children. He betrayed his best friend, offering him up to the KGB. He betrayed his God. Most of all, he betrayed himself. Only David Wise could tell the astonishing, full story, and he does so, in masterly style, in Spy.

From the Back Cover

Praise for David Wise

Molehunt

“David Wise is a master at penetrating the invisible government. We won’t read a better book about this aspect of the Cold War.” –Seymour M. Hersh

“A brilliant, fascinating account of the CIA’s greatest trauma–whether it had been penetrated by agents of the KGB. It tied the Agency into knots for two decades, but the evidence outlined by David Wise now reveals that it was only a phantom. Paranoia is sometimes said to be the prerequisite for good counterintelligence–but the CIA’s history suggests that it can become its Achilles’ heel as well.” –William E. Colby

The Spy Who Got Away

“The most important book on intelligence since The Invisible Government . . . with the suspense and tension-building that you expect in John le Carré’s fiction.” –Ronald L. Ostrow, Los Angeles Times Book Review

About the Author

David Wise is America’s leading writer on intelligence and espionage. He is coauthor of The Invisible Government, a number one bestseller about the CIA. A native New Yorker and graduate of Columbia College, he is the former chief of the Washington bureau of the New York Herald Tribune. He was a commentator on CNN for six years and has contributed articles on government and politics to many national magazines. He is married and lives in Washington, D.C.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The Mole Hunter

Disaster.

Inside the Soviet counterintelligence section at FBI headquarters in Washington, there could be no other word for what had happened: the two KGB agents who were the bureau's highly secret sources inside the Soviet embassy in Washington had somehow been discovered. Valery Martynov and Sergei Motorin had been lured back to Moscow and executed. Each was killed with a bullet in the head, the preferred method used by the KGB to dispatch traitors.

There would be no more visits to the candy store by the FBI counterintelligence agents; M&M, as the two KGB men were informally if irreverently known inside FBI headquarters, were gone, two more secret casualties of the Cold War. The year was 1986. The FBI quickly created a six-person team to try to determine what had gone wrong.

Meanwhile, the CIA, across the Potomac in Langley, Virginia, was having its own troubles. It was losing dozens of agents inside the Soviet Union, some executed, others thrown into prison. The agency formed a mole hunt group.

Two years later, in 1988, the FBI still had no answer to how Martynov, whom the bureau had given the code name pimenta, and Motorin, code name megas, had been lost. Something more had to be done, and the FBI now began thinking the unthinkable. As painful, even heretical, as it might be to consider, perhaps there was a traitor-a Russian spy-inside the FBI itself.

To find out the truth was the job of the bureau's intelligence division, which was in charge of arresting spies, penetrating foreign espionage services, and, when possible, recruiting their agents to work for the FBI. The division was divided into sections, one of which, CI-3 (the CI stood for counterintelligence), housed the Soviet analytical unit, the research arm of the bureau's spycatchers. Perhaps, the division's chiefs reasoned, something might be learned if the analysts, looking back to the beginning of the Cold War, carefully studied every report gleaned from a recruitment or a defector that hinted at possible penetrations of the FBI by Soviet intelligence. Perhaps a pattern could be seen that might point to a current penetration, if one existed.

Within the Soviet unit, two experienced analysts, Bob King and Jim Milburn, were assigned to read the debriefings of Soviet defectors and reports of Soviet intelligence sources who had, over the years, been recruited as spies by the FBI. The two shared a cubicle in Room 4835 with their supervisor.

The supervisor, a tall, forty-four-year-old, somewhat dour man, was not a popular figure among his fellow special agents, although he was respected for his wizardry with computers. He had been born in Chicago, served for a while as a police officer in that city, and joined the FBI twelve years before, in 1976. Now he was responsible for preparing and overseeing the mole study.

For the supervisor, directing the analysis to help pinpoint a possible mole inside the FBI was a task of exquisite irony. For he knew who had turned over the names of Valery Martynov and Sergei Motorin to the KGB. He knew there was in fact an active mole inside the FBI, passing the bureau's most highly classified secrets to Moscow. He knew the spy was a trusted counterintelligence agent at headquarters. He knew, in fact, that the spy was a supervisory special agent inside the Soviet analytical unit. He knew all this but could tell no one. And for good reason.

Robert Hanssen was looking for himself.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; First Edition (October 22, 2002)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0375507450
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0375507458
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.3 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.39 x 1.17 x 9.53 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #398,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,997 in Military Leader Biographies

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LEE

If you enjoy cloak-and-dagger spy thrillers, you’ll enjoy this true story.

