DOJ Looks at Hanssen Probe

DOJ Looks at Hanssen Probe

NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, March 13, 2001

WASHINGTON (UPI) – The Justice Department's inspector general's office is taking a long look at what department officials did and didn't do leading up to the arrest of accused FBI agent Robert Hanssen, the department said Monday.

A department statement said Attorney General John Ashcroft requested the "thorough review" by Inspector General Glenn Fine last Friday. Ashcroft announced the review in a broadcast interview Sunday, and Monday's statement clarified what is going on.

"The review will determine the department's performance in preventing, detecting and investigating Hanssen's espionage activities, similar to the Office of Inspector General's April 1997 review of the Aldrich Ames matter," the statement said.

The IG review at the CIA resulted in a number of disciplinary actions within that agency. Any review by Fine's office would be independent of the normal Justice Department operations and could exonerate department officials or recommend disciplinary action as well.

"The inspector general will coordinate this review with the Hanssen prosecution team, so as not to interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation and with Judge William Webster's review of the FBI's internal security functions and procedures in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort," the statement said.

FBI Director Louis Freeh already asked Webster, a former CIA and FBI director, to be chairman of a commission that would find out how much damage Hanssen's alleged activities did to U.S. security and how it went undetected for so long.

Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence official, was accused last month of spying for Moscow since 1985 in exchange for money and diamonds. Hanssen was a 27-year veteran of the bureau until his arrest. His alleged activities are believed to be especially damaging since he had access to secrets at the National Security Agency and the State Department, as well as at the FBI.

The case has already caused the Justice Department and the FBI to increase the use of polygraph tests and to conduct a continuing computer audit to see who is accessing top secret information.

Ashcroft announced those new steps on March 1.

"The director and I have agreed that [the increased use of polygraphs] should be commenced," Ashcroft said at a news conference.

But Ashcroft warned that polygraphs are not completely reliable and register false positives about 15 percent of the time.

Ames was arrested in 1995 and later pleaded guilty to spying for Moscow, also since 1985, in exchange for money. The Hanssen prosecution is pending.

Ashcroft said other measures to guard against internal FBI traitors include increased auditing of computer activity. Auditors would be looking for FBI employees who show "an inappropriate inquisitiveness of mind" when searching through secure U.S. databanks from their office computers.

But he cautioned that even such "inquisitiveness" does necessarily not mean that an employee is looking for secrets to sell to a foreign government.

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