Robert Hanssen told the KGB how the US intelligence services had built a tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington to spy on their communications. He also informed Moscow about the three KGB officers themselves who were spying for the US, a tip that cost two of them their lives through convictions in Russia for treason. These were some of the most notorious performances of Hanssen, an FBI super agent who for 22 years, from 1980 to 2001 with some breaks, was passing secret information to his country’s number one enemy during the cold war and beyond, the USSR and the Russian Federation. He was “the most damaging spy in the history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” according to the entity.
Hanssen was found dead before 7 a.m. Monday in his cell at the maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado. There he was serving a life sentence under a sentence of 15 life sentences for as many crimes of espionage and conspiracy. He was 79 years old, and his death was declared after unsuccessful resuscitation maneuvers by the prison medical staff. Authorities did not specify the cause of death.
Married with six children, Hanssen did not act out of convictions, but perhaps out of resentment, feeling undervalued at the agency, according to internal rumors, and above all because of money. He then quickly succumbed to Moscow gold, although in reality he received diamonds, in cash, for a total of 1.4 million dollars and in bank funds for an undetermined amount. He was, in short, a tome capitalist. And, far from any affinity for communism, he was affiliated with Opus Dei.
Hanssen did have a certain vocation as a spy. As a child he was obsessed with James Bond, collected spy devices and opened an account in Switzerland. A native of Chicago, he studied Russian and Chemistry at Knox College in Illinois. Later, he applied for a job in the cryptography section of the National Security Agency. He didn’t get it.
So, he studied Dentistry for a while and then got a Master’s in Business Administration. Around this time he met his soon to be wife, Bonnie Wauck, who persuaded him to change his faith from Lutheran to Catholic. After a few months working at an accounting firm, he joined the Chicago Police Department, where he spent four years, and finally the FBI, in 1976.
In the federal agency, he held different counterintelligence positions that gave him access to classified information. Although his betrayal began three years after joining the Office, his most refined work for the KGB began in 1985. He identified himself as Ramón GarcÃa or “Bâ€. His reports included key data on satellite intelligence gathering.
Everything went well for years. Until, already in the 1990s, the authorities arrested CIA agent Aldrich Ames for espionage without the leaks completely stopping. Falling for it, the authorities launched Operation Graysuit to find out who was still spying for the Russians. But for a while investigators were blindsided, spending two years on the trail of a CIA veteran who turned out not to be the traitor.
It was only in 2000 that strong indications emerged that the man was Hanssen. His bosses moved him, gave him a false assignment, and watched him until they accumulated the necessary evidence against him. The investigation led to an operation involving 300 officers who, on February 18, 2001, caught him red-handed as he left a package containing reports for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) under a footbridge in Foxstone Park, in the suburb of Vienna (Virginia).
“Why have you taken so long?” he asked the agents. And already during the interrogations he said that security at the FBI was weak to the point of “criminal negligence.” Any agency employee could, with basic authorization, find “stuff” in the computer system, he said before pleading sorry and “ashamed” at trial. The FBI also had to feel ashamed, and in fact changed its security protocols to cover the glaring holes that one of their own had used for 20 years to get rich selling state secrets. How many did he give to the Russians? Maybe only they and he know. How many will he have taken to the grave? Perhaps he knew that alone.
