Hanssen, part II

1985 Spy Events

Feb: Karl Koecher (spy for Czech. and USSR) exchanged

Apr: Rick Ames (spy for USSR) volunteers to the KGB; KGB officer Viktor Cherkashin met him and ran his case

May: John Walker (spy for USSR) arrested by FBI after spying for them for 18 years

May: Walker spy ring arrested by FBI

May: Thomas Cavanagh (tried to spy for USSR) sentenced

May: Oleg Gordievsky (spy for UK) recalled to USSR [Ames claimes in Confessions of a Spy "I didn't give up Martynov, Mortorin or Gordievsky until I gave the KGB my complete list of names on June 13; you can't blame me for Gordievsky."]

May: Leonid Poleschuk (spy for US) recalled to USSR

Jun: Adolf Tolkachev (spy for US) arrested by KGB

Jun: Rick Ames (spy for USSR), CIA, betrays 20+ names including Martynov, Motorin, Yuzhin, Gordievsky

Jun: Arne Treholt (spy for USSR) found guilty

Jul: Sharon Scranage (spy for Ghana/Cuba), CIA, arrested by FBI

Jul: Oleg Gordievsky escapes from USSR

Aug: Vitali Yurchenko defects to US; Ames becomes his debriefer

Aug: Edward Buchanan (spy for USSR) sentenced

Aug: Gennady Smetanin (spy for US) recalled to USSR

Sep: Leonid Poleschuk (spy for US) arrested by KGB

Sep: Ed Howard (spy for USSR), CIA, defects to USSR

Oct: Bob Hanssen volunteers to KGB officer Viktor Cherkashin and betrays the names of Martynov, Motorin, Yuzhin

Nov: Yurchenko redefects to USSR; Martynov goes back to USSR and is arrested

Nov: Gennady Varenik (spy for US) recalled to USSR

Nov: Jonathan Pollard (spy for Israel) arrested by FBI

Nov: Larry Chin (spy for China), CIA, arrested by FBI

Nov: Ronald Pelton (spy for USSR), NSA, arrested by FBI

Dec: Randy Jeffries (spy for USSR) arrested by FBI

Note: In August 1986, Viktor Cherkashin received the Order of Lenin, the second highest award in the Soviet Union. He then was reassigned to a desk job and told he could never travel outside of Russia again.

Philby Book

“I decided on this course when I was 14 years old. I’d read Philby’s book. Now that is insane, eh!”--Bob Hanssen

Kim Philby's book My Silent War: The Soviet Spymaster's Own Story was written in 1968 when Bob Hanssen (born in 1944) would have been 24 years old. Philby defected to the USSR in 1963, when Hanssen was 19 years old.

Novelist Graham Greene once said, "Far more gripping than any novel of espionage I can remember is Kim Philby, My Silent War."

Philby had been recruited by Soviet intelligence in 1934 and he later said that he “was given the assignment to infiltrate counterespionage however long it took.” (Source: Philby entry on page 434, Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen's "The Encyclopedia of Espionage)

CI Centre Professor Hayden Peake's latest book is about Kim Philby's later years: The Private Life of Kim Philby: The Moscow Years co-authored with Rufina Philby and Michael Lyubimov.

CI Centre Professor Oleg Kalugin was in charge of handling Philby while in Moscow. photo

FBI files on Philby