Confessed Traitor Supervised Spying on U.S. Citizens
Program Targeted Teachers, Political Activists during 1980s

Jonathan Dann & J. Michael Kennedy / Los Angeles Times 29jul01

At the same time he was selling U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union, former FBI special agent Robert Philip Hanssen was a key supervisor in a 1980s domestic-spying program questioning the loyalty of U.S. citizens and monitoring their activities, newly obtained FBI documents show.

In this program, federal agents filed reports on teachers, clerics and political activists who primarily were affiliated with liberal causes.

FBI domestic spy operations under the Reagan and first Bush administrations came to light a decade ago, prompting congressional rebukes. But the role -- and historical irony -- of confessed traitor Hanssen has not been reported before. The documents also offer some of the richest information to date about FBI domestic surveillance during the 1980s.

Hanssen's initials appear on numerous files among 2,815 pages of formerly classified documents recently obtained under a federal Freedom of Information Act request submitted nearly 15 years ago. Former co-workers confirmed his handwriting.

"It's astonishing that the very guy who was going after dissenters was in fact working for the Soviets," said Michael Ratner, vice president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, a left-leaning political group that has been monitored by the FBI in the past.

The program, which lasted for more than a decade, monitored peace and anti- nuclear activists and other groups that the White House worried could be manipulated by Soviet propaganda. Its stated goal was to uncover Soviet attempts at altering U.S. policy by influencing targeted groups.

As a result, the FBI invested thousands of hours collecting political intelligence, even as insider Hanssen was delivering the FBI's most closely held secrets to the KGB.

FBI TAILED CLINTON APPOINTEE

For example, agents noted the movements of a woman who eventually became a high-ranking official in the State Department with the Clinton administration. In another instance, it warned that Philadelphia was ripe for Soviet infiltration.

Recent FBI embarrassments include the loss of hundreds of computers and weapons, late disclosure of material relating to the Oklahoma City bombing case and missteps in investigating scientist Wen Ho Lee, who once stood accused of spying for China. President Bush's choice to run the FBI, Robert Mueller, is expected to be given the task of overhauling the agency.

According to an FBI affidavit filed in connection with Hanssen's arrest, the secrets he disclosed to the Soviets in return for more than $1 million included the identity of three KGB double agents, two of whom subsequently were executed. He also allegedly revealed how the United States was intercepting Soviet satellite transmissions and the means by which the United States would retaliate in the event of a nuclear attack.

In a plea deal that spares him from possible execution, Hanssen faces life in prison in exchange for providing full details of his spying to investigators. He declined to be interviewed, and the FBI declined to comment further about the confessed spy's activity within the bureau.

Hanssen's assignment to the bureau's Soviet counterintelligence unit has been reported previously, but the documents show that he also was key in the political intelligence operation. After Hanssen's arrest in February, an examination of the files revealed his initials on a number of documents.

The files repeatedly cite the role of the Soviet Analytical Unit, which had responsibility in the bureau not only for evaluating information collected about Soviet spies in the United States, but also to digest raw intelligence reports regarding alleged subversion. The unit would analyze the data, then provide conclusions to the intelligence community, the White House, Congress and occasionally the public.

SOVIET PROPAGANDA THREAT

There is no doubt that the Soviets made many attempts to manipulate public opinion through spokespeople and various front groups. Such political influence operations routinely were detailed in a series of official U.S. government reports made public throughout the 1980s.

But the newly released files reveal a tendency by the FBI during this period to include in its net almost anyone involved in political activism opposing administration defense or foreign policy and having contact with the Soviets during the Reagan-Bush era.

What has happened to the FBI's political spy program in the years since Hanssen was working both sides of the fence? David Major, Hanssen's former boss, said the agency "walked away from active-measures investigations" after the 1991 abortive coup against Mikhail S. Gorbachev. But three years after the coup attempt, the telltale initials "RPH" reappear, indicating that Hanssen apparently authorized an FBI letter to the U.S. Information Agency requesting that it continue to participate in the bureau's effort to combat political subversion.

It is almost impossible to determine whether the FBI's program for rooting out subversives continues today. Like the newly released FBI files, many of the bureau's guidelines concerning counterintelligence remain secret.