http://www.almartinraw.com/column19.html
by Al Martin
The FBI-CIA Wars:
An Update on the Phony Hanssen Case
When former FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who has been accused of espionage, went into FBI counter-intelligence in 1985, the entire group consisted of a total of 22 men.
Eleven of these men, still at the FBI, are now being forced to retire early. They are also being asked to turn over all documents in their possession, in their private files outside of the Bureau, documents which they have kept over the years. In exchange for the return of these documents, they have been offered all sorts of inducements -- as well as their retirement checks. Typically this consists of future subcontract work with the Bureau on preferred cases, often resulting in rich, fee-paying situations.
The agents are being instructed by the FBI in a memorandum signed by FBI Director Louis Freeh himself to turn over all their documents, which will undoubtedly be shredded.
The agents are afraid. Should there be some sort of congressional investigation in the future, they could get in trouble for having complied by turning over documents which they knew were going to be destroyed.
In another bombshell revelation by an inside source, it has been learned that three years before the FBI publicly broke the Hanssen case, Louis Freeh went to then Attorney General Janet Reno asking for prosecution.
Reno said no. She told him that at the request of the CIA, the Department of Justice was not prepared to prosecute Hanssen -- or launch any type of investigation at that time.
Reno told Freeh that what he was talking about doesn't exist, that it isn't happening. When Freeh asked her how she knew that, she told him that the CIA had assured her.
According to an inside source, the level of frustration in counter-intelligence at the FBI is at an all time high. They have been manipulated by the CIA for years - and they know it. They have also been forced to cover up for the Agency.
Also the CIA has consistently interfered with FBI investigations in the United States and the FBI has had a very contentious relationship with the CIA over the years. In some cases, the CIA has actually acted to frustrate FBI's CI-3 investigations.
For example, in the famous Korcher case, the FBI's counter-intelligence division believes that in the waning weeks of that investigation, when they were closing in on Karl and Hanna Korcher, the CIA purposely threw monkey wrenches at them in the end, thus allowing the Korchers to escape.
When these allegations were raised, the CIA claimed that this had to do with Operation Ivy Bells, that the Korchers were attempting to discover the location of the American listening device, which had been attached to the underwater Soviet cables in the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The CIA also tried to claim that the listening device was actually a dummy and they wanted the Russians to find it on purpose, so they wouldn't look for the real listening device. That story was absolute nonsense, however, and the FBI knew it.
What the CIA was covering up was their own duplicity with the Russians. There was some kind of conniving together. They purposely frustrated the FBI's investigation and the FBI always knew this.
According to an inside source, in this little espionage ring (if that's what you want to call it) which has been piled on FBI agent Hanssen's shoulders, there was a total of six men involved, besides Hanssen, in the transfer of technology and the transfer of information to the Russians over the years. They are all part of FBI's CI-3 (counter-intelligence) division.
The Department of Justice absolutely denies this. They claim that Hanssen acted alone and that there are no other problems in CI-3, despite the fact an internal FBI Inspector General report from three years ago stated that the FBI itself is very suspect and that its counter-intelligence division is rife with all sorts of problems.
In fact, the FBI's Inspector General suspected that there were numerous leaks and numerous illicit relations between the FBI CI-3 and the Russians.
According to the inside source, any espionage that was going on at the FBI CI-3 was essentially being directed by the CIA. And the reason it was being done was because the FBI's counter intelligence would keep coming across illegal activity done by the CIA. They also kept stumbling across a tremendous amount of covert contact that the CIA agents were having with their Russian counterparts.
This is more than just inter-agency rivalry. It's the FBI uncovering wrongdoing at the CIA, and the CIA consistently pressuring the Attorney General to make sure nothing is done about it.
Another source has said that the FBI has undergone so many changes in the past few years that they should probably change the name of the Bureau. They are changing all the rules. The rules of retirement and the restrictions on subcontracting after retirement - all the restrictions agents are supposed to have are meaningless.
What the FBI is doing by offering these early retirements is actually a policy. They are essentially building a whole new covert branch of retired FBI agents, who are officially retired as matter of record, but who are unofficially still working.
It appears to be that their function is to continue to be eyes and ears for the FBI and continue to frustrate certain investigations of Congress and other federal agencies and certain court actions.
This behavior has always existed, but now it may be an actual policy of the FBI to build a defacto covert wing of the Bureau, "former" agents who have deniability by saying they're retired.
There is an incredible amount of corruption that exists within counter-intelligence.
And poor agent Hanssen has become the "designated scapegoat."
AL MARTIN is America's foremost whistle-blower on government fraud and corruption. A retired US Navy Lt. Commander and former officer in the Office of Naval Intelligence, he has testified before Congress (the Kerry Committee and the Alexander Committee) regarding Iran-Contra. Al Martin is the author of "The Conspirators: Secrets of an Iran Contra Insider" (2001, National Liberty Press, $14.95; order line: 1-877-776-9000.) He lives at an undisclosed location, since the criminals named in his book have been returned to national power and prominence. His column "Behind the Scenes in the Beltway" is published regularly on Al Martin Raw: Criminal Govt Conspiracy (www.almartinraw.com).
