FBI agents investigate spy Robert Hanssen's home after his arrest last year
The networks are already lining up commentators and staking out camera
positions for the sentencing of renegade FBI agent Robert Hanssen, scheduled
for next Friday, fifteen months after his arrest for espionage. But the
confessed spy's long-anticipated day in court, originally slated for January,
could be delayed a second time, according to government sources. The hitch:
after debriefing Hanssen for months, FBI agents still aren't convinced
he has told the whole truth about his role in what a blue ribbon commission
recently called "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history."
Hanssen's lawyer, Plato Cacheris, insists his client has done his best
to cooperate fully, as he pledged when he struck a plea bargain last July
to avoid the death penalty. Still, some FBI officials think serious
inconsistencies remain in his account of 21 years as a double agent for
Soviet intelligence, during which he is estimated to have betrayed 50 U.S.
spies and potential recruits. (It didn't help that Hanssen lost his temper
with a skeptical bureau polygrapher.)
FBI director Robert Mueller and top Justice officials have spent days debating whether to move for another
postponement. Meanwhile, Hanssen is undergoing his most intensive probing
yet, at the hands of a CIA damage assessment team that includes psychiatrists
and interrogation specialists practiced at dealing with traitors' complex
psychological subterfuges. Hanssen is said to have lost weight and appears
more stooped than ever, but sources say flashes of the old arrogance
show: he has complained recently that the press is overplaying his sexual
obsessions — by reporting on his pornographic writings, which he posted
on the web.
