Quotes about the Robert Hanssen Case, Part IV

Quotes about the Robert Hanssen Case

Quotes 4

"I will tell you more, and it is obvious now, thanks to our sources in special services who informed us, we knew everything about the tunnel.”--Retired KGB Col. Igor Prelin, interviewed in a Los Angeles Times article, who said the Russians had cut the listening cables in the early 1990s.

“What I managed to do was not demolished, was not swept away. The service is alive and kicking and maybe even biting.”--Leonid Shebarshin, the last director of the Soviet KGB, on the Russian intelligence service

"For me, he was not a traitor. He was my comrade. He was my colleague. He was a person who was trying to help my country. And to hell with your country."--Leonid Shebarshin on Rick Ames

"In almost 65 percent of the cases the prime motivation...was revenge. Revenge for a...true wrong, or a perception in his or her head that something terrible had been done to him or her by that system."--Former CIA case officer Jack Platt

"It's a very dangerous game, mind you, but there's also a great deal of thrill about it."--Former CIA case officer Jack Platt

"I once said to Gennadiy, what are you going to offer me? Five hours in a bread line? Nine square meters of living space in Moscow?"--CIA case officer Jack Platt to KGB officer Gennadiy Vasilenko who tried to recruit him

“I've been thinking about that since the first time I saw his name on the computer when it first came up, and I felt like I got kicked in the stomach. I could see his mind saying, 'I am sitting in this meeting and they're discussing how to catch spies, how to find people who are agents, and I'm the one they really want, and I'm right next to them.'”--CI Centre Professor David Major on CBS 60 Minutes II regarding Hanssen's motivations

"He was a man in the shadows. He was always there. And if you asked his opinion, it would be brilliant, but he wouldn't start the conversation."--CI Centre Professor David Major

"He would never would've popped up. This was not a money man; it's a man who wore the same suit all the time, sometimes the same tie all the time."--CI Centre Professor David Major

"As a person he would've been the one you wanted inside your inner sanctum. He was that good; he was that smart."--CI Centre Professor David Major

"Not only would he talk about them operationally but he was a religious person. He would put it in a religious context. He would say that (the) Soviet Union is bound to fail because...because they're run by communists. And communists don't have God in their life."--CI Centre Professor David Major

"He was the master spy, the perfect spy, the Le Carre perfect spy. And that means to be the perfect spy, you have to be the perfect spy for a long period of time. Not just once. And the longer he does it, the better the rush."-CI Centre Professor David Major

“Everything you've ever known suddenly is not true. My husband, my church, my government--everything was thrown up in the air, and I had to go put the puzzle pieces back together.”--Paula Hill, whose first husband, Richard W. Miller, was the first FBI agent ever convicted of espionage.

“This appears to be like a 500-year flood. We plan against 100-year floods. We can't ordinarily build our lives around a 500-year flood. But we can learn from them.”--Former Director of the FBI and the CIA, William Webster, who is leading up a review of the Hanssen case

"She's going to have to find a place for her and the two youngest ones to live. There's a lot of financial stuff that's a problem."--Leroy Wauck, Bonnie Hanssen's father

"Before this happened [to us], I would have been out there saying, 'We ought to hang Hanssen.' Now the shoe's on the other foot. I feel for his family."--Rob Nicholson, brother of Jim Nicholson, a CIA officer arrested in 1996 for spying for Russia

"I can't believe it. I can't believe he would lead two lives."--Vivian Hanssen, Hanssen's mother