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profgandalf · 4 years ago

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Fatherhood and FBI Agents of Robert Hanssen's Generation

I wrote this several years back in 2001, when my father was still alive. But I post it here to underline the nature of law enformcent officers in my experience:

My father, a retired special agent for the FBI, meets and stays in contact with other ex-federal or "government men" (Dad still prefers "g-men") on a list server developed by another former agent. Following standard FBI procedure--habits endure even after retirement--messages from this list server regularly end with the phrase "Privileged / Confidential Information May be contained in this Message." In some ways what I am about to share violates that confidentiality, drawn as it is from the private thoughts of members who once belonged to an agency well known for its official reticence. Yet, in light of some of the criticism aimed at the agency recently along with what feels to me to be a growing general, public mistrust of what motivates the average agent, it is a point of view I think should be exposed to the broader American public.

There is a common misconception that most individuals—be they soldiers, policemen, and or government agents—who develop the skills needed to use deadly force do so because they enjoy the rush of hot dogging. Recently, while reporting on the ongoing FBI espionage scandal which involved veteran agent, Robert Hanssen, US News and World Report quoted David Major, a retired FBI counterintelligence officer, as describing his and Hanssen’s generation of agents as members of a “cigar-chomping, door kicking” macho order (Duffy 24). I find this perception limiting and incomplete. My dad, a veteran of 24 years with the Bureau whose career centered around the urban New York City office from 1955-78 and who was a part of that same generation, never chomped on a cigar, but I did see him kick down a door--once. And the circumstances are telling.

In my childhood home, a solidly built Tudor in Long Island, NY, the second-floor was laid out in an L with the entrance hallway and stairwell located in the short line. The long line had two bedrooms, but--in an anomalous floor plan design I have not seen since--the second bedroom was reachable only via the first. Each bedroom was used by a sister. The older sister, Debbie, "guarded" the outer door, while Mary, three years younger, slept in the inner room. For anyone who has had, or sired, siblings this set up clearly has problematic privacy issues. Debbie controlled the only portal to Mary’s room, and “Debs” had the only door that could be locked. Thus, Mary found that the only way to assure the integrity of her personal space was to sometimes lock Debbie’s outer door and then retreat to her own room. One day Mary locked her sister’s door, and with her friend closed her own door to enjoy a private game of “Barbie.”

Downstairs the visiting girl’s parents and my family were enjoying one another’s company when they noticed the girls had been missing for quite a while. They soon found, with the help of a frustrated Debbie, the locked door, but as hard as they knocked and as loud as they shouted, no response came from inside: no music, no chatter, just silence. Furthermore, that room being on the second floor, there was no way to check through any available windows. To this day, we don’t know why the girls did not hear us, probably lost in the world of pink corvettes, miniature fashions and plastic boyfriends. However, Dad, fearing some unknown tragedy, took two steps back, braced himself, and with a hard strike, kicked the door down. In a moment he rushed in, only to find Mary and her friend wide-eyed in fear and surprise but completely safe. Debbie's door, meanwhile, was never lockable again until my parents sold the house nearly ten years later.

I don’t tell this family story to embarrass Dad, although he blushes whenever this comes up. I tell it to illustrate a basic quality that does not seem to be coming up in the various descriptions of the men who served in Mr. Hanssen’s generation. Certainly, Dad was capable of using force—even deadly force. One of my prize possessions for years was one of his firearm's silhouette targets with a tight cluster of bullet holes around both the figure’s heart and head. But Dad’s use of force was centered neither on a macho lifestyle nor in a game of cops, robbers and spies: Dad kicked down the door because he thought Mary was in trouble. He and the men with whom he served (women, then, had not yet gained access to the bureau) were committed to protecting and preserving the society that in turn protected and preserved their families.

Furthermore, my father was typical of agents in his generation in their commitment to theirs and other's families. He once told me that the one case that could galvanize an entire office was a kidnapping case. Other agents would stop their own investigations to help the agent assigned the task. They were all fathers, and they knew the clock was running on a child's life. In addition, when asked about what was the outstanding moment of his FBI career, my dad, who still proudly displays a wall lined with commendations signed by J. Edgar Hoover, says it was the night he could put down the phone, turn to a pair of terrified parents, and tell them that their child was safe.

