| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020278)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020278" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3657 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 126 |
| for the Russian intelligence services from 1979 to 2001. He was a "walk-in," who never entered |
| the Soviet embassy or met with KGB or SVR case officers. Instead, he set his espionage in |
| motion by passing an anonymous letter to Victor Cherkashin, the KGB spy handler working |
| undercover at the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. From the start of his work for the KGB, |
| Hanssen laid down his own rules. The KGB would deliver cash from which all the fingerprints |
| were removed to locations, or "dead drops," he specified. He would deliver documents exposing |
| FBI, CIA and NSA sources and methods in another dead drop. The KGB would precisely follow |
| his instructions. Cherkashin told me that Hanssen's "astounding self-recruitment" was executed in |
| such a way that the KGB never actually controlled him. "He was our most important mole and we |
| didn't ever know his identity, where he worked or how he had access to FBI, CIA and NSA |
| files." Even so, the KGB (and later SVR) paid him $600,000 in cash. In return, the anonymous |
| spy delivered 27 computer discs containing hundreds of secret documents revealing the sources |
| and methods of American intelligence. According to Cherkashin, it was the largest haul of top |
| secrets documents ever obtained by the KGB (although it was only a small fraction of the number |
| of top secret NSA, Department of Defense and CIA documents taken by Snowden in 2013.) |
| Cherkashin told me the price paid by Moscow was a great bargain since it helped compromise |
| "the NSA's most advanced electronic interception technology," including a tunnel under the |
| Soviet Embassy. Yet, it was only after newspapers reported that Hanssen had been arrested by the |
| FBI in February 2001 that Cherkashin learned the name and position of the spy that he had |
| recruited. Cherkashin told me that what matters to the KGB was not "control" of an agent but |
| the value of the secrets he or she delivered. "Control is not necessary in espionage as long as we |
| manage to obtain the documents." So in the eyes of the KGB, anyone who elects to provide it |
| with US secrets is a spy. |
| It is also possible to exploit a walk-in even after he has left his service. For example, KGB |
| Major Anatoli Golitsyn was an ideological self-generated spy who walked into the US embassy in |
| Helsinki, Finland on Christmas Day 1962. He asked to see the CIA officer on duty announce to |
| him he had collected a trove of KGB secrets, including information that could identify its key |
| spies in the West. He offered to defect to the U.S. The CIA accepted his offer, and through this |
| archive of secrets he had previously compiled, he became one of the CIA's most productive |
| sources in the Cold War. |
| The job of an intelligence service is to take advantage of whatever opportunities comes its way |
| in the form of self-generated spies. If a Russian walk-in had not yet burned his bridges to his own |
| service, US intelligence officers were under instructions to attempt to persuade the walk-in to |
| return to his post in Russia and serve as a "defector-in-place," or mole. "While defectors can and |
| do provide critical information, a CIA memorandum on walk-ins during the Cold War noted, |
| "There are very few cases in which the same individual may not have been of greater value if he |
| had returned to his post." Of course if a walk-in believed he was already compromises, as |
| Golitsyn did, a decision would have to be made whether the value of his intelligence merited |
| ex filtrating him to the United States. |
| This required evaluating the bona fides of the walk-in. Not all walk-ins are accepted as |
| defectors. Some walk-ins are deemed "dangles," or agents dispatched by the KGB to test and |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020278 |
|
|
