Rating: 
Summary: general waste of time
Review: save your money and check it out from the library if you must read it. however, i'm sure there's better, more qualified books out there on this guy. do i have to give it a star? how about negative stars? disappointing book. gratuitous sex was insulting...bedroom antics didn't have anything to do with hanssen's destructive betrayal of this country. book seemed to be thrown together. was it about hanssen, ames, clinton, freeh? who? title infers it's about hanssen, but author must have run out of resources to copy. there's nothing new! glad i didn't buy it.
Rating:
Summary: a rush job
Review: I heard the author, David Vise, being interviewed on the radio (on the PBS program "Fresh Air") and found him very interesting. Unfortunately, the book is a big disappointment. It's a rush job and a pastiche, without much new information. The chapters on Louis Freeh are a complete waste. They were presumably thrown in to give the book some "structure," but really have nothing to do with the Hanssen case and tell you nothing you wouldn't know from any press digest or encyclopedia yearbook. I am hooked on the Hanssen case, so I guess I would have read the book no mater what, but this book is a dud. It tells you little and is not particularly well written or researched. Plus, there's a lot of padding (e.g., chapter on Freeh).
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written, rushed through
Review: Hanssen's story is an interesting one, to be sure, but the author gets bogged down in trivia and minutiae here. While the little details about his family life and professional persona are interesting enough, they are crammed in with little development or thought -- almost as if Vise was just proud of himself for having learned them in the first place, never bothering to put any serious thought into their places in the larger story.More troubling than that is Vise's attempt to run a parallel narrative about the career and life of former FBI director Louis Freeh. Attempts to compare and contrast the two men feel sorely out of place and poorly developed. Clearly Vise was looking for "something different" in framing his story to position his book in the crowded marketplace (two other new releases deal with the Hanssen case) -- a liberty that is squarely in an author's right, obviously, but a liberty that feels curiously out of place here. This is a rush job -- Hanssen hasn't even been sentenced yet. One wonders how a serious reporter like Vise could pedal a story that hasn't finished unfolding. Nevertheless, buyers should beware, the more thoughtful and readable commentary on this case has appeared elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: my review
Review: First I have to comment on the way the book was written: I thought the author kept very close contact with the facts and did not distort the reality of the situation. The book is very well researched and some of the things presented, like the letters Hanssen sent to the Russians, are totally amazing. The idea to present both lives in parallel, between Freeh and Hanssen is brilliant because it gives the book and additional angle, the way two people from similar backgrounds can play their lives in totally different ways and succeed or not in their endeavors. On the other hand, the content of the book is mind-blowing. How can someone live with himself knowing they are practically destroying a country and all to feel better about themselves, to feel in control? And his obsession with this wife and pornography is also nauseating. I do not understand how can his wife still visit him after knowing everything he did to her. This is a must read, only to learn what the extent of evil in some people and how it has consequences still years later.
Rating: 
Summary: He's a good reporter. Trouble is, the book reads like it
Review: Now, how do I explain that title? I know - it's kind of confusing. Well, here goes. The story of Robert Hanssen is fairly well-known by now, in generalities. Most of the world doesn't know the specifics, and that's what David Vise attempts to do here. Vise does tell as much of the story as he could get his hands on. He lays it out in chronological order, looking at both sides of the story - Hanssen's and the man who headed up his capture, FBI Director Louis Freeh. The thing is, the story reads like a newspaper article - or, more accurately, I felt like I was reading a plot from "Dragnet" (remember? "Just the facts, ma'am."). Being a true story, I realize that Vise can't embellish on what happened, but his writing style is extremely low-key - almost dead, which is somewhat surprising, since I read this book based on Terry Gross' interview with him on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air", in which he was extremely animated and passionate about his subject. I now know as much as anyone else about the Hanssen affair - but I didn't really enjoy finding out what I learned.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: This is a great book that will give you goose bumps when you read about the deceiptful things this man did. It's almost hard to believe that this is all factual..it seems like a spy novel. Hanssen managed to deceive everyone, his country, his family, his God.
Rating: 
Summary: The Bureau and the Mole
Review: I read a lot of bestsellers in my work as a seller of these kinds of books and this is one of the most enjoyable, insightful and thrilling that I have read this year. When people talk about a page-turner this is definitely one. This book goes into the true workings of the FBI and its counter-espionage today, this book would be on Robert Hanson's list of books to read if he were trying to understand the state of the real spy-craft today. After you read the book you will understand how prepared the FBI and the CIA was to counter espionage in this country and some of the reasons why their work was so poor. The FBI might have never captured Hanson had not the Russians given him up because after Hanson was captured the first thing he said was," why did it take you so long?" J.Edgar must be turning over in his grave
Rating:
Summary: garbage
Review: Did I just spend $(...) dollars for this. This book simply fails to deliver. It spends little time exploring the life and psyche of Philip Hansen, and dwells on useless filler. It provides us with a rather detailed sycophantic account of Louis Freeh. It juxtaposes this idealized picture of Louis Freeh to the dual, hypocratical, and deceitful Hanssen. This is supposed to give this book a pseudointellectual flavor, but instead it bores the reader and falls short on delivering the biography of the worst spy in American history. Lastly the appendix describing the sexual fantasies of Philip Hansen is an egregious move on the part of the author. It does not add to the already incomplete and shallow account AND it also victimizes innocent family members.
Rating: 
Summary: You would do better to read the newspaper
Review: I thought the book was pretty poor. Not much in facts of what happened. I think I would have been better off to read newspaper articles written about the "mole"
Rating:
Summary: The Bureau and the Mole
Review: The really intereseting thing about this book is how the author paralleled the life of Hanssen and the FBI director, Louis Freeh. They both worshipped at the same church. They both had six children. They both worked at the FBI. But what separated the two men was that Hanssen was physically and psychologically abused by his father his whole life as a child and as an adult. It destroyed him as a person. He spent his life being badmouthed by his father which took a toll on the rest of his life. This portrayal of Hanssen's life makes you pitty him. Hanssen saw the FBI in his distorted view as the father figure that he wanted to punish and he took up spying as a double agent with a vengence while all the time thinking he was in the right. This book gives you an interesting insight into the FBI and the life of a double agent. This book explains what Hanssen was doing in his spying and how he hurt our country in the process. What I just couldn't believe about him is not only did he destroy his family through pornography and betrayal he caused the deaths of many others in our country and internationally. This book is a must read and was very well-written.
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