The Spy Next Door
By Elaine Shannon and Ann Blackman
The Bureau and the Mole
By David A. Vise
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Robert Hanssen: the why of spyingREVIEW BY EDWARD MORRISThe puzzling life of Robert Philip Hanssen, the seemingly straight-arrow FBI agent who spent 22 years spying for Russia, is the subject of two fascinating new books: The Spy Next Door by Elaine Shannon and Ann Blackman and The Bureau and The Mole by David A. Vise. In content, the books are so much alike that to read either is to absolve oneself of the guilt of ignoring the other. Both are constructed chronologically, both draw on the same sources for essential data and both arrive at similar conclusions about the chinks in Hanssen's personality and the flaws in the FBI that incited and nourished his betrayal. Vise, however, makes former FBI director Louis Freeh a central character in the drama by alternating chapters that contrast Freeh's promising rise in the federal bureaucracy with Hanssen's increasing frustration at a career that was going nowhere. Watching these two men -- both conservative, family-first Catholics -- moving toward each other for the final clash is like contemplating the inevitable convergence of the Titanic and the iceberg. While Shannon and Blackman treat the sexual fantasies that Hanssen posted on the Internet as just that, Vise maintains that these imaginings were often realized, including the one of installing a video camera in his bedroom to enable a friend to watch him and his wife having sex. Both books offer an assortment of reasonable guesses, but the real motivations behind Hanssen's treacheries remain unfathomable. He was vocally and persistently anticommunist -- not even his private correspondence with his Russian handlers suggested otherwise. Yet he began selling American secrets in 1979, a time when communism was still a vital force in the Soviet Union and, as such, a real menace to the political system Hanssen had sworn to uphold. He was a loving husband and an attentive father. Yet he spent precious spare time and thousands of dollars on a stripper (with whom he may never have had or attempted a sexual relationship). He was an ardent anti-abortionist and pro-lifer, yet he deliberately unmasked Russians who were spying for America and, in so doing, ensured their execution. Hanssen didn't spy for money, either. To be sure, the Russians paid him for his services, but never very much and certainly never enough to cover his growing family's financial needs. Hanssen seemed almost embarrassed to bring up the question of compensation. It was almost as if such a mundane matter was beneath him. Both books speculate that Hanssen may have turned to spying on a grand scale just to demonstrate how much smarter he was than the people who ridiculed, belittled or overlooked him. Vise contends that Hanssen's father, a tough Chicago cop, brutalized him physically and emotionally, although the evidence of this is not wholly persuasive. Because he was inward-dwelling and socially inept, Hanssen fared little better with his colleagues at the FBI, who made fun of his funereal dress and demeanor and resented his holier-than-thou attitude. There's no doubt, though, that Hanssen was clever. In all his years of feeding information to the Russians, they never discovered his identity until the FBI arrested him. The key to his character, it appears, may have been his attraction to and years of faithful membership in Opus Dei. This ultraconservative Catholic society required daily attendance at mass, weekly and monthly discussion sessions, annual retreats and daily and weekly mortifications of the flesh by such means as self-flagellation and the wearing of a spiked chain to gouge the thigh. Such a time-intensive and attention-focusing organization can create within especially zealous adherents a complete and self-contained world view that is impervious to "outside" concepts of right and wrong. Vise notes that after Hanssen was arrested and charged in February 2001, he said he had been driven to spying by "fear and rage," specifically "[f]ear of being a failure and fear of not being able to provide for my family." The evidence suggests there was more to it than this. Edward Morris writes on books and music from Nashville.
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