Exposing "Ramona"

Exactly seven years ago, on February 21, 1994, CIA officer Aldrich Ames was unexpectedly summoned to the office. He stepped down from the porch of his home in Arlington, Virginia, and got into his red Jaguar. It was a holiday, Presidents Day, and Ames went to work in an informal suit. A block and a half from the house, he had to slow down: two cars ahead of him stupidly stood up, blocking the way. Before he could get angry, two more cars rolled up behind him, stern men got out of them, and one of them said to Ames: "FBI. You are under arrest. Get out of the car."

According to FBI Director Louis Free, it was the arrest of Ames that laid the foundation for the Robert Hanssen case. Exposing a mole is insidious luck. Instead of letting out a sigh of relief, the office begins to be tormented by doubts: if one mole is found, who can guarantee that another one has not sat down somewhere nearby? Which of the agents not yet arrested abroad has already been betrayed by a mole? The CIA still remembers the formal defeat that in the 60s was perpetrated in the department by the head of the internal security service, James Angleton, who with manic stubbornness plagued the most devoted employees with suspicions, almost paralyzed the work of intelligence and eventually fired himself. There is even a version that it was Angleton who was the main Soviet mole in Langley. In this sense, the mole becomes much more dangerous AFTER the capture than it was BEFORE - then it performs, like a time bomb, its real, main task.

Ames's capture has no doubt traumatized the US intelligence community. Agents he could know about were no longer trusted, operations he could report to Moscow were curtailed. But the worst nightmare of intelligence came true when some details did not agree in Ames's testimony: it became clear that he was not the only mole, and he could not hand over the one who remained at large, with all his desire, because he knew nothing about him. On at least two occasions, Freeh claims, Hanssen was tasked with rechecking and correcting Ames' information. As a result, two KGB officers who worked in Washington under the roof of the embassy and recruited by the CIA were recalled to Moscow, sentenced to death and shot. The FBI director did not name them, but they are known from the Ames case: Colonel Valery Martynov and Major Sergei Motorin.

Calculating Hanssen, according to Free, was extremely difficult for the reason that he, being an experienced counterintelligence officer, did not disclose his name or place of service to Moscow employers - they knew him only by the nickname "Ramon" - and stubbornly refused to travel abroad for confidential meetings. Even the liaisons never seem to have seen him, maintaining contact with the agent exclusively through hiding places. At the same time, the prosecution undertakes to prove in court that Hannsen voluntarily offered his services to Soviet intelligence back in 1985 and received at least $1.4 million for his work, as well as other valuables, such as diamonds. However, the prosecution says it does not yet know Hanssen's motives. The US intelligence community is not ready to assess the damage done to the country's national security. This assessment will be worked on by a special commission agreed to be chaired by former FBI and CIA director William Webster.

Hanssen is 56 years old, a father of six children and a devout Catholic.

The bookmark of the next report was scheduled for Sunday, eight in the evening. The hiding place was located in Foxton Park, under the support of a wooden footbridge over a creek with the amazing name Wolf Trap. Unaware that video cameras were following him, Hannsen got out of the car, left a symbol, went deeper into the forest and put the documents wrapped in plastic in a hiding place. The visit to the park took only nine minutes. When he returned to his car, strict men came out of the darkness and said that they were from the FBI. On Monday, February 19, the court did not work on the occasion of the holiday - Presidents' Day, and the hearing of the case took place only on Tuesday. The defendant pleaded not guilty.

Pictured from the AP file: Robert Hanssen in 1966 - not yet with the FBI