This included all the FBI activities related to wiretapping and electronic surveillance, which were Hanssen's responsibility. Before concluding, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for the cooperation and assistance of his agency in this investigation. December 2000 - The FBI begins surveillance of Hanssen. Regrettably, I stand here today both saddened and outraged. In 1979, three years after joining the FBI, Hanssen approached the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) to offer his services, beginning his first espionage cycle, lasting until 1981. Each time, I share the pride and sanctity of those words when new agents swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.. "Robert Hanssen, FBI Agent Who Became a Soviet Mole." The crimes alleged are an affront not only to his fellow FBI employees but to the American people, not to mention the pain and suffering he has brought upon his family. Discovery Company. His job was to help assemble a database of foreign officials posted in New York who, while posing as diplomats, were actually intelligence officers spying on the United States. Under Mr. Hanssen's plea bargain, she. To the residents of the quiet suburb of Vienna, Virginia, Robert Hanssen was the perfect neighbor. Bonnie had previously told her brother that Hanssen once talked about retiring in Poland, then part of the Eastern Bloc. [33], Hanssen continued to take risks in 1993 when he hacked into the computer of a fellow FBI agent, Ray Mislock, printed out a classified document from Mislock's computer and took the document to Mislock, saying, "You didn't believe me that the system was insecure." Press Release - Veteran FBI Agent Arrested and Charged with Espionage, FBI.gov is an official site of the U.S. Department of Justice. Christian owned a bakery and would make his son work for long hours as a kid. As Director of the FBI, I am proud of the courageous men and women of the FBI who each day make enormous sacrifices in serving their country. [69], Hanssen frequently visited D.C. strip clubs and spent a great deal of time with a Washington stripper named Priscilla Sue Galey. [72], Hanssen was the subject of a 2002 made-for-television movie, Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story, with the teleplay by Norman Mailer and starring William Hurt as Hanssen. 2000 - The FBI identifies Hanssen from a fingerprint and from a tape recording supplied by a disgruntled Russian intelligence operative. He never indicated any political or ideological motive for his actions, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was financial. They never lived the high life; they never even went out to dinner, she said. "Robert Hanssen, FBI Agent Who Became a Soviet Mole." In January 2001, Hanssen was given an office and an assistant, Eric O'Neill, who, in reality, was a young FBI surveillance specialist who had been assigned to watch Hanssen. The Russians then filed an official protest with the State Department, believing Hanssen to be a triple agent. Therefore, after he was given a 461-year sentence for his crimes, she chose to divorce him. ", "Eric O'Neill and Billy Ray Discuss 'Breach', "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees: Uproar Over CIA Operative; Iraq Weapons Hunt: Congress to be Briefed", "FBI Spy Robert Hanssen Gets Life Sentence", "Faculty and Staff Directory for Oakcrest School for Girls", Ex-stripper describes her time with accused spy, "MUGSHOTS: ROBERT HANSSEN HANSSEN AND THE KGB", "Smithsonian Channel: It's Brighter Here", FBI application for arrest warrant for Hanssen, "The Movie Breach and Hollywood's Take on Espionage; Peter interviews Eric O'Neill, the FBI investigator who went undercover as Robert Hanssen's clerk during the final months before Hanssen was arrested for espionage", "This FBI Agent Sold Secrets to the KGB for Years", "Curator's Corner: Robert Hanssen - An Inside View with Eric O'Neill", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Robert_Hanssen&oldid=1134276656, Ramon Garcia, Jim Baker, G. Robertson, Graysuit, "B", This page was last edited on 17 January 2023, at 21:42. Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. The FBI and CIA formed a joint mole-hunting team in 1994 to find the suspected second intelligence leak. The FBI could not produce any good evidence, and as a result, Bloch was never charged with a crime, although the State Department later terminated his employment and denied his pension. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/robert-hanssen-6997.php. The plea bargain spared Hanssen the death penalty. FBI career and first espionage activities (19761981), FBI counterintelligence unit, further espionage activities (19851991), Later FBI career, continued espionage activities (19922001), Lynch, Christopher, The C.I. McNamara, Robert. A proficient hunter and tracker since childhood, Hansen chased down his victims in the Alaskan wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. He began providing the Soviets with highly valuable material. Although his name was not specifically mentioned, evidence in the file pointed to Hanssen, who was put under close surveillance. In 1999, the FBI even interrogated Kelley, his ex-wife, two sisters, and three children. [73], Eric O'Neill's role in the capture of Robert Hanssen was dramatized in the 2007 movie Breach, in which Chris Cooper played the role of Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe played O'Neill.