Associated Press
March 6, 2001
The Spying Game Sometimes a Circle
By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press WriterWASHINGTON (AP) - The list of classified information that FBI agent Robert Hanssen is accused of selling to the Russians is long on details about spies spying on spies.
As the potential scope of revelations is evaluated, Hanssen's case is a reminder that espionage at times can be as much about finding out what the other side knows about your own intelligence operation as it is about getting nuclear codes or other vital secrets.
In a trade dubbed a "wilderness of mirrors," practitioners may not see much more than reflections of each other.
"It has very little to do with a nation's top secrets sometimes," said Loch Johnson, a University of Georgia political scientist who worked on intelligence for the Clinton White House and congressional committees. "It does begin to be a little bit circular -- counterintelligence agencies going after one another."
Even so, former U.S. spymasters say much can be lost, or gained, for national security when an insider betrays how one side's intelligence operation has penetrated the other side's.
Hanssen is alleged to have divulged an eye-popping wealth of information about American intelligence-gathering, including extensive detail about how U.S. officials had tapped into Russian spy operations.
Among documents the former counterintelligence official is alleged to have stashed in Hefty bags and left in "dead drops" for Russian handlers were details on the U.S. Double Agent Program, the FBI Double Agent Program and U.S. government studies of future intelligence requirements and KGB recruitment operations. Officials also believe Hanssen tipped off Moscow to a secret tunnel the Americans built under the Soviet Embassy in Washington for eavesdropping.
"He compromised United States Intelligence Community technical operations of extraordinary importance and value," the FBI said in an affidavit supporting Hanssen's arrest.
A federal judge said Monday the government's case against Hanssen is "extraordinarily strong" and ordered him confined to jail. Hanssen has not entered a plea, but his attorney said he would plead innocent. A May 21 preliminary hearing has been scheduled.
Steve Aftergood, an intelligence analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, said it appears much of the damage allegedly done by Hanssen "was to U.S. intelligence, but not necessarily to the United States."
"When officials speak of vital secrets that might have been lost, they are really speaking within the framework of intelligence, and not national security as a whole," he said.
In the Aldrich Ames case, as with Hanssen, the focus was on classified information about U.S. intelligence-gathering. Ames, a CIA (news - web sites) official who pleaded guilty to espionage in 1994, is blamed for the deaths of at least nine agents working for the United States in the Soviet Union and for disclosing U.S. counterintelligence techniques.
"A lot of spying is a self-perpetuating game in which each side is simply trying to penetrate the other and to discover intelligence operations that the other side is running," Aftergood said.
Other notable spy cases, however, have been more directly related to national security.
Retired Navy Warrant Officer John A. Walker Jr., for example, pleaded guilty in 1985 to running a spy ring that gave the Soviets secret codes that allowed them to read 1 million classified Navy cables.
Robert Gates, CIA director under former President Bush, stressed that the vast majority of U.S. intelligence work is aimed at gathering information about possible threats to American security, such as terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts and military modernization around the world.
"Those are the things that preoccupy American intelligence," Gates said. At the same time, he said, U.S. officials have to be vigilant against those who can "give away the means by which we gather the information we need to know on these threats."
"These people inside can do serious damage in terms of our ability to accomplish the broader mission," Gates said.
James Woolsey, CIA director under former President Clinton from 1993 to 1995, said America's open society makes it harder to safeguard secrets. More pervasive polygraph tests of government employees, for example, would help deter foreign espionage but could intrude on workers' civil liberties.
Penetrating rival spy networks, he said, does not raise the same problems, which can make counterintelligence ploys "money well spent."
Woolsey said striking the right balance between safeguarding secrets and protecting civil liberties means "you can never be sure that you're completely successful" at avoiding security breaches.
As a result, he added, "You have to be a bit more paranoid in this business than you do when you're out in the normal world of business or commerce or law."