Original subtitles

The story goes, it was a bright spring morning.

Kgb colonel valery martynov and major sergei motorin

Are high ranking soviet intelligence officers.

Yet both are also cia spies.

And this will be their last russian dawn.

Some might say their fate was an occupational hazard.

But their deaths sent a shockwave Through america's intelligence agencies.

Because they were not alone in being betrayed.

This is the story of robert hanssen, An american traitor who systematically dismantled

The united states' network of undercover soviet agents From the inside out.

Perhaps the most dangerous spy in us history,

His actions pitted the cia against the fbi And triggered a mole hunt that brought

The american intelligence services to their knees.

The short-lived regimes of ailing soviet hardliners In the kremlin had heralded the rise

Of the young, dynamic mikhail gorbachev.

While preaching reform and rapprochement with the west,

Gorbachev still relied on the support of factions Within the kgb that viewed america

And its allies as enemies.

Behind the public smiles and handshakes, Tensions in the intelligence world

Were ratcheting to breaking point.

Milton bearden was deputy chief Of the cia's soviet/east european operations at the time.

There was a very high degree of paranoia In the soviet union in the mid-80s.

The soviet union began to enter The first stages of crumbling.

Washington and london were putting This heavy, heavy pressure on them.

But in 1985, in spite Of its economic and military frailties, The soviet union still appeared

To have the upper hand in the intelligence war, By systematically exposing and eliminating

A whole slew of cia agents in its midst.

We lost a massive number of assets in moscow,

All taken out and shot within a very quick period, Short period of time.

It came as a profound shock.

Us intelligence prided itself on being able to penetrate

The soviet security services almost at will, Without being compromised in return.

It was, the single word To answer what happened, betrayal.

American counterintelligence Began to think the unthinkable,

Someone in the cia was a traitor, a russian spy.

We knew that there had to be a very high placed mole Within the us intelligence community

Who had access to the names and identities Of these very, very, very secret

High placed spies in the soviet union.

The traitor had to be stopped Before america's intelligence network Was destroyed altogether.

The biggest mole hunt in american history was underway.

In the mid-1980s, special agent david major Was the fbi national security council advisor

To president ronald reagan.

The cia starts their study, The fbi analytical unit is doing a study.

I know, because I was there at the time.

Methodically, both us intelligence services Began to gather evidence.

They start doing a study about what caused this, What is causing our loss of sources.

The g-men of the bureau Had never really trusted the spooks of the cia.

And the suspicion was entirely mutual.

If there was a penetration, Which there probably was, It probably was in the cia.

So we go back and look at every single potential penetration We ever had with the russians,

And we'll see if we can pinpoint What's the commonality, and we do this.

One of the people that was supervising That study was bob hanssen.

Fbi security specialist, Robert philip hanssen Would become one of the key players

In the mole hunt for the american traitor in the cia.

But he wasn't your typical fbi agent.

I met bob hanssen at fbi headquarters in about 1981.

I realized this guy's a really bright guy.

Now very, very shy, very introverted, doesn't talk often.

He was a very strange man to work for.

He lacked the basic social skills.

He was in the budget unit.

Nobody wants to be in the budget unit.

So he's odd man out.

He wasn't one of us.

But hanssen had talents That made him valuable to the fbi.

In 1985, he had a skill That few fbi agents had or even understood.

Bob hanssen's hobby was running computers.

He liked computers, he liked technology.

So he was a geek, when geeks, Before it was fashionable to be one.

He had an incredible level of sophistication With computer systems, at a time when the fbi

Barely knew how to turn computers on.

He was a wizard inside the bureau Because he understood things a lot of other people didn't.

Thanks to his computer skills, Hanssen was promoted from the budget unit to analytics,

Compiling data on russian intelligence.

At a time when the fbi was still using handwritten notes, Hanssen spoke a different language.

It made him the perfect man to help unmask the russian mole.

He maintained a computer, a standalone computer database That we had entered all the information

That the fbi had ever gathered from every single penetration

It had made on the russian intelligence service, Bob hanssen essentially knew everything

That we knew about the russian program.

Hanssen was put in charge Of a small team of analysts tasked with going through

All of the fbi's soviet counterintelligence files.

