Robert Hanssen, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Russia was found dead in a top-security prison in the US on Monday (June 5), according to prison officials. Hanssen secretly fed Russia some of the deepest secrets in the 80s and 90s.
Hanssen offered himself to Soviet intelligence in 1985. He traded government secrets and also provided identities of US moles in the Soviet and later Russian governments. In exchange, he received diamonds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He worked in FBI’s key New York counterintelligence department and was tasked with catching foreign spies. His work at the unit allowed him to cover his tracks as he investigated Russian agents in the US.
He was finally caught at a dead drop for exchanging messages with his Russian handlers in suburban Virginia just outside Washington on February 18, 2001.
A year later he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
‘Most damaging spy’ found unresponsive
A statement from high-security US prison in Florence, Colorado said that Hanssen (79) was found unresponsive early on Monday. He was later pronounced dead, said the statement.
The FBI has, in past, regarded him as “the most damaging spy in bureau history.”
Before joining the FBI, Hanssen served as a policeman in Chicago. He joined the bureau in 1976. Nine years later, he took a position in the counterintelligence unit. The unit tracked and tried to recruit Soviet officials at the United Nations.
Soon, Hanssen offered his services to the Soviets under the name “Ramon Garcia”. Even his handlers did not know his true identity.
At the time that he was caught, he was considered the most damaging mole ever to pass US secrets to a foreign government, with thousands of classified US documents handed over to the Soviets, and later to the Russians.
Those included US nuclear war plans, software for tracking spying investigations, and the identities of US sources in Moscow, including Dmitri Polyakov or “Tophat,” a Soviet general who fed his country’s secrets to the United States between the 1960s and 1980s.
Polyakov was arrested in 1986 and executed several years later.
It is believed that Hanssen was motivated by money and intrigue rather than ideology. He reportedly reaped USD 1.4 million in cash and diamonds for his spying.
In May 2002 he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage in exchange for a prosecution agreement not to seek the death penalty.
“I apologize for my behavior. I am shamed by it.” Hanssen said at his sentencing.
(With inputs from agencies)
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