WASHINGTON – Robert Hanssen told his Russian handler he’d been a spy in the making since he was a teenager – and his hero was master mole Kim Philby, FBI papers show.
Using the alias “Ramon Garcia,” Hanssen wrote his handler last March that Philby was an inspiration in his decision to become a spook.
It’s not clear whether Hanssen was motivated solely by money – or whether ideology played a role, since he allegedly started spying when the Soviet Union was ruled by the Communists.
The man he admired, Philby, worked for British intelligence during and after World War II while secretly spying for the Soviets.
“I decided on this course when I was 14 years old,” Hanssen wrote to Russian handler “SZR” last March.
“I’d read Philby’s book. Now that is insane, eh!”
Philby was considered a suspect in Britain’s greatest spy scandal before Hanssen was 10, defected when Hanssen was 19, and wrote his book when Hanssen was 24. Hanssen’s letters, collected by the FBI, also raise the possibility he was motivated by the excitement of spying, but he knew exactly what was at risk.
“Recent changes in U.S. law now attach the death penalty to my help to you, as you know, so I do take some risk,” he wrote, according to an FBI affidavit.
In another letter, last March, he wrote:
“I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you, and I get silence. I hate silence.
“Conclusion: One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane.
“I’d answer neither. I’d say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There is insanity in all the answers,” the letter read.
In June, he wrote to complain that the Russians weren’t taking advantage of him.
“You waste me,” he wrote.
Hanssen, the FBI agent in charge of uncovering foreign operations at the State Department, said he knew of Russian microphones that had been discovered there and that security was revamped.
“I only found out the gruesome details too late to warn you,” he wrote.
In one bizarre passage, he warned his Russian “friends” that, though they had fooled the Americans for a long time, they must stay alert.
“The U.S. can be errantly likened to a powerfully built but retarded child, potentially dangerous, but young, immature and easily manipulated. But don’t be fooled by that appearance,” he wrote, according to the FBI affidavit. “It is also one which can turn ingenius [sic] quickly, like an idiot savant.”
In November, he told the Russians: “Generally speaking, you overestimate the FBI’s capacity to interdict you,” Hanssen wrote.