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In December 1991, "B" abruptly broke off with Moscow until late 1999, when he just as abruptly resumed as before. In hindsight, FBI officials believe the reason is obvious. In 1992, the FBI and CIA assembled a "backroom" team to figure out why a series of operations had been blown. They suspected a high-level mole. Eventually their stealthy investigations led them to CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames in 1994. Though the backroom hunt was a closely held secret, the ever curious Hanssen might have figured it out from stray details. Even after Ames' arrest, the mole ferreting went on, leading to the 1996 arrest of CIA employee Harold Nicholson, then of FBI agent Earl Pitts. That July, Hanssen started running his own name, his address and keywords such as dead drop and Foxstone through the FBI's automated database, which contained information on all investigations. Only when he found nothing indicating that he was under suspicion did he get back in touch with his former handlers, now in service to the SVR. They still had no idea who he was. Yet a delighted letter from Moscow in October 1999 crowed, "Dear Friend: Welcome! It's good to know you are here."
But as "B" resumed selling American secrets, he grew increasingly anxious. "I have come as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you and I get silence," he complained in March 2000. "I hate silence..." Speculating darkly about his own motives, he wrote: "One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quite insane. I'd answer neither. I'd say, insanely loyal. Take your pick. There is insanity in all the answers." Though he believed he had so far "judged the edge correctly" of his own jeopardy, "it's been a long time, my dear friends, a long and lonely time." In June he suggested that a Palm VII wireless organizer might improve secure communication. While he mocked the U.S. as a "powerfully built but retarded child, potentially dangerous but young, immature and easily manipulated," he worried, "it is also one that can turn ingenious quickly, like an idiot savant." And in November, even as he joked about retiring to Moscow to teach Spying 101, he wrote: "I ask you to help me survive... Wish me luck."
CATCHING A MOLE
By the autumn of 2000, Hanssen needed more than luck. The back room was still digging, since none of the previous arrests explained all the blown operations of the '80s and '90s. Not too long after "B" resumed contact with the Russians, the analysts concluded that the failures were caused by leaks from FBI files. They were sure the FBI harbored another mole.
After an analysis of the NSD employees with access to data on compromised missions, Hanssen's name popped up on a short list of suspects. Yet he might never have been uncovered without betrayal from the other side--the one thing even the cleverest double agent cannot control.