The acute sensitivity and secrecy Of the operation suited hanssen perfectly.

He already knew the mole was an intelligence agent Who had access to the bureau's

Most highly classified secrets.

But bob hanssen wasn't going to share this intel.

Because hanssen was the russian spy.

There are many reasons that people Betray their own countries.

Undeniably ideology and politics have some role to play,

But really most reasons for committing treason are personal.

Dr. David charney had a unique insight Into the mind of robert hanssen.

He was his psychiatrist.

He was frustrated because He wanted to be a success, And he was a partial success.

But that wasn't enough, and that led to I think A sense of alienation, anger.

He joined the fbi to be james bond, And they had made him a librarian, and he was angry.

They didn't listen to him, they didn't give him The job he wanted, and he needed money.

In 1985, hanssen was married with six children,

Mortgaged to the hilt, and making barely $46,000 a year.

He needed to support his wife, He wanted to send the children To expensive catholic schools.

Where men have trouble dealing with things That don't go well in their life,

They've got to do something to fix it.

And sometimes the fix can be something Very terrible, turning traitor.

Hanssen's treachery had a simple beginning.

He sent an unsigned letter to victor cherkashin, The man he knew was the kgb's

Head of counterintelligence in washington.

In it, hanssen offered his services, Requested $100,000, and as a sign of goodwill

Revealed the names of the cia informants Known as m and m, martynov and motorin.

With a single unsolicited letter Hanssen had sent two soviet us informants to their deaths.

The russians do not play games With people who betray the motherland.

And bob hanssen alone is responsible for that happening.

But this was just the beginning.

Because hanssen was sitting on an intelligence goldmine.

He had access to a treasure trove of information.

The russians knew our game plan, How we operate, where we go,

How many agents we have, how much surveillance we have.

Bob hanssen compromised every single human source

That the fbi had ever worked against the russians.

He compromised hundreds of double agents.

Hanssen delivered his secrets to the soviets Using old fashioned spy craft,

A method known as a dead drop.

Hanssen wrapped the documents in plastic bags And hid them at a pre - Arranged location

Near his home in virginia.

He placed a piece of white tape on a signpost As the signal his drop had been made.

It meant that hanssen never had to meet The soviets handlers face to face.

He was smart enough to know That he needed to keep his true identity

Hidden from the kgb as much as from the fbi.

Cherkashin and the soviets Had no idea about his identity.

The greatest danger for spies of any side Is to be exposed by spies on the other side.

Spies catch spies, that's the usual saying.

Using the alias of ramon garcia, Hanssen made 22 dead drops in five years,

Supplying the kgb with not only the identities Of us agents in russia, but thousands of pages

Of america's most closely guarded secrets.

The damage ran deep.

He compromised our continuity government program, Which is one of the greatest secrets we had,

And that is how do you respond at a time of nuclear attack.

It's unheard of the amount of insight they had.

The fbi was now running The biggest spy hunt in living memory,

To track down the source of these leaks.

But by 1994, the mole hunt was seemingly No closer to finding the traitor.

They decide to go back and look At all the people that could have known

About these cases that were compromised.

There were 20 that itzeroed in on.

I was on that list.

One name stood out from the crowd,

A cia agent who had received money from a suspicious source.

They began to realize that there was this money That was deposited in his account.

Further digging revealed the cia officer Had been in contact with russians in washington dc.

They noticed he'd meet the russian, Then there'd be a deposit.

He'd meet him, then there'd be a deposit.

And so something was wrong here.

And so one of them he eventually said, "you know, this doesn't take a brain surgeon

"to realize something's going on here."

The mole hunters believed they had found the traitor

Who had sent so many loyal agents to their deaths,

A man they believed was the most dangerous mole In intelligence history.

How wrong they were.

After a nine year mole hunt, The man the fbi finally arrested

For selling state secrets to the russians was aldrich ames, An officer in the cia's

Soviet counterintelligence division.

Well ames, he was a pretty mediocre officer, But he was an officer within the cia

And he did have access to an awful lot of stuff.

He's sitting there on top of all these cases, For example, that we're running in moscow.

