The Bureau and the Mole
The Bureau and the Mole

Author: David A. Vise

Publisher: Open Road + Grove/Atlantic

Published: 2007-12-01

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1555847552

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The New York Times–bestselling “first-rate spy thriller” of the FBI agent who sold top-secret information to the Russians for more than twenty years (Entertainment Weekly). Drawing from a wide variety of sources in the FBI, the Justice Department, the White House, and the intelligence community, Pulitzer Prize–winning author David A. Vise tells the story of how FBI counterintelligence agent Robert Philip Hanssen employed the very sources and methods his own nation had entrusted to him in a devious game of deceit—simply because he had something to prove. Vise also interweaves the narrative of how FBI director Louis J. Freeh led the government’s desperate search for its 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. “Absorbing . . . Vise’s account of Mr. Hanssen’s road to becoming a double agent is fascinating.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Spy
Spy

Author: David Wise

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2002-10-22

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1588362612

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Spy tells, for the first time, the full, authoritative story of how FBI agent Robert Hanssen, code name grayday, spied for Russia for twenty-two years in what has been called the “worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history”–and how he was finally caught in an incredible gambit by U.S. intelligence. David Wise, the nation’s leading espionage writer, has called on his unique knowledge and unrivaled intelligence sources to write the definitive, inside story of how Robert Hanssen betrayed his country, and why. Spy at last reveals the mind and motives of a man who was a walking paradox: FBI counterspy, KGB mole, devout Catholic, obsessed pornographer who secretly televised himself and his wife having sex so that his best friend could watch, defender of family values, fantasy James Bond who took a stripper to Hong Kong and carried a machine gun in his car trunk. Brimming with startling new details sure to make headlines, Spy discloses: • the previously untold story of how the FBI got the actual file on Robert Hanssen out of KGB headquarters in Moscow for $7 million in an unprecedented operation that ended in Hanssen’s arrest. • how for three years, the FBI pursued a CIA officer, code name gray deceiver, in the mistaken belief that he was the mole they were seeking inside U.S. intelligence. The innocent officer was accused as a spy and suspended by the CIA for nearly two years. • why Hanssen spied, based on exclusive interviews with Dr. David L. Charney, the psychiatrist who met with Hanssen in his jail cell more than thirty times. Hanssen, in an extraordinary arrangement, authorized Charney to talk to the author. • the full story of Robert Hanssen’s bizarre sex life, including the hidden video camera he set up in his bedroom and how he plotted to drug his wife, Bonnie, so that his best friend could father her child. • how Hanssen and the CIA’s Aldrich Ames betrayed three Russians secretly spying for the FBI–including tophat, a Soviet general–who were then executed by Moscow. • that after Hanssen was already working for the KGB, he directed a study of moles in the FBI when–as he alone knew–he was the mole. Robert Hanssen betrayed the FBI. He betrayed his country. He betrayed his wife. He betrayed his children. He betrayed his best friend, offering him up to the KGB. He betrayed his God. Most of all, he betrayed himself. Only David Wise could tell the astonishing, full story, and he does so, in masterly style, in Spy.

Bureau and the Mole
Bureau and the Mole

Author: David A. Vise

Publisher:

Published: 2008-02

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9781422392744

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In 1979, FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen began to sell some of America¿s most closely guarded intelligence secrets to the Soviet Union. Over the next 22 years, the volume of info. he divulged to the Russians from the FBI, CIA, NSA, & White House would compromise decades of espionage work & jeopardize the nat. security of the U.S. During the mid-1990s, FBI Dir. Louis Freeh discovered that there was a mole within the Bureau, & he began to set the trap that would expose the traitor within its midst. This is the story of the man who betrayed more of his country¿s secrets than any other spy in Amer. history -- & of the crime-fighter who would bring him to justice. A fascinating, true spy thriller as riveting as it is unforgettable. B&W photos.

Betrayal
Betrayal

Author: Tim Weiner

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2014-11-26

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0307824446

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The remarkable story of the last American spy of the Cold War: Aldrich “Rick” Ames, the most destructive traitor in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency Tim Weiner, David Johnston, and Neil A. Lewis, reporters for The New York Times, tell how the barons of the CIA could not believe that its headquarters harbored a traitor. For years, the Agency was baffled by a wily Russian spymaster who played a high-stakes chess game against the Americans, deceiving the CIA into thinking that there were other moles—or no moles at all. It took nearly eight years for the CIA to share the full facts of the scenario with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Once they knew those facts, the men and women of the FBI tracked Aldrich Ames day and night for nine months before they arrested him. They tell their story here in astonishing detail for the first time. The interviews are entirely on-the-record. There are no pseudonyms, anonymous quotes, or invented scenes. The men betrayed by Ames were real people, and the stories of their lives are the true history of the espionage game in the waning years of the Cold War.

