NewsMax.com
Wednesday, March 7, 2001

Robert P. Hanssen, 56, was one of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's most-trusted counterintelligence operatives.

He now stands charged with having spied for 15 years on his own country, first for the now-defunct Communist Soviet Union and then its successor, the Russian government.

In exchange, the United States government alleges, Hanssen was paid $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and deferred deposits in a Moscow bank.

If found guilty, he could be put to death.

Almost with each passing day since Hanssen's arrest in late February, there have been leaks from government sources as to the extent of secret information about America's intelligence operations that he could have passed along to Moscow.

The latest was the possibility that he tipped off Russia about a secret tunnel United States counterspies had burrowed beneath its embassy in Washington as a means of listening in on its espionage efforts against this country.

Now, Knight-Ridder news service is reporting that:

It's possible Hanssen could have sold Russia some of America's most-precious intelligence secrets, including information on how the United States tracks foreign submarines and sniffs out nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

If intelligence officers' fears are well-founded, it means a number of major U.S. intelligence programs have been rendered useless and more than a billion dollars spent in research and investment is for nothing.

"If Hanssen sold the Russians everything he knew about these programs, the damage would be devastating, among the worst we've ever seen," said one American official.

"These things can be compromised in an instant. They work only as long as the other side doesn't know what we can do."

Retired Air Force Gen. James Clapper, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said:

"A lot of this is pretty exotic technology. It's conceivable [the alleged disclosures] could be quite egregious."

Some of the technology, Clapper said, is used in monitoring the size and characteristics of nuclear test blasts.

"It's the Holy Grail of anti-submarine warfare," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence analyst for the Federation of American Scientists.

"That would be something that a foreign intelligence service would be eager to get its hands on. Their interest would not so much be in duplicating it as much as discovering ways to evade our collection abilities."

What the intelligence authorities are talking about is something called "Measurement and Signature Intelligence" and known in the spy trade as MASINT.

Its programs can detect and track submarines, missiles and other weapons by analyzing their sounds, heat, radiation, chemical traces and other physical evidence.

They go right to the very core of how the United States defends itself against potential enemies.

Hanssen's making the secrets of those technologies available to Russia could render useless a U.S. nuclear submarine's ability to avoid detection, make it easier for Russian subs carrying missiles to lurk off the U.S. coast and help Russia conceal data on its missile and weapons tests.

MASINT devices are also used at border crossings to detect movement of nuclear and chemical weapons.

With those compromised, it would be easier for terrorists to slip weapons of mass destruction onto American territory.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Hanssen Case
Russia

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