NewsMax.com Wires
Tuesday, March 6, 2001

In addition to revealing the existence of an electronic eavesdropping tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington, these sources say, Hanssen tipped the Soviets off about real-time FBI monitoring of the Soviets' interception of top secret telephone traffic.

"There was a tremendous volume of calls taking place from the White House to other government agencies, and the Soviets got a lot of it," one source said. This included facsimile and data transmission circuits as well as telephone calls between Air Force One and the White House and between the White House and the National Security Agency, he said. The Soviets also listened in on the Department of Defense and State Department.

The Soviets operated their interceptions from the sixth floor of their embassy, at that time on 16th Street in northwest Washington, and a site in a trade representation building on Connecticut Avenue, U.S. intelligence officials said.

A report in the New York Times Sunday said that federal investigators believe Hanssen told Moscow about the secret tunnel operation, run by the FBI and the NSA, which sources told the paper had cost several hundred million dollars. The tunnel reportedly ran under the complex built on Washington's Wisconsin Avenue in the 1970s and 1980s to replace the 16th Street premises. However, owing to a dispute with the United States, the new building was not fully occupied until the 1990s, by which time the Soviet Union had collapsed. The complex is now the Russian Embassy.

The government charges that Hanssen, a 25-year veteran of the FBI and a counterintelligence expert, volunteered to spy for Moscow in 1985. He was arrested on Feb. 18.

According to former FBI officials, the Soviets used a sophisticated microwave device shipped to the 16th Street building through the Netherlands to listen in on U.S. electronic traffic. The operation was run by the GRU, Soviet military intelligence.

Using computers, the Soviets set up a "watch list" that would hone interceptions on calls that used words such as "CIA" or "strategic defense initiative." They would then transcribe the calls and send them to Moscow.

The calls were intercepted to glean sensitive personal information about U.S. government officials who might be having personal or financial problems that would make them vulnerable to an approach to spy for the Soviet Union.

To counter this, the FBI began to track what the Soviets were tracking, a U.S. intelligence official told UPI.

Hanssen also allegedly told the Soviets about a sophisticated system of street sensors that tracked Soviet diplomatic and embassy staff vehicles. The system was set up at key intersections downtown and was activated by the passage of Soviet vehicles, making surveillance much easier and almost foolproof, according to a former KGB defector interviewed by UPI.

Hanssen also alerted the Soviets to Washington downtown hotels and other locations that had become so-called Special Facilities of the National Security Agency. The Madison Hotel, where Soviet visitors often stayed, was one such building whose hallways and door frames had been modified into huge listening devices, U.S. intelligence officials said.

Regarding the FBI-NSA listening tunnel, U.S. government officials said that the NSA was using laser beams directed at glass surfaces of the embassy compound such as windows to monitor conversations, these sources said. The lasers are able to pick up the minute vibrations of window glass caused by conversations, which can then be recorded.

"The take we got wasn't all that great. The Russians aren't stupid," said one official.

CIA officials at agency headquarters across the river in Virginia, fearing that Soviet operators were using the same technology against them, installed double panes of glass plus screens and meshes, a former senior CIA official told UPI. "The place looked really weird," he said.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

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