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Show WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 2B, 2001 THE SUN News FBI Agent accused of spying By Tribune Media Services WASHINGTON A veteran FBI counterintelligence agent was charged Tuesday with spying for Moscow for 15 years, doing "extremely grave" damage to national security by exposing numerous sensitive U.S. intelligence operations and providing information that led to the executions of at least two American double agents in Russia. Robert Philip Hanssen, a former Chicago police officer who has been an FBI agent since 1976, was arrested Sunday evening after allegedly leaving a package of classified documents for his Russian handlers at a designated drop point under a footbridge in a wooded park in suburban Virginia. According to an affidavit filed in court against Hanssen, he volunteered to become a paid spy for the KGB during the Cold War and continued working for its successor agency, over the years earning at least $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and foreign bank deposits for his services. After his arrest, the FBI collected $50,000 in a plastic trash bag allegedly for Hanssen at another drop site. The affidavit also describes intrigue, including the use of "dead drops" in public parks, signals passed by tape placed on public signs, numerical ciphers to disguise meeting dates and times, and communication through newspaper want ads. Hanssen, 56, apparently operated undetected despite holding a series of highly sensitive positions in the FBI's Washington headquarters and in its New York field office, a hub of spying and counterespionage operations. He came under suspicion in the fall after U.S. intelligence agencies obtained Russian documents describing communica"Ramon." tions with an agent Excerpts from those communications quote Hanssen musing about his Chicago past, suggesting as the August 1991 Soviet coup was unfolding that the country's leaders could benefit from a "thorough study" of Mayor Richard J. Daley's management of Chicago. They also show a healthy ego, with Hanssen deriding the work of another FBI counterintelligence officer, and they suggest a teenage fascination with becoming a double agent for Russia. According to the FBI, Hanssen drew on his counterintelligence experience to take extraordinary precautions to protect himself, never revealing his identity to his Russian handlers and refusing to meet with them. He also was careful not to live beyond his means and did not appear to press for large litpayments, communications show. "I have tle need or utility for more than 100,000 dollars. It merely provides a difficulty since I cannot spend it, store it or invest it easily. ... Eventually I would appreciate an escape plan," he wrote in a 1985 letter to his handlers after his first delivery to them. The pattern of infonnalion contained in his communications to Moscow made him the leading suspect once the FBI analyzed the Russian documents. FBI Director Louis Freeh said that code-name- d although the agency was only beginning to assess the damage to national security, the information Hanssen provided to his handlers appeared to have done "extremely grave" harm. Freeh said Hanssen's conduct "represents the most traitorous actions imaginable." Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, President Bush said it was "a difficult day for those who love our country, and especially for those who serve our country in law enforcement and in the intelligence community." But, he added, "to anyone who would betray its trust, I warn you: We'll find you and we'll bring you to justice." Hanssen allegedly turned over more than 6,000 pages of highly sensitive docue ments, including plans for U.S. intelligence gathering and detailed information on electronic surveillance techniques and targets. The information on surveillance can be especially damaging because the Soviets would have been able to use that knowledge to plant misleading information for U.S. long-rang- intelligence agencies, espionage experts said. Hanssen is charged with betraying "numerous" U.S. double agents working for the Soviet Union and Russia. The affidavit says one of his first acts was to name three mole., who already had been revealed by CIA double agent Aldrich Ames. With the corroboration from Hanssen, two of the moles who were working in the Soviet Embassy in Washington were called back and executed. The third, who had worked in San Francisco, was imprisoned by the KGB and released after the fall of the Soviet Union, according to the affidavit. In 1989, Hanssen tipped off his handlers to an espionage investigation of U.S. diplomat Felix Bloch, compromising the case against the suspected Soviet spy, Freeh said. Bloch was fired by the State Department but never prosecuted. Hanssen also is accused of identifying potential recruits within the U.S. government, including a military officer, not named in the affidavit, whom Hanssen allegedly knew in Chicago. Hanssen may have nursed teenage dreams of espionage. According to the affidavit, in a letter allegedly left for his Russian handler in March 2000, Hanssen wrote, "I decided on this course when I was 14 years old. I'd read Philby's book an apparent reference to notorious British double agent Harold "Kim" Phil-bonce head of the Soviet section of British Secret Intelligence. Now, that is insane, eh! My only hesitations were my security concerns under uncertainty. I hate uncertainty. So far I have judged the edge correctly." In another communication, he muses about what he considers to be the failings of the FBI's lead agent in the Bloch investigation, which he writes could have been successful if the FBI supervisor had acted more decisively. 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