The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Damaging FBI Agent in U.S. History (Hardcover)

by Elaine Shannon (Author), Ann Blackman (Author) "Bob Hanssen started the morning of February 18, 2001, much like any other Sunday..." (more)
Key Phrases: blown operations, dead drop, signal site, Bob Hanssen, Opus Dei, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
The focus of this intriguing story is Robert Hanssen, an unassuming man here labeled "the most damaging FBI agent in U.S. history." Pretending to be a religious family man who hated communism, Hanssen used his top-secret clearance to gain information on the activities of FBI agents and double agents in Moscow secrets he leaked to the Soviets over the years for a total of $470,000. His betrayal is linked to the execution of at least three U.S. spies. Only a plea bargain saved him from a death sentence. Drawing on information gathered from more than 150 interviews with Hanssen's friends, neighbors, colleagues, lawyers, professors, classmates, roommates, psychiatrists, and priests, Time reporters Shannon and Blackman provide an in-depth analysis of a hypocritical man consumed with possessing power over others. Vise's The Bureau and the Mole provides greater context for Hanssen's eventual downfall. Recommended for criminal justice collections and large public libraries. Tim Delaney, Canisius Coll., Buffalo
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The story of FBI special agent Bob Hanssen was told in David Vise's The Bureau and the Mole [BKL D 15 01], and now the story of this spy extraordinaire is retold, this time by two Time magazine reporters. In February 2001, Hanssen was arrested as a double agent for Russian intelligence after what turned out to be the biggest sellout of U.S. national security secrets in the long history of the FBI. The version of the story presented here is based on extensive interviews, many with people who have not spoken about Hanssen before, and the emphasis is on how the FBI tracked a mole, found out who he was, and laid a trap for him. Interesting, too, is the authors' account of FBI culture under J. Edgar Hoover and the differences and similarities in post-Hoover days. Calling Hanssen the "quintessential suburban dad," the authors relate how this seemingly innocuous and, frankly, rather boring man transformed himself into "one of the most damaging spies ever to work against the United States." Having access to intelligence and counterintelligence and making the decision to sell what he knew time and time again was, apparently, a way for this chronic "outsider" to exert power. The two books taken together cover every detail and nuance of the case. Buy wherever the first one proved popular. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company (January 2, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316718211
• ISBN-13: 978-0316718219
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #282,304 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best by far!, February 8, 2002

By A Customer

I just finished the two Hanssen books, this one and The Bureau and the Mole, and there is no comparison. I heard a lot from Vise on the radio, but his book is essentially a quickie padded with psychobabble guessing about Hanssen's thoughts and motives. Vise has a few sexy stories and fills around them with chapters of inexplicable praise for Louis Freeh, who must have helped Vise a lot to get such favorable treatment himself when he was being drummed out of the FBI. The Spy Next Door, on the other hand, is carefully researched and beautifully written. The authors work hard trying to explain why anyone with Hanssen's all-American background would commit such heinous crimes, but in the end, they refuse to speculate, laying out what they learned (a lot) and stopping before they go too far. It's a sad tale, but an important one. An easy read, too. Highly recommended.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Latest Spy . . . . But Probably Not the Last, February 3, 2002

By	William Holmes "semloh2287" (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Shannon and Blackman have written an interesting book about the career of Robert Philip Hanssen, the FBI "mole" who was arrested in February 2001 for spying for the KGB and its successors.

The authors' prose is clear and crisp, and in the end they settle for a "just the facts, ma'am" approach to the story. The book discusses Hanssen's childhood, education, career with the FBI, religious convictions, sexual fantasies, as well as the secrets he betrayed. Hanssen emerges as a study in contradictions: a vocal anti-Communist who spies for the Soviet Union; a devout Catholic who sells vital secrets to an atheist government; an apparent prude who patronizes a stripper and posts odd fantasies about his sex life on the Internet.

Hanssen betrayed everything that he claimed was important to him--his wife, his family, his friends, his religion, and his country. But the motive for his horrendous crimes, which he committed over the course of more than twenty years, is anything but clear. I would have loved it if this book had had more to say about the psychology of a spy, but it didn't. How can someone like Hanssen wake up and go to work every morning, knowing what he's risking and what he's done? Why doesn't the contradiction between his public image and his life cause him to break down? Is he able to compartmentalize things, so that the "good" Hanssen can live his life while the "bad" Hanssen" lives a lie? Is he just a sociopath, who doesn't really care about anyone or anything but himself? Maybe the FBI's own behavioral science unit will weigh in on this subject one day, but Shannon and Blackman don't venture down this dangerous trail. For better or worse, they describe "what" Hanssen is without really explaining "why" he is.

Another gap in the book is that, apart from a few generalizations, it doesn't address why the FBI and CIA seem so incompetent when it comes to catching spies (not that the KGB comes off looking a whole lot better). Perhaps the problem is that resources aren't allocated well, or that FBI and CIA personnel aren't trained to recognize the behavioral patterns of a spy--whatever the reason, the book largely leaves that problem to the reader's imagination.

The thing that should really strike you about this book is the realization that, for the last 25 years, there has always been at least one--usually several--moles who are busily selling vital American secrets. And those are just the ones that we know about. There is no obvious reason to think that there aren't just as many spies today as there have been in the last two decades. A book like this cries out for an explanation: what, if anything, are the FBI and the CIA doing to make sure that a disaster like Hanssen doesn't happen again?

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The best Hanssen book so far, January 30, 2002

By	cb (va) - See all my reviews

This is the best of the three Hanssen books published so far, having read all three.
This is the most deeply-researched, and the one that deals most extensively with the Hanssen case. David Vise's book, for instance, diverges repeatedly when it gimickally tries to juxtapose Hanssen's spying with Louis Freeh's career.