Since Hanssen's arrest, friends and colleagues have been puzzling over the personality question. There is, for instance, the issue of his religious beliefs. Opus Dei is a very small association, with only about 84,000 members worldwide. Its adherents advocate a highly disciplined way of living as a means of bringing people closer to God. Significantly, in Hanssen's case, Opus Dei members are also, as a rule, staunchly anti-Communist.
Human motivations are complex, but that's a mystery.
It's not the only one, though. Ames was manifestly motivated by greed, but Hanssen is another story. Paul Moore, a retired FBI counterintelligence analyst and another friend of Hanssen's, agrees. I think of him a little bit like the counterintelligence version of the hacker. He's broken into the system, and he's going to see how far he can go.