THE SPYING GAME.

• Author: Shenon, Philip

Who is spying on us and what do they want? Are top secrets vulnerable? A blockbuster spy case raises alarms.

Robert Hanssen, a veteran agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a single assignment for most of his 25-year career in the FBI: to identify and track down Russian spies working in the United States. But this February, Hanssen was the one being tracked down.

FBI agents say they were watching as Hanssen drove his Ford Taurus to a public park near his home outside Washington, D.C., on February 18. He stopped the car, grabbed a black plastic trash bag that was in the trunk, and walked to a footbridge, where he left the bag.

As he walked back to his car, he was stopped--and arrested. Inside the bag, the FBI says, were several secret government documents and a computer disk that contained a letter signed "Ramon Garcia," which the bureau says was an alias Hanssen used.

Hanssen, the FBI says, had been a spy for Moscow for 15 years. No one knows what his motives were, but greed may have played a part. He is accused of accepting $600,000 in cash and untraceable diamonds, with another $800,000 deposited for him in a bank in Russia, which was part of the Soviet Union when the spying supposedly began. According to the bureau, the letter in the trash bag was intended for Hanssen's handlers in the Russian spy agency.

Hanssen, 56, a Chicago-born father of six, now faces the death penalty for espionage. His arrest has exposed what may have been the most damaging spy operation ever aimed at the FBI, which is responsible for ferreting out spies within the borders of the United States. And it has also reopened a larger debate about spying:

After the end of the Cold War, why are Russia and many other countries still spying on the United States, and why is the U.S. snooping on them? What secrets still need protecting? What is the point of spending billions of dollars a year to protect secrets if they can be so easily given away by one or two "moles" hidden within the American government?

Although the U.S. has spied on its enemies since the days of George Washington (who recruited spies for the Revolutionary Army), the Central Intelligence Agency, the government's most famous spy agency, was only established in 1947.

The agency is responsible for sending American spies to other countries to gather information--and, more controversially, to influence events abroad. The CIA has been tarred at times by scandal, especially after it was discovered in the 1970s that agency had been involved in assassination plots, had directed coups to overthrow foreign governments, and had spied on Americans.

SPYING ON THE SPIES

The agency also claims great--but still mostly secret--successes. At the end of the Cold War, the CIA smuggled money and fax machines to the Solidarity movement in Poland, which helped overthrow Communism there and in the rest of Eastern Europe. More recently, officials say, the agency prevented attacks on Americans in this country and overseas by intercepting the communications of terrorists.

The CIA is one of 13 government agencies, including the FBI, that make up the U.S. intelligence community. (See "The Web," page 11.) While better known for its "10 Most Wanted" list and for chasing bank robbers and kidnappers, the FBI is...