Quotes about the Robert Hanssen Case, Part III

Quotes about the Robert Hanssen Case

Quotes 3

"There is a marvelous old Russian proverb. It says, ‘Another man's soul is darkness.' Does anybody ever really know anybody else?"--Milt Bearden, a retired senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency

"I guess if somebody's really motivated to spy for money, they're going to do it."--Sen. Richard Shelby

"The lesson that Americans should take away from this is that there is no way to say there will never be another spy. No way."--Paul Redmond, former head of counterintelligence at the CIA

"You can never fully stop spying. What you can do is to try to take every reasonable precaution to catch spies in your midst."--Former SecDef William Cohen

"He wanted to touch the wire. It was like he was wondering, ‘Can I do it?’"--CI Centre Professor David Major

"He seemed like a quiet, decent guy. He thought he was a little smarter than everyone else, but he probably was. All those people who are in this occupation are arrogant."--Ernie Rizzo, a coworker in the Chicago Police's C-5 Department

"I thought he was a very intelligent guy, but he was different. He was something of an introvert. As most agents go, they're extroverts. The ideal agent is a used-car salesman. You've got to be able to sell yourself."--Former FBI colleague Richard Alu

"The most important lesson to be learned from this incident is that most security breaches are the work of insiders, not outsiders." – Richard Hunter, a security analyst at the Gartner Group Inc.

"Security is not mainly about software or biometrics. First and foremost, it's about people and policies."– Richard Hunter who also is a former NSA employee

"What goes on behind the firewall can be even more damaging because of the degree of access insiders have."--Eric Friedberg, a computer crime consultant at Stroz and Associates

"Most of us knew he was an [FBI] agent. That's where we figured the arrogance came from."--Mike Shotwell, president of the homeowners association

"There are only two safeguards. Very good compartmentalization and good counterintelligence."--Paul Redmond, former chief of counterintelligence at the CIA

"They may no longer be Reds. They may no longer be Soviets. They may call themselves the SVR instead of the KGB. But Russian agents are keeping up their espionage efforts against the United States with as much vigor as in the bad old days when the Berlin Wall was the front line of cloak-and-dagger superpower combat."--Michael Kilian, Chicago Tribune

"Spying is a matter of habit with them. It is how they have traditionally dealt with one another. It is how they run their government."--Jeffrey Bergner, professor of national security studies at Georgetown University

"This is a spy who remained active until handcuffed. There were essentially no limits on what Hanssen was willing to do."--Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy I. Bellows

"It is well known that the U.S. intelligence services harbor a passion for tunneling. Take for instance the Berlin tunnel from the 1950s."--Tatyana Samolis, spokeswoman for the SVR foreign intelligence service

"To betray, you must first belong. I never belonged."--Kim Philby shortly before his death in 1988

“A spy is one of the loneliest people in the world. He is completely dependent on his handler.”--Dr. David Charney, a psychiatrist who has spent 20 hours interviewing Earl Pitts about his career as a spy

“The family is devastated. We don’t even know who he is.”--Fran Wauck, Hanssen’s mother-in-law

"It's unbelievable to me, and I can't imagine him doing something like that. But I love him just the same."--Vivian Hanssen, his mother

"This is not a textbook example of caution. This is a textbook example of risk."--Fred Farley, a past president of the American Psychological Assn. and a specialist in extreme behavior

"I had been a prisoner of war of the Nazis and then I couldn't go back to my country because of the communists. That he learned Russian from me is strange. I was anti-Soviet and anti-Communist, of course, very much so, and said so in my classes."--Momcilo Rosi, a Yugoslavian immigrant who had fled from communism in 1950 and taught Russian to Hanssen

"It probably looked like a windfall, but they [the Russians] must have been turning themselves inside out trying to figure out if this was too good to be true."--Harry "Skip" Brandon, a retired FBI counterintelligence agent

"All I'll say is, I hear there's a new dress code now in Moscow Center–everybody has to walk around naked"–[so they can't slip files out of the building under their clothes]--A senior FBI official

"If you've lived in the real world, you know there is no absolutely fail- safe setup that will quickly and immediately identify a good man or woman who goes sour. So our focus will be on shortening the distance from detection to defection."--Judge William Webster, former FBI and CIA director

"I think the lesson that wasn't learned from the Ames case is that you can't stop that. As long as there's a country that's willing to pay underpaid government employees millions of dollars, there's going to be espionage. You can give all the polygraphs you want and have compartmented access, but somebody has to have access to the secrets or they're no good. If you have KGB agents on the payroll of the U.S., some people have to know who they are or they're of no use."--Mark Hulkhower, former prosecutor

"Tom Sheer looks like the smartest man in America."--New York FBI spokesman Joe Valiquette. Assistant FBI Director Sheer, who headed the FBI's Manhattan office, resigned from there in 1987 saying his $72,500 salary left him broke. In 1985, seven agents a month were leaving the FBI from NYFO because they couldn't afford to live in the area on a government salary. Hanssen at the time was making $46K.

"There probably will be other spies. Don't be surprised."--Sen. Richard Shelby

"It is time to seclude myself from active service. . . . Something has aroused the sleeping tiger."--Bob Hanssen

"He was really tormented professionally. He was a lot smarter than a lot of the people he worked for, and they really kicked him around."--an acquaintance

“She says she’s got a chain around her neck and she can’t get up.”--Liz Rahimi talking about the reaction of Vivian Hanssen to her son's alleged espionage. Rahimi is Bob's sister-in-law.