sentenced was reduced to 13 years, and he was released in 1994 after serving nine years. Today, the government's affidavit said Mr. Hanssen volunteered to spy for Moscow in October 1985 when he was working as the supervisor of a squad that was responsible for the electronic monitoring of Russians in the vicinity of New York. He sent a secret letter to Victor I. Cherkashin, the same official at the Russian Embassy in Washington who acted as the contact for Mr. Ames, the career C.I.A. officer who walked into the Soviet Embassy in May 1985. In the letter, Mr. Hanssen said he was aware that "your service has recently suffered some setbacks." Then, in an apparent effort to demonstrate that the intelligence he could offer was genuine, he identified Boris Yuzhin, Sergei M. Motorin and Valery F. Martinov, all Russian agents who had been recruited to spy for the United States. By then, all three had already been identified by Mr. Ames, but by passing these names to the Russians, Mr. Hanssen could be sentenced to death because Mr. Motorin and Mr. Martynov were later convicted in Soviet courts and executed for their actions. The affidavit appears to clear up what counterintelligence officials have long said was a mystery that had perplexed them since 1989 when a covert investigation began into Felix S. Bloch, a State Department employee suspected of espionage. The affidavit said that Mr. Hanssen compromised the investigation by alerting the Russians that the F.B.I. suspected Mr. Bloch of meeting in 1989 with a Soviet agent in Paris and Brussels. As a result, Mr. Bloch denied he had ever engaged in spying and declined to answer any questions and the F.B.I. inquiry collapsed. Mr. Hanssen, whom the Russians referred to only as B, wrote articulate messages to his handlers that reflected his knowledge of spying, his need for anonymity and the risks he faced, the affidavit said. In one message in July 1988, he wrote about his strict precautions to avoi...
