In other circumstances, it makes a good story line. Despite the apparent hemorrhaging of U.S. secrets, Russia foundered while America prospered. Johnson believes there are circumstances in which intelligence matters very much, particularly in cases of terrorism or war. But in peacetime, the intelligence stakes can be exaggerated. If you step back and take a harder look, that's not so clear.
Espionage is sort of about itself.
By the standards of the espionage universe, the severity and scale of the charges against Hanssen are staggering. During his 15 years as an alleged double agent, Hanssen's jobs gave him access to information not just on individual agents but on U.S. systems of electronic eavesdropping, spy recruitment and techniques to identify facilities making weapons of mass destruction. And if the charges prove true, Hanssen is only the latest U.S. intelligence agent to spend a career on the Soviet or Russian payroll. The 1980s saw the exposure of a Navy spy ring led for 18 years by John A. Walker Jr. and of National Security Agency eavesdropper Ronald W. Pelton, who shared with the Soviets his photographic memory of 14 years inside the largest and most secretive American intelligence organization. In the 1990s, there was Aldrich Ames, the career Central Intelligence Agency officer who in nine years of spying for Moscow revealed more than 100 U.S. covert operations and betrayed 30 operatives for the CIA and other Western intelligence services.