[74]. He was tasked with studying all known and rumored penetrations of the FBI to find the man who had betrayed Martynov and Motorin; this meant, in effect, that he was charged with searching for himself. An FBI arrest team moved into position at Foxstone Park, a location where Hanssen had been spotted before by FBI surveillance. 1972 - Joins the Chicago Police Department. Hanssen warned the KGB that Bloch was being investigated, causing the KGB to end contact with him abruptly. While not identifying himself, he was able to gain their trust by initially providing information which the Soviets found both credible and valuable. Both schools are associated with Opus Dei. His wife was a teacher of theology at Oakcrest. Hanssen received payments of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds from the information he gave the Soviet Union and Russia. [53] Upon being arrested, Hanssen asked, "What took you so long?" With two children already out of school, the pension money will help Bonnie Hanssen support two children who are in college and two more still in high school, Brookner said. They attended Mass weekly and were very active in Opus Dei. Hansen was first married in his native Iowa when he was in his early 20s (via The Cinemaholic). Your effort and contribution in providing this feedback is much 1980 - Begins working for the counterintelligence unit, focusing on the Soviet Union. Despite having shown his face, disclosed his code name, and revealed his FBI affiliation, Hanssen escaped arrest when the FBI's investigation into the incident did not advance. Desk: FBI and CIA Counterintelligence As Seen From My Cubicle Dog Ear Publishing 2010, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy, Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, "USA v. Robert Philip Hanssen: Affidavit in Support of Criminal Complaint, Arrest Warrant and Search Warrant", "Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator", "A Review of FBI Security Programs (Webster Report)", "A Review of the FBI's Performance in Deterring, Detecting, and Investigating the Espionage Activities of Robert Philip Hanssen", Thompson Statement Regarding Hanssen Guilty Plea, "Spy's Wife Speaks, After Taking a Lie Test", "Riddle Resolved: Who Dimed Out American Traitor and Super-Spy, Robert Hanssen? Wanting to get a fresh start, the newlywed couple migrated to Alaska in 1967 (per the New YorkDaily News). [4], In 1989, Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation of Felix Bloch, a Department of State official who had become suspected of espionage. Hanssen's children returned to school within days of his arrest, family and friends said, to maintain their routines. It belongs to his wife . After being released, he met his second wife, Darla Henrichsen, and the pair got married in 1963. The full extent of the damage done is yet unknown because no accurate damage assessment could be conducted without jeopardizing the investigation. A few years later, they moved to Anchorage, Alaska, and had two children. Hanssen restarted communications the next year and continued until his arrest. [7][8] He was sentenced to 15 life terms without the possibility of parole. Hanssen reportedly lavished cash and gifts on a Washington stripper whom he befriended. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. He often steered conversations to talk of religion and his very conservative values, which were aligned with the very conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. It is alleged that Hanssen provided to the former Soviet Union and subsequently to Russia substantial volumes of highly classified information that he acquired during the course of his job responsibilities in counterintelligence. Polyakov was arrested in 1986 and executed in 1988. Apparently, even though Hansen was naturally a left-handed person, he was always forced to use his right hand, making his speech problems worse. On July 6, 2001, he was tried in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on fifteen counts for his espionage. For many years, the CIA and FBI have been aggressively engaged in a sustained analytical effort to identify foreign penetrations of the Intelligence Community. He used encrypted communications, dead drops, and other clandestine methods to provide information to the KGB and its successor agency, the SVR. Thereafter he enrolled in Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois and in 1966 completed his bachelor degree with Chemistry as major. He is serving his sentence at the ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado, in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. In 1991, he discontinued selling classified information to KGB after the collapse of Soviet Union and also probably because the FBI was on the lookout for a probable defector. What makes Hansen seem even more grisly than other serial killers was the way that many of his victims were murdered. He then enrolled at the Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, to study dentistry but after three years shifted to business studies. The couple went on to have two children. After divorcing Robert, Darla was faced with a choice. Born In: Chicago, Illinois, United States. Hanssen's story was featured in episode 4, under the name of "Perfect Traitor", of Smithsonian Channel's series Spy Wars, aired end of 2019 and narrated by Damian Lewis.