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FBI to start polygraph tests following spy probeDirector likely first to take lie detector test
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The FBI will begin making all of its employees undergo random polygraph tests probably within the next few weeks, according to high-level FBI officials. The looming policy change came as sources said Robert Hanssen, accused of selling U.S. classified information to the Russians, never had a polygraph test during his 25-year FBI career. Hanssen was arrested on Sunday at a park near his Vienna, Virginia, home while allegedly dropping classified materials into a secret location for pickup by Russian agents. He was charged on Tuesday in federal court with two counts of espionage activities from the 1980s.
As a symbolic gesture, officials said the first employee tested will likely be Director Louis Freeh, followed by the deputy director and other assistant directors. Officials admitted there is a cultural stigma to overcome at the bureau. "When CIA employees hear polygraph, they think 'normal course of doing business'," one FBI official said. "But when our guys hear polygraph they think of it as a tool used against criminals." The FBI's computer systems also are being redesigned, officials said, though not specifically in reaction to the Hanssen case. The redesign will include updating audit abilities and flagging mechanisms. For example, even though Hanssen searched his name several times to see if he was under investigation, the computer system did not raise any red flags. The officials also said they have not yet located the $600,000 Hanssen allegedly was paid for offering secrets to the Russians. But the officials said the search for funds will continue as long as necessary and that the bureau "wants the money back." The officials emphatically disputed press reports that Sergei Tretyakov, former first secretary of the Russian mission for the United Nations, was involved in the Hanssen Case. As previously reported, Russian documents acquired by the FBI last year allowed the bureau to focus its investigation on Hanssen. Before that, they had not been looking at him at all. When asked about how those documents were acquired, bureau officials had no comment. But they did say that the dossier gave them "fairly substantial knowledge of everything Hanssen gave up" to the Russians and that it provided a solid start for a damage assessment. Colleagues say accused spy knew everythingFBI agents had boxes of evidence and computer hard drives to dissect on Thursday, material taken from Hanssen's home. His former boss said Hanssen knew "everything" about U.S. intelligence activities. With the target of a covert, four-month-long surveillance in custody, agents were able to investigate openly -- and to speak out about the damage such a spy at Hanssen's level could do to intelligence operations. David Major, Hanssen's boss and a 20-year colleague at the FBI, told The Washington Post that Hanssen had access to "everything -- all sources, all methods, all techniques, all targets." "There's only a few people in counterintelligence that have to know everything, and he was one of them," Major said. Co-workers said Hanssen was incredibly knowledgeable about many topics -- including computer programming -- and that he had developed a system to automate the FBI's Washington Field Office teletype for receiving communications from agents in the field. "It's going to be horrible," Paul Moore, a former colleague who said he considers Hanssen a close friend, told the Post. "You develop a capability into the other side that puts information into your hands -- and somebody comes along and blows that up." Congress plans own investigationFBI agents returned on Wednesday to the home Hanssen shared with his wife and two of their six children, as lawmakers promised their own investigation. FBI agents were also at the State Department where Hanssen, a 25-year veteran FBI agent, had been posted since 1995. They interviewed former colleagues, trying to determine if they could tie Hanssen to any security breaches there. Hanssen has been charged with handing over classified documents to Soviet agents and with revealing the names of double agents working in what was the Soviet Union and now Russia. Two of the double agents allegedly unmasked by him were executed. He is being held without bond at an undisclosed location. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will hold hearings on the Hanssen case next Wednesday, according to a spokeswoman for committee chairman Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Alabama. Sen. Bob Graham, the ranking Democrat on the committee, said a quick response from Congress is necessary. "We've just had a case in which some of our important national secrets have been stolen over a period of 15 years," said Graham, D-Florida. Suspect 'didn't fit the profile'The FBI is still trying to assess the extent of the secrets lost in the case -- something that could not be done while Hanssen was under investigation. The agency began investigating Hanssen only late last year, FBI Director Louis Freeh said. "He knew all the trip wires," said Richard Alu, a retired FBI counterintelligence agent who worked with Hanssen for several years. The FBI redoes background checks on agents every three years or so, so any red flags that might have indicated a problem with Hanssen -- financial troubles, marital problems, drug or alcohol problems -- would have turned up. "He didn't fit the profile," said Alu. FBI officials filed a 110-page affidavit with a federal court that accuses Hanssen of dropping off intelligence information for the Russians on more than 20 occasions. The material included more than two dozen computer disks and thousands of pages of government documents, the bureau charged. At least a dozen parks in northern Virginia are identified as dead-drop locations in the FBI's thickly detailed affidavit, which purports to quote directly from correspondence between Russian handlers and their source. CNN Congressional Correspondent Kate Snow, Justice Department Correspondent Kelli Arena, Reporter Kathleen Koch and The Associated Press contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: FBI digs more into spying case RELATED SITES:
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