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. Furthermore, she supported her husband when he was first incarcerated for theft, and then for abducting and sexually abusing a housewife and a prostitute (although the rape charge concerning the latter was dropped when he pleaded guilty.) Bonnie Hanssens first public statements on the case reveal both her anxiety over her husbands actions and her sense of relief over the fact that she and her six children will retain an estimated $39,000 a year from his government pension. 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. Hanssen's jailers allowed him to watch this movie, but he was so angered by it that he turned it off. Interestingly, Hansen got married twice. He became known in the FBI as an expert on computers.[19]. The October 1 letter began a long, active espionage period for Hanssen. McNamara, Robert. Hanssen was arrested on February 18, 2001, at Foxstone Park,[5] near his home in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Vienna, Virginia, after leaving a package of classified materials at a dead drop site. [54], With the representation of Washington lawyer Plato Cacheris, Hanssen negotiated a plea bargain that enabled him to avoid the death penalty in exchange for cooperating with authorities. He also designated a code to be used when dates were exchanged. He could sit in his office and shut the door. "Once he got caught, the only thing he cared about was trying to provide for his wife and his children," who visit him regularly in prison, Brookner said. At present he is serving his fifteen successive life terms at a federal supermax prison, the ADX Florence. Hanssen was tracked from the time he left his house in Fairfax County, Virginia, to the time he got home at night, and it was confirmed that he was still an active spy. They paid $7 million to KGB agent Alexandr Shcherbakov[43] who had access to a file on "B". On January 12 that year he was posted in FBIs field office in Gary, Indiana, and in 1978 he was again transferred to its field office in New York. A proficient hunter and tracker since childhood, Hansen chased down his victims in the Alaskan wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. The investigation was not fruitful and the FBI was unable to charge Bloch on any account. For a time he planned to become a dentist, but eventually wound up obtaining an MBA and becoming an accountant. After being imprisoned, Hanssen claimed he periodically admitted his espionage to priests in confession. The FBI also obtains the complete original KGB dossier on Hanssen. Sullivan noted that Hanssen spent a lot of time trolling ACS for information. The plea bargain spared Hanssen the death penalty. May 16, 2001 - Is indicted on 21 counts of spying for the Soviet Union/Russia and passing top secret material to the Soviet Union/Russia. The failure of the Bloch investigation and the FBI's investigation of how the KGB learned that they were investigating Bloch caused the mole hunt that eventually resulted in the arrest of Hanssen. [25] That same year, Hanssen, according to a government report, committed a "serious security breach" by revealing secret information to a Soviet defector during a debriefing. After confirmation by the FBI CART Unit, Sullivan filed a report with the Office of Professional Responsibility requesting the further investigation of Hanssen's attempted hack. When in 1989 a State Department official, Felix Bloch came under the scrutiny of the FBI, Hanssen soon informed the KGB, who immediately snapped all ties with Bloch. [20] In 1985, Hanssen was again transferred to the FBI's field office in New York, where he continued to work in counterintelligence against the Soviets. In the end, officials believed his claim that he was merely demonstrating flaws in the FBI's security system. For unknown reasons[dubious discuss], the Soviets did not act against Polyakov until he was betrayed a second time by CIA mole Aldrich Ames in 1985. Its amazing to live with a man for all those years and not know him.. May 10 Robert Hanssen, FBI agent turned Russian spy, is sentenced to life in prison On May 10, 2002, Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who intermittently sold state secrets to Russia over. Special Agent Don Sullivan, a squad supervisor at the FBIs Washington Field Office at the time, volunteered to replace Hanssen. Hanssen, a former counterintelligence supervisor for the FBI, pleaded guilty last week to 15 espionage-related charges and admitted that he had sold the Russians thousands of pages of national security secrets in exchange for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. Later, he hid a video camera in the bedroom connected via a closed-circuit television line so that Hoschouer could observe the Hanssens from his guest bedroom. He never indicated any political or ideological motive for his actions, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was financial. The couple, however, did not have a great relationship. In short, the trusted insider betrayed his trust without detection. He often steered conversations to talk of religion and his very conservative values, which were aligned with the very conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. He enrolled in dental school at Northwestern University[11] but switched his focus to business after three years. 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. Children: Lisa, Greg, Mark, John "Jack," Sue and Jane Education: Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, A.B. [23] Martynov and Motorin were recalled to Moscow, where they were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of espionage against the Soviet government. She sold their house and bakery in Alaska and shifted closer to her family in Arkansas after the children were getting bullied massively at their school. He managed to avoid a death penalty by negotiating a plea deal where he agreed to cooperate with government agents. In 1962 he completed his graduation from William Howard Taft High School. He was arrested while in the process of using a dead drop to clandestinely provide numerous classified documents to his Russian handler. (Photo courtesy of FBI/Newsmakers). 