Bureau And the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History - Hardcover

David A. Vise

3.6

972 ratings by Goodreads

9780756781880: Bureau And the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0756781884 ISBN 13: 9780756781880

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002

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Robert Philip Hanssen was one of the FBI's most trusted agents, a twenty-five-year veteran who was a devout Catholic and devoted suburban family man, who attended the same church and sent his children to the same school as his boss, bureau director Louis J. Freeh. But as he rose up the ranks to become one of America's foremost counterintelligence experts, he was also leading another life as a devilishly clever spy for the Russian government, selling secrets that would destroy billions of dollars of painstaking intelligence work and compromise a host of America's most closely guarded national security secrets, including the names of clandestine operatives and the top-secret-survival plan in the event of nuclear attack. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David A. Vise untangles Hanssen's web of deceit to tell the story of how he avoided detection for decades while becoming the most dangerous double agent in FBI history -- and how Freeh and the FBI eventually brought him down. Vise probes Hanssen's personal history to uncover how a seemingly all-American boy ultimately became the perfect traitor by employing the very sources and methods his own nation had trusted him with -- from covert drop sites to cryptography to the use of seemingly innocuous markings on telephone poles and signs -- to jeopardize America's national security for over fifteen years. Drawing from a wide variety of sources in the FBI, the Justice Department, the White House, and the intelligence community, Vise also interweaves the narrative of how Freeh led the government's desperate search for the betrayer among its own ranks, from the false leads to the near misses to its ultimate, shocking conclusion. Fascinating, gripping, and provocative, The Bureau and the Mole is a harrowing tale of how one man's treachery rocked a fraternity built on fidelity, bravery, and integrity -- and how the dedicated perseverance of another brought him to justice. This edition includes an index and epilogue bringing the book up-to-date with the sentencing of Robert Hanssen.

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From Publishers Weekly:

By the time fellow FBI agents arrested Robert Hanssen in February 2001, he'd been spying for the Russians off and on for two decades. Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post scribe Vise attempts to explain why Hanssen did it and how he got away with it in this comprehensive account. Hanssen, says Vise, was a highly intelligent but socially inept loner who felt "overlooked and underappreciated" by his colleagues at the Bureau. Determined to prove he was better than them and eager to profit from his superiority Hanssen decided to begin passing classified documents to his KGB counterparts in exchange for diamonds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. He also revealed the names of at least nine U.S. spies working in the KGB, several of whom were subsequently executed. But the FBI, Vise writes, was so blind to its own vulnerabilities that it ignored the warning signs even when Hanssen's brother-in-law (also an FBI agent) reported that Hanssen was hiding huge sums of cash at home. Vise adheres to a plain newspaper style in his account, which steals some of the excitement from Hanssen's dramatic spy craft; he also includes long, needless digressions on the career of FBI Director Louis Freeh. But Vise's research and reporting are first-rate and his sources (Hanssen's wife, mother and best friend, as well as other FBI agents and ex-KGB operatives) are excellent. This is a chilling portrait of a man who betrayed his country simply to see if he could. (Jan.) Forecast: This is one of a trio of books on Hanssen, including The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold (Forecasts, Oct. 1), one of which came in too late for review (see note, The Spy Next Door, page 59). The market may be too crowded for Atlantic's optimistic 50,000-copy first printing.

From Booklist:

The story seems to come straight out of a cold-war spy novel. In February 2001, FBI special agent Bob Hanssen was arrested as a double agent for Russian intelligence in what turned out to be the biggest sellout of U.S. national security secrets in the long history of the bureau. Why would someone spy on his own country? Vise, a Pulitzer Prize winner who broke the Hanssen story in the Washington Post, details how Hanssen did it and how he got caught but also offers a credible psychological profile. Hanssen grew up at the mercy of an abusive father who completely stripped his son of confidence and self-respect. As an FBI agent, Hanssen acted out the results of his boyhood abuse by fanning a growing resentment for the bureau. "His 'rage' at the FBI erupted each time he was passed over for promotion," the author reveals. "He fought back by attempting grand, daring feats of espionage. He failed to recognize that his progress at the FBI was inhibited by his [difficult] personality." This dramatic account--one more indictment of the FBI's record of late--is certain to be requested at the circulation desk. Brad Hooper
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