[78]. He passed on data related to surveillance activities of FBI and provided the GRU with data of suspected Soviet intelligence spies. Hanssen is a Special Agent of the FBI with a long career in counterintelligence. in Chemistry, 1966; Attended Northwestern University Dental School, 1966-1968;. Robert Phillip Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 18, 1944. [32] The following year, after the Russian Federation assumed control of the defunct Soviet spy agencies, Hanssen made a risky approach to the GRU, with whom he had not been in contact in ten months. Darla was an extremely religious woman, and she felt that faith could be his way out. He urged fellow Catholics in the FBI to attend Mass more often and denounced the Russians as "godless", even though he had been spying for them. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. The one thing the father and son would eventually have in common is their interest in hunting. His most important leak was the betrayal of Dmitri Polyakov, a CIA informant who passed enormous amounts of information to U.S. intelligence while rising to the rank of general in the Soviet Army. Hanssen parked on a residential street and walked down a wooded path to a footbridge with the classified materials wrapped in a plastic bag. He was eventually placed on administrative leave, where he remained falsely accused until after Hanssen was arrested. Through our cooperative efforts, the FBI and CIA were able to learn the true identity of Ramon and the FBI was able to conduct a solid investigation. Hansen even followed in his fathers footsteps and opened up his own bakery. He did well in his elective, Russian. In court proceedings the government stated that Hanssen had been paid more than $1.4 million during his spying career, most of which he never actually received, as it was held for him in a Russian bank. By February 2001, about 300 personnel were working the investigation and monitoring Hanssen. In school, he was bullied for his acne, girls would not talk to him, and he also developed a stutter. Further, the complaint alleges that Hanssen, using his training and experience to protect himself from discovery by the FBI, never met face-to-face with his Russian handlers, never revealed to them his true identity or where he worked, constantly checked FBI records for signs he and the drop sites he was using were being investigated, refused any foreign travel to meet with the Russians, and even declined to accept any trade craft. Hanssen never displayed outward signs that he was receiving large amounts of unexplained cash. However, even though Hansen would go to church with his wife, nothing really changed. At present he is serving his fifteen successive life terms as prisoner #48551-083 at a federal supermax prison, the ADX Florence. [26], Later that year, Hanssen gave extensive information about American planning for measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), a general term for intelligence collected by a variety of electronic means, such as radar, spy satellites, and signal intercepts. Pitts was the second FBI agent to mention Hanssen by name as a possible mole, but superiors were still unconvinced, and no action was taken. We dont know at this point what happened to that money, she said. But Thursday, Bonnie Hanssen issued a statement through her attorney revealing the torment that the case has caused. In January 2001, Hanssen moved into a small office in FBI Headquarters secretly outfitted with surveillance cameras and microphones. As Hanssen walked back to his car, the arrest team rushed up and took him into custody. For a while he was in contact with Priscilla Sue Galey, a stripper in Washington, who received cash, jewelry and other benefits from Hanssen. During the early 1990s, KGB veterans began to approach western intelligence agencies and provide information. To get Hanssen back to FBI Headquarters where he could be closely monitored, Neil Gallagher, assistant director of the National Security Division at the time, called Hanssen to inform him of a bogus assignment to serve on his staff as a special assistant for a technology project. She supports the plea agreement and agrees that the sentence of life in prison without parole, rather than the death penalty, is appropriate in these circumstances.. history. But the government could not prove he had lied, and wishing to avoid a public trial, the government chose not to void his plea agreement. 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