The Spy Next Door

Rating:
Summary: Solid research, interesting story
Review: An intriguing case: a nearly pathologically archconservative FBI agent, Opus Dei credentials and all, convicted of selling countless top level secrets to the Soviets and their successors. Why?

First, the text was well-structured. It started in Hansen's youth, and examined his relationship with his father. The authors returned to that relationship a few times but they didn't dwell on it. Personally, I get tired of overanalysis, journalists who like to think they're Freud incarnate. I feared a few times that the book was getting into that but, the analysis was brief enough that it could be seen as speculation rather than as psychoanalysis.

The peripheral details of the story were most interesting: the near worship of J. Edgar Hoover, as if anticipating his reincarnation years after he'd died; the uncanny details of Opus Dei (which has interested me more to the point that I plan to read lots more on that bizarre cult!); the stories of the other spies of the era, e.g., Aldrich Ames, and their relationship to that Hansen case, and the number of KGB agents stationed in the US!

But the focus was on Bob Hansen, Opus Dei Catholic, who felt that communism was the earthly manifestation of the Prince of Darkness himself. I mean, God knows, we all have sexual fantasies. I suppose overpopulation would not be a problem if we didn't. But this guy with six kids, who went to 6:30 mass every day and was an FBI agent who argued the inerrancy of the bible, I wouldn't expect porn posting from him on the early Internet. But Hansen didn't let us down.

I tend to shy away from texts that provide too many answers. This did not. The authors returned to the issue that it was apparently NOT money that motivated Hansen. They conclude, without being offensive about it, that much of his drive seems to have been inside, trying, for example, to show up his father who was never satisfied with Bobby's accomplishments; to show up his FBI colleagues who felt he was a snob who did little but lecture to them. When discussing one of Hansen's contracts with the Soviets, the authors suggest that he discussed money "like a flower child with a trust fund," i.e., had it been his major motive, he could have asked for much, much more, and gotten it. They implied that it must have been somewhat of a motive, as he had a flock of kids and they had college tuitions and the like to worry about. But his motives had to have been deeper than just cash.

Oh, and the authors are not easy on the FBI. Hansen took a stripper friend of his on a trip to Hong Kong, a lifestyle contradiction that may have indicated there was something wrong. And no one even noticed. What, one of our FBI brothers? But the book ends with some of the techniques the bureau contemplated to catch potential spies before such a thing happens again. They concluded--wisely--that all the hi-tech devices, polygraphs, or psychological fantasies in the book won?t preclude such a thing. That's the price one pays to be a "free country."

All I will say about the vocal performance is that it was well-done. It holds a second, though, to the story, something the US, the FBI, and probably even the KGB veterans will be pondering for a long time.