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American Morning

Hanssen Sentenced to Life; Interview with Karen Chiao

Aired May 10, 2002 - 07:20   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, within the next couple of hours, in fact, a notorious double agent, Robert Phillip Hanssen, is expected to be sentenced to life in prison. In exchange for his guilty plea, Hanssen escaped a possible death sentence.

But as CNN's David Ensor reports, it was the bizarre double life of the infamous agent that had all the makings of a spy novel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There is not one, but at least two Robert Hanssens, experts and friends say. Entirely compartmentalized personalities, often with opposite views on any given subject.

Take espionage. Russia's mole in the FBI for over 20 years now tells interrogators, quote, "I could have been a devastating spy, I think, but I didn't want to be a devastating spy. I wanted to get a little money and to get out of it."

A little money? More than $600,000. Not a devastating spy? Not even his friends like former FBI colleague Paul Moore believe that one.

PAUL MOORE, CENTER FOR COUNTERINTELLIGENCE STUDIES: His ambition is to play the spy game better than anybody has ever played it before. He wants to be the best spy ever.

DAVID VISE, AUTHOR, "THE BUREAU AND THE MOLE": We are talking about the most prolific and damaging spy in American history.

ENSOR: Hanssen was abused by his father, experts say, and learned as a young man to compartmentalize those feelings so as to survive.

VISE: He was able for more than 20 years, without the Russians ever learning his identity, to be a spy, to be a solid FBI analyst, to be a patriotic American, to commit treason, to be a church-going man, and to have blood on his hands.

ENSOR: Sex is another area where there are two other Hanssens. One who spent some of his spying money from the Russians on a stripper he picked up here. Another, church-going devout Opus Dei Catholic who spoke up when FBI agents were planning a farewell for a colleague at a nude dancing bar.

MOORE: He was just tremendously against that, absolutely sincere. "You should not go to these places, it's wrong if you go to the places. It's a sin if you go to the places."

VISE: Robert Hanssen put a secret spy camera in the bedroom of his home so that his best friend, Jack Hoschouer, could sit in the den and watch on the big-screen TV while Robert Hanssen had sex with his wife Bonnie.

ENSOR: A new book by Lawrence Schiller and Norman Mailer quotes Hanssen's friend Jack Hoschouer as saying, "The spy even suggested giving his wife Bonnie an illegal date rape drug, then letting his friend rape her." The friend demurred.

MOORE: There's a psychology that drove the whole thing, and it's a sickness, it's a sick psychology.

ENSOR (on camera): Hanssen, the religious patriot, understands only too well, friends and experts say, why the other Hanssen, the twisted sexual adventurer and master trader, now faces life in prison.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And from the notorious now to the courageous, we're going to put a little different spin on the spy game and take a look at what it's like to be married to a secret agent. In a new book called "Spies' Wives," dozens of CIA spouses write about their undercover life.

And Karen Chiao, the coeditor and author, is the wife of a now retired CIA agent. She joins us this morning from Washington -- welcome, good to see you, Karen.

KAREN CHIAO, AUTHOR, "SPIES' WIVES": Good morning -- welcome. Thank you for having me.

ZAHN: Our pleasure.

Well we should say you had a pretty long track run as the wife of a CIA agent. Your husband retired after some 23 years of your being posted in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Germany, Manila, Rome. In the process, you raised a daughter. What was the most challenging part of your life during those years?

CHIAO: For me, it was just getting adjusted to the new surroundings that I was in. You know this was before we had e-mail and cell phones. You know we were not -- when we were over there, we were very isolated from our families. But eventually, it improved or I aged well, and I accepted it.

ZAHN: Now there are a number of pretty pointed anecdotes for women, some of whom, you know, shared their stories anonymously with you about what the isolation drove them to do. How many problems did these wives have as they went, sometimes in some cases, for six-month stretches and never even seeing their husbands, not even knowing where they were?

CHIAO: We did not want to sugarcoat it. We told the women to write whatever they wanted and we would publish it. We tried not to over-edit it. We wanted their voice to be heard.

We were very proud of these women and of ourselves, also. Marianne (ph) and I said that we would be very frank, and we wanted to write openly. And so, therefore, you see our warts, but you also see the courage of these women.

ZAHN: Well, share an anecdote about where you think courage was displayed, as one just went about trying to lead their daily life.

CHIAO: I think the story about the woman who recovers from alcoholism is one of the most courageous in the book. She had her own demons to battle, and she battled them successfully. And now has been recovered for many years.

And I'm just proud of all the women that are in the book. I think we all showed courage. And you know we were ordinary women who served under extraordinary circumstances. Most of us had no training whatsoever, and yet when we went overseas we were expected to perform for the U.S. government and, you know, to maintain our husbands' secrecy and also, you know, live an exemplary life -- or try to, put it that way.

ZAHN: We should make it clear that even your own daughter didn't know her father was a spy until she was 17 years old. How did she find out?

CHIAO: Well, she and I have different recollections on this. I thought that she had written a letter to the agency protesting Chile, and that was when we told her that her father worked for the CIA. Now she has a recollection where she learned from a fellow classmate whose father had already told him who he worked for.

Either way, it was a difficult period, but she was also 17, so it would be difficult anyway. But you know she felt we had lied to her all those years, and you know we tried to explain that we did that to protect her. You know, this way, she didn't have to lie. So, you know, she thought her father was State Department and she could maintain that.

ZAHN: Well it's interesting that we should talk to you today, a day that we're going to see Robert Hanssen back in court. Some of the anecdotes are just brutal, but fascinating at the same time.

Karen Chiao, thanks for sharing some of those stories with us this morning.

CHIAO: Thank you.

ZAHN: Good luck to you.

CHIAO: Thank you.

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