The Secrets of the FBI
The Secrets of the FBI

Author: Ronald Kessler

Publisher: Forum Books

Published: 2012-08-07

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 0307719707

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New York Times bestselling author reveals the FBI’s most closely guarded secrets, with an insider look at the bureau’s inner workings and intelligence investigations. Based on inside access and hundreds of interviews with federal agents, the book presents an unprecedented, authoritative window on the FBI's unique role in American history. From White House scandals to celebrity deaths, from cult catastrophes to the investigations of terrorists, stalkers, Mafia figures, and spies, the FBI becomes involved in almost every aspect of American life. Kessler shares how the FBI caught spy Robert Hanssen in its midst as well as how the bureau breaks into homes, offices, and embassies to plant bugging devices without getting caught. With revelations about the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, the recent Russian spy swap, Marilyn Monroe's death, Vince Foster’s suicide, and even J. Edgar Hoover, The Secrets of the FBI presents headline-making disclosures about the most important figures and events of our time.

The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold
The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold

Author: Adrian Havill

Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Published: 2002-11-18

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1429975202

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Robert Philip Hansen thought he was smarter than the system. For decades, the quirky but respected counterintelligence expert, religious family man, and father of six, sold top secret information to agents of the Soviet Union and Russia. A self-taught computer expert, Hansen often encrypted his stolen files on wafer-thin disks. The data-some 6000 pages of highly classified documents-revealed precious nuclear secrets, outlined American espionage initiatives, and named names of agents-spies who covertly worked for both sides. Soviet government leaders, and their successors in the Russian Federation, used the stolen information to undermine U.S. policies and to eliminate spies in their own ranks. Moscow did not allow their moles the luxury of a defense: at least two men named by Hanssen were executed; a third languished for years in a Siberian hard labor camp. For more than twenty years, Bob Hanssen was the perfect spy. He personally collected at least $600,000 from his Russian handlers while another $800,000 was deposited in his name at a Moscow bank. Along with the cash came Rolex watches and cut diamonds. The money financed both his children's education at schools run by the elite and ultra-conservative Catholic organization, Opus Dei, and an inexplicably strange fling with a former Ohio "stripper of the year." But he didn't just do it for the money; he did it for the thrill and for a mysterious third reason rooted in religious mysticism. He lacked the people skills to play office politics, and it seemed the aging FBI analyst faced a disappointing career mired in middle management. Instead, he chose to become one of the most dangerous spies in America's history. And no one suspected him until just weeks before his arrest. Robert Philip Hanssen thought he was smarter than the system. And until February 18, 2001, he was right. That's when federal agents surrounded him while he was attempting to complete an exchange with his handlers at a Virginia park. When the G-men captured their mark, they catapulted the once innocuous bureaucrat onto the front pages of every newspaper in America. The most notorious spy since the Rosenbergs had finally become a victim of his own undoing. Now, drawing on more than 100 interviews with Bob Hanssen's friends, colleagues, coworkers, and family members, and confidential sources, best-selling author Adrian Havill tells the entire story you haven't read as only he can. The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold tells not only how he did it, but why.

Wedge
Wedge

Author: Mark Riebling

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 598

ISBN-13: 1451603851

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Prophetic when first published, even more relevant now, Wedge is the classic, definitive story of the secret war America has waged against itself. Based on scores of interviews with former spies and thousands of declassified documents, Wedge reveals and re-creates -- battle by battle, bungle by bungle -- the epic clash that has made America uniquely vulnerable to its enemies. For more than six decades, the opposed and overlapping missions of the FBI and CIA -- and the rival personalities of cops and spies -- have caused fistfights and turf tangles, breakdowns and cover-ups, public scandals and tragic deaths. A grand panorama of dramatic episodes, peopled by picaresque secret agents from Ian Fleming to Oliver North, Wedge is both a journey and a warning. From Pearl Harbor, McCarthyism, and the plots to kill Castro through the JFK assassination, Watergate, and Iran Contra down to the Aldrich Ames affair, Robert Hanssen's treachery, and the hunt for Al Qaeda -- Wedge shows the price America has paid for its failure to resolve the conflict between law enforcement and intelligence. Gripping and authoritative -- and updated with an important new epilogue, carrying the action through to September 11, 2001 -- Wedge is the only book about the schism that has informed nearly every major blunder in American espionage.

