Hanssen Case And Police Corruption Analysis

There are several parallels between the Hanssen case and police corruption within the context of prevention. The prevention of crime is made more difficult by the presence of corrupt police officers. This is because a corrupt officer might be aware of a plan to commit a crime, but choose not to take any action because of their connection with the criminal. This was evident in the Hanssen case when he compromised key US intelligence assets. Hanssen knew that the agents he had compromised would be imprisoned or even killed, but he took no measures to prevent this. In addition, Hanssen’s corruption made it harder for the US counter-intelligence to prevent the fate that befell their agents, most of whom were either imprisoned, or killed (George
Police corruption makes crime detection by law enforcement officers very difficult. This is because corrupt police officers aid criminals in hiding their activities, which makes it hard to detect crime. For example, a criminal that co-operates with a corrupt officer will likely learn the measures that the police are taking to detect crime. With this knowledge, the criminal has a higher chance of planning and executing their actions in such a way that makes it harder for law enforcement officers to detect. In the Hanssen case, it was difficult for the US counter-intelligence officers to identify how their assets were being compromised because one of their own was corrupt. Hanssen’s actions meant that US intelligence agencies could not detect when the Soviets, and later the Russians, arrested, tried and executed some of the FBI and CIA’s key assets. The US intelligence learnt about the compromises to its assets when it was too late to act. Furthermore, Hanssen had provided the Russians with sensitive information regarding the operational procedures of US security intelligence agencies. This gave the Russians the ability to plan their espionage activities against the US government without being detected by counter-intelligence agents (New York Times,
For instance, the FBI personnel specialists who were in charge of background investigations on employees lacked the required analytical training that was crucial when assessing common issues that come up during background investigations. The employees who were using the ACS system had insufficient training and knowledge on how to use the system’s security controls, which were intended to control access to sensitive cases. Employees at the FBI had not received the appropriate training on how to handle sensitive information. In addition, FBI employees did not have the proper training on the reporting and documentation of security violations (Stich,