NOTE: The following is an excerpt from an article by Lee Penn, "Opus Dei & the Da Vinci Code, part II", published in the Journal of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project [SCP] (Vol. 29:4-30:1, 2006, pp. 42-67.) (*) (**) (***)


Fourth, there is the case of Robert Philip Hanssen, a top-level FBI agent responsible for counterintelligence in the US, who spied for the Russians from 1979 until his arrest in February 2001.(1) He told the Soviets about four of their own intelligence staff who were spying for the US, interfered with the investigation of a Soviet spy in the US State Department, and gave the Communists “the plan of a program for the continuity of government in case of a Soviet nuclear attack and planned defense and retaliation.”(2) A biographer calls him “the most damaging spy in history.”(3) For his efforts, the KGB (and its successor agency, the FSB) gave Hanssen $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.

While betraying his country, Hanssen was a devoted member of Opus Dei.(4) With the Soviet money, Hanssen put his children through Opus Dei-approved private schools. According to one report, Hanssen believed that his children “might in the future be part of a holy war that would remerge God and country, whose leaders would then ban abortion, divorce and other evils of the world that he and Opus Dei opposed.”(5) He and his wife were public activists against abortion.(6) Meanwhile, he put sex stories about his wife on the alt.sex group on the Internet, “shared pornographic photos of his wife with his best friend, [and] secretly broadcast his sex acts over closed-circuit television to his guest room.”(7) He also spent $80,000 of Soviet-supplied cash on a two-year flirtation with a stripper – and justified himself by refraining from intercourse with her, and by trying to get her to attend church.(8)

When his wife confronted him in 1982 after she caught him in the basement counting out $20,000 in $100 bills,(9) she made him confess to an Opus Dei priest – Fr. Robert Bucciarelli, the former head of Opus Dei in the US. The priest told Hanssen to give the $20,000 that he had thus far received to Mother Teresa’s charities.(10) The rite of penance did not cause a change in Hanssen’s behavior; he continued to spy on the US throughout the Gorbachev era. Hanssen and Louis Freeh (head of the FBI from 1993 to 2001) attended the same church,(11) St. Catherine of Siena,(12) as have Justice Antonin Scalia and Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa).

One way that Hanssen might have rationalized his behavior was his belief that the Soviet Union would soon collapse. One of Hanssen’s bosses at the FBI said, “He was a religious person who put the Soviets into a religious context. He would say that the Soviet Union is bound to fail because it is run by communists and communists don’t have God in their life. He said to me, ‘Without religion, man is lost.’”(13) The reporter Adrian Havill added, “Did Hanssen believe that giving our most vital secrets to the Soviet Union was a moot issue because they were about to collapse? If so, he was a true seer. Mikhail Gorbachev would declare communism dead in 1991. ‘Ramon Garcia’ [the name Hanssen used in his dealings with the KGB] went to ground a few months later.”(14)

Another reporter sees a more direct link to Vatican and Opus Dei statecraft: “It may seem paradoxical that Hanssen would spy for the Soviet Union, a moral adversary and indeed a satanic force in the eyes of Opus Dei. During Gorbachev’s glasnost era, however, there is evidence of behind-the-scenes collaboration between the Vatican and Moscow. In particular, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, a powerful Opus Dei supporter, pursued a policy of reaching out toward Moscow with the aim of gaining Poland’s release from the Warsaw Pact. …

Hanssen’s most damaging activities in FBI counterintelligence coincided with these years, 1985-89. Secrets from America’s intelligence vaults could well have been part of the quid pro quo in the late cardinal's dance with Moscow. Certainly, the Vatican has had no qualms about violating American sensitivities. Indeed, it seems to reflect a Eurocentric triumphalism. The papal encyclical on labor rights slapped rampant materialism – that is, the immoral United States – as the ‘other’ great evil afoot in the world. The Vatican’s political work with Moscow paid off handsomely with the independence of Catholic-dominant (sic) Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine and later, from Moscow’s nominal ally Yugoslavia, of Slovenia and Croatia. All the while, Hanssen kept up the flow of U.S. secrets to Moscow.”(15)



NOTES             

(*) Although we appreciate the courtesy of the Journal of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project [ SCP Journal] in allowing us to publish documents authored by Mr. Lee Penn, documents which have appeared in their magazine, we do not in any form whatsoever endorse, agree or recommend any other article or recommendation and/or promotion which may appear the SCP Journal.

(**) The entire article, which describes the track record of Opus Dei and its members, is available to those who order a copy of this magazine. To do so, visit the magazine's web site at http://www.scp-inc.org, or call their office in Berkeley,California at 510-540-0300, between 9am and 5pm, Pacific time.

(***) The full text of Part 1 of Lee Penn's article about Opus Dei is now available on-line, courtesy of SCP. To read the article go to http://www.scp-inc.org/publications/journals/J2902/index.php.

(1) Information in this paragraph, unless otherwise noted, is from Wikipedia, “Robert Hanssen,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen, printed 09/08/05.

(2) Wikipedia, “Robert Hanssen,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen, printed 09/08/05.

(3) Adrian Havill, “Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 4, “On the Road to Oblivion,” http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/7.html?sect=23, printed 09/08/05.

(4) In addition, his brother-in-law is an Opus Dei priest in Rome, and one of his daughters is an Opus Dei numerary. (“Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 5, “Secret World of a Spy,” http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/5.html?sect=23, printed 08/28/03.)

(5) Adrian Havill, “Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 5, “Secret World of a Spy,” http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/5.html?sect=23, printed 08/28/03.

(6) Michael Walsh, “Secrets and Spies,” The Tablet, January 1, 2005, http://www.thetablet.co.uk/cgi-bin/register.cgi/tablet-00966, printed 09/08/05.

(7) Wikipedia, “Robert Hanssen,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen, printed 09/08/05.

(8) Adrian Havill, “Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 6, “Inside Robert Hanssen’s Weird World,” http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/6.html?sect=23, printed 09/08/05.

(9) Adrian Havill, “Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 4, “NYC to Washington and Back,” http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/4.html?sect=23, printed 09/08/05.

(10) Adrian Havill, “Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 4, “NYC to Washington and Back,” http://www..crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/4.html?sect=23, printed 09/08/05.

(11) Freeh and Opus Dei have denied repeated allegations that Freeh is an Opus Dei member. (Wikipedia, “Robert Hanssen,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen, printed 09/08/05.)

(12) Yoichi Clark Shimatsu, “Was FBI Agent's True ‘Loyalty’ To Opus Dei?,” Pacific News Service, March 5, 2001, http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/6.31/010305-spy.html, printed 08/28/03.

(13) Adrian Havill, “Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 5, “Secret World of a Spy,” http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/5.html?sect=23, printed 08/28/03.

(14) Adrian Havill, “Robert Philip Hanssen: The Spy Who Stayed Out In the Cold,” section 5, “Secret World of a Spy,” http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/spies/hanssen/5.html?sect=23, printed 08/28/03.

(15) Yoichi Clark Shimatsu, “Was FBI Agent's True ‘Loyalty’ To Opus Dei?,” Pacific News Service, March 5, 2001, http://www.pacificnews.org/jinn/stories/6.31/010305-spy.html, printed 08/28/03.



Document Published on leepenn.info on December 26th, 2007

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