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. After a few years working as an accountant, he decided to enter law enforcement. Nor can there be any doubt that he was keenly aware of the gravity of his traitorous actions. [12] Hanssen received an MBA in accounting and information systems in 1971 and took a job with an accounting firm. February 18, 2001 - Is arrested in a Virginia park after making a drop of classified documents. He once said in a letter to the KGB that it should emulate the management style of Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daleya comment that easily could have led an investigator to look at people from Chicago. [41] The idea that an FBI agent was the second mole was not considered early enough. ThoughtCo. In 1995 he was designated as a liaison between the Office of Foreign Missions of the Department of State and the FBI. In 1979, three years after joining the FBI, Hanss [4] The family moved to Richmond, California in 1942, but returned to Iowa in 1949, settling in Pocahontas. The Russian had obtained Hanssen's KGB file. He received $5,00,000 and jewellery for this work. Later he would convert to Catholicism from Lutheranism. Hanssen took an oath 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, but he decided to violate that oath. The Hanssens were associated with the Catholic fraternal order Opus Dei. In November 1998, they had a man with a foreign accent come to Kelley's door, warn him that the FBI knew he was a spy, and tell him to show up at a Metro station the next day to escape. Though the Russians made an official protest, he managed to get away with it as FBIs probe in this matter did not make any progress. The FBI waited two more days to see if any of Hanssen's SVR handlers would show up at Foxstone Park. Press Release - Veteran FBI Agent Arrested and Charged with Espionage, FBI.gov is an official site of the U.S. Department of Justice. Hanssens espionage activities began in 1985. Hanssen reportedly lavished cash and gifts on a Washington stripper whom he befriended. In the early 1980s, Hanssen was transferred to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. To his colleagues in the bureau he seemed to be a model agent. When these two KGB officials returned to Moscow, they were tried and convicted on espionage charges and executed. Investigators learned that Hanssen was set to make a dead drop on February 18, 2001. Hanssen would later claim that his goal was simply to make some extra money, as living in New York City was putting a financial squeeze on his growing family. He 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. After a stint of three years he was shifted to the Soviet Analytical Unit that delved in probing, recognising and catching Soviet agents in the US. Because of his experience and training as a counterintelligence agent, Hanssen went undetected for years, although some of his unusual activities had aroused suspicion from time to time. [58] Going by the alias "Ramon" or "Ramon Garcia",[59] Hanssen exchanged intelligence and payments through an old-fashioned dead drop system in which he and his KGB handlers left packages in public, unobtrusive places. When FBI agents observed this incriminating act, they rushed in to arrest Hanssen. Robert Hansen was actually married twice. Friends of Hanssen later came forward and told journalists that Hanssen had exhibited eccentric behavior, which included an obsession with pornography. FBI agents remove evidence from Robert Hanssen's home in Vienna, Virginia on February 20, 2001. . The criminal conduct alleged represents the most traitorous actions imaginable against a country governed by the Rule of Law. The Soviets, suspicious of being lured into a trap, demanded to meet him. I dont think there was anybody more shocked by all this, Brookner said. Their actions represent counterintelligence at its very best and under the most difficult and sensitive of circumstances. The couple's relationship was fraught, and Darla, who had a master's degree in Education and taught children with learning disabilities, supported herself. December 2000 - The FBI begins surveillance of Hanssen. An FBI arrest team moved into position at Foxstone Park, a location where Hanssen had been spotted before by FBI surveillance. He was eventually placed on administrative leave, where he remained falsely accused until after Hanssen was arrested. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/robert-hanssen-4587832. His Russian contacts and Hanssen were highly trained in espionage techniques and were able to work together without ever meeting. The actions alleged date back as far as 1985 and, with the possible exception of several years in the 1990s, continued until his arrest on Sunday. Apparently, even though Hansen was naturally a left-handed person, he was always forced to use his right hand, making his speech problems worse. No one knew Hansen was abducting some of these women and killing them for sport. While the risk that an employee of the United States Government will betray his country can never be eliminated, there must be more that the FBI can do to protect itself from such an occurrence. [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. Interestingly, after being relocated to Washington in 1987, he was delegated with a specific probe which actually meant searching for himself but he tactfully managed it. Yuzhin was imprisoned for six years before he was released by a general amnesty to political prisoners, and subsequently emigrated to the U.S..