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1. #FBI UNDERCOVER AGENT SWITCHING ASSIGNMENT SERIAL#
2. #FBI UNDERCOVER AGENT SWITCHING ASSIGNMENT PROFESSIONAL#

And I believe that regular evaluation of all agents might help expose threats and prevent security disasters. So, while I don't know Hanssen or pretend to understand his particular case, I understand a great deal about undercover agents. Not all the agents I have worked with were undercover, but I have evaluated dozens of men and women with secret missions and double lives. I trained many counselors and went out on assignments myself, working with agents everywhere from U.S. From 1992 to 1997, in fact, I worked regularly with the FBI I helped develop and was medical director of the bureau's Mobile Psychiatric Emergency Response Team. And in crises involving its agents, it often relies on the tools of modern psychiatry.

#FBI UNDERCOVER AGENT SWITCHING ASSIGNMENT SERIAL#

It's not that the bureau doesn't believe in the usefulness of psychology - consider, for example, its use of extensive profiling to understand and identify serial criminals. The FBI keeps regular tabs on its agents' weight and blood pressure - but not their emotional stability. After that, however, only the physical exams are routine, even though these employees are subject to stresses and pressures far beyond what most people experience. When personnel are hired, they go thorough physical and psychological screenings. This is a painfully obvious lack in bureau security. But very likely they wouldn't have been picked up - because the FBI doesn't require regular psychological evaluations of its agents.

#FBI UNDERCOVER AGENT SWITCHING ASSIGNMENT PROFESSIONAL#

Were there signals that a professional evaluation would have picked up? Could a psychiatrist have identified Hanssen as a possible threat years before a double agent fingered him as a spy?

I have been thinking of that agent and what "more" he might have done since the headlines first appeared about Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent accused of betraying his country beginning in 1985. His final words to me were: "I know I crossed the line and was going to do more. The agent was gradually extricated from the assignment without arousing suspicion, and he soon retired from the bureau. Luckily, our work had a successful ending. And this unnecessarily risky escapade was his way of punishing the uncaring agency. Behind his cool exterior he was seething, because he believed the exceptional caliber of his undercover work was not fully appreciated by his superiors. He was remarkably candid about what motivated his reckless sexual conduct: anger. During our meetings, the agent seemed quite calm, unfazed by either his dangerous assignment or the firestorm his behavior was causing at headquarters. I spent about a week there, talking with the agent in various restaurants and bars, my back always to the entrance so he could keep an eye on who came through the door. The reason: The agent was having an affair with a member of the criminal organization he was investigating. In the mid-1990s, the FBI sent me to a Southern city to do a psychological evaluation of one of its undercover agents.