Spy Case Underscores FBI's Past Bungles, Whitewashes
DACIA LAN
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Spy Case Underscores FBI's Past Bungles, Whitewashes
The new and very selective Marshall Plan for convicted spies, their family and
friends, discussed in this column last week, seems inexplicable based upon the
known facts.
As we have seen, Robert P. Hanssen, the former FBI counterintelligence agent
who pled guilty to spying for the Soviet Union and who was responsible for the
death of at least two U.S. agents, has been rewarded by the Bush-Ashcroft team.
His family has received cash, automobiles, a home and the full pension to which
his wife would have been entitled had Hanssen been working for us instead of
spying for the Russians.
In addition, his espionage is a valuable commodity that his wife has been given
permission to sell to the highest bidder. She may auction his life story, write
books, make a deal with Hollywood film producers and keep all of the profits
procured through her husband's treason.
This special arrangement invites speculation about the motive. Is Hanssen
really being encouraged to talk to the government about his misconduct, as the
CIA and FBI claim, or are those agencies afraid that he might talk to us about
those agencies? Also of interest is the media's reluctance to probe in the face
of a national scandal.
If repeated, continuous and gross incompetence by the agencies that refer to
themselves as the "intelligence community" were the only issues, that would be
a matter for serious inquiry and great concern. However, the matter may be even
more complex and the cover-up even more damaging.
Let us begin with the close relationship between the director of the FBI, Louis
J. Freeh, and Hanssen.
Freeh and Hanssen attended church together and were both members of a
politically extreme and very secret Catholic society from which almost all
other members of their faith and their church were excluded. Their children
attended expensive private schools together.
Did Freeh informally reveal classified information to his friend and was that
data passed along to the Soviet spymaster?
Since Freeh was in regular contact with Hanssen, both in and out of the office,
how was it possible that this top FBI sleuth missed the clues that Hanssen was
living well beyond his apparent means? After all, for some years Freeh was
complaining that he might have to quit as FBI director unless his salary was
increased. Yet Hanssen, at a much lower pay scale-excluding the Russian
contributions-had no difficulty in affording an expensive education for his
children, a large home in Vienna, Va., three automobiles, a bejeweled wife and
a mistress.
These questions are pertinent given the role played by Freeh in the
negotiations that led to the deal which silenced Hanssen. Attorney General John
Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wanted Hanssen to be
executed in order to deter future acts of espionage by FBI and CIA personnel.
Freeh led the fight for a generous deal for his friend. CIA Director George J.
Tenet joined Freeh and finally the deal was made. Freeh, his work done, then
resigned.
There will be no trial and the secrets are safe. Only Bush, Ashcroft, Freeh and
Tenet-and the entire Russian intelligence complex-know the facts. The secrets
are safe from the American people. The media seems satisfied with this
arrangement.
However, this is not the first tragic moment in American history that Freeh
sought to cover up.
Following the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge and the fatal shooting of Vicki Weaver,
an inquiry was undertaken by the Department of Justice through its Office of
Professional Responsibility and a task force of the Justice Management
Division.
The murder of Mrs. Weaver was a planned event, although the victim may not have
been identified in advance as the target. Freeh's FBI sharpshooters, part of a
military force of hundreds of agents from various agencies who surrounded the
home of the Weaver family, were told that if they observed any man, with any
weapon near the Weaver home, that such a person "could and should be shot."
These rules of engagement have no precedent in peacetime.
A U.S. court of appeals later held that "such wartime rules are patently
unconstitutional for a police action."
The Justice Department inquiry recommended that Freeh be censured, an action
that likely would have brought an end to his violent career as the FBI's
director, a period that almost made civil libertarians long for the good old
days of J. Edgar Hoover. However, an assistant attorney general, Stephen R.
Colgate, who had been authorized to make the final determination in the matter,
denied that recommendation and the findings of the investigators who had urged
that Freeh and three other high-ranking FBI activists be punished. The attorney
general, Janet Reno, had appointed Colgate, and President Clinton permitted the
recommendation for censure to be rejected.
The bipartisan cover-up demonstrated that gridlock in the nation's capitol can
be overcome when both parties work together to protect criminals in high
places.
A few courageous rank-and-file agents knowingly jeopardized their future with
the bureau in order that justice might prevail by conducting a thorough and
fair investigation. Then they, not the guilty leaders, were penalized.
The FBI remains the major national police agency. Its record over the past
decades has not been comforting, especially for those committed to the concept
of law and order.
Its disasters include the suppression of evidence about the assassination of
President Kennedy; after all records indicate that both Lee Harvey Oswald and
Jack Ruby, who murdered him, worked for the FBI.
The FBI also played a decisive part in the assassination of Martin Luther King,
Jr., and in destroying the evidence in that case.
The bureau's fingerprints are all over crimes committed from Waco to Ruby
Ridge. Its counterintelligence agent was a Russian spy, and a close associate
and good friend of the FBI's director.
Many of its weapons and computers are missing, raising the question as to
whether agents have been selling them, along with the secrets they contain.
The hope was expressed that with the defeat of communism in the old Soviet
Union, the Russians would become more like us; instead it seems we have become
more like them.
Perhaps offering the most revealing insight into the FBI's investigative skill
is a review of the bureau's in ves tigation into its own spy.
When confronted with evidence that pointed to Hanssen, one of their own, they
abandoned those leads and focused upon a CIA officer instead. His name has not
been revealed, but his lawyer, John Moustakas, stated that he had been falsely
targeted by the FBI and punished for a crime he did not commit. He was
suspended from his work at the CIA for two years, while the FBI declined to
examine the trail that led to Hanssen.
During that time agents interrogated the CIA agent and his family members and
threatened to confront his 84-year-old mother who was confined to a nursing
home and ill.
In addition, agents conducted secret searches of his home, entered his
computers, tapped his telephone, placed him under surveillance and threatened
to arrest him. The man took several polygraph tests, all of which he passed.
Hanssen was not requested to take the lie-detector test.
After Hanssen pleaded guilty, the CIA employee asked the FBI to apologize to
him and to his family. The FBI refuses to apologize, while admitting that the
CIA officer was innocent. An agency that cannot honestly confront its own
egregious misconduct cannot be ex pected to reform itself.
Clearly, promises of small reforms will not suffice. A complete reorganization
of the FBI is required. It should begin with a task force made up of those
agents, investigators and Justice Department officers who told the truth about
Ruby Ridge and insisted that Freeh and his guilty cohorts be exposed. It should
be led by a longtime opponent of FBI abuses.
I am not available. I could suggest a few names. H