Read Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America for Free Online Page B

that type.”
    Partly it was his appearance, and the way he dressed. Under J. Edgar Hoover, FBI agents were required to wear white shirts and conventional business attire. “But after 1972,” Alu said, “when Hoover died and he didn’t roll the stone back after three days, the dress code changed dramatically. Not for Bob; he still wore the white shirt, the dark clothes.”
    Among at least some of Hanssen’s fellow agents, his somber mienand conservative attire earned him the nickname “Dr. Death” and “Dr. Doom.” Or, Alu said, “some people called him ‘the mortician.’ ”
    “He kind of lived in the shadows,” said John F. Lewis, Jr., a former assistant FBI director in charge of the intelligence division. “If there was a shadow in the room, he’d be sitting in it. He was very, very bright. He was good at analytical work; his problem was he didn’t work well with others. He was the last person in the world to say let’s have a drink with.”
    Like Lewis, Phillip A. Parker, who was chief of the division’s Soviet section in 1982 when Hanssen worked in the budget unit, remembered him as “a lurker,” always hovering at the side of any gathering.
    Donald E. Stukey, Parker’s successor, considered Hanssen irksome. “When I was chief of the Soviet section, he’d come in once in a while. He had an annoying habit, if you were conducting a meeting in your office, he would stand in the doorway until you finally said, ‘What do you want?’ ”
    One veteran FBI counterintelligence officer, Edward J. Curran, knew Hanssen both in New York and at headquarters. “I found him to be very reclusive; his demeanor was somewhat uncomfortable. He was very thoughtful, very reserved, very quiet. Very poor in groups, always liked to get you aside in a corner. He’s kind of in your space. You’d just try to get away from the guy. He’s the kind of guy, you see him in the hall at headquarters, you’d turn the other way and try to escape.”
    Hanssen’s boss, Joe Tierney, thought this view of Hanssen, which was shared by many in the division, was overdrawn, and he liked him. “He was more colorless in dress than the average agent, but not gloomy. He was a very bright guy. He was seriously religious.” He remembered Hanssen as tall and gaunt, with pale skin. “He had kind of a nervous smile, sort of self-conscious. He smiled a lot.”
    Hanssen’s ability to explain technical matters to his superiors, the quality that Tierney had admired, may have been helped by some coaching from Dick Alu. “This guy was extremely bright, one of the smartest people I’d ever run into,” Alu said. “We were trying to come up with management techniques to measure how effective we were, to justify our programs to Congress. Bob came up with terminology and I’d say to Bob, ‘I understand, you understand what you’re talking about, but you got to present it to the management here who might not understand the terms you are using.’ ”
    Alu told Hanssen, “You’ve got to use words like ‘Dick and Jane carrieda pail of water up the hill.’ I could just see the wry expression on his face. He just didn’t suffer fools gladly. Why should I have to reduce myself to this level? I said, ‘You gotta be able to communicate with people. You communicate with whatever level they are.’ ”
    Hanssen’s friends in the bureau were few in number. To many, he came across as arrogant, someone who did not bother to conceal the fact that he thought himself brighter than his coworkers. The colleagues he did get to know well were those he apparently considered his intellectual equals.
    In the bureau, Hanssen made no secret of his conservative political views. He talked about religion to anyone who would listen. He was vehemently antiabortion, and to all appearances a strong anti-Communist. He had no use for gays and lesbians.
    Directly across the hall from Hanssen’s office on the fourth floor were the division’s analytical units. Paul Moore,