When the story of Robert Hanssen's betrayal came out--and by the way, it is notable to me that in a society in which so many seem to plead “not guilty” even when overtly caught, Hanssen ended the affair quickly with an admission--I avoided the topic in my regular emails to Dad. I knew that the subject would be upsetting. I've watched his pain, faced as he has been, by the general cultural debasement of Hoover to whose memory he still remains in many ways loyal. I also knew that everyone else, friends and family, would be asking the retired but passionate man what he thought of the whole scenario. So I left it alone.

For his part, Dad occasionally forwarded emails to me from the g-men list server maintained by former FBI agents. There were comments of self-re-assurance and pride. One was especially ironic considering the suspect’s and my dad’s strong religious feelings: “Even Jesus, after hand picking his twelve, still had a Judas.” But in it all, I could sense that there was a pained gritting of teeth behind the ironic smiles. As I read about Hanssen, his role as a father has come up again and again. I thought of the times I had seen FBI agents as fathers.

While growing up, I occasionally accompanied my dad to “firearms,” practice where I also saw other children with their FBI dads. I even sometimes fired a weapon myself--like the time I learned that shooting a sawed-off shot gun is more like aiming a hose than firing a pistol. I came away with both a profound sense of their power and of them not being toys. On the other hand, the Styrofoam containers used for storing rounds of ammo, found everywhere on the firearm compound, made great toy blocks and because they floated, toy boats. Never was I allowed to forget the difference between toys and not toys: I remember "the talk" when Dad sat me down, like Harrison Ford in Witness,and clearly explained that his gun was not and nor would ever to be used as, a plaything. That speech--filled with serous, imminent threat and protecting, abiding love--was echoed by other agent-fathers all around the firearms' compound. Their fierce warnings heard amidst the single pistol shots and thundering, rhythmic automatic fire of men sharpening their skills with deadly force. And then, years later, I became a dad too and found myself under a different kind of fire.

My first son, Andy (the 4th) was born with a trachea and esophagus fistula, called a TEF baby by all the doctors and nurses who now filled my life. His neck dead-ended while his breathing tube was directly connected to his eating pipe. Massive surgery in Rhode Island’s children’s hospital saved his life, but my wife, Loretta, and I began the long journey traveled by so many parents who sit by bedsides holding the hands of little ones who suffer in innocence. Part of our burden was lightened by the McDonald House program. And it was while staying at the Providence Ronald McDonald House that I saw for the last time FBI agents from my father’s generation.

Three men representing the FBI Foundation arrived to present a large donation to the head of the Providence Ronald McDonald House. Thinking of that experience, I wrote this email in response to those he had sent on about the Hanssen affair:

Dear Dad:

With all the news about the alleged treason committed by an FBI vet, I was wondering how you were doing. I got my answer with the last few emails you sent me.

I thought the points made by the other G-men and women were good and important reminders of the bureau's right to still be proud. Still, I couldn’t help but sense the wincing within the correspondence—a general suffering from the sting that something like this could happen in the bureau at all. I know that for you, the FBI was not only a law enforcement agency: it was a fellowship of men who believed that the good of the society within which they, and their families, lived was important enough to defend. I know that you weren’t alone in this perception.

It’s been years since this happened, but while the news was breaking about this case of espionage, I thought of how you and your fellow agents came to the Rhode Island Ronald McDonald House to give a large donation to the McDonald program partly because of the extraordinary service they had given Andy after his birth.

I don’t recall where Loretta was, but I believe I, you and the other men

ate together somewhere for lunch. I recall being struck by how similar they were to you. You were all about the same age--graying if still fit.

You all still wore the same "regulation" trench coat over your suits in the manner that I recall so well from my childhood. Some wore tan; some wore navy-blue, but it was in all in a similar mode. (I, myself, wear something like it today. I like to let my London Fog© flow out behind me on windy days, but I'm not the same. I suspect that the tweed jacket and the tummy-warming sweater of an English professor would not have met with Mr. Hoover's approval.)

