Free Republic

From Russia to the FBI, with Love How the FBI agent who spied for Russia set the stage for the FBI’s betrayal of the American people. Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the infamous dossier deployed against Donald Trump in 2016, was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI. If the verdict seems surprising, consider the back story. Danchenko, a Russian national, was once on the FBI payroll. As Julie Kelly explains, that made the Russian part of the bureau’s untouchable “sources and methods,” protecting him and any documents referencing him from congressional and other outside scrutiny. That invites a...

At approximately 8 PM on Sunday, February 18, 2001, there was a knock on my front door. At the time I was a Special Agent (SA) with the FBI, so imagine my shock when I opened the door and found the two top officials in the Division on my doorstep. I knew this couldn't possibly be good news, but they quickly sought to reassure me. "Everything is all right, but Bob Hanssen has been arrested." All right? Bob Hanssen was my brother in law, and a longtime counterintelligence (CI) official at FBIHQ, privy to a vast range of sensitive intelligence...

WASHINGTON - One of the most damaging espionage cases in U.S. history was more the result of poor oversight by the FBI than master spying by Robert Hanssen, said a Justice Department report released Thursday. The FBI's deficiencies, including an almost blind trust in its own agents, enabled Hanssen to spy for the Soviet Union and Russia for more than two decades, according to the investigation by inspector general Glenn A. Fine. The report concluded that Hanssen, a top FBI counterespionage official, received little supervision and the bureau had few checks in place that would deter him from spying or...