For information of readers to this site, I submitted a letter to the Weekly Standard (www.weeklystandard.com) which was published in the 2/18/02 issue.  It responded to a review of 3 books on the Hanssen case that appeared in the 1/28/02 issue.  That article is available on-line through the Weekly Standard's web site (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/794usohl.asp)  Here is the text of my letter as it was published, followed by a relevant excerpt from the original article:

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Justin Torres is partially off the mark in his review of three recent books on FBI spy Robert Hanssen.  Citing the three books, Torres points to an arrogant FBI culture that could not
believe one of its own could go bad; therefore Hanssen was never polygraphed.

I was an FBI Agent from 1987-1996, working in foreign counterintelligence for much of that time (I never met Hanssen).  Because my work was sensitive, I was given a routine polygraph, as were many of my colleagues.  Solely as a result of the polygraph, the FBI falsely accused me of espionage.  A massive investigation ensued-- twenty four hour surveillances by car and airplane, lengthy interrogations of my family, a consent search of my home, and other
intrusions into my life.  Nearly two years later, the FBI gave me a grudging exoneration.  My career undermined, I resigned immediately.

Torres and the authors he reviews equate conducting polygraphs with national security.  A polygraph has never caught a spy. It is fundamentally dependent on trickery, easily defeated by countermeasures in which we should expect any spy to be practiced.  Trying to identify an actual
spy from within a population who “failed” their polygraphs, if he “failed,” renders such a screening exercise impracticable.  One might with more justification investigate all those who
“passed” the polygraph, since a spy is more likely to appear in that group.  Aldrich Ames passed his CIA polygraphs with primitive countermeasures.  Double agents from Cuban intelligence routed the CIA in the 1980's by passing polygraphs.  Larry Wu Tai Chin, a convicted spy
formerly with the CIA, passed his polygraph.  Belief in the polygraph has been a costly delusion.

Torres additionally chides the FBI for not recognizing in Hanssen signs betraying a troubled personality.  This is of course easier in hindsight, although the FBI’s failure to act on his brother-in-law’s information was egregious.  Nevertheless, I do not wish to see national security
hinge on the perceptiveness of those in contact with people accessing classified information.  Self-absorption and denial are, alas, too powerful.  

What the Russians understand that we don’t is that the best  way to catch a spy is to recruit one from the other side.

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Here is a relevant excerpt from the article:

The failures of the FBI are particularly obvious. Hanssen was administered not one polygraph in his twenty-five-year career, even as he was exposed to increasingly more sensitive information. All three of the new books detail how an old-boys culture at the bureau resisted polygraphing.
Higher-ups refused to believe that agents who had sworn an oath and often put their lives on the line could possibly go bad. That attitude went straight to the top. Havil notes in "The Spy Who Stayed Out in the Cold" that FBI director Louis Freeh, in a speech given just days after Hanssen's
arrest, warned that "removing someone from a position based on a polygraph can ruin a career."