Robert Hanssen Failure

The Most Damaging Spy to Penetrate the FBI What would drive someone to betray his or her country and become the worst spy to ever penetrate the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)? Robert Hanssen had a loving family, great job, and respect from his peers. However, two years after starting at the FBI he began spying for other countries. No one suspected Robert Hanssen of being a traitor; he worked hard at his job, showed up early for work, and stayed late when he needed. Throughout all those years, he built up a resentment for his job that led him to become the most damaging spy to penetrate the FBI. Robert Hanssen’s feeling of contempt towards his fellow FBI colleagues was one of the driving factors that led him to become a spy. He …show more content…
This program created a 136-page document and outlined all aspects of failure related to Robert Hanssen’s case. The Office of the Inspector General for the FBI came up with 21 items detailed in this report that they felt would have helped prevent these events from happening. One of the first items was to have a penetration unit at FBI Headquarters so they can track internal threats and see if the FBI network was penetrated (Webster, 2002). You can accomplish this through constant monitoring and analysis. Up until this, the FBI did not properly track documentation of security violations. Creating and designing policies and procedures geared towards being able to document and look back on security violations that have been reported is going to be a crucial step in this process (Office of the Inspector General Oversight and Review Division, 2007). Until filing this report, there was not a concrete way of doing it. Some tools that are in use today started from this report. An example of such tools is a financial disclosure program where annually FBI employees must disclose their finance records for review. This will give the FBI the opportunity to look for any discrepancies or sudden influxes of