The Weirdest Arch-Traitor of Them All

This week’s death of Bob Hanssen, the FBI’s worst agent ever, recalls some essential truths about the counterspy life

For much of its history, the Federal Bureau of Investigation haughtily deemed itself to be above internal counterintelligence concerns. Moles happened elsewhere, not in Mr. Hoover’s Bureau. For some time, this happened to be true. The decryption of classified 1940s Soviet intelligence cables by the National Security Agency, the famed VENONA secret, shockingly revealed that during the Second World War, Moscow possessed moles inside every significant arm and branch of the U.S. Government. The Kremlin penetrated all our intelligence and security agencies too – there were at least a dozen Soviet moles embedded inside the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency – except the FBI (and, oddly, the Office of Naval Intelligence).

This was taken by J. Edgar Hoover and his successors as evidence that the Bureau, a disciplined and elite cadre, was inherently above penetration, or suspicion. Pride goeth before a fall, in counterespionage like everything else, and it was only a matter of time before the KGB got inside the FBI too. That happened in the 1960s with the remarkable case of UNSUB Dick, which the Bureau successfully covered up for decades.

In the early 1960s, the FBI commenced its first-ever mole-hunt when a KGB case officer named Aleksei Kulak, based at the Soviet mission to the United Nations in New York, volunteered his services to the Bureau’s New York Field Office, sharing that the KGB had a mole there. Given the covername FEDORA, Kulak over time provided a good deal of bona fide information to the FBI but was unable to provide much biographical information about “Dick.” This sparked off a decade-long hunt for “Dick” that tore apart NYFO and reverberated through FBI offices nationwide, leaving behind bad feelings and doubts, without ever finding the mole. Many years later, an FBI counterintelligence relook established the mole’s identity, but since “Dick” was then retired, the Bureau decided to let the embarrassing case fade out.*

The Bureau finally got a confirmed Soviet mole in its ranks with the 1984 arrest of Richard Miller, a sad-sack agent who was a chronic underperformer and all-around slob: colleagues observed that his clothing regularly had food stains on it, and Miller once lost his FBI credentials and service weapon. A Mormon with eight children, Miller was strapped for cash and when his Russian immigrant sidepiece, a KGB cut-out, suggested that he give her FBI secrets in exchange for cash, he complied eagerly. However, the case against Miller was surprisingly weak – the defendant claimed that his outreach to the KGB was really a self-styled sting-operation, which worked on some jurors – and it took DoJ three tries to convict the rogue agent, who ultimately served less than three years in prison.**

Soon following was Earl Edwin Pitts, another FBI agent gone rogue for Moscow out of NYFO. His motivation was a mixture of revenge and greed since Pitts was angry at the Bureau for assigning him to Manhattan, where his FBI salary didn’t go far. Pitts passed secrets to the Russians for five years, including highly classified counterspy information about what the FBI knew about KGB operations – which was Pitts’ actual job. He was caught when his KGB handler defected to the U.S., unmasking him. Unwisely for him, Pitts then fell for an FBI dangle which persuaded him that Moscow wanted him to spy on their behalf again, confirming his guilt. In 1997, Pitts accepted a plea arrangement and a 27-year prison sentence for espionage. He was released from prison in 2019.

As part of that plea deal, per standard practice, Pitts agreed to counterintelligence debriefings with the FBI as it attempted to assess what damage Pitts had wrought by passing secrets to Moscow. During this, in 1997 Pitts was asked if he knew of any other Russian moles inside the Bureau. He said no, but Pitts added that he regarded a fellow FBI agent named Robert Hanssen, a specialist in Russian counterintelligence matters, with suspicion.