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2018

Verified Purchase

If I hadn’t know that SPY: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW THE FBI’S ROBERT HANSSEN BETRAYED AMERICA was based on a true story, I would have said that David Wise had written a wild and improbable cloak-and-dagger fiction novel. A story so wild and improbable that it was beyond belief and somewhat laughable. The fact that it is a true story makes it AMAZING. If you enjoy cloak-and-dagger spy thrillers, you’ll enjoy this true story.

Robert Hanssen is a former Chicago policeman and the son of a Chicago policeman who rose through the ranks of the FBI to a senior position in the FBI with access to the most sensitive intelligence information about US vs. Russia activities. For 22 years, Robert Hanssen divulged these FBI / CIA / NSA secrets to Russia that resulted in death to US spies and did considerable damage to US security.

Robert Hanssen is an enigma. He is a family man, a staunch neoconservative Republican, an anti-Communist, a devout Catholic (Opus Dei) who opposed homosexuality and abortion. He would be the last person you would suspect of being a Russian spy. Although the FBI had clues, the FBI couldn’t accept the fact that one of their own could be a traitor so Hanssen avoided detection for 22 years.

The book shows another side of Robert Hanssen as a man who patronized strip clubs and brothels and was a sugar daddy to a stripper. Hanssen was so sexually deviant that he shared nude photos of his wife with his friend and allowed his friend to secretly view him having sex with his wife.

Despite Robert Hanssen’s moral shortcoming, the fact that he spied for Russia for 22 years is completely contrary to all that he politically and religiously espoused throughout his adult life. Nevertheless, Hanssen was able and willing to commit treason for money and the flattery that Russia heaped on him for being such a clever spy.

Amazingly, SPY: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW THE FBI’S ROBERT HANSSEN BETRAYED AMERICA points out that during this time, Robert Hanssen was not the only Russian spy that had infiltrated US intelligence agencies. There was Aldrich Ames, John Anthony Walker, Ronald Pelton, Earl Pitts, etc. During the time that Hanssen was a mole for Russia, the frequency and number of Russian moles who infiltrated US intelligence agencies was astoundingly high. There seemed to be so many Russian moles that US intelligence was playing a never ending game of whack-a-mole.

I don’t know if things have really changed at the FBI and CIA, but SPY: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW THE FBI’S ROBERT HANSSEN BETRAYED AMERICA highlighted problems within those agencies that contributed to Hanssen’s ability to spy for Russia for 22 years.

17 people found this helpful

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Mimi

The "mole", who was finally caught!

Reviewed in the United States on May 11, 2016

Verified Purchase

It is a detailed book on how the FBI finally caught Robert Hanson. He was a spy for Russia for twenty years. They knew there was a mole , beside Alridge Ames, but he was so smart, that if a source in the KGB had not given them clues as to who, he might be, he would have retired & they would have never discovered him. FBI went after the wrong man several times & ruined careers, but he was a seasoned agent & knew how to stay below the "radar". Interesting book, but it is not too flattering for the FBI in their hunt for moles. At one point, he was put in charge of ferrating out the mole (which was himself).

One person found this helpful

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Roger J. Buffington

A thorough and insightful analysis of the FBI's worst mole

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2012

Verified Purchase

This is a thorough and insightful piece dealing with arch-traitor Robert Hanssen, the most damaging Soviet agent in FBI history. Hanssen was a veteran FBI agent who had himself worked in various FBI counter-espionage departments against the Soviet Union. When he inexplicably turned traitor and offered his services to the Soviets he was in a position to do incalculable damage to American security and by all accounts did exactly that. No one will ever know how many American agents within the KGB met their deaths due to Hanssen betraying them to the Russians. Further, he gave the Soviets huge amounts of information on such things as US assessments of Soviet strategic weapons, the Continuity of Government plan for safeguarding the US Government in the event of war, and countless other critical secrets. This well-researched and engaging piece goes into much of this in depressing detail.

This book tries harder than most to analyze what motivated Hanssen to turn traitor. He was a genuinely religious man who nonetheless was addicted to pornography. He was a family man who secretly took movies and photos of his wife in intimate circumstances and shared them on the internet. He was politically anti-Soviet and yet he spied for the Soviets. The book has some interesting speculations by experts on Hanssen's psyche, but at the end of the day the complex mix of evil that motivated him is probably beyond full human understanding.

This book brings out many lessons. There were ample warnings that Hanssen was a mole. He lived much better than his Government salary should have allowed, and in fact his brother-in-law, who was also an agent, reported this to the FBI. When Hanssen was offered a prestigious posting within the FBI on condition that he take a polygraph, he refused and turned down the job. He was caught with hacking software on his computer and he was further caught hacking into colleagues' computers. At least back then, the FBI appeared not to want to suspect its own, or it had an institutional blind spot.

