Will The Hanssen Arrest Prompt The Bush Team to Correct Clinton-Era Inattention to Security?

(Washington, D.C.): The arrest of FBI counter-intelligence (CI) agent Robert Hanssen on espionage charges yesterday is not only a reminder, as Attorney General John Ashcroft noted this afternoon, that “our free society is an international target in a dangerous world.” It is a forceful warning that even rigorous CI procedures can be foiled by skillful, determined adversaries and their agents.

Damage Assessment

Hanssen was in a position to do immense damage to U.S. national security. Among other things, he could have provided Soviet and Russian handlers with:

• Incalculably valuable information concerning U.S. intelligence operations; the indictment says that at least two American agents operating inside the KGB were compromised — presumably, “with extreme prejudice” — by his revelations. Many more may have had their lives or their missions put at risk.

Potentially lethal insights into the techniques and status of the United States’ counter- intelligence services. The Kremlin would have benefitted enormously if it could gauge what the FBI knew about its operatives — and the extent of American ignorance about them.

Perhaps most damaging of all, a wealth of information about non-intelligence-related, but highly sensitive, programs he was assigned to protect from foreign espionage. As he would have been “read-in” on these programs, he could have compromised their most secret details, as well.

Given the demonstrated willingness of the Russian military and its defense industrial base to sell whatever they have for hard currency, it must be asked: Could such vital American secrets have wound up not only in the hands of the Kremlin but also in those of its clients — including all of the world’s most dangerous rogue states?

The Bottom Line

The Hanssen affair makes transparently clear the need for intensified attention to the continuing danger of espionage against the United States. Unfortunately, as grievous as the damage Mr. Hanssen might have done appears to be, even it could pale by comparison with the cumulative effects of eight years of malign neglect towards personnel, information and physical security that was the leitmotif of the Clinton-Gore Administration. Damage assessments of this vastly larger category of potential espionage disasters — and corrective actions — should be undertaken in parallel with those launched in the wake of Hanssen’s arrest.

The Bush-Cheney Administration now has not only the opportunity, but the obligation, promptly to implement the hundreds of recommendations that have been made by the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), intelligence community and congressional panels and other official reviews in recent years aimed at shoring up the Nation’s defenses against espionage, technology theft, blackmailing and suborning of U.S. officials, etc. Should it fail to do so, the Bush team will henceforth share in the responsibility for the next, perhaps even more serious, compromises of U.S. national security.