Robert Hanssen Failure

The Most Damaging Spy to Penetrate the FBI What would drive someone to betray his or her country and become the worst spy to ever penetrate the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)? Robert Hanssen had a loving family, great job, and respect from his peers. However, two years after starting at the FBI he began spying for other countries. No one suspected Robert Hanssen of being a traitor; he worked hard at his job, showed up early for work, and stayed late when he needed. Throughout all those years, he built up a resentment for his job that led him to become the most damaging spy to penetrate the FBI. Robert Hanssen’s feeling of contempt towards his fellow FBI colleagues was one of the driving factors that led him to become a spy. He enjoyed celebrating the fact that he felt he was smarter than his colleagues were and felt he was better at their job. Eric O’Neill, a previous partner of his, once stated, "I really felt at that minute that he was saying, if you're onto me then try and catch me because I'm better than you and all these guys at the FBI. Because I'm the great Robert Hanssen.” (ABC News, 2002). In 1972, Robert Hanssen joined the Chicago Police Department followed by two years as a criminal investigator in Gary, Indiana (Library, CNN, 2013). Not long after, on January 12, 1976, he began working for the FBI. Throughout his career, he rose through the ranks of counterintelligence agents. His specialty was what the FBI called the “Dark Side”, also known as National Security Division. In 1978, the FBI assigned him to the New York field division until 1981 and again from 1985 to 1987. At this time, he was making around $38,000 a year. He had to use this money to support his large family, which included four children. His annual salary did not include cost-of-living allowances for living in the New York City area. The first part of his treason lasted roughly two years when he had only been with the FBI for going on four years. During that time, he earned $20,000 to $30,000 for the three drops that he made for the Soviet Union. This first period of spying ended in 1981 when his wife found a document relating to his crimes (Ellard, 2003). He told her that he sold the Soviets harmless information. Had she not believed him and turned him in, Robert Hanssen would have stopped in his first 2 years. For over four years, he did not commit espionage. That was until he transferred to the Soviet Counterintelligence Division in the New York office. To try to deter the FBI from catching him, Robert Hanssen would run his name through multiple FBI databases that were available for him to access. From 1979 to 1981, he would deliver packages to the Soviet Military Intelligence Agency. He collected roughly $20,000 during that span. While he was a supervisor in the Soviet Analytical Unit, he would deliver names of double …show more content…
This program created a 136-page document and outlined all aspects of failure related to Robert Hanssen’s case. The Office of the Inspector General for the FBI came up with 21 items detailed in this report that they felt would have helped prevent these events from happening. One of the first items was to have a penetration unit at FBI Headquarters so they can track internal threats and see if the FBI network was penetrated (Webster, 2002). You can accomplish this through constant monitoring and analysis. Up until this, the FBI did not properly track documentation of security violations. Creating and designing policies and procedures geared towards being able to document and look back on security violations that have been reported is going to be a crucial step in this process (Office of the Inspector General Oversight and Review Division, 2007). Until filing this report, there was not a concrete way of doing it. Some tools that are in use today started from this report. An example of such tools is a financial disclosure program where annually FBI employees must disclose their finance records for review. This will give the FBI the opportunity to look for any discrepancies or sudden influxes of