This book reads like fiction, but is far more interesting than any spy novel. One wonders where some of the details that the author dredges up came from. The details of the battle of spies between the KGB (later SVR) on the one hand, and the CIA and FBI on the other, is fascinating. Highly recommended. RJB.

15 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

excellent researched book detailing one of America’s worst traitors

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2023

Verified Purchase

The author has written a superb book on Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent, who betrayed his country, his family, and his colleagues. Many people died as a result of his illegal activities, since he had excess to a wealth of top secret information, which laid bare our national security. The book is hard to put down, it has all the makings of a movie, were it not for all the pain this man caused. I highly recommend.

One person found this helpful

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Anna Dobritt

Great read

Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

Amazing how long he spied for the Russians. Seems the FBI really dept the ball in this case. A lot fascinating information.

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susyrecio

Libro interesantísimo y ameno

Reviewed in Spain on February 10, 2015

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El libro me lo he leído volando, está escrito de forma muy amena, es una historia real que vale la pena conocer, había visto la película, The breach, y eso me llevó a interesarme por el libro. Lo recomiendo para lectura y como regalo.

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Benjamin Girth

A Dreary Man in a Dismal Business

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 3, 2008

Verified Purchase

If you take a mirror and shine it into another mirror, the images extend to infinity. Always another reflection, what is fact and fiction? David Wise's book takes you to the back office, a rather dreary place. There are no car chases, no gunplay but along the way a women of dubious character. This is the real front line of espionage.

Within CIA (Aldrich Ames) and FBI (Robert Hanssen) were senior men caught spying for Russia. It was an unparalleled loss for American intelligence. Active over decades, they had access to serious secrets that they sold for sordid (as opposed to ideological) motives. Their colleagues had suspicions and evidence, yet failed to act. Why? So what? This is an incestuous world where spies mostly spy on spies, like small dogs chasing their tails. It was a game, actors playing many parts and almost comical. But real people were shot in the back of the head and billions (not millions) of dollars wasted.

Having watched the rather awkward (and largely inaccurate) movie "Breach", I was curious to find out more about Robert Hanssen. What was his "motivation?" He had spent 22 years spying for Russia, he was not coerced or persuaded, rather he volunteered and along the way made $1.4mn. Hanssen also has blood on his hands, implicated in the exposure and subsequent execution of Russian double agents.

Without deprecating David Wise, you are no nearer understanding the man at the end his book. That is inevitable. Being a spy and a traitor is never going to produce an uncomplicated individual. What Wise reveals is a lacklustre one. Hanssen was just doing dull tasks in a big bureaucracy. He was a loner, a computer geek, abrasive and largely disliked. Plodding his way, he had access to secrets that with reasonable skill he sold to the Russians. The most worrying aspect was that he had sight of highly classified information that he had no need to see. It raises extremely uncomfortable questions for the FBI.

Hanssen was a man of devout religious belief, a convert to Catholicism and a member of the cult Opus Dei; an "extremist" yet he served a Godless Russia. In a more civilised country his behaviour might have marginalised him but in America, a land where religion is a serious business, such zealots are comfortably accommodated. They are trusted in the highest places. His wife - also devout - found out in 1981, twenty years before his arrest, that her husband was a spy. We are told a confession was made to a priest and the money paid was given to charity! I was reminded of events in England in 1605, when the Attorney General Sir Edward Coke confronted the conspirators of the gunpowder plot. It raised the issue of Catholic loyalty (dilemmas that could equally apply to other religions, Jewish, Muslim et al). Who do you serve, "your" God or your county or yourself? The Doctrine of Equivocation might have helped him, very useful for a spy! Hanssen claimed he periodically admitted his espionage to priests in confession. Did they have a duty to act? Perhaps Hanssen merely concentrated on his sex life, which included a relationship with a stripper who he spoilt with gifts, trips and a car. He also might have mentioned peddling pornogpraphic pitures of his wife to his best freind.

Hanssen was caught. Had he been given a lie detector test it might have been sooner but he never was. He was revealed when a Russian was paid $7mn to remove files from the KGB. A plea bargain followed avoiding the death penalty. He has cooperated with authorities and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. David Wise has told the story competently, shone a mirror into the mirror. But so many loose ends remain. Was he sold out by the Russians to deflect from more productive agents? Robert Hanssen as a man or spy is not a compelling story, a rather mundane tale. How much is true, will we ever know? One thing we can be sure of is that he will not "discover" religion in prison, he had already found that well before.

4 people found this helpful

marek

Just the facts ma'am

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 16, 2017

Verified Purchase

rather more prosaic than you might have imagined but non the less fascinating insight into the motives of a damaging traitor- i think leCarre might have done it better

Z

Very intensive and detailed.

Reviewed in Canada on June 1, 2015

Verified Purchase

Just great intense reading. Good write!!

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