Rating: 
Summary: like something from "The National Enquirer"
Review: Skip it, you can read better at the supermarket check-out.And, if you've heard the overzealous author on the radio or on television, you won't escape him here -- I have a feeling that some of these reviews are written by him and his friends.....
Rating:
Summary: bad bad bad
Review: the author should be ashamed of himself {for] writing [this]-- I can't imagine how he ever got a job writing at the Washington Post when he writes as if his audience was full of kindergartners.... Focusing on the filth of the spy's life does very little but make Vise out to be a muckraker! And to hear him shamelessly and gracelessly promote himself on the radio proves that he has no shame. To hear a Pulitzer Prize winner go on about "taking the book to #1 on the bestseller list" was nauseating. Write something that deserves it, then maybe it will come true!
Rating: 
Summary: A lightweight Book
Review: This book is, unfortunately, full of puff and non-topic filler. The subject is fascinating, but the writing rambels into several irrelevant areas. Perhaps only 50% of the book actually deals with Hanssen. If it's Hanssen and his misdeeds you want to learn about, try a different book.
Rating: 
Summary: An extraordinary novel about an "extraordinary" spy
Review: The Bureau and the Mole tells about the most successful and as well the most dangerous spy in FBI history. The way the story is put together and how it intertwines Robert Hanssen and his boss, Louis Freeh, the director of the FBI is incredible. Even if you are not into the whole double agent and espionage thing, it doesn't matter because it talks aobut a little of everything. It discusses all of the CIA's top secret information, the Pizza Connection which is the bringing down of some of the top New York and Italian Mafia, the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, and the Oklahoma City bombing. It doesn't just briefly explain it, it goes into great detail about how either Freeh or Hanssen was involved in it and how it all broken down. What I enjoyed the most was how the story starts off as just Hanssen and Freeh going their separate ways and throughout the story interweaves itself to where Freeh is cracking down on Hanssen.
I do not usually go out of my way to read a book in any specific ammount of time, but this one I couldn't put down. Whenever you thought that it was going to slow down or get worse, it just kept speeding up into a totally new story about another criminal that the FBI was out to capture. I look forward to the movie!
Rating:
Summary: Tremendous disappoint
Review: My review in one word; WORTHLESS !!
Rating: 
Summary: Slow, disappointing
Review: I had hoped for something along the lines of the book about Aldrich Ames (Betrayal). This is nothing of the sort, but rather is a rather slim volume with comparatively little devoted to Robert Hanssen. This tome seems disjointed and even when it makes a point it seems hard to understand. e.g. pg. 93 he states "...only farmers climbing off a tractor are going to be more noticeable than me walking around my house." Is he implying that he(Hanssen) would like to be more noticeable or less noticeable? (One would assume he would prefer less noticeable, but the implication is the opposite)
There are many uncorroborated statements in the book, and there is no bibliography nor index which might possibly help to straighten things out. All in all, I get the impression that this was a hurry-up effort to strike while the percieved "Iron is hot".
One good chapter is # 17, where the text is devoted to the clash between FBI Director, Louis Freeh and Bill Clinton over excesses emanating from the White House, which Freeh did not take lying down, and which some unspecified aide said Clinton "went nuclear" over when Freeh didn't "roll over", and acquiesce.
The book plays somewhat to the prurient interest, in that it describes in two places how Hanssen and his wife collaborated to display her nude bod.
Overall, this is a book I'd skip. I was disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Important Lessons But No Spy Thriller
Review: After September 11th the lessons in this story take on even more importance as we restructure American law enforcement and security. If you still hold on to images of the FBI as portrayed by Effron Zimbalist, Jr. in the famous TV show, this book will obliterate those memories and leave you feeling very foolish. David Vise's presentation is clear, straightforward and loaded with detail. He does not draw conclusions or present solutions in this book. This leaves the reader to deal with his/her own emotions, not the author's. As an American, it leaves me feeling embarrassed and angry. The performance put on by members of our top law enforcement agency, took place on the world stage, in full view of the Soviets and others. While at home we failed to see what was right in front of us. Were we just too vain to look? The Bureau And The Mole is a fast read and an important book. Read it and you will understand some of the forces behind many of the major domestic and international events of the last 20+ years. The author paints a thorough picture of the two leading characters-Robert Philip Hanssen, the spy, and Louis J. Freeh, the FBI director-in this two-decade long drama. Unfortunately, Vise falls short of explaining how the FBI eventually identified and ensnared Hanssen. Perhaps it was just sheer dumb luck, be cause you sure get the impression they couldn't get out of their own way. The reader is left with the haunting question that even Hanssen asked of the FBI as he was taken into custody, "What took you so long?"
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: Forget the naysayers in other reviews posted at this site. The author has done an excellent job of presenting information in a very reader-friendly style.
Rating:
Summary: Simplistic writing; exploitative passages; naive analysis
Review: What a fascinating story and what a dissapointing book. The book is written at the high school level at best. But aside from the authorship, most troubling was the level of pure exploitation of Hanssen's perversity. The lengthy quotation from Hanssen's pornography (including an entire appendix) can only be considered gratuitous. Why humiliate Mrs. Hanssen by offering her husband's lewd tales of their sex life? Finally, the virtually fawning descriptions of Louis Freeh's career show a very naive understanding of the way such cases are brought, and it is disrepectful of the many agents and line prosecutors who actually brought Hanssen to justice.
Rating:
Summary: Not Well Written
Review: Though readable, David A. Vise's "The Bureau and the Mole" is poorly written, poorly researched, gratuitous and just not well thought out. It's a shame since a spy as good as Robert Hanssen deserves a better chronicler. The first indictation that the book was rushed include a major factual error in the very first chapter (Vise refers to the "Daley Machine" in Chicago circa the late 1930s, even though the senior Daley was not elected Mayor until 1955). The book then becomes a dual biography of Hannsen and FBI Director Loius Freeh, but because the narrative is a brief 229 pages, neither party gets more than a superficial telling of his life story. The book also contains lengthy verbatim passeges of Hannsen's letters to the Soviets and his fantasy e-mails, which shorten the already inadequate narrative even more. The e-mails are particularly offensive in that they detail Hannsen's perverted sexual fantasies about his wife to the point where the book starts to read like a degrading peep show. In documenting Freeh's story, Vise relates every major FBI success and mistake during his tenure so that each get a scant few sentences of mention. Another example of underreporting comes from the account of how Hannsen's brother-in-law reported his suspicions that Hannsen was spying in 1990 and the FBI dropped the ball. Vise reports the fact, but apparently never attempted to find out WHY nothing was done. Another poor decision was interviewing psychologists who never treated or even met Hanssen to get "psychological insight" into the man. This ploy strikes me as less than worthless. I should also mention that apperently no interviews were done with Hannsen's immediate family members for insight into how his spying impacted their lives. Overall, this book is a shoddy rush job that never should have been released in its present condition...
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