Russian spy Robert Hanssen.
Robert P. Hannsen was the mole arrested for spying for Russia by a legion of FBI agents who basically swarmed him on February 18, 2001. He spent 22 years as a undercover spy for Russia stealing American secrets and selling them for cash.
He is mentioned prominently in a book called: “The Bureau and the Mole”, by David A. Vise, a Pulitzer prize winning author, who wrote the book on the “Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History.”
It is a great read by the way and I have it as part of my personal library of books in my study.
The book, contains some unusual emails in an Appendix called: “Emails of a spy” , written by Robert Hannsen and send to his mysterious Russian spy master (a man believed by some to be working under “official diplomatic cover” at the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C.).
One email in particular involves an exchange between the former FBI agent and his Russian spymaster where Hannsen muses over an incident that presumably took place in 1999.
What caught my eye, almost immediately was that story involved Flight 800, where hundreds of people died.
Trans World Airlines Flight 800 (TWA 800), as you remember was a Boeing 747-131 aircraft that exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, on July 17, 1996, at about 20:31 EDT, 12 minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 230 people on board.
It was the second-deadliest U.S. aviation accident after American Airlines Flight 191 until American Airlines Flight 587, which also took off from Kennedy Airport, surpassed it in 2001. It remains the third-deadliest aviation accident to occur in U.S. territory.
TWA 800 was a scheduled international passenger flight from New York to Rome, with a stopover in Paris.
While accident investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) traveled to the scene, arriving the following morning, there was much initial speculation that a terrorist attack was the cause of the crash. Consequently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) initiated a parallel criminal investigation.
Sixteen months later the FBI announced that no evidence had been found of a criminal act and closed its active investigation (see article: FBI No criminal evidence behind TWA 800 crash http://articles.cnn.com/1997-11-18/us/9711_18_twa.fbi.presser_1_bomb-or-… ).
In retrospect this email may have been part of the official FBI investigation into the Flight 800 crash.
Regarding: Questions!
Date Tues, Mar 1999 21:39:17 – 0500
From: Robert P Hanssen
To:
“The problem with genius is that it often borders on insanity. The problem with truth is that it sometimes seems utterly fantastic. I don’t see how the Israelis could have altered our desire to look into [TWA Flight] 800 crash up or down. They didn’t know it wasn’t terrorist related. Nobody did. The flight which left just before it (which was delayed) was an El-Al flight to Israel. Further, the Israelis have no desire to tie up our counter-terrorism resources. Their interest is in having the FBI dedicate 100% of our counter terror resources to the protection of Israel. They just wanted to know if it was terrorist action and if so did it hit the wrong plane and if so who launched it so they could kill them as quickly and publically as possible…Did you know that we grabbed some Israeli students in Newark with walkie talkies hanging around the inbound flight path of the El Al flight? They said they were hired by the Israeli Consulate in NY to look for anything suspicious like someone getting to shoot at the plane. If they saw anything suspicious,, they were to use the radios. The radios were on a secret security channel directly to the El-Al flight to wave it off. This is not stupid. This is careful, Israel, as a nation, hasn’t stayed alive by dumb luck. Israel is thorough. You don’t want to underestimate them. Whenever we do, we get burned. They have a lot of smart people. It isn’t for nothing that God chose them to carry the message. Remember, God is Jewish. He was born of the House of David. He had His choice.”
MANY UNANSWERED QUESTIONS
What interesting is the tidbit about the El-Al flight, and the discussion about if the crash of Flight 800 was terrorism related.
With regard to Israel, it seems they are conducting counterterrorism operations in the United States, using a network of Israelis from universities and colleges, using the cover of “college students” from Newark, N.J.
These covert operations were run out the Israeli Consulate office in New York.
Last but not least what does former FBI agent Robert Hannsen know about Flight 800 crash? And why were the Russians so interested?
Robert Tilford