Spy Tipped Off Russians About Secret Embassy Tunnel
WASHINGTON, March 4 (News Agencies) - The U.S. government burrowed a secret tunnel under the then-Soviet Union's embassy in Washington, and accused spy Robert Hanssen tipped off Moscow about the operation, the New York Times reported Sunday.
Quoting current and former United States intelligence and law enforcement officials, the Times reported that the secret tunnel operation was part of a broad United States effort to eavesdrop on and track first Soviet, and then later, Russian, facilities and personnel in the United States.
It said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA) ran the operation jointly.
The officials estimated that the tunnel construction and related intelligence-gathering activities cost several hundred million dollars, making it one of the most expensive clandestine intelligence operations ever that Hanssen revealed to Moscow, the daily reported.
Hanssen was arrested February 18th, after allegedly leaving a package full of classified information in a Virginia park outside Washington for his Russian handlers.
He allegedly began to pass highly sensitive information to Moscow in 1985 and continued in the activity even after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Hanssen, a veteran counter-intelligence officer with 27 years of service at the FBI, had virtually unlimited access to state secrets and is believed to have seriously compromised U.S. national security.