The fbi's investigation revealed That on June 13th, 1985, aldrich ames

Had walked into chadwick's restaurant in washington dc For an authorized meeting

With a diplomat from the soviet embassy.

But instead, at the table Was soviet counterintelligence chief, victor cherkashin.

During his time as moscow correspondent, Greg feifer, got to know cherkashin well.

At one point during this half an hour conversation, Ames took out a piece of notepaper

And wrote down the list Of many of the american assets in the ussr.

This was at the very least One of the most stunning Intelligence coups in kgb history.

Ames gave the soviets information About virtually every agent they had inside the ussr.

Aldrich ames was no less than a serial murderer.

He killed all those people.

But unlike hanssen, ames had become careless.

He had done about $40,000 worth of work on his teeth.

Then his wardrobe got a little better.

He bought a 500 and something Thousand dollar house for cash.

The money trail Led the fbi back to ames's meeting With cherkashin in chadwick's restaurant.

The evidence was damning and conviction swift.

Ames was sentenced to life in prison, And he's currently in a medium security prison in indiana,

Never to be released.

There was relief and elation In us intelligence circles

That the russian agent had finally been caught.

And it only made hanssen feel more secure.

He thought any other spy, Including aldrich ames and others, were bumbling idiots.

He was the only really great spy.

At his request, the kgb rewarded hanssen With a modest gift of just a few thousand dollars,

So as not to raise suspicion.

For hanssen that was payment enough.

It wasn't about money.

Bob was driven by other demons.

Often agents turn traitor For reasons of greed, ideology, or revenge.

For hanssen, it seems more complicated.

His life was full of contradictions.

He converted to catholicism And took it very, very, very seriously.

So much so that he adopted A more serious subset of it called opus dei,

And he was very serious about adhering to its rules.

I think there must have been a constant anguish

And turmoil about who he actually was as a person.

And trying to resolve his devout religious faith, His sense of right and wrong.

Hanssen would spy for the russians, And then turn to god on his lunch break for forgiveness.

As he saw it, he returned to his desk Absolved of his worldly sins.

Hanssen is one of the most complicated, Complex people that I've met with.

Of all the people that I've met in my regular practice I would put him at the top rank of people

Who live very much of a compartmentalized mental life.

I don't know how he did it.

A devout man was such an unlikely traitor That his fellow mole hunters never suspected him.

His faith had become his cover.

Ames' arrest in 1994

Should have put an end to the fbi's mole hunt.

But not everything was adding up.

Investigators were unable to link All of the intelligence leaks to aldrich ames.

Ames was not in a position To know about the bloch case, And therefore it didn't explain

What had happened with bloch.

In the late 1980's, felix bloch Was a senior state department official,

A man the fbi suspected of espionage.

They listened to his telephone conversations, And they realized he was going to have a meeting

With somebody in paris.

We figured we had a spy.

They had him surrounded at the hotel, And at the last minute felix bloch gets a phone call.

He never meets his intelligence officer.

The fbi never catches him.

A mole had tipped him off.

Federal investigators realized the tip-off Could not have come from aldrich ames,

Because he was unaware of the bloch investigation.

So, it had to be somebody else, somebody with, With good information about the felix bloch case.

And we knew that we still had this mole,

Once again, the rivalry Between cia and fbi confused the issue.

It was their guy who screwed up.

And so, the next time the suspicion arose,

It was natural for the fbi to say it might be the cia again.

The fbi hastily assembled A new team of mole hunters.

They operated out of the black vault, A secure room at fbi headquarters.

Right across the hallway was robert hanssen's old office.

It's a lot harder to spot spying than is thought.

You can really get away with it for far longer Than you might imagine if you're any good at all.

Because people don't wanna think about somebody Sitting next to you in the next cubicle as a spy.

Hanssen had been careful and meticulous, But in early 1993, he made a mistake.

One that should have led to his downfall.

He was found to have hacked Into the double agent operations within the russian section.

This was the inner sanctum Of the fbi's counterintelligence operations,

Where the identities of all those suspected Of spying for the russians were kept.

It should have triggered hanssen's immediate arrest.

Instead, hanssen calmly talked his way out of it.

The rationale that he gave was that he was trying

To show that the system was fragile and easy to hack

And that it should be a heads up to the powers that be.

