The Infiltration of Knox College: The College Experience of Super Spy Robert Hanssen '66

Sept. 13, 1962 was a sweltering day for freshmen to cart boxes and bags into the dorms of Knox College. With a high of 91 degrees Fahrenheit and only traces of clouds, families went through the typical rigmarole of meeting roommates, dorm mates, and extending firm handshakes as greetings. Raub Hall was crowded during the unpacking process, and even though there were only about a dozen students in Robert Hanssen's second floor suite, the heat affected everyone.

In Elaine Shannon and Ann Blackman's book The Spy Next Door, former dorm mate Tom Kozel notes, "My mother recalls that when it was time for Bob's parents to leave, he did not want them to go"?a strange observation given what we know about Hanssen's family life.

Overly critical, Howard Hanssen, Robert's father, often went to great lengths to ensure his son would not become too proud of himself, according to Shannon and Blackman's book. On one occasion, he went so far as to bribe his son's driving instructor to fail him. Later, he would make the drive to Knox to offer disparaging remarks about his son to his professors. While Hanssen was not an acclaimed scholar during his time at Knox (he never made the dean's list), perhaps it had something to do with his father who, according to the Chicago Tribune, "urged school officials not to put Robert on the dean's list 'because he thought that would get to Bob's head.'"

Hanssen's mother, Vivian, was more supportive, though Hank Wilkins, Hanssen's dorm mate, remembers her pushing him towards dental school?a career he did not want. "Bob didn't really have the grades to get into dental school. But the thing is, if Bob wanted to do something, he could. For Bob, it was always about the challenge. Dental school just wasn't the challenge he wanted," Wilkins said during a phone interview. In the Floridian, Vivian noted that Bob admired his father and eventually followed in his footsteps as a Chicago police officer for a brief time prior to his work at the FBI.

Thirty-five years after graduating from Knox with a chemistry degree, Hanssen's mother was informed that her son had been arrested for selling sensitive information to the Soviets.

On hearing that her son had become, quite possibly, the most harmful spy in American history, Vivian Hanssen sat rigid on her couch in her Florida home, alongside her son's picture, and told reporters, "I had hoped at the beginning that it was possible he was a double agent. Pretending?but it doesn't look like that now."

After saying goodbye to his parents on that hot September day, Robert "Bob" Hanssen spent the next four years all but invisible during his undergraduate studies at Knox.

"He was like a fly on the wall," Wilkins recalled. "He was kind of a geek. At night, he'd read physic books like novels."

1962 was a good year for Knox. Aside from gaining prestige as an academic institution, Knox also brought such visitors as poet Archibald MacLeish and comedian Phyllis Diller. The theater department produced a rendition of The Taming of the Shrew. The year was off to an optimistic start, despite the football team's loss to Monmouth 20-6, forcing the college to surrender the Turkey Bowl Trophy yet again.

In the collegiate world, Knox was gaining respect. It held the honor of being the first college in Illinois to offer Russian courses?a fact which Hanssen might have taken into account when applying. A 2001 Chicago Tribune article attributed the emergence of Russian on campus as "part of a national campaign to improve Russian skills after the embarrassment of Sputnik." The article goes on to explain that while "Hanssen picked up words and idioms ? he made no impressions on his professor as a serious student of the language."

His professor, Momcilo Rosic, was a Yugoslavian who had served time in a POW camp during World War II. A staunch anti-communist, David Wise's book Spy notes that when Rosic was informed that his former student had been selling U.S. secrets, he replied, "He was certainly not influenced by me."

Wilkins remembered Hanssen being far more successful at learning languages.

"In those days [prior to Knox], Chicago public schools were teaching all kinds of languages and that's probably what got him into the FBI in the first place. All those languages. He had a photographic memory," Wilkins said in the phone interview.

While Hannsen did take Russian classes during his Knox experience, it is unclear whether he had any true intentions of becoming a spy at that point in his life. According to a 2001 issue of Newsweek, in a letter to the Soviets, Hanssen boasted that he had "decided on this course" of spying when he was 14 years old, after becoming inspired by Kim Philby's book, My Silent War. Philby, a member of British Intelligence, sold secrets to the Soviets throughout the 40s and 50s. Hanssen bragged that he'd read the book at 14, though as Newsweek was sure to point out, My Silent War wasn't published until 1968, when Hanssen was 24 and two years removed from Knox.

When interviewed for The Spy Next Door, Hank Wilkins recalled that he and Hanssen often spent Saturday nights making the same pilgrimage most Knox student have made at one time or another?walking to a nearby restaurant at 2 a.m. "for eggs, toast, and hash."

Shannon and Blackman recount that on warm afternoons when the homework load was light, Hanssen and Wilkins played softball in the Quads. To the outsider peering in, it appears as if Hanssen's college experience resembled that of any other Knox student of the 60's or today.

