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United States: Robert Hanssen, the FBI agent who spied for years for the Soviet KGB, died

2023-06-05T21:30:51.990Z

Highlights: Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was found dead in his cell on Monday. Hanssen, 79, had been arrested in 2001 and had pleaded guilty to selling highly classified material. He was serving a life sentence at the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. His revelations included details about U.S. nuclear war preparations and a secret wiretapping tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. He also betrayed double agents, including Soviet General Dmitri Polyakov, who were later executed.


He was 79 years old and had been imprisoned since 2001. He was the most damaging spy in the agency's history, the FBI says on its website.


Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who was the most damaging spy in U.S. history by leaking top-secret information to Moscow's secret services at the height of the Cold War for years, was found dead in his cell on Monday. Hanssen, 79, had been arrested in 2001 and had pleaded guilty to selling highly classified material to the Soviet Union and then Russia. He was serving a life sentence at the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

The spy was found unconscious in the morning and efforts to revive him did not help, Bureau of Prisons communications director Kristie Breshears said.

Hanssen's espionage story is remembered as one of the most scandalous of the twentieth century and the entirety of the information he leaked will never be revealed. But all experts agree that it did damage like few others. "He was the most damaging spy in the history of the agency," the FBI says on its website.

Three years after being hired by the FBI, Hanssen approached the Soviets and began spying in 1979 for the KGB and its successor, the SVR. He stopped a few years later after his wife discovered him with a pile of money and confronted him.

Hassen was a devout Catholic, father of 6 children, and his wife sent him to atone for his sins with a priest who advised him to donate the money to charity and thus atone for guilt.

Robert Hanssen approached the KGB in 1979. AP Photo

But Hassen, greedy for money, did not sit still for long and wanted more. He resumed espionage in 1985, selling thousands of classified documents compromising human and technical sources and counterintelligence investigations in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and foreign bank deposits.

Under the alias "Ramon Garcia," he passed information to spy agencies using encrypted communications and camouflaged envelopes, never meeting in person with a Russian facilitator. He used to advertise his deliveries with adhesive tape marks in certain places and on some day and time that he needed he deposited garbage bags with secret information under some bridge in Washington and its surroundings.

His work at the FBI gave him unfettered access to classified information about the bureau's counterintelligence operations. His revelations included details about U.S. nuclear war preparations and a secret wiretapping tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. He also betrayed double agents, including Soviet General Dmitri Polyakov, who were later executed.

"The information he provided compromised numerous human resources, counterintelligence techniques, investigations, dozens of highly classified U.S. Government documents, and technical operations of extraordinary importance and value," the FBI said.

Hanssen was arrested after attempting to send a hidden message in a Virginia park at 200after the FBI had been secretly monitoring him for months.

When he was arrested, he only asked his FBI colleagues, "Why did it take so long?" One of the events that gave Hanssen air was the arrest during those years of another double spy, Aldrich Ames, a CIA agent who also supplied information from that agency to the Russians. Much of what Hanssen had leaked was attributed to Ames, until they realized that some did not close.

The FBI suspected that there was a mole in his bowels, but did not find it until he put a price on his head, a hook that was bitten by a Russian spy who decided to betray his activities, although he did not know his exact name. His identity was discovered after a Russian intelligence officer handed over a file containing a garbage bag with Hanssen's fingerprints and a recording of his voice.

Hanssen faced 15 consecutive life sentences. His case triggered months later the formation of a Security Review Commission of FBI programs. That commission described Hanssen's spying as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in American history."

PB

See also

The incredible story of Russian spies detained in Slovenia with Argentine passports

The war in Ukraine: the United States, a "hotbed" of Russian spies

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-06-05

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