Who was Robert Hanssen, 'most damaging spy' in FBI history

Robert P. Hanssen was a former F.B.I. agent, who spied for Moscow intermittently for more than two decades amid and following the Cold War has died. US Federal authorities notified that he was discovered dead in his prison cell in Colorado on Monday. He was 79.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons declared in a statement that at the United States Penitentiary Florence, where he was serving a life sentence, Hanssen was discovered unresponsive shortly before 7 a.m. After extensive life-saving measures by emergency medical personnel, he was officially declared deceased. The cause of death has not been not specified in the statement.

Hanssen's case was distinguished as a highly infamous spy scandal in his generation, leaving F.B.I. leaders and government officials stunned when they discovered that one of their own had been transferring information to the other side for an extended period of time. Even today, the F.B.I. refers to him as “the most damaging spy in bureau history.”

Hanssen exchanged a substantial sum of $1.4 million in cash, bank funds, and diamonds for which he traded a multitude of classified information with Moscow. Among the disclosed secrets was the revelation that the United States government had constructed a tunnel beneath the Soviet embassy in Washington, allowing for the covert interception of diplomatic and other types of communications. Furthermore, he provided Moscow with details regarding three K.G.B. officers who were engaged in covert espionage on behalf of the United States, resulting in the subsequent execution of two of them.

“The magnitude of Hanssen’s crimes cannot be overstated”, remarked Paul J. McNulty, the U.S. attorney who was responsible for prosecution, said on Monday in response to the news of his demise. “They will long be remembered as being among the most egregious betrayals of trust in U.S. history. It was both a low point and an investigative success for the FBI”.

After joining the FBI in 1976 as a special agent, Mr. Hanssen held various counterintelligence roles that granted him access to classified data. It was three years into his tenure when he commenced spying for the Soviet Union. he initiated his espionage activities when he was appointed to a counterintelligence unit in New York, approaching the New York offices of Amtorg, a Soviet trade organization recognized as a front for the Soviet military intelligence agency.

Between 1980 and several years thereafter, Hanssen halted his espionage activities following an incident at his residence in Westchester County, N.Y. His wife, Bonnie, unexpectedly discovered him in the basement, prompting him to swiftly conceal his papers. Subsequently, he confessed his actions to his wife and a priest associated with Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic organization with which the couple was affiliated.

In 1985, Hanssen resumed his espionage activities, resupplying information to the K.G.B. However, this time he adopted more efficient measures to conceal his actions. Employing encrypted communications and other covert techniques, he in fact remained completely anonymous even to his Russian handlers.

During the 1990s, following the apprehension of Aldrich Ames, a C.I.A. agent engaged in Russian espionage, both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. became aware of another undisclosed individual who was still supplying classified information to Russia. Consequently, they launched an operation "Graysuit" to uncover the unidentified agent. However, it wasn't until 2000 that investigators made significant progress in their pursuit.

The F.B.I. paid a former Russian intelligence officer $7 million for a file containing information on the elusive mole, who referred to himself as B. Within the file was an audio recording featuring a voice that two F.B.I. analysts, familiar with Mr. Hanssen, eventually recognized.

Using fingerprints, the F.B.I. definitively confirmed the identity of the mole as Mr. Hanssen. They then conducted surveillance on him for several months, even granting him a promotion as a strategy to closely monitor him. In February 2001, he was apprehended in Foxstone Park, situated in the Vienna area of Washington, D.C., mere blocks away from his place of residence. The arrest occurred shortly after he had left classified documents in a trash bag at a predetermined "dead drop" location under a wooden footbridge, intended for his Russian handlers.

Upon his arrest, Mr. Hanssen displayed a lack of surprise, reportedly arrogantly questioning, "What took you so long?" This response indicated a degree of anticipation concerning his apprehension. In 2003, a report from the Justice Department's inspector general highlighted that the conventional motives that usually drive traitors in the past, such as greed, ideology, career setbacks, resentment, and substance abuse, were not pertinent to Hanssen’s behavior.

The case of Mr. Hanssen revealed a significant failure within the American intelligence apparatus, as his ability to evade detection was a glaring flaw. Mr. Hanssen's own brother-in-law, who was also an F.B.I. employee, had raised suspicions about him to the bureau a decade prior to his arrest. However, the supervisor to whom he reported the concerns had dismissed them, further emphasizing the missed opportunities to apprehend Hanssen earlier.