The 1966 Gale Yearbook offers only one photograph of Robert Hanssen. In it, he is dressed in suit and tie and smiles in all-American boy fashion. Under his picture, the only listed activity is "intramurals" which he played for all four years. After his arrest, this same picture would be reprinted in the New York Times.

"Though Bob didn't plunge into student politics or even evolve as a social butterfly, he did attempt to change his image as awkward and clumsy by playing intramural basketball. His six-foot-two height was a plus, though he was still?skinny enough to be bent in two by a stiff wind," Adrian Havill, author of The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold, writes.

The Chicago Tribune, when trying to understand how one man could manage to be so inconspicuous, noted that even in retrospect, "The FBI would have overlooked him for the same reason his classmates back at Norwood Park and Knox College. Introverted and nondescript, he hardly leapt to mind when you were hunting a daring spy."

Likewise, the New York Times reported that his FBI colleagues remembered him as "dour, colorless, socially awkward," Wilkins concurred in the phone interview. "Aside from his height, if you walked across the Knox campus, you wouldn't pick out Bob."

Robert Seibert '63, professor of political science, recently had the opportunity to meet three of Hanssen's dorm mates at Homecoming. They had "nothing to say about him," recalls Seibert. "He apparently lived here with very little interaction with his peers and teachers."

Though, in some ways, his forgettable attributes made him the perfect candidate for the job. After dropping out of dental school at Northwestern, he went on to receive his accounting certification and then became a police officer for three years.

"But not just any cop," reported Newsweek in 2001. "He volunteered for an elite squad that investigated other cops suspected of corruption." For years he would hold a similar job with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Even from his early career with a police department, he put himself in the position to become the ideal mole. With the undistinguishable nature that would mark his career, he was never suspected. David Vise, author of The Bureau and the Mole, reported that Hanssen remained under the FBI's radar, despite the fact that Mark Wauck, his brother-in-law and a fellow FBI agent, tipped off the Bureau years prior to the arrest.

With tuition of $2,350.00, Knox was a financial burden to many, and it was not uncommon for students to earn money during the summer. Robert Hanssen, continually pressured by his father to go to medical school, decided to spend his summers in the closest proximity he could to a medical atmosphere?a mental institution. There, among the mentally disabled, he met fellow co-worker Bonnie Wauck, his future wife.

 Returning to Knox in the fall of his senior year, he spent much of his time writing love letters to Bonnie, a sociology student at Loyola. In The Spy Next Door, Jack Hoschouer, Hanssen's friend, remembers that Bonnie "was impressed with his creativity, his imagination and his intellect. She told me that she fell in love with his letters" while most other girls simply pegged him as "weird."

Bonnie was, according to Newsweek, the "Doris Day-type." By 21, she was married to the 24 year-old Hanssen. In the wedding picture, he flashes a set of white teeth while she offers only the slightest hint of a smile. Kim Philby's My Silent War, the book that supposedly inspired his espionage, came out that same year.

Hanssen's knack for letter writing would stay with him throughout the course of his career. Though no longer love letters, he often wrote to the Soviets regarding drop-off points and how information could be successfully exchanged. Now made famous in the recently released film Breach, Hanssen once wrote the Soviets offering his own diagnosis: "One might propose that I am either insanely brave or quiet insane," he wrote. "I'd say neither. I'd say insanely loyal."

The obvious question is: loyal to whom? After transferring over 6000 pages of highly sensitive information during the end of the Cold War, it is difficult for Americans to view him as anything other than a traitor.

In the March 18, 2001 issue of The New York Magazine, James Bamford describes Hanssen as a "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hanssen." To Bamford, he appeared to be the type of man who could "leave Sunday Mass and load a dead drop with top secret documents or march in protest at the killing of 'unborn children' while coolly sending American spies to their deaths."

Undoubtedly, Hanssen is a difficult character to fully grasp. A father of six and a member of the selective Roman Catholic organization known as Opus Dei, in many instances Hanssen appeared simultaneously pious and perverted. He refused the sin of strip clubs, though he sexually exploited his wife to a leering friend outside their bedroom window, as well as on the internet according to David Wise, author of Spy. It is difficult to accurately discern the motivations of men such as Hanssen. Vice writes that in the "world of espionage" the acronym "MICE" typically covers all possible reasons for national defectors. "MICE," Vise writes, "stands for Money, Ideology, Compromise, Ego. In Hanssen's case," he speculates, "ego was considered the most important factor."

In The Spy Next Door, Wilkins remembers another instance in which Hanssen's ego stood in the way of reason. While taking a Western Civilization final, Wilkins recalls that Hanssen "didn't like the first question, so he walked out of the exam and went to the gym. He spent two and a half hours working on his left-hand lay-up. That was Bob. Inner challenges were more important to him than those presented to him by others."

In the phone interview, Wilkins offered more information related to the scene.

"Who in the right mind would do something like that? The lay-up is a fundamental you learn in fifth grade. Yet here was this 19 year-old kid spending time doing it." Wilkins remembers Hanssen as a very neat person with a meticulous nature.