The fbi had missed a red flag.

Hanssen continued to hack into the fbi mainframe,

This time to see if he was on the bureau's watchlist.

Because by now hanssen had reached tipping point And wanted out.

Conflict, conflict.

Do I really wanna do this?

Is this something that I want to do?

Is it safe for me to do this?

Is it possible something terrible will happen And I really should get out of doing it now?

Can I ever have a normal life again?

All these thoughts are in the mind I believe of every spy.

All this time, hanssen was able To avoid suspicion because the fbi investigators

Still believed the traitor was in the cia.

By 1998, they had a shortlist of suspects.

They zeroed in on seven people inside the cia In a position to know about the bloch case.

One of the men that was there was brian kelley, Because brian kelley had been

In the right place at the right time.

Brian kelley was a cia specialist in illegals, Russian spies who worked without diplomatic cover.

He was made prime suspect Because of his direct involvement In the felix bloch case.

They start an intensive investigation into brian kelley.

He's surveilled every single day, They have aircraft on him every single day.

They tried all kinds of I would call it tricks To get him to reveal what his true identity was.

They found a map on his kitchen table That they misconstrued as being a drop site map.

It turned out to be brian kelley's jogging map.

Brian kelley was very convenient for hanssen.

He lived around the corner from hanssen, His jogging route took him past

Some of his hanssen's signal sites and drop sites.

By 2000, after over a decade of investigation, The fbi was no closer to catching the mole.

But then they had a stroke of luck.

They came into contact with a disgruntled former soviet spy

Who claimed he had a piece of electrifying evidence,

The kgb file on the russian mole known as ramon garcia.

A couple of scraps of evidence, a garbage bag Used to hand over a dead drop of documents,

And also there was a telephone recording.

At one point ramon garcia Spoke to one of cherkashin's subordinates.

The price of the kgb file was a staggering $7 million.

To the fbi, it was a small price to pay To unmask once and for all

The greatest traitor in us intelligence history.

The fbi had paid $7 million for a secret kgb file That would unmask a mole

Within the us intelligence community, A mole who had been giving away

State secrets for over a decade.

When they eventually get the file, And in it is a tape recording.

And that tape recording Is supposed to be between the source,

The mole if you would, and the kgb officer.

After a 15 year man hunt, federal agents Were going to hear the evidence that would nail the man

Who had betrayed his country and its agents.

They are convinced they know who the traitor is And that this will confirm their suspicions.

They know it's going to be brian kelley And they're going to be able to make a case.

So, when they finally turn it on, They listen to it, it's not brian kelley.

The fbi was shocked When they heard that taped phone call.

"wow," they said, "that's bob hanssen."

Of all the people you thought would ever do this, Bob hanssen was not one of them.

It was a revelation that would tear the bureau apart.

All the time, they'd been looking at the cia As the source of the treachery.

And now they knew the traitor worked from within.

Hiding in plain sight, hanssen had made fools of them all.

To take him down, they'd have to find evidence That would stand up in court.

And that wouldn't be easy.

Bob hanssen was a trained Counterintelligence officer.

He spent his career looking for spies, So he knows how spies are caught.

The fbi needed a special kind of spy catcher,

Someone who could equal hanssen's computer skills

And who could get close to him without arousing suspicion.

They chose eric o'neill.

I was a ghost.

The official title is investigative specialist,

Which means an undercover operative who follows people.

I spent my days following spies and terrorists, Tracking them from the morning

Until they were asleep at night And sometimes listening to them sleep.

Like hanssen, o'neill Had a very particular skillset.

The problem was that hanssen was a computer genius, He was a hacker.

He could breach systems, He could write programming language.

And they had to find someone who understood computer systems

In order to investigate him, and that was me.

I was their only option.

O'neill became hanssen's new aide, The perfect cover to stay close to his target.

We needed not only to catch him Spying for the russians,

We believed he was still active and we wanted to catch him

Making a drop of secrets to the russians.

So, they positioned him Where they could watch his every move.

They put him in charge of looking At the fbi's security technology,

Looking at the fbi's computer systems And devising methods where we could better secure them

From outside attackers and inside penetrations.

