Uncle John’s Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader

by Michael Brunsfeld

  The Japanese samurai were desperate. Although they had fought magnificently, they were badly outnumbered and, without the protection of the wall, they were exposed to the full onslaught of the Mongol invaders. As they waited on the beach to fight what they were sure was their last battle, all the samurai could do was pray for deliverance.

  Amazingly, it came.

  SAVED…AGAIN

  Out of the south a typhoon swept up and ripped through the invading armada. The devastation was astonishing. Almost 4,000 ships sunk and 100,000 soldiers were lost. The Japanese were jubilant. A “divine wind” had saved them from invasion, not once, but twice. Over time the legend grew: the divine wind would protect them from foreign invaders forever.

  Six hundred fifty years later the Japanese empire was once again in dire straits, facing invasion as Allied forces closed in during the final days of World War II. In a desperate attempt to turn the tide of war, the Japanese military sacrificed 5,000 young and untrained pilots in suicide missions against Allied warships.

  Their last-ditch effort to save Japan failed, but the suicide bombers became known by the Japanese word for “divine wind”—kamikaze.

  Six snowflake types: Needles, columns, plates, columns topped with plates, dendrites, and stars.

  SPY HUNT: GRAY DECEIVER, PART III

  Here’s part III of our story on one of the biggest mole hunts in FBI history. (Part II is on page 342.)

  FINGERED

  The FBI mole hunters had never suspected Robert Hanssen of spying before, but all residual doubt that he was their man disappeared when the KGB officer who sold them Hanssen’s file began to interpret the file’s contents.

  What about that mysterious sealed envelope marked “Don’t Open This”? The FBI waited until the retired KGB officer arrived to open it. The officer explained that when the spy left documents and computer discs at a dead drop, he wrapped them in two plastic garbage bags to protect them from the elements. The envelope contained one of the spy’s garbage bags. The KGB officer explained that only he and the spy had touched the bag; if Hanssen was the spy (and wasn’t wearing gloves when he wrapped the package), it would likely contain his fingerprints.

  The agents took the bag to the lab and succeeded in lifting two fingerprints from the bag. As they expected, the prints were Hanssen’s. Every piece of evidence in the KGB file pointed to him and him alone. He even had a thing for diamonds and strippers, just as Russian sources had been reporting for years.

  GRAYDAY

  The investigators put aside their investigation of GRAY DECEIVER, gave Hanssen the nickname GRAYDAY, and started investigating him. They arranged for Hanssen to be promoted to a new job at FBI headquarters, where he could be closely watched by hidden cameras. Then they tapped his office phone and searched his laptop computer. They couldn’t bug or search his house—his wife and two of his six kids still living at home were never gone long enough—but when a house across the street from Hanssen’s was put up for sale, the FBI bought it, moved in, and began watching Hanssen from there. Whenever Hanssen left home, undercover FBI agents secretly followed him.

  An Australian company makes eco-friendly coffins out of recycled newspaper.

  This time, the mole hunters’ work paid off: after about three months of constant surveillance, on the afternoon of February 18, 2001, Hanssen was caught red-handed leaving a package of computer discs and classified documents in a dead drop in Foxstone Park near his home in Vienna, Virginia. A payment of $50,000 in cash was retrieved from another dead drop in a nature center in Arlington, Virginia.

  The evidence against Hanssen was overwhelming, and he knew it. He confessed immediately and later agreed to a plea bargain in which he was spared the death penalty in exchange for cooperating fully with the FBI investigation into his crimes.

  Hanssen admitted that he’d been spying off and on for more than 20 years. He started in 1979, quit in 1981 when his wife caught him (a devout Catholic, she made him go to confession but never turned him in), started again in 1985, quit when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and started again in 1999. He continued spying until his arrest in 2001.

  GRAYBOOB

  The FBI had long assumed they were hunting a master spy, someone who knew how to cover his tracks and would be very hard to catch. They formed that impression over time as they failed to collect any incriminating evidence against Kelley (other than his jogging map), even though they were certain Kelley was the spy.

  But as the investigation into Hanssen continued, the mole hunters realized just how wrong they’d been. Hanssen was smart enough not to tell the Russians his real name, but he was no master spy—in fact, he could have been caught years earlier if the people around him had been paying attention and doing their jobs. Over the years Hanssen left so many clues to his spying that he practically glowed in the dark.

  He used FBI phone lines and answering machines to communicate with his KGB handlers in the 1980s.

  When the KGB paid him cash, Hanssen sometimes counted the money at work, then deposited it in a savings account in his own name, in a bank less than a block from FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.

  Native to Indiana? A species of spider, calponia Harrisonfordi, is named for Harrison Ford.

  At a time when he made less than $100,000 a year, Hanssen kept a gym bag filled with $100,000 in cash in his bedroom closet. One time he left $5,000 sitting on top of his dresser. His brother-in-law, Mark Wauck, also an FBI agent, saw the unexplained cash and reported it to his superiors, also noting that Hanssen had once talked of retiring to Poland, which was then still part of the Soviet bloc. An FBI agent retiring to a Communist country? The FBI never investigated the incident.