"If he [Hanssen] took it as a challenge, you were never going to beat Bob. That really tells you a lot about him," Wilkins said in the phone interview.

Eventually, Hanssen's inner challenges did begin to wear on him. In the early 80's, when Bonnie stumbled into his office to find him surrounded by money, he tried to explain the situation. The Chicago Tribune reported that he told Bonnie that he was "actually double crossing Moscow by feeding them bogus information." For Bonnie, it was a lie worth believing, though she did encourage him to at least go to the church and confess. There, according to Spy author David Wise, he confessed to Father Bucciarelli who initially told him he had to turn himself into the authorities.

However, the following day Bucciarelli explained that the situation could be rectified if the money was donated to a "worthy charity." Plato Cacheris, Hanssen's lawyer, clarified the charity to which Bucciarelli referred.
"The priest told him he should turn himself in," said Cacheris, "then called Hanssen and said he could give the money to the church." A man of devout faith, he assured his wife that he would make monthly payments to the church in retribution.

Though estimates differ, it is believed that Hanssen only earned somewhere around $600,000.00 for his troubles?a meagerly sum considering the information he offered. Vise writes that Hanssen sold information related to "intelligence sources and methods; cryptology; communications and technical surveillance programs?and military, logistical, and political strategy for surviving a nuclear attack." While he did treat himself to a Rolex, many believe that much of the money went towards his children's private school tuition. He sold America's secrets in order to give his children the freedom of a private education.

In a Newsweek picture, an FBI agent is seen dragging bicycles and sleds from Hanssen's backyard shed. Judging by his possessions splayed throughout the yard, Hanssen appeared to be the kind of caring father the neighborhood expected him to be.

But the story gets stranger.

Despite his disservice to the country, Bonnie Hanssen still receives her husband's pension of $40,000.00 a year reports Wise's Spy.

Why would the wife of the most-infamous spy in American history still receive federal money? In a recent phone interview, Special Agent Ross Rice of the FBI's Chicago office explained, though he wasn't sure, that it was his belief that the pension was "part of the plea agreement."

 In exchange for offering information, Hanssen's family would continue to receive the money. It is Rice's understanding that, under normal circumstances, if an FBI agent committed crimes prior to earning his pension and was then convicted after earning it, as was the case with Hanssen, then the money could be voided. However, in regards to Robert Hanssen, the United States government continues to pay his pension regardless of the insurmountable security damages he has caused.

The peculiarity of the government's willingness to continue to pay his pension might lead conspiracy theorists to agree with Hanssen's mother's initial instinct?that her son was secretly working as a double agent to benefit the country. Theorists might also believe that his telling Bonnie that he was giving the Soviets "bogus information" might actually hold some truth. They would agree that it was within the realm of possibility that Hanssen simply took the fall, and as a result, was given money for his family and protection within a prison.

While his new home in Florence, Colorado's maximum security prison is safe from outsiders, it is hardly the country club prison we'd expect for him if these theories held truth.

Dubbed "The Alcatraz of the Rockies," Hanssen currently spends 23 hours a day in solitary confinement at the Administrative Maximum Facility. Sharing the prison are such notable inmates as Ted "the Unabomber" Kaczynski, Terry Nichols of the Oklahoma City bombing, Zacarias Moussaoui charged with conspiracy for the September 11th attacks, and Richard Reid, better known as "the Shoe Bomber." It appears as though he had much better company with dorm mate Hank Wilkins here at Knox.

"Hanssen left no lasting impressions at Knox" exclaims a 2001 Register-Mail headline. It seems a fair assessment. Harry Neumiller, professor emeritus of chemistry, recalls that, having had Hanssen as a student, he can still "conjure a picture" of his face though he could not comment further.

 In 1966, the year Hanssen graduated, Knox's incoming class was, according to the Register-Mail, the best Knox had ever seen. Of the 315 incoming freshmen, 82 percent were ranked in the top quarter of their high school class. Hanssen, hardly a stellar student, left Knox without leaving so much as a fingerprint, though undoubtedly, he has affected the community in his aftermath.

Knox College no longer has his initial college application, though one can't help but wonder what the admissions counselors saw in his application. The recipient of a chemistry scholarship, were there any other unique characteristics that might have shed some light on Hanssen's later actions? He is an enigma, and it is equally hard for both intimate relations and perfect strangers to grasp his character and his motivation. In a Chicago Tribune article, Hanssen's former church leader, Reverend Franklyn Martin McAfee, a man who seemed to know Hanssen well, notes his priorities when reaching the afterlife: "I guess I will first have God explain the Trinity to me," he says, "and then Bob Hanssen."

 A request for a phone interview with Hanssen regarding his Knox experience is currently en route to the warden of the Administrative Maximum Facility.

This article was originally printed in The Knox Student. Reprinted with permission.