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section for the division. As such, Tierney supervised both the budget unit and the bureau’s Soviet analytical unit. Tierney, too, was impressed with Hanssen. “He was a very bright guy, and his assignment was very broad. He had an ability to explain technical stuff to people like myself who needed to know it.”
    It was almost inevitable, therefore, that within the budget unit Hanssen was detailed to the bureau’s secret and highly sensitive Dedicated Technical Program. The name was deliberately vague, designed to mask the fact that it was the FBI’s system for developing and refining bugs, wiretaps, and even more exotic spy gadgetry used against foreign embassies and other counterintelligence targets. “He worked on DTP, which paid for everything technical, chiefly electronic surveillance,” Tierney confirmed.
    “The program paid for R and D and acquisition of equipment. DTP would make the proposal and spend the money when it came through.” In some instances, Hanssen would learn where a bug or other device was to be planted. “He would not necessarily know where it was going. But if it was a custom-made device for one installation, he would probably know where it was going in.”
    When the bureau’s technical experts came up with suggestions for more sophisticated bugging devices, they would have to go to Hanssen. “They’re always trying to make transmitters consume less power, make them smaller and better disguised,” Tierney said. “He’s taking the ideas and running them by the execs in the division; have the engineers gone gaga? Is this something we really need or is it marginal?”
    As a result of his position, Hanssen knew the full array of the FBI’s surveillance equipment, from miniature video cameras that could be concealed in a wall or ceiling, to tiny transmitters able to broadcast room conversations, even whispers. “He would have a pretty good gripon what were the strengths and inadequacies of our technical capacity,” Tierney said. “He knew what we were dreaming of having and didn’t have yet.”
    Hanssen, in short, was emerging as the FBI’s Wizard of Oz. But unlike L. Frank Baum’s fictional wizard, Hanssen was both real and capable. He not only had an overview of the bureau’s ability to bug and tap its counterintelligence targets, he served as a watchman over the entire program. “He would monitor what had been approved two years before,” Tierney said. “To see if the gadgets had been bought. He spent a lot of time on encrypted radio gear that we used internally.”
    The encrypted radios were a vital tool for the counterintelligence agents. When the FBI places a Russian intelligence officer under surveillance, it is well aware that the KGB (and now its successor, the SVR) monitors the airwaves to see if there is unusual radio traffic in an area—a tip-off that the FBI might be tailing one of their people. The encryption at least makes it more difficult for the Russians to be sure that the traffic is the FBI’s.
    Tierney appreciated Hanssen’s skills and came to rely on him. “He was a geek, but fairly polished. He was a ham radio operator. He was not a degreed electrical engineer. The people in the engineering section, in TSD, the Technical Services Division, kind of resented it because he knew so much. If they were giving us a snow job he could tell us.”
    Although Hanssen’s technical skills were recognized, he remained an aloof and rather remote figure, an outsider to most of his coworkers. That was certainly how Hanssen seemed to Dick Alu, a former FBI agent who worked with him in the budget unit for two years.
    “Your typical FBI agent would be a used-car salesman whom you trusted—if that’s possible. An agent to be effective has to be able to sell himself. You had to have good interpersonal skills. Bob did not have good interpersonal skills. Bob was the odd man out. Bob did not socialize after work. ‘Hey, want to go out for a couple of pops?’ Bob was not