Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America by David Wise

face of what Hanssen said he assumed were the usual “bureaucratic obstacles.” He went on in the same vein:
    I would not have contacted you if it were not reported that you were held in esteem within your organization, an organization I have studied for years. I did expect some communication plan in your response. I viewed the postal delivery as a necessary risk and do not wish to trust again that channel with valuable material. I did this only because I had to so you would take my offer seriously, that there be no misunderstanding as to my long-term value, and to obtain appropriate security for our relationship from the start.

    Hanssen was using old-fashioned spycraft. As he well knew, even in the high-tech age of computers, the KGB and for that matter the CIA, perhaps surprisingly, clung to traditional methods of contacting agents and exchanging documents and money. Since both sides rightly assumed that their telephones were tapped, the use of signal sites and dead drops offered a measure of security that spies found attractive. Typically, the intelligence officer or agent would contact each other by leaving a signal, a piece of tape on a telephone pole or perhaps a chalk mark on a mailbox, to indicate that a drop had been loaded or cleared. Usually these signals were placed in such a way and at a height that someone driving by could see them without getting out of a car.
    True, using hiding places to stash documents or money carried a small risk that children playing in a park might discover the secret, or someone’s dog might snuffle into a dead drop. However, that slight danger was offset by the fact that the use of these established methods meant that an officer and his agent would not be caught together with incriminating material, as could happen in a personal meeting.
    But the computer-savvy Hanssen hoped to drag the KGB into the age of cyberspace. He suggested they contact each other on a computer “bulletin board,” using “appropriate encryption.” Hanssen must have realized there was little chance of changing the ways of the KGB, for he wrote that, in the meantime, “Let us use the same site again. Same timing. Same signals.” Hanssen proposed that the next exchange at a dead drop take place on March 3, 1986. *
    Hanssen was not going to fuss over the money with his new paymasters. “Thank you for the 50,000,” he wrote. “As far as the funds are concerned, I have little need or utility for more than the 100,000. It merely provides a difficulty since I can not spend it, store it or invest it easily without triping [sic] ‘drug money’ warning bells.
    “Perhaps some diamonds as security to my children and some good will so that when the time comes, you will accept by [sic] senior services as a guest lecturer.”
    Even at this early stage, sixteen years before he was caught, Hanssen was aware that despite all of his professional precautions, the day might come when he was discovered and would have to flee. “Eventually,” he wrote, “I would appreciate an escape plan. (Nothing lasts forever.)”
    In the same letter, Hanssen made clear that he had access to communications intelligence and the supersecret collection methods of the National Security Agency. He warned the KGB of a “new technique” used by the NSA, which he described in detail.
    Having already betrayed Martynov, Motorin, and Yuzhin and, as far as he knew, ensuring that they would be shot, Hanssen wanted to makecertain that the KGB believed he was a genuine mole whose information could be trusted. Referring to the three FBI sources, he wrote:
    I can not provide documentary substantiating evidence without arousing suspicion at this time. Nevertheless, it is from my own knowledge as a member of the community.… I have seen video tapes of debriefings and physically saw the last, though we were not introduced. The names were provided to me as part of my duties as one of the few who needed to know. You have some avenues of inquiry.