I can't recall the conversation, but I remember thinking that you all shared qualities besides those of style. I picked up that the dominant political tone was conservative (I don't even recall who was president at the time). There were shared bits of knowledge sometimes expressed in an unintentional code of past experience: numbers relating to weapons or details of some past case. And I was keenly aware of my greenness among such old warriors.

And yet there was one other quality I recall. I don't know if I was right. But I thought I sensed that they, like you, were all fathers and grandfathers. Thus, the purpose of being a warrior was not the quality of danger and action in the lifestyle, it was the quality of life which you defended. As young as I felt back then, I also felt quite comfortable.

One detail from the present case which hurts is that this man is the father of six. He, like you and they (and me) is a father. If he is guilty, I wonder where he lost the vision of what it was he, a part of an elite group of warriors, was defending.

Your Loving and Thankful Son,

Dad not only confirmed to me that they were all indeed fathers but thought this letter worthwhile enough to send to the former agent listserver with an explanation of the events and even the names of the agents to whom I had vaguely referred. Later he forwarded me some of the responses. They confirm what I thought I knew. For privacy’s sake I have suppressed their names, but there seems to have been a strong sense of something that needed to be said.

One former agent wrote that the theme of the family speaks “volumes that we need to hear to get through this tragedy.” Another said ��The letter placed the Hanssen matter in its' proper perspective and put into words those values which we all cherish.” Another agent went in a slightly different if related direction saying that the letter's reminder of the family as motivation for all that generation “causes me concern for Hanssen's children. That family surely needs our prayers.” This perspective, surprising to some, was not unique; these former agents, these warriors, continued to think of and care about even the family of the one who had failed them all. One agent especially articulated this concern:

I can’t believe what this man has done to his family! It is unlikely that his wife will be able to collect any of the monies that he has paid into his government pension. That will probably be frozen by the government. As a result, the family will likely lose their house, cars, ability to pay college tuition. . .everything! He has undoubtedly been fired by now, so the family loses their insurance coverage, not to mention his salary. Add to this whatever fees Plato Cacheris and Co. [Hanssen's defense team] will charge them to represent this monster. . .My Lord, what a mess! Talk about innocent victims. . .I hope we all go back to our families this evening and hold them very, very tight.

These letters express what does not seem to be coming up in all the ongoing coverage about the agency nor its people. For the agents of my father’s generation the protection of the society was an extension of the protection of their own and everyone else’s children. I suppose we have all heard of criminals who were devoted family figures. However true (and I question this), I want to make it clear that I am not just trying to show that FBI agents were merely good family men.

What I am trying to express is that there was in most of them a direct connection to what they did in the field to their familial responsibilities. People who are devoted to their families can be selfish and savage to others outside of their unit. However, these men tempered their lifestyles, worked to uncover evil, and used even their deadly force because they were family men. Are there exceptions? Of course. But that’s what they are—unusual.

Much of the negative portrayals of members of the FBI (and other military and law-enforcement organizations), come, I think, from the belief held by many that individuals whose service to this nation includes learning how to use deadly force must be inherently evil. They forget that people raised in cultures of familial importance will, even as tough individuals, be motivated by the need to protect rather than to play with dangerous and expensive toys. Oh sure, the FBI agents of my father's generation were macho; they could kick down doors; they could chew cigars, but that was not what defined them nor should it define our attitudes towards them or any other member of our police or armed forces. We need to distance our perspective from the shaping forces of Hollywood action adventure heroes. One agent wrote simply “Thank you for this email. I cried.” Major’s definition is wrong by omission. What a difference it makes in one’s mind to think of the above agent weeping for, and over, families--even if he is chomping on a cigar as he does so. Did he? I don’t know; however, there were tears of relief in my father’s eyes when, after kicking down the door, action-adventure he found my little sister and her friend safe.

Works Cited

Duffy, Brian. “Spy vs. Spy” U.S. News and World Report. 20 Feb. 2001: 24-25.

If done today using MLA:

Works Cited

Duffy, Brian. “Spy vs. Spy” USNews.com. 25 Feb. 2001 Web.4 Oct. 2012.

If done today using APA:

References

Duffy, Brian. (25 Feb. 2001). Spy vs. Spy. ” USNews.com. Retrieved from

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/010305/archive_004809_6.htm

#law enforcement #family #betrayal

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