1. Robert Philip Hanssen was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States on and off from 1979 to 2001.
74 Facts About Robert Hanssen
1. 2.
Robert Hanssen's espionage was described by the US Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history".
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In 1979, three years after joining the FBI, Hanssen approached the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate to offer his services, beginning his first espionage cycle, lasting until 1981.
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Robert Hanssen restarted his espionage activities in 1985 and continued until 1991, when he ended communications during the collapse of the Soviet Union, fearing he would be exposed.
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Robert Hanssen restarted communications the next year and continued until his arrest.
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Robert Hanssen sold about six thousand classified documents to the KGB that detailed US strategies in the event of nuclear war, developments in military weapons technologies, and aspects of the US counterintelligence program.
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Robert Hanssen was spying at the same time as Aldrich Ames in the Central Intelligence Agency.
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Robert Hanssen revealed a multimillion-dollar eavesdropping tunnel built by the FBI under the Soviet Embassy.
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Robert Hanssen was arrested on February 18,2001, at Foxstone Park, near his home in the Washington, DC, suburb of Vienna, Virginia, after leaving a package of classified materials at a dead drop site.
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Robert Hanssen was charged with selling US intelligence documents to the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia for more than $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and Rolex watches over twenty-two years.
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Robert Hanssen was sentenced to 15 life terms without the possibility of parole, and was incarcerated at ADX Florence until his death in 2023.
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Robert Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Lutheran family that lived in the Norwood Park neighborhood.
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Robert Hanssen graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1962 and attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1966.
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Robert Hanssen applied for a cryptography job at the National Security Agency following his college graduation but was turned down due to budget constraints.
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Robert Hanssen enrolled in dental school at Northwestern University, but he switched his focus to business after three years.
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Robert Hanssen received an MBA in accounting and information systems in 1971 and took a job with an accounting firm.
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Robert Hanssen quit after one year and joined the Chicago Police Department as an internal affairs investigator, specializing in forensic accounting.
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In January 1976, Robert Hanssen left the Chicago police to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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Robert Hanssen met Bernadette "Bonnie" Wauck, a staunch Roman Catholic, while attending dental school at Northwestern.
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The couple married in 1968, and Robert Hanssen converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism.
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The next year, Robert Hanssen was transferred to counterintelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the FBI.
22.
In 1979, Robert Hanssen approached the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate and offered his services.
23.
Robert Hanssen never indicated any political or ideological motive for his actions, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was financial.
24.
Ames was officially blamed for giving Polyakov's name to the Soviets, while Robert Hanssen's attempt was not revealed until after his 2001 capture.
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In 1981, Robert Hanssen was transferred to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, and relocated his family to the suburb of Vienna, Virginia.
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Robert Hanssen became known in the FBI as an expert on computers.
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Three years later, Robert Hanssen transferred to the FBI's Soviet analytical unit, responsible for studying, identifying, and capturing Soviet spies and intelligence operatives in the United States.
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Robert Hanssen's section evaluated Soviet agents who volunteered to give intelligence to determine whether they were genuine or re-doubled agents.
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In 1985, Robert Hanssen was again transferred to the FBI's field office in New York City, where he continued to work in counterintelligence against the Soviets.
30.
Robert Hanssen was recalled yet again to Washington, DC, in 1987.
31.
That same year, Robert Hanssen, according to a government report, committed a "serious security breach" by revealing secret information to a Soviet defector during a debriefing.
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In 1989, Robert Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation of Felix Bloch, a Department of State official who was suspected of espionage.
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Robert Hanssen warned the KGB that Bloch was being investigated, causing the KGB to end contact with him abruptly.
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Later that year, Robert Hanssen gave the KGB extensive information about US planning for measurement and signature intelligence, a general term for intelligence collected by a variety of electronic means, such as radar, spy satellites, and signal intercepts.
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On two occasions, Robert Hanssen gave the Soviets a complete list of American double agents.
36.
Bonnie had previously told her brother that Robert Hanssen once talked about retiring in Poland, then part of the Eastern Bloc.
37.
Robert Hanssen went to the Russian embassy in person and physically approached a GRU officer in the parking garage.
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Robert Hanssen, carrying a package of documents, identified himself by his Soviet code name, "Ramon Garcia", and described himself as a "disaffected FBI agent" who was offering his services as a spy.
