Robert Hanssen was the chief of counterintelligence at the FBI and a long-running mole for the USSR and then Russia. Per John Kiriakou, when assets Hanssen was betraying began to be executed, Hanssen — in his counterintelligence-chief capacity — pointed the FBI at his CIA counterpart Brian Kelly: “It’s that CIA guy, Brian Kelly.”[1][2]
The frame
Per Kiriakou: the FBI put Kelly on leave without pay and surrounded his house 24 hours a day with agents. Other FBI agents traveled to Oregon, where Kelly’s daughter was working in a nursing home, and told her: “You have to get your father to confess, because if we arrest him without a confession we’re going to ask for the death penalty.” Kelly: “I don’t know what’s happening here. It’s not me.” Time elapsed before Hanssen was identified as the actual mole: a year and a half.[2][3]
The dead-drop tape
Per John Kiriakou, the operational confirmation of Hanssen as the mole came from a recording device the FBI had placed at a dead-drop site under a footbridge in Vienna, Virginia. After the drop was made and the mole did the pickup, the FBI retrieved the device and brought it back to FBI headquarters: “They were all gathered around the table with a recorder to see who it is, and they pressed play — and it was their boss, Hanssen.”[4]
The plea-deal pension
Hanssen retained Kiriakou’s eventual attorney. Per Kiriakou: “They had him dead to rights. There was no chance to ever win. And he ended up taking a plea, and the only thing he got in exchange for the plea was that his wife could have his pension. That was it. He died a year ago or two years ago at the Supermax ADX Florence. He never saw the light of day.”[5][6]