  THE PERSONAL TOUCH

  The FBI, and even the KGB, had assumed that Hanssen never met with any Russian agents, but they were wrong. Hanssen launched his spying career in 1979 by walking right into the offices of a Soviet trade organization that was known to be a GRU (the military version of the KGB) front and offering his services, even though he knew the office was likely to be under surveillance. When he made his first contact with the KGB in 1985, he did so by sending a letter through the U.S. mail to a known KGB officer who lived in Virginia. Both approaches were incredibly foolhardy, but Hanssen got away with it both times.

  In 1993 Hanssen botched an attempt to resume spying for GRU when he walked up to a GRU officer in the parking lot of the man’s apartment building and tried to hand him a packet of classified documents. The officer, thinking it was an FBI sting, reported the incident to his superiors at the Russian Embassy, who lodged a formal protest with the U.S. State Department. The FBI launched an investigation—which Hanssen closely followed by hacking into FBI computers—but the investigation was unsuccessful.

  In 1992 Hanssen hacked into a computer to gain access to Soviet counterintelligence documents. Then, fearing he might be caught, he reported his own hacking and claimed he was testing the computer’s security. His colleagues and superiors believed his story and were grateful to him for pointing out the weakness in the system. The incident was never investigated.

  AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT

  But perhaps the most inexplicable breach of security came in 1994, when Hanssen was transferred to an FBI post at the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions. As the Justice Department later described it, Hanssen was “wholly unsupervised” by either the State Department or the FBI for the next six years. In that time he didn’t receive a single job performance review. Hanssen spent much of his time out of the office visiting friends and colleagues; when he did go to the office he spent his time surfing the Internet, reading classified documents, and watching movies on his laptop. Then he resumed spying for the Russians.

  Giraffes were originally known as “cameleopards.”

  In 1997 Hanssen asked for a computer that would connect him to the FBI’s Automatic Case Support System (ACS) and got it, even though his job didn’t call for it. Soon after he got the computer, Hanssen was caught installing
password breaker software that allowed him to hack into password-protected files. When confronted, Hanssen said he was trying to hook up a color printer. His story went unchallenged and the incident was never investigated.

  Using the ACS systems, Hanssen downloaded hundreds, if not thousands, of classified documents and gave them to the Russians. At the same time, he repeatedly scanned the FBI’s files for his own name, address, and the locations of his various dead drops to check whether the FBI was onto him.

  He also stumbled onto the FBI’s investigation of Brian Kelley. Assuming that Kelley, too, was a mole, he warned the Russians about the investigation. Then he did what he could to keep the FBI focused on Kelley, so that he could continue his own spying.

  SUMMING IT UP

  In the years that Hanssen spied for the Russians, he handed over thousands of America’s most important military and intelligence secrets. He revealed the identities of scores of secret Russian sources, at least three of whom were executed, and he caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to American intelligence programs. Hanssen also sold computer software to the Russians that allowed them to track CIA and FBI activities. Someone in Russia then sold it to Al-Qaeda, which may have used it to track the CIA’s search for Osama Bin Laden.

  Hanssen was paid $600,000 for his efforts (and promised that another $800,000 was waiting for him in a Russian bank). He is the most damaging spy in FBI history and possibly in the history of the United States.

  Scarier than they sound: Banana spiders are considered by some the deadliest in the world.

  FAILING GRADE

  After Hanssen’s arrest, the inspector general of the Justice Department launched an investigation into how the mole hunt had gone so wrong and how Hanssen had been able to spy for so long without attracting suspicion.

  In August 2003, the inspector general issued a scathing report condemning the FBI mole hunters for focusing on the CIA without seriously considering the possibility that the mole might be in the FBI, especially since most of the biggest secrets known to have been compromised had come from the FBI. (The mole hunters’ explanation for how CIA agent Brian Kelley could have known so many FBI secrets: they thought he was seducing female FBI employees and selling their secrets to the Soviets.)

  THE HONOR SYSTEM

  The inspector general’s report also faulted the FBI for “decades of neglect” of its own internal security. Before Hanssen’s arrest, the Bureau operated on what was effectively the honor system: in his 25-year career, Hanssen never once had to take a lie detector test or submit to a financial background investigation, which might have turned up the KGB cash he was depositing in banks near FBI headquarters in his own name.

  Hanssen had virtually unlimited access to the FBI’s most sensitive material—over the years he handed over thousands of original, numbered documents to the Soviets and no one had noticed they were missing. He also had unrestricted, unmonitored access to the ACS computer system, which gave him access to thousands more documents. The ACS software did have an audit feature that would have revealed Hanssen’s searches for classified information or for references to himself, but the audit feature was rarely, if ever, used. Hanssen knew it and felt secure enough to conduct thousands of unauthorized and incriminating searches over the years.

  AFTERMATH

  • The FBI. No one involved in the Kelley/Hanssen mole hunt was disciplined or fired from the FBI, although several agents were promoted. The FBI says it has tightened security since the Hanssen arrest. The Bureau’s ACS computer system was scheduled to be replaced by a new $170 million software program called Virtual Case File in 2003. As of January 2005 only 10 percent of the system was in place, and the system was so flawed that the FBI was weighing whether to scrap the entire project and start over again.