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The Russians then filed an official protest with the USState Department, believing Robert Hanssen to be a triple agent.
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Mislock has since theorized that Robert Hanssen probably went onto his computer to see if his superiors were investigating him for espionage and invented the document story to cover his tracks.
41.
In 1994, Robert Hanssen expressed interest in a transfer to the new National Counterintelligence Center, which coordinated counterintelligence activities.
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When told that he would have to take a lie detector test to join, Robert Hanssen changed his mind.
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Robert Hanssen claimed he was trying to connect a color printer to his computer but needed the password cracker to bypass the administrative password.
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The FBI believed his story, and Robert Hanssen was merely given a warning.
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Robert Hanssen was indiscreet enough to type his name into FBI search engines.
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Robert Hanssen established contact with the SVR during the autumn of 1999.
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Robert Hanssen continued to perform incriminating searches of FBI files for his name and address.
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Robert Hanssen's exposure explained many of the asset losses US intelligence suffered during the 1980s, including the arrest and execution of Martinov and Motorin.
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However, Robert Hanssen escaped notice, likely because these efforts concentrated on CIA agents rather than FBI agents.
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Robert Hanssen was eventually placed on administrative leave, where he remained, falsely accused until after Hanssen was arrested.
51.
FBI analyst Bob King remembered Robert Hanssen using that same quote.
52.
Robert Hanssen was given an office and an assistant, Eric O'Neill, who was actually a young FBI surveillance specialist who had been assigned to watch Robert Hanssen.
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O'Neill ascertained that Robert Hanssen was using a Palm III PDA to store his information.
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Robert Hanssen believed he heard noises on his car radio that indicated it was bugged, although the FBI was later unable to reproduce the noises Hanssen claimed to have heard.
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However, Robert Hanssen's suspicions did not stop him from making one more dead drop.
56.
Robert Hanssen placed a white piece of tape on a park sign to signal his Russian contacts that there was information at the dead drop site.
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Robert Hanssen then followed his usual routine, taking a sealed garbage bag of classified material and taping it to the bottom side of a wooden footbridge over a creek.
58.
On May 10,2002, Robert Hanssen was sentenced to 15 consecutive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
59.
Robert Hanssen never told the KGB or GRU his identity and refused to meet them personally, except for the abortive 1993 contact in the Russian embassy parking garage.
60.
Robert Hanssen refused to use the dead drop sites that his handler, Victor Cherkashin, suggested and instead chose his own.
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Robert Hanssen designated a code to be used when dates were exchanged.
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Robert Hanssen took the risk of recommending to his handlers that they try to recruit his closest friend, a colonel in the United States Army.
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Robert Hanssen urged fellow Catholics in the FBI to attend Mass more often and denounced the Russians as "godless", even as he was spying for them.
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Robert Hanssen frequently visited DC strip clubs and spent a great deal of time with a Washington stripper named Priscilla Sue Galey.
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Robert Hanssen went with Hanssen on visits to Hong Kong and the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia.
66.
Robert Hanssen gave her money, jewels, and a used Mercedes-Benz but ended contact with her before his arrest when she began abusing drugs and engaging in prostitution.
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On June 5,2023, Robert Hanssen was found unresponsive in his prison cell and was pronounced dead after unsuccessful efforts to revive him.
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Robert Hanssen's autopsy listed the cause of death as colon cancer.
69.
The Hanssen spy case was told in David Wise's book Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, published by Random House in 2002.
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Robert Hanssen's jailers allowed him to watch the movie, but he was so angered by it that he turned it off.
71.
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.
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Robert Hanssen was mentioned in chapter 5 of Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code as the most noted Opus Dei member to non-members.
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Robert Hanssen's story was featured in episode 4, under the name of "Perfect Traitor", of Smithsonian Channel's series Spy Wars, which aired at the end of 2019 and was narrated by Damian Lewis, and features Eric O'Neill as well as being mentioned in the seventh episode of The History Channel series America's Book of Secrets, as well as in the fifth episode of Netflix series Spycraft and was the subject of the 2021 documentary A Spy in the FBI.
74.
Robert Hanssen was the subject of the CBS News podcast detailing his life and espionage, Agent of Betrayal: The Double Life of Robert Hanssen.