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argosciv ago

Clintons

nytimes.com - Agent Who Betrayed F.B.I. Cites Its Laxity | https://archive.is/hVONJ

Article opens:

A veteran F.B.I. agent who spied for Moscow for more than two decades has said that security at the bureau was so lax that it amounted to ''criminal negligence'' and that even file clerks had easy access to classified national-security information stored on the bureau's computers, according to a report by a special Justice Department panel that was released today.

The confessed spy, Robert P. Hanssen, also told the panel's investigators in a series of interviews that his motivation for spying was money and that he had originally planned to ''get a little money'' from espionage and then ''get out of it.''

Instead, Mr. Hanssen, a 57-year-old father of six, remained a spy for 22 years, collecting an estimated $600,000 in cash and gems from the Russians in exchange for American secrets, including the identity of Russian agents working for the United States who were later executed because of Mr. Hanssen's treachery.

The juicy part:

Mr. Hanssen told the investigators that he had little fear that his computer hacking would attract the attention of his superiors, given the lax supervision of the computer system. ''If I had been a more malevolent spy than I was,'' he is quoted as saying, ''they would have had a very difficult time finding me.''

The panel's report noted that because there was so little monitoring of intrusions into the computer system, Mr. Hanssen was not detected even when he began running computer searches on files involving Louis J. Freeh, the former F.B.I. director, and President Bill Clinton's family.

''On more than 20 occasions, he ran searches containing the names 'Hillary Rodham Clinton,' 'Hillary,' 'Chelsea' or 'Clinton,' '' the report said. ''He ran at least one search on Director Freeh. Had the F.B.I. been aware of these searches, it seems likely that auditors would have found this activity peculiar.''

Was he trying to make sure nobody was looking into the Clintons?