Incursiune într-un joc dublu al mistificării și diseminării de informații pentru identificarea indicatorilor de trădare

In a knowledge-based society, information is power. In the never-ending war for greatness, intelligence services worldwide take advantage of vulnerable individuals, citizens of foreign countries, to gain intel that would be otherwise inaccessible. This paper presents the infamous espionage case of Robert Hanssen, an infamous spy for the former KGB, Russia's foreign intelligence service. As an individual, he has a damaged perception of reality, due to his early life and vanitous personality. The current research objective is to determine the motivation that led Hanssen to spy for a foreign intelligence service and analyze his psychological profile, in order to establish a pattern. The research method used was qualitative, analyzing Robert Hanssen's case study, alongside a psychological analysis to contour his profile. To establish the motivation of the spy, Robert Cialdini's inspired MICE instrument was used. Given the brief assessment found in the present paper, the key to discovering it lay in his perception of life. As well as applying the journalists' questions, the personal life and career of Hanssen were put through the looking glass. The results of the paper offered a series of red flags in terms of personality development and psychological traits that would push an individual towards committing treason against his country. Robert Hanssen's motivation, though not very clear at a first glance, represented for him the way out from a life that had failed to offer him the solutions he sought, to alleviate his needs. The calm and controlled manner in which he sold classified information gave us a clue that he had been through conspicuous life events before, starting from his personal double-life. This goes to show that having a high IQ does not compensate for the feeling of being without purpose or the need to fulfill desires and needs. In the end, having emotionally unstable employees can prove to be the biggest vulnerability for an organization, especially for one that conducts conspiratorial or secret activities. In the complex mental chess game designed by Hanssen, the USA is always at loss, as the effect of his espionage had, at all times, devastating effects over the national security of the country, leading, in the end, to the most gruesome terrorist attack of all times – 9/11.