Robert Hanssen
Robert Hanssen | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Robert Philip Hanssen April 18, 1944 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | June 5, 2023 (aged 79) ADX Florence, Fremont County, Colorado, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation | FBI agent (1976–2001) |
| Criminal charge(s) | and [1] (Espionage Act) |
| Criminal penalty | 15 consecutive life sentences without parole |
| Spouse |
Bernadette "Bonnie" Wauck
(m. 1968) |
| Children | 6 |
| Espionage activity | |
| Country | United States |
| Allegiance |
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| Agency | FBI |
| Service years |
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| Codename |
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Robert Philip Hanssen (April 18, 1944 – June 5, 2023) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States on and off from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the U.S. Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history".[2]
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. 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. Hanssen restarted communications the next year and continued until his arrest. Throughout his spying, he remained anonymous to the Russians.
Hanssen sold about six thousand 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.[3] 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 U.S., some of whom were executed for their betrayal. Hanssen also revealed a multimillion-dollar eavesdropping tunnel built by the FBI under the Soviet Embassy. After Ames's arrest in 1994, some of these intelligence breaches remained unsolved, and the search for another spy continued. 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,[4] near his home in the Washington, D.C., suburb of 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 $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and Rolex watches over twenty-two years.[5][6] To avoid the death penalty, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 14 counts of espionage and one of conspiracy to commit espionage.[7][8] He was sentenced to 15 life terms without the possibility of parole, and was incarcerated at ADX Florence until his death in 2023.[9]
Early life
[edit]Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Lutheran family that lived in the Norwood Park neighborhood.[10] His father, Howard (died 1993),[11] a Chicago police officer, was allegedly emotionally abusive to Hanssen during his childhood.[3][12] Hanssen graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1962 and attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1966.[13]
Hanssen applied for a cryptography job at the National Security Agency following his college graduation but was turned down due to budget constraints. He enrolled in dental school at Northwestern University,[14] but he switched his focus to business after three years.[15] 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, Hanssen left the Chicago police to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[3]
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 Catholicism.[16]
Career and espionage
[edit]FBI career and first espionage activities (1976–1981)
[edit]Upon becoming a special agent on January 12, 1976, Hanssen was transferred to the FBI's field office in Gary, Indiana. In 1978, he and his growing family of three (eventually six) children relocated to New York City when the bureau transferred him to its field office there.[17] The next year, Hanssen was transferred to counterintelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the FBI.[9]
In 1979, Hanssen approached the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) and offered his services. He never indicated any political or ideological motive for his actions, telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was financial.[18] During his first espionage cycle, Hanssen provided a significant amount of information to the GRU, including details of the FBI's bugging activities and lists of suspected Soviet intelligence agents. His most important leak was the betrayal of Dmitri Polyakov, a CIA informant who passed enormous amounts of information to U.S. intelligence while rising to the rank of general in the Soviet Army. Following a second betrayal by CIA mole Aldrich Ames in 1985, Polyakov was arrested in 1986 and executed in 1988. Ames was officially blamed for giving Polyakov's name to the Soviets, while Hanssen's attempt was not revealed until after his 2001 capture.[19]
FBI counterintelligence unit, further espionage activities (1985–1991)
[edit]
In 1981, Hanssen was transferred to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., and relocated his family to the suburb of Vienna, Virginia. His new job in the FBI's budget office gave him access to information involving many different FBI operations. This included all the FBI activities related to wiretapping and electronic surveillance, which were Hanssen's responsibility. He became known in the FBI as an expert on computers.[20]
Three years later, Hanssen transferred to the FBI's Soviet analytical unit, responsible for studying, identifying, and capturing Soviet spies and intelligence operatives in the United States. Hanssen's section evaluated Soviet agents who volunteered to give intelligence to determine whether they were genuine or re-doubled agents.[21] In 1985, Hanssen was again transferred to the FBI's field office in New York City, where he continued to work in counterintelligence against the Soviets.[22] After the transfer, while on a business visit back to Washington, he resumed his espionage career.[23]
On October 1, 1985, Hanssen sent an anonymous letter to the KGB offering his services and asking for $100,000 in cash, equivalent to $290,000 in 2024.[24] In the letter, he gave the names of three KGB agents secretly working for the FBI: Boris Yuzhin, Valery Martinov, and Sergei Motorin. Although Hanssen was unaware of it, Ames had already exposed all three agents earlier that year.[25] Yuzhin had returned to Moscow in 1982 and had been subject to an intensive investigation by the KGB because he had lost a concealed camera in the Soviet consulate in San Francisco, but he was not arrested until exposed by Ames and Hanssen.[26] Martynov and Motorin were recalled to Moscow, where they were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of espionage against the Soviet government. Martynov and Motorin were executed via gunshot to the back of the head; Yuzhin was imprisoned for six years before he was released by a general amnesty granted political prisoners and he subsequently immigrated to the U.S.[27] Because the FBI blamed Ames for the leak, Hanssen was neither suspected nor investigated. The October 1 letter began a long, active espionage period for Hanssen.[28]
Hanssen was recalled yet again to Washington, D.C., in 1987. He was tasked with studying all known and rumored penetrations of the FBI to find the man who had betrayed Martynov and Motorin; this meant, in effect, that he was charged with searching for himself. Hanssen ensured that he did not reveal himself with his study, but in addition, he gave the entire study—including the list of all Soviets who had contacted the FBI about FBI moles—to the KGB in 1988.[29] 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. The agents working for him reported this breach to a supervisor, but no action was taken.[3]
In 1989, Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation of Felix Bloch, a Department of State official who was suspected of espionage. Hanssen warned the KGB that Bloch was being investigated, causing the KGB to end contact with him abruptly. 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. 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 Hanssen's arrest.[30]
Later that year, Hanssen gave the KGB extensive information about U.S. 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.[31][32] When the Soviets began construction on a new embassy in 1977, the FBI dug a tunnel beneath their decoding room. The FBI planned to