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On Oct. 4, 1985, the Justice Department charges, Hanssen sent a fateful letter, addressed to a KGB officer in Washington. Inside was a second missive marked "Do not open. Take this envelope unopened to Viktor I. Cherkashin." Hanssen knew well who Cherkashin was: Moscow's chief counterspy at the Soviet embassy, a KGB colonel adept at handling double agents. (Cherkashin was already masterminding the activities of CIA mole Aldrich Ames, who was not uncovered until 1994.) Inside that second envelope was an anonymous offer to send a trove of classified papers to the KGB in exchange for $100,000, and a proposal to keep on selling similar secrets. "They are from certain of the most sensitive and highly compartmented projects of the U.S. intelligence community," wrote the man identifying himself only as "B." "All are originals to aid in verifying their authenticity." As another gesture to establish his good faith, "B" named three KGB officers who had been recruited to spy for the U.S., confirming names that Ames had spilled in June. Soon, the three were recalled to Moscow, where later two were executed and one jailed.
That initiated a sporadic series of communications and payments between "B" and the KGB lasting until December 1991. By the time of the arrest, "B" had been paid some $600,000 in cash, plus three diamonds, and had been told an additional $800,000 lay banked for him in a Moscow account (though he scoffed that he knew the account was a typical spymaster's fiction).
As a counterintelligence agent, Hanssen knew his gravest danger lay in betrayal. So he was obsessive about security from the start and never revealed his identity to his "friends" in Moscow. He noted that his first delivery of documents made him vulnerable because "as a collection they point to me." He said his name and position "must be left unstated to ensure my security." He used various aliases besides "B," including Ramon Garcia and Jim Baker; his handlers could address him only as "Dear Friend." When Moscow suggested more complex and distant drop sites, he refused, saying, "My experience tells me we can actually be more secure in easier modes." He refused requests to meet Soviet agents face to face or travel abroad: these could look suspicious. "I am much safer if you know little about me," he wrote in 1988. "Neither of us are children about these things. Over time, I can cut your losses rather than become one."