An FBI agent who worked as a senior counterintelligence officer may have supplied Russia with high-grade information for 15 years, US intelligence sources said yesterday following his arrest. The FBI director, Mr Louis Freeh, described the case as "exceptionally grave".
Mr Robert Philip Hanssen, aged 56, a career FBI agent who spent 25 of his 27 years of service in counterintelligence, was charged yesterday in the federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, with passing secrets to Russia.
He was arrested on Monday at his home in the nearby suburb of Vienna following a surveillance operation run by the FBI and CIA. It lasted four months and culminated in agents observing Mr Hanssen depositing classified papers at a "dead drop" near his home on Sunday.
Agents also recovered $50,000, supposedly intended for Mr Hanssen, at another drop in Arlington.
Mr Hanssen had never revealed his identity to the Russians. They knew him simply as Ramon. "They are learning it today," Mr Freeh said.
He is alleged to have written to the Russians first in October 1985, offering his services at a price and suggesting means by which he could be paid, including Swiss bank accounts.
FBI/CIA suspicions had been prompted, Mr Freeh said, after they had successfully obtained copies of communications from him to his controllers which pointed to a senior source in the FBI.
Mr Hanssen, a father of six who allegedly received some $1.4 million in cash and diamonds from Moscow, was in a position to deliver extremely sensitive material to the Russians about US surveillance methods, not least in his time between 1995 and 2000 as the FBI's representative in the State Department in Washington.
He had the highest level of security clearance, and officials fear he may also have been in a position to confirm the names of US secret agents abroad first exposed by the spy Aldridge Ames, the CIA officer whose treachery allegedly led to the execution of up to 10 agents in Russia.
His indictment accuses Mr Hanssen of fingering at least three KGB double agents working in the US in 1985. Two were later executed, one imprisoned, after they returned to Russia.
Neighbours describe Mr and Mrs Hanssen as unremarkable and unostentatious participants in local community activities. They drove a 10-year-old van into which the family piled every Sunday to go to a local Catholic church.
The FBI has ordered a comprehensive review of procedures.
In an indication of the attention the trial is likely to attract, Mr Hanssen will be represented by Mr Plato Cucheris, a lawyer whose previous clients include Ms Monica Lewinsky and Aldridge Ames.
