Robert P. Hanssen, a former FBI agent who spied for Moscow on and off for more than two decades during and after the Cold War in one of the most damaging espionage cases in American history, was discovered dead in his prison cell in Colorado on Monday. , announced federal authorities. He was 79 years old.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons said in a statement that Mr. Hanssen was found unconscious just before 7 am at the United States Penitentiary in Florence, where he was serving a life sentence. He was pronounced dead after rescue efforts by emergency medical workers. The statement did not identify a cause.
The Mr. Hanssen case was considered one of the most notorious spy scandals of its generation, shocking FBI leaders and other government officials when they learned that one of their own had been passing information to the other side with impunity for so many years. To this day, the FBI describes him as “the most damaging spy in the history of the bureau”.
In exchange for $1.4 million in cash, bank funds, and diamonds, Mr. Hanssen conveyed a torrent of secrets to Moscow, including one that revealed that the United States government had dug a tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington to spy on diplomatic and other communications. . He also informed Moscow about three KGB officers secretly spying for the United States, two of whom were later executed.
“The magnitude of Hanssen’s crimes cannot be overstated,” Paul J. McNulty, who was the federal prosecutor who prosecuted him, said Monday in response to reports of his death. “They will long be remembered as one of the most egregious betrayals of trust in American history. It was both a low point and an investigative success for the FBI.”
Hanssen’s arrest in 2001 briefly severed relations between the United States and Russia at a time when the two former enemies sought to build friendlier ties after the collapse of the Soviet Union. President George W. Bush expelled about 50 Russian diplomats, and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia retaliated by expelling 50 US diplomats. But both parties were determined to end the matter there and not let it result in a more lasting rift.
The discovery of Mr. Hanssen’s spying embarrassed the FBI and led to changes in security procedures. He told investigators after his arrest that security at the office was so lax it amounted to “criminal negligence.” He said it was a simple matter to gain access to classified material on official computers with only routine security clearances.
“Any employee in the office could find out about that system,” Hanssen said, according to a Justice Department report on his case in 2002. “It’s criminal what’s being presented.”
Mr. Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy to avoid the death penalty and expressed remorse for his betrayal. “It embarrasses me,” he said during the 2002 hearing in which he was sentenced to life without parole.
Since July 17, 2002, Mr. Hanssen has been in custody at Florence, the maximum-security facility that is considered the most secure prison in the federal system and has been used in recent years to house convicted terrorists. Prisoners are usually held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
Mr. Hanssen joined the FBI in 1976 as a special agent and later held various counterintelligence positions that gave him access to classified information. He began spying for the Soviet Union three years after joining the bureau, when he was assigned to a counterintelligence unit in New York, breaking into the New York offices of Amtorg, a Soviet trade organization that was known to be a front. for the Soviet Union. military intelligence agency.
He stopped spying for several years beginning in 1980, after his wife, Bonnie, discovered him in the basement of their home in Westchester County, New York, and quickly tried to hide his papers. He confessed to her and to a priest affiliated with Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic organization to which the couple belonged.
In 1985, he began spying again, providing information to the KGB. This time he did a better job of covering his tracks, using encrypted communications and other secret methods; even the Russians never found out who he was. Identifying himself only by code names such as B and Ramón García, Mr. Hanssen handed over sensitive information said to include specific satellite intelligence gathering capabilities.
He stopped spying again after the collapse of the Soviet Union, then resumed again in 1999. His treachery went undetected for years while he collected at least $600,000 in cash and diamonds from the KGB and its post-Soviet successor, SVR, who told him they had turned away another $800,000 for him in a Moscow bank, according to prosecutors.
In the 1990s, after the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a CIA agent who had also spied for the Russians, the FBI and CIA realized that someone else was still feeding Russia classified information, and they started “Greysuit.” “, a search for the unknown double agent. But it wasn’t until 2000 that investigators were able to narrow the search, when the FBI paid a former Russian intelligence officer $7 million for a file on the anonymous mole calling himself B, a file that included an audio recording with a voice that two FBI analysts who knew Mr. Hanssen eventually recognized.
Using fingerprints, the FBI confirmed that the mole was Mr. Hanssen and kept an eye on him for months, even urging him to better follow him. In February 2001, agents arrested him in Foxstone Park, in the Washington suburb of Vienna, Virginia, a few blocks from his home, after he left classified documents in a garbage bag at a “deadlock” for his Russian handlers under a wooden plank. Pedestrian bridge.
Mr. Hanssen didn’t seem surprised that he was finally caught. “What took you so long?” he supposedly asked when he was arrested.
Robert Philip Hanssen was born on April 18, 1944, in Chicago to Vivian and Howard Hanssen, a career Chicago police officer who did intelligence work for the department. Robert, an only child who was seen as a nerd and never fit in, had a difficult relationship with his father, who emotionally abused him. He grew up obsessed with James Bond, collecting spy gadgets and even opening a bank account in Switzerland.
Mr. Hanssen received a chemistry degree in 1966 from Knox College in Illinois, where he also studied Russian, but after graduation he was turned down by the National Security Agency when he applied for a position in cryptography. He enrolled in Northwestern University dental school, but later transferred to the business school, where he earned an MBA.
While in dental school, he met and married Bonnie Wauck and converted from a Lutheran to join his Roman Catholic faith. After a year working at an accounting firm, she took a position with the Chicago Police Department specializing in forensic accounting. Four years later he went over to the FBI.
Brilliant but fragile, Mr. Hanssen was said to burn with resentment that he did not receive the respect and assignments he felt he deserved. With six children in parochial schools or college, he chalked up his decision to spy for Moscow to money, though his reasons were never fully understood.
“Many of the factors that have motivated or influenced traitors in the past, such as greed, ideology, professional disappointments and resentment, and drug and alcohol abuse, do not apply to Hanssen or fully explain his behavior. ”. said a Justice Department inspector general report on the case in 2003.
Mr. Hanssen led a double life in more ways than one. An active member of the Roman Catholic lay organization Opus Dei, he presented himself as a religious and committed anti-communist conservative. But he also reportedly visited strip clubs, allowed a friend to clandestinely observe him having sex with his wife, and engaged in what was said to be a secret but non-sexual relationship with an exotic dancer to whom he delivered gifts and confronted her. to an FBI. he travels to Hong Kong.
Mr. Hanssen’s ability to avoid detection was a sign of failure of the US intelligence apparatus. His own brother-in-law, who also worked for the FBI, reported suspicions about Hanssen to the office a decade before his arrest, but the supervisor she told had dismissed his concerns.
Mr. Hanssen was the subject of multiple books and movies, including a 2002 TV movie in which he was played by William Hurt and a full-screen movie called “Breach” in 2007, in which he was played by Chris Cooper.
“Hanssen was a tangle of paradoxes, a suburban father and seemingly devout family man who professed to be deeply religious while simultaneously betraying family, faith, and country—everyone and everyone who ever mattered to him.” Ann Blackman, co-author of “The Spy Next Door,” said Monday. “For 21 years, during the terms of four presidents and three FBI directors, he fooled them all.”
jesus jimenez contributed reporting from New York.