Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

Robert Hanssen: FBI Espionage

Robert Philip Hanssen (born April 18, 1944) is a former Federal Bureau Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history." He is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado.

Hanssen was born in Chicago. His father, a police officer, was emotionally abusive to him during his childhood. In 1968 Hanssen married his wife Bonnie, a Roman Catholic. He converted to Catholicism and became involved in the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. He hovered between varying academic pursuits and jobs before joining the FBI in 1976. Three years after joining, Hanssen approached the Soviet GRU to offer his services, launching his first espionage cycle, which lasted until 1981. Hanssen restarted his espionage activities in 1985 and continued until 1991 when he broke off communications during the collapse of the Soviet Union, fearing he would be exposed. He restored communications the next year and continued until his arrest. Throughout his spying, Hanssen remained anonymous to the Russians.

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. He was spying at the same time as Aldrich Ames in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Both Ames and Hanssen compromised the names of KGB agents working secretly for the United States, some of whom were executed for their betrayal. Hanssen also revealed a multimillion dollar eavesdropping tunnel built by the FBI under the Soviet Embassy in Washington. After Ames's arrest in 1994, some of these intelligence breaches still remained unsolved. The FBI paid $7 million to a KGB agent to obtain a file on an anonymous mole, whom the FBI later identified as Hanssen through fingerprint and voice analysis.

Hanssen was arrested on February 18, 2001, at Foxstone Park near his home in Vienna, Virginia after leaving a package of classified materials at a dead drop site. He was charged with selling U.S. intelligence documents to the Soviet Union and subsequently Russia for more than US$1.4 million in cash and diamonds over a 22-year period. To avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to 14 counts of espionage and one of conspiracy to commit espionage. He was sentenced to 15 life terms without the possibility of parole.

Early life

Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a family who lived in the Norwood Park community. His father Howard, a Chicago police officer, was emotionally abusive to Hanssen during his childhood. He graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1962 and went on to attend Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1966.

Hanssen applied for a cryptographer position in the National Security Agency, but was rebuffed due to budget setbacks. He enrolled in dental school at Northwestern University but switched his focus to business after three years. Hanssen received an MBA in accounting and information systems in 1971 and took a job with an accounting firm. He quit after one year and joined the Chicago Police Department as an internal affairs investigator, specializing in forensic accounting. In January 1976, he left the police department to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Hanssen met Bernadette "Bonnie" Wauck, a staunch Roman Catholic, while attending dental school at Northwestern. The couple married in 1968, and Hanssen converted from Lutheranism to his wife's Catholicism, becoming a fervent believer and through involvement in the Catholic organization Opus Dei.

FBI career and first espionage activities (1976–1981)

Upon becoming a special agent on January 12, 1976, Hanssen was transferred to the FBI's Gary, Indiana, field office. In 1978, Hanssen and his growing family (of three children and eventually six) moved to New York City when the FBI transferred him to its field office there. The next year, Hanssen was moved into counter-intelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the Bureau.