Spy Swap
Spy Swap

Author: Nigel West

Publisher: Frontline Books

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1526792168

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On Monday, 4 March 2019, Sergei Skripal and his 33-year-old daughter Yulia collapsed in the centre of Salisbury in Wiltshire. Both were suffering the effects of A-234, a third-generation Russian-manufactured military grade Novichok nerve agent. As three suspects, all GRU officers, were quickly identified, it was also established that the door handle to the Skripals’ suburban home had been contaminated with the toxin. Whilst the Skripals had lived in the cathedral city for the past seven years, what Sergei’s neighbours did not know was that he had once been a colonel in the Russian Federation’s military intelligence service. Back in July 1996, he had been posted under diplomatic cover to Madrid where he was subsequently cultivated by Pablo Miller, an MI6 officer operating as a businessman under the alias Antonio Alvares de Idalgo. Sergei’s recruitment by Miller was one of many successes achieved by Western agencies following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. These counter-intelligence triumphs had their origins in a joint FBI/CIA project codenamed COURTSHIP which was based on the rather risky tactic of making an approach to almost any identified KGB or GRU officer, in almost any environment – a technique known as a ‘cold pitch’. It soon yielded results; within five years COURTSHIP had netted about twenty assets. Codenamed FORTHWITH, Sergei was betrayed in December 2001. Arrested in 2004, he was convicted of high treason in Russia, but was subsequently included in a prisoner swap in July 2010 and brought to the UK. The journey to the attempt on his life had begun. The Vienna spy swap was the culmination of a CIA plan to free a specific individual, Gennadi Vasilenko, who had been the Agency’s key mole inside the KGB since March 1979. To acquire the necessary leverage, the FBI swooped on a large network in the United States, bringing to an end a surveillance operation, codenamed GHOST STORIES, that lasted ten years. Anxious to avoid further embarrassment over the arrests, Vladimir Putin personally authorised an exchange, unaware of Vasilenko’s true status. It was only after the transaction had been completed, and two further Russian spies were exfiltrated from Moscow, that the Kremlin learned of Vasilenko’s value, and the scale of the deception. For the very first time, a Russian government had been persuaded to release four traitors and send them to the West. The humiliation was complete. As Spy Swap reveals, Putin’s retribution would manifest itself in a quiet Wiltshire market town.

Treason
Treason

Author: Bill Powell

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2007-11-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0743233336

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A high-level Russian spy secretly working for the CIA is betrayed and arrested in Moscow. In Washington, counterintelligence agents search for a traitor in the upper reaches of the CIA. In the middle of it all is an American reporter whose chance encounter leads to the discovery of a double agent in the very heart of the American intelligence community. Treason is award-winning reporter Bill Powell's dramatic account of how he became involved in one of the highest-profile U.S. mole hunts of recent decades. Vyacheslav Baranov had just been released from a prison camp in Siberia when he walked into Newsweek bureau chief Bill Powell's office in Moscow in the summer of 1998. A former colonel in the GRU, the Soviet Union's once-feared military intelligence agency, Baranov had also been one of the highest-ranking spies on the CIA's payroll when he was arrested six years earlier. Baranov was convinced he had been betrayed, and the question that obsessed him -- and that would thrust Powell into the spying game -- was, by whom? Treason begins on the day Baranov walked into Powell's office, unannounced, saying he had a story Powell would find interesting. Powell was skeptical of Baranov's tale of spying for the CIA and being mishandled by the agency, but he was intrigued and agreed to see Baranov again. Over the course of several weeks, then months, as it became clear to him that Baranov was credible, Powell realized that he might have an extraordinary news story. Little did he know that his meetings with Baranov would put him in the middle of a top-secret mole hunt. The CIA had assumed that Baranov was one of more than a dozen Soviet double agents who had been betrayed by Aldrich Ames, a former counterintelligence officer in the agency's directorate of operations, who himself had been arrested by the FBI for spying for Moscow. Baranov had another theory about who had betrayed him, and through Powell -- his only means of communicating with the U.S. government -- he managed to pass crucial information to the FBI that convinced its mole hunters that he was right. A story of intrigue and furtive meetings with secret agents in Moscow, New York, Crete, Moldova, and Bangladesh, Treason recounts how Baranov was first recruited to spy for the GRU, and then by the CIA to spy for the United States. It describes the murky and dangerous world of spies and counterspies -- a world in which it is never clear whom you can trust -- as well as the lonely life of a double agent. It is also an eye-opening account of how the United States handles -- and sometimes mishandles -- its double agents. And it is a vivid firsthand account of what can happen when the worlds of journalism and espionage collide.

FBI Files: Catching a Russian Spy
FBI Files: Catching a Russian Spy

Author: Bryan Denson

Publisher: Roaring Brook Press

Published: 2020-01-21

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 1250199182

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Catching a Russian Spy is the story of the FBI's investigation of Aldrich Ames, CIA agent who turned Russian spy, and the agent who helped bring him to justice. Aldrich H. "Rick" Ames was a 31-year veteran of the CIA. He was also a Russian spy. By the time Ames was arrested in 1994, he had betrayed the identities of dozens and caused the deaths of ten agents. The notorious KGB (and later the Russian intelligence service, SVR) paid him millions of dollars. Agent Leslie G. “Les” Wiser, Jr. ran the FBI's Nightmover investigation tasked with uncovering a mole in the CIA. The team worked night and day to collect evidence—sneaking into Ames' home, hiding a homing beacon in his Jaguar, and installing a video camera above his desk. But the spy kept one step ahead, even after agents followed him to Bogota, Colombia. In a crazy twist, the FBI would score its biggest clue from inside Ames' garbage can. At the time of his arrest on February 21, 1994, he had compromised more highly-classified CIA assets than any other agent in history. Go behind the scences of some of the FBI's most interesting cases in award-winning journalist Bryan Denson's FBI Files series, featuring the investigations of the Unabomber, al-Qaeda member Mohamed Mohamud, and Michael Young's diamong theft ring. Each book includes photographs, a glossary, a note from the author, and other detailed backmatter on the subject of the investigation.