AFTER AMES’ ARREST AND CONVICTION, Sandy and Jeanne bowed out of the “mole-hunting” business. Jeanne continued to work at the CIA part-time. She spent one year writing a classified study of the Ames case, then moved to a counterintelligence job that involved operations, not personnel. Sandy meantime devoted herself to her family and private life. However both were peripherally involved in what became, after many false starts, the Hanssen case. Both of them knew that there were several loose ends after Ames was arrested. Some CI leads that indicated a KGB penetration of the U.S. intelligence community just could not be made to fit with Ames’ access, no matter how hard the FBI tried.
First and foremost was the Felix Bloch case. As recounted earlier, Bloch was a U.S. State Department officer. In the spring of 1989, when the CIA got wind that he might be cooperating with the KGB, the FBI was immediately informed. Less than two months later, the KGB warned Bloch that he was under suspicion. Ames could not have known about this case. He was in Rome at the time and there was no Italian connection. One theory was that the French DST, which had helped with the surveillance of Bloch, could be responsible for the leak, but there was no evidence that this was so. Thus the case remained a question mark, and a burning one, in the minds of many.
Another operation involved an FBI technical penetration of a Soviet establishment in the United States. KGB technicians removed the FBI’s device and it looked as if they had known exactly where to search for it. The CIA was aware of the technical capability involved, but despite an intensive investigation, the FBI never could ascertain that anyone in the CIA knew about the specific device and its location.
Yet another operation concerned the FBI’s recruitment of a Soviet official in New York and his subsequent compromise. The CIA had been informed of the case because it had important implications for the collection of intelligence. However, after the compromise it appeared as if the KGB had information about the case not available in the CIA.
The investigation of non-Ames-related indications that there was a penetration of the U.S. intelligence community started in 1994, soon after Ames’ arrest. The FBI was the lead agency, and was convinced that the spy was to be found in the CIA. Eventually CIA officer Brian Kelley became the focus of suspicion and a broad array of the tools and techniques of an espionage investigation were employed over a period of years to prove that he was guilty. All of this was to no avail, however, because Kelley was innocent.
The FBI had made the mistake of narrowing their focus to one single person too early and ignoring the bits and pieces that did not fit. Not until late 2000 was the Bureau forced to admit that they had been wrong all along. The spy was one of their own: Robert Philip Hanssen. He had been working for the Soviets, first the GRU and later the KGB and its successor agency the SVR, since 1979. We find it ironic that the mantra of those criticizing our investigation of Ames was “What took you so long?” Yet, of the 1980s cases that caused major damage, Ames represents one of the fastest roll-ups. Hanssen spied successfully for more than twenty years. John Walker’s espionage career lasted some eighteen years. The Clyde Conrad ring operated for almost as long. It is also interesting to note that in these cases the CIA provided leads that helped in their denouement.
A comparison between Ames and Hanssen provides food for thought. Both were born in the United States as were their parents, and from the heartland. Hanssen’s father was controlling and abusive. Ames’ father appears to have been more of a withdrawn, passive type. Hanssen’s father was reasonably successful in his career on the Chicago police force, although there is some reporting that he retired under a cloud. Ames’ father, on the other hand, was something of a failure in his career. Hanssen’s mother deferred to her husband, as well she might. Ames’ mother was more assertive and outgoing.
Both Hanssen and Ames followed in their fathers’ footsteps. Hanssen joined the Chicago police force in 1972 and worked there for three years before obtaining FBI employment in 1976. As has been recounted, Ames started his CIA career as a teenager, and never worked anyplace else except for a short period in Chicago.
Both Hanssen and Ames are intelligent. They had IQs higher than most of those around them. But neither had a stellar academic career. Hanssen was a somewhat better scholar. He had poor undergraduate grades but managed to get an advanced degree in accounting. Ames flunked out of the University of Chicago. He then redeemed himself by managing to get a BA degree in history at George Washington University, with reasonably good grades, especially in the subjects that most interested him.
In matters of religion, Hanssen and Ames were at different ends of the pole. Ames never showed any interest in organized religion in adulthood, and is probably best described as an agnostic or even an atheist. His second wife was a Roman Catholic, but he did not join her church. Hanssen also married a Roman Catholic, but the results were very different. He converted from the Lutheranism of his youth and became a super-devout Catholic, often attending daily mass. He also joined the conservative Opus Dei movement and was given to proselytizing.
When it comes to personal lifestyle, there are obvious differences. As far as alcohol consumption is concerned, Hanssen drank little; Ames drank a lot on occasion and could not control his binges. They also diverged in their attitudes toward pornography. Hanssen was interested in pornography, and surfed the Internet in support of this interest. He even involved his wife though she was unwitting. He described her in sexual terms on the net, going so far as to use her real first name. In this same vein, he allowed his friend jack Hoschouer to view the two of them having sex, which again she did not know. Ames on the other hand was not very interested in sex, and was impotent at times. In any event, it is difficult to imagine him treating his wife with the disrespect that Hanssen showed his.
In 1985 both Hanssen and Ames volunteered separately to the KGB in Washington, DC. It was their idea. Both were in it at least partly for the money and neither was ideologically attracted to the USSR. However, both were interested in the Soviet Union and knew a fair amount about the country and its intelligence structure.
This was not Hanssen’s first experience as a Soviet spy. He had previously volunteered to the GRU in 1979 but his wife found out about his activities in 1980 and persuaded him to cut off contact.
Ames, who preceded Hanssen by several months in 1985, identified himself but Hanssen did not. Indeed, Hanssen never met any of his handlers while Ames had personal contacts with Washington CI chief Viktor Cherkashin, who managed both cases in the early years. It must have been comforting to Cherkashin when he discovered that there was such an overlap in their access and knowledge. Otherwise the reporting from Hanssen, the unknown quantity, would have been highly suspect. And, as the cases developed, Ames established close relations with his KGB handlers and admired them.
The timing is noteworthy. Ames worked for the CIA for more than twenty years before volunteering; Hanssen volunteered after three years. He made his approach to the GRU almost as soon as he got access to information that would interest the Soviet Union. Ames had had at least some access for many years, and broad access starting in the fall of 1983. Possibly there was some trigger, such as an especially hefty Nordstrom bill or unpalatable feedback from an Agency guidance counselor, which took him across the line in April 1985.
Both Ames and Hanssen communicated with their Soviet handlers via dead drops in the Washington area. Hanssen had no other form of communication, but Ames also had personal meetings via a go-between in Washington and Rome, and direct personal meetings with his Moscow-based handlers in Europe and South America.
Ames was polygraphed twice after he began his espionage career. In both instances he managed to satisfy the operators that he was leveling with them. The polygraph was not an issue in the Hanssen case because he was never subjected to this kind of examination.
While Ames may have been nervous at the outset of his espionage activities, it seems that he gained confidence as time passed and he perceived no signs that he was under suspicion. When the SIU team interviewed him in 1992, he gave Sandy and Jeanne the impression that he thought that he was smarter than we were, and that he would have no trouble pulling the wool over our eyes. As we used to say at the time, he viewed us as “two dumb broads.” According to the FBI, when he was finally arrested he was dumbfounded. He did not see it coming. Hanssen, on the other hand, became more and more uneasy in the final months of his treason. His last written message to the SVR showed that he knew that his activities were bound to end in a highly unpleasant way.