[24] Because the FBI blamed Ames for the leak, Hanssen was neither suspected nor investigated. In this article, Hansens dynamic with his own family is discussed to give you a better insight into the life of the now-deceased murderer. 1972 - Joins the Chicago Police Department. At present he is serving his fifteen successive life terms as prisoner #48551-083 at a federal supermax prison, the ADX Florence. Robert Hansen was a reputed baker and a married man with two children living in Anchorage, Alaska. Hanssen sold thousands of classified documents to the KGB that detailed U.S. strategies in the event of nuclear war, developments in military weapons technologies, and aspects of the U.S. counterintelligence program. But even as her life regains some sense of normalcy, Bonnie Hanssen struggles to understand the havoc that the last few months have wrought, Brookner said. Before Hanssen left the position, Sullivan went to learn his new role at the Department of State. Robert Philip Hanssen is an American former Federal Bureau of Investigation double agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. But in 1999, while assigned as an FBI liaison with the State Department, he once again began selling American secrets. In 1980, after his first interactions with the Soviets, Hanssen told his wife what he had done, and she suggested they meet with a Catholic priest. What we wanted to do was get enough evidence to convict him, and the ultimate aim was to catch him in the act, said Debra Evans Smith, a former deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division. Sunday night the FBI arrested Robert Philip Hanssen who has been charged with committing espionage. Both schools are associated with Opus Dei. That could leave Bonnie Hanssen, who works part time at the Catholic girls' school that her youngest child attends, in dire straits. Mislock has since theorized that 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. In mid-2001 he was tried in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on fifteen counts as a spy and was given sentence of fifteen life terms without a chance of parole. 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. As difficult as this moment is for the FBI and for the country, I am immensely proud of the men and women who conducted this investigation. The Hanssens are active members of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group. Wikimedia Commons Robert Hanssen made over $1 million spying for the Soviets until he was caught in 2001. In 1978, he and his growing family of three children (and eventually six) relocated to New York City when the FBI transferred him to its field office there. 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. https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/robert-hanssen-6997.php. He relayed secret information to Russia regarding US intelligence and counterintelligence operations. [4], In 1989, Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation of Felix Bloch, a Department of State official who had become suspected of espionage. Hanssen received payments of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds from the information he gave the Soviet Union and Russia. [77] David Wise wrote Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America. [30], In 1990, Hanssen's brother-in-law, Mark Wauck, who was also an FBI employee, recommended to the FBI that Hanssen be investigated for espionage because his sister, Hanssen's wife, told him that her sister, Jeanne Beglis, had found a pile of cash on a dresser in the Hanssens' house. He married Bernadette Wauck in 1968 and, influenced by his devout Catholic wife, he converted to Catholicism. He is serving his sentence at the ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado, in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. She left her children, Ivanka, Donald Jr., and Eric well taken care of, but she didn't leave . The FBI believes that the Russians never knew the name of their source. 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. Hanssen was serving as a detailee to the Office of Foreign Missions at the Department of State at the time suspicions around him arose. Marriage: Bernadette Bonnie (Wauck) Hanssen (August 10, 1968-present), Children: Lisa, Greg, Mark, John Jack, Sue and Jane, Education: Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, A.B. This included all the FBI activities related to wiretapping and electronic surveillance, which were Hanssen's responsibility. In May 2002, Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison. The fact that the KGB became aware of the probe triggered the FBI to look for the leak. Under Mr. Hanssen's plea bargain, she. Imagine finding out that your husband is a ruthless serial rapist and murderer. Hanssen pled guilty to 15 counts of espionage on July 6, 2001. On January 12, 1976, Robert Philip Hanssen swore an oath to enforce the law and protect the nation as a newly minted FBI special agent. They gave him a new job supervising FBI computer security. It would seem as though Hansen's children want their privacy respected, and who could blame them? [27][28] When the Soviets began construction on a new embassy during 1977, the FBI dug a tunnel beneath their decoding room. 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. A turning point came in 2000, when the FBI and CIA were able to secure original Russian documentation of an American spy who appeared to be Hanssen. He met his second wife, Darla, shortly after his parole. [45] FBI analyst Bob King remembered Hanssen using that same quote. Discovery Company. [16] CIA and FBI officials, including Deputy Director William Sullivan, believed that, at some point, Polyakov was made into a triple agent by the Soviets, who thereby deceived the West with misinformation. 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. , but eventually wound up obtaining an MBA in accounting and information systems in 1971 and took a job an! 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