The fbi appeared to have placed The biggest spy in us history,

A computer hacker who had been handing state secrets

To the kgb for decades, in charge of cyber security.

In fact, it was a ruse to track hanssen's movements And enable o'neill to get closer to him.

Hey, bill.

My first conversation with hanssen, And one of the first things he tells me is,

"what we're doing here in information assurance section, "we are hunting spies.

"and we will find the spies in the worst possible place."

Now to do this day, I don't know whether He was challenging me to catch him

Or whether he was just trying to be a mentor.

Privately, doubts appear To have been forming in hanssen's mind.

He regularly hacked into the fbi database To see if his name appeared on any investigations

Into operation graysuit, the mole's codename.

He found nothing except files on cia operative brian kelley.

When hanssen learned About the brian kelley investigation,

And learned that they thought brian kelley was graysuit, It made him feel very confident.

Hanssen continued To plan his drops to the russians.

The location, a park just a few hundred yards From his home in virginia.

On one surveillance recce, the fbi caught him Casing the area four times in one day.

But even this wasn't enough.

We needed him making a drop to the russians

So we could catch him red-handed in the act of espionage.

I needed to find a way to get information That would lead us to when he would make

A next drop to the russians, because we believed

He was going to make a drop of secrets to the russians.

I looked at everything that surrounded hanssen,

All of the things he said, all of the things he did.

And the one thing that he protected Most zealously was his personal device,

A palmpilot.

O'neill suspected hanssen's palmpilot Held encrypted information

About kgb dead drop locations and times.

To bait a trap, o'neill had to get hold of that palmpilot.

And hanssen had this Very significant and obvious routine.

He would keep it in his left back pocket And every time he sat down at his desk

He'd put it in a bag that he kept In the same spot every day.

Like clockwork.

So I knew we had to get that away from him.

The plan was simple.

Hanssen would be summoned to the firing range Under the pretext of a formal assessment.

He had a tough time getting him to go to firearms.

You're supposed to go every quarter, and he just didn't go.

Being ordered to go down to firearms Was not something that he would love doing.

The order was intended To make him angry enough to forget his palmpilot

And give o'neil enough time to steal the data from it.

At 12.05 they make the call.

Really?

Again?

He stands up angrily, he grabs his firearm.

And for the first time he forgets To reach down and grab his palmpilot.

And goes down all those flights of steps

To the sub basement where the fbi has their shooting range.

I go over to his bag,

And I grabbed the palmpilot,

Run down three flights of steps to where we had a tech team

Set up with all sorts of computer equipment.

As soon as they start to copy it I get a text on my pager.

Apparently, hanssen had got down to the range,

Had set his target, pulled his firearm, fired a few times...

Then holstered his firearm, excused himself, And walked right back to the room.

Now I knew I had about nine minutes.

It took that long to get all the way up to the ninth floor.

I told the tech team, "you've got to hurry."

And finally, they get it finished, They hand me the devices and say, "run."

I bolt up three flights of steps, I get to his office, I kneel down in front of his bag.

I've got a good two minutes before he shows up by my watch.

And I look at his bag and I realize, There are four pockets.

And I can't for the life of me remember what pockets I've pulled these things out of.

Horrible rookie mistake.

The success of the 15 year spy hunt Could rest on o'neill's next move.

If I got the palmpilot wrong, The game is over, the case is done.

There's a good chance he will shoot me Because he knows that he's finished.

Door closing.

He comes through the door into the office.

And he glares at me, goes into his back office.

And I hear him checking for his palmpilot.

And he gives me this angry look and he says, "were you in my office?"

And I sat back, had a neutral expression, Looked at him and said, "yeah I was in your office.

"I put a memo in your inbox, didn't you see it?"

And he looks at me, and then he looks at me and he says, "I never want you in my office again."

When analysts decoded the data On hanssen's palmpilot, they found a reference

To a dead drop in three weeks' time.

We knew that hanssen was planning to make a drop Under a footbridge in foxstone park

On a Sunday night at about seven o'clock.

What the fbi didn't know Was the hanssen was planning To quit spying for the russians.

This was the fbi's only chance to catch him red handed.

The net was closing around the most prolific

And damaging spy in us history, a man who, for 15 years,

Had sold america's best-kept secrets to her greatest enemy.

The last time I saw bob hanssen, I said, "bob, you look terrible."

I said, "what are you doing?"

He says, "well they've just forgotten me in the bureau.

"I'm going to retire next year, "but I just, you know I just, I'm miserable."

It was interesting.

The strain of leading a double life Was finally getting to hanssen.

He was spooked.

He thought he had heard radio signals coming from his car,

The tell-tale signs of a bugging device.

Life is a misery for these people.

They're all the time terrified of being caught.

Sooner or later in the counterintelligence world, I'm totally convinced,

That the spy gets betrayed, almost always.

So you're under this stress constantly, Fear, uncertainty, and uncertainty

Is the worst state for a human to deal with.

And I think the tiresomeness of it gets to people.

They're so sick of that life That they just wanna get it over with.

In the third week of February 2001, Hanssen prepared for his final

Drop of secrets to the russians.

In what was effectively his resignation letter to the kgb, He seems to recognize his fate.

He wrote, "it seems however it is time "to seclude myself from active service.

"something has aroused the sleeping tiger"

Meaning the fbi is awakened.

He should go to ground, he shouldn't do anything.

You shouldn't be going filling a dead drop.

You should just stop.

But he didn't, 'cause I think He had to play out the last chapter.

On February 18th, 2001, The fbi began the single most important operation

In its history of counterintelligence.

At four p.M., agents arrived to stake out The bridge at foxstone park, codenamed ellis.

But almost immediately there was a problem.

He arrives early, they expect him to be At seven o'clock to come to fill the dead drop.

And he doesn't, he shows up way early.

The surveillance team's only been Put in place for like 15 minutes.

And in drives bob hanssen.

Everyone is scrambling.

They have cameras and everything else on ellis,

This place he'd done before, and he doesn't go there.

Turns around and goes into the woods.

Oh my god, where's he going?

What the fbi didn't know Was that the kgb had switched the location

To a different part of the park.

Hanssen made his final drop unseen

And the fbi had missed it.

The second he walked off that bridge feeling elated,

Like he'd just made his last drop to the russians, Feeling all these emotions,

That he was going to retire as a spy, That this was his final moment, his swan song,

Swat team showed up,

Put handcuffs on him.

Despite missing the drop, The fbi had had to seize the moment.

Then hanssen did something odd.

They take him into the car And they ask him one question, "were you working just for the russians

"or russians and others?"

And bob says, "just for the russians."

Well you know what that constituted, a confession.

When he said that, he just confessed To the agents for being a spy for the russians.

By answering that question.

Hanssen's takedown Had been a top-secret operation in the fbi.

So, when the news broke within its ranks, It rocked the bureau to its core.

Yeah, I think those of us who worked for bob Would never forgot where each of us was

At the time we learned about bob's arrest.

I was driving to work.

I had to pull the car over.

I immediately felt like I had been punched In the stomach.

And then drove the rest of the way Into the office, dumbfounded.

There were literally people crying In the halls of the fbi.

Hardcore, stoic agents who had learned That their entire career had been a waste,

That everything that they had done

Hanssen was undoing behind the scenes.

And then I thought, that day, what did I not see,

What did I miss, what should I have seen as a professional?

I don't think I missed anything.

I don't think I missed anything about what he said, What he did, how he acted,

That would have given me an indication That he was going to become a betrayer.

And that standpoint, he was a perfect spy.

Bob hanssen escaped the electric chair By confessing all to the fbi.

Though the scale of his deception Was far greater than anyone had imagined.

There are some in the intelligence community Who believe that bob hanssen may have been

The most damaging spy in modern american history.

Hanssen gave up a lot of real secrets.

I mean from an intelligence point of view You can say we were really clobbered by hanssen.

Bob hanssen compromised The entire intelligence community.

He compromised nro, nsa, the three military services, Everything that we're doing

In counterintelligence anywhere, he compromised us.

And that's breath-taking stuff.

Hanssen is serving 15 life sentences.

He's imprisoned at colorado's supermax Alongside the world's deadliest criminals.

But he will never meet them.

He will see out his remaining days in solitary confinement

Where he will be remembered As america's most notorious traitor.

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