The FBI decided to set a trap and set it up near the bridge where Hanssen would come and drop off the documents and collect his money from the Russians. He was caught red-handed right at the moment when he grabbed the suitcase containing the $50,000. The great game was over and the man who had wanted to walk in the footsteps of Kim Philby had lost.
Jacques Isnard
124
In revealing the Robert Hanssen affair, Washington killed two birds with one stone.The Americans showed that they had not lowered their guard against Soviet intrusions on their soil and also tried to dissuade their allies from cooperating with Moscow, whose methods they hoped to discredit. Thus, for Washington, the Russians would only have one thing on their minds: the knowledge that Europe had mastered both technological performance and capacity better than them and to use them at a lower cost so as to benefit their defence industry that was struggling to finance its own modernisation.
However, the battle that has begun since the arrival of George W. Bush in the White House concerning the weapons programmes of the future is a different story. It foretells an explosion of dirty tricks between the secret services, as each puts ‘pressure’ on the other. Do they not say, for example, that in the United States, the FSB found some 300 potential agents in Washington, which are the same levels the KGB had in 1989? While in Russia, do they not contend that the expansion of activities by the western intelligence services in central Europe and the Baltic states, is such that it constitutes a threat to Moscow?
On 10 May 2002, in exchange for his cooperation with the US authorities, Robert Hanssen avoided the death penalty by pleading guilty, and was instead sentenced to life in prison. He is serving his sentence in ADX Florence, a high-security penitentiary in Colorado, where he spends twenty-three hours a day completely alone, away from other prisoners.
Endnotes
1A Famous spy who betrayed the British intelligence services. See Monsieur X, Memoires secrets (Denoel, 1998).
2One of the great painters of the Louis XIV era.
3In this article, which appeared in Liberation (2006), the journalist reports on one of Anthony Blunt's major works of writing; a monumental essay on French art and architecture from 1500-1700.
4One of the five Cambridge Spies.
5The NKVD was the precursor to the KGB. Comintern (Communist International) was an international organisation that advocated global communism.
6Author of a biography of Anthony Blunt, Anthony Blunt: His Lives (2001). According to her, Burgess, instructed by Arnold Deutsch, had played a dominant role in Blunt's recruitment by the NKVD.
7Encrypted Soviet messages from the Second World War that had yet to be decoded. See chapter IV.
8Philosopher and critic, Les Cahiers de I’Herne (1981).
9WASP: White Anglo Saxon Protestant. A name often given to the East Coast elite.
10Jean-Paul Torok, Pour en finir avec le maccarthysme (L'Harmattan, 1999),
11The Glory and the Dream (Little Brown & Co., 1973).
12La chasse aux socieres, (Complexes, 1995).
13Alger Hiss died in 1996 aged 92.
14OSS: A predecessor of the CIA.
15FTP (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans) A radical resistance movement.
16PCF (Parti communiste frangais) The French Communist Party.
17Service B, (Fayard, 1985).
18Historia, (1997)
19Maurice Thorez (1900-1964), leader of the French Communist Party from 1930 until his death.
20On chantait rouge, autobiographie, (Robert Laffont, 1977).
21See Chapter 1.
22Fuchs is German for fox.
23DST (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire): French domestic intelligence agency, established in 1944.
24See Chapter 1.
25Les Visiteurs de i’ombre, (Grasset, 1990).
26Ibid.
27The International Brigades (Spanish: Brigadas Internacionales) were military units, made up of volunteers from different countries, who travelled to Spain in order to fight for the Second Spanish Republic in the Spanish Civil War, between 1936 and 1939.
28PSL (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe). The Polish People's (or Peasants) Party.
29Police Secrete, (Flammarion, 1999).
30See Chapter 8.
31He took the surname Blake from his mother's second husband, who was a British citizen.
32Le Point, 1977.
33See Chapter 1.
34No Other Choice:An Autobiography, (Jonathan Cape, 1990).
35Ibid.
36Ibid.
37KGB:The Inside Story, (Hodder, 1990).
38The system (in the former Soviet Union) whereby influential posts in government and industry were filled by Party appointees.
39This testimony derives from a curious document, whose authenticity is in doubt. It appeared in the United States in 1965 and was supposed to be the confession or memoire of the spy. See the explanation at the end of the chapter.
40KGB:The Inside Story, (Hodder, 1990).
41Le Guide mondial de i’espionage, (Le Cherche-Midi, 1998).
42He was the victim of the famous ‘spy crate' story and was nearly sent to Egypt in a specially converted trunk. It was later revealed that Louk was an Israeli agent who had infiltrated the Egyptian services. See Monsieur X,Journal secret, (Denoel, 1998).
43Mossad: Israeli’s Secret Intelligence Service, (Paddington Press, 1978).
44Officially the Likud-National Liberation Movement, this is the major centre-right political party in Israel.
45See previous chapter.
46Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community (Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
47See previous chapter.
48L’Gil deTel-Aviv, (Stanke, 1978).
55LesVisituersde l'ombre (Grasset, 1990).
56SDECE (Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionage): France's external intelligence agency from 1944-1982, before being replaced by the DGSE (Direction Generale de la Secruite Exterieure).
57Chalet led the famous Farewell affair, the codename of the KGB mole who collaborated with the DST and resulted in the unmasking of dozens of eastern spies. It was an operation that highlighted the importance of the looting of western technological secrets by the Soviets.
58A Soviet network that operated in France and Belgium during the Second World War and worked closely with the French Resistance.
59The codename would later inspire Leon Uris for the title of his best-seller ‘Topaz', in 1967.
60DST, Secret Police, (Flammarion, 1999).
61Le Figaro, 17 July 1964.
62Gideon's Spies: The Secret History of Mossad (St Martin's, 1999).
63L’Espion qui venait d’Israel (Fayard, 1967).
64According to Uri Dan and Ben Porat, this meant the Mossad agent based in Switzerland.
65Every Spy a Prince (Houghton Mifflin, 1990).
66Histoire mondiale du renseignement, (Robert Laffont, 1993).
67FFI: French Forces of the Interior.
68A pseudonym.
69Cinq ans a la tete de la DST, (Plon, 1985).
70Le Monde, 28 October 1968.
71See Chapter 10.
72Cinq ans a la tete de la DST,