  World’s smallest police station: A phone booth in Carabelle, Florida.

  • Robert Hanssen. On July 6, 2001, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage, and conspiracy; he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was supposed to cooperate with U.S. investigators, but he flunked a lie detector test when he was asked, “Have you told the truth?” So instead of being sent to a high-security prison, where he would have had some freedom of movement, he was assigned to a “supermax” prison in Florence, Colorado, where he is confined to his soundproof 7' x 12' cell for 23 hours a day.

  • Bonnie Hanssen. Because she cooperated with investigators and passed a lie detector test that showed she had no knowledge of her husband’s espionage after 1981, Bonnie Hanssen was allowed to collect the widow’s portion of her husband’s pension and to keep their three cars and family home.

  • Brian Kelley. After Hanssen’s arrest, Kelley was completely exonerated. He returned to the CIA and received an apology from the FBI. He did, however, lose his covert status when his identity was revealed by an investigative reporter writing a book about the Hanssen case. At last report he was still working at the CIA, teaching spy catchers how to avoid making the same mistakes that were made when he was targeted by the mole hunters.

  After Kelley’s identity was revealed in 2002, he went public with his concern that nothing had changed at the FBI and that the same mistakes could happen again. The mole hunters “were so overzealous, so myopic,” he told the Hartford Courant in 2002. “If these abuses happen to us, what chance does the average citizen have to protect their civil liberties?”

  * * *

  A Sandwich Is Born. During World War II, Americans soldiers stationed in Europe found three items in their ration kits: peanut butter, jelly, and bread. One day, legend has it, some soldier put the three together. Proof? There is no written record of the PB&J sandwich before the war, and after the war sales of peanut butter and jelly skyrocketed in America.

  The Pacific Ocean holds about 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons of water.

  SMUDGERS & SLEEPERS

  A few more bits of top-secret spy lingo.

  • Terminated with extreme prejudice: When a spy agency executes one of its own spies for betraying the agency. (As opposed to just firing—terminating—them.)

  • Fumigating: Searching a home or office to remove or neutralize any listening devices, or “bugs.”

  • The British disease: A reference to several members of the British upper classes who betrayed their country by becoming spies for the USSR after World War II.

  • Sleeper: A dormant spy; sometimes an employee of a government agency who won’t begin spying until he or she is promoted to a position with access to classified information.

  • Smudger: A photographer.

  • Case of the measles: An assassination made to look like a death from accidental or natural causes.

  • Shopworn goods: Spy information so old or out of date that it’s completely useless.

  • Jack in the box: A fake torso, sometimes inflatable, that’s put in a car to fool surveillance teams about how many people are riding in it.

  • Backstopping: Creating fake background material (employers, phone numbers, etc.) to enhance the credibility of a spy’s cover.

  • Spy dust: Invisible powder the KGB sprinkled on door knobs, inside cars, etc., so that they could track diplomats and suspected spies as they moved around Moscow.

  • Cover: The fake identity that a spy assumes to blend in with his or her surroundings.

  • Overhead: Planes or satellites that spy from the sky.

  • Cannon: Spies are sometimes paid large sums of cash. A cannon is a professional thief hired by an intelligence agency to steal the money back.

  • The Farm: Camp Peary, the 10,000-acre facility near Williamsburg, Virginia, where CIA agents get their spy training.

  No takeout? Polar bears roam an average 5,500 miles every year in search of food.

  VIVA LA REBELLION!

  You know about the colonists’ revolt against British rule in 1776, and the Confederate secession from the United States in 1861, but what about some of America�
�s lesser-known coups and rebellions?

  THE WHISKEY REBELLION (1794)

  Background: Staggering under a huge national debt after winning the Revolutionary War, the federal government looked for any revenue source they could find…including a tax on liquor. The large distilleries had well-established political connections, ensuring that their taxes remained low—six cents a gallon (about a dollar in today’s money). Small distillers and farmers, however, had no such connections and had to pay a tax of nine cents for every gallon of whiskey they produced.

  Rebellion: At the time, western Pennsylvania was the frontier, so far from civilization that the only way for farmers to get their grain to market was to distill it into spirits. Furthermore, most farmers couldn’t have paid even if they’d wanted to—they had very little money. Result: “revenooers” in the western counties were harassed, beat up…and seldom paid.

  Result: President George Washington conferred with his treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton. Keeping in mind the chaos of Shays’ Rebellion (page 269), they decided to draw a line in the sand in Pennsylvania and make an example of those farmers. Washington summoned the protesters to federal district court; they responded by setting up camps in the Monongahela Valley near Pittsburgh. Faced with several thousand armed tax protesters, Washington temporarily became a general again, leading 13,000 troops from several states’ militias to western Pennsylvania accompanied by Hamilton and General “Lighthouse Harry” Lee. It was the largest army ever commanded by Washington, and it was the first and last time that a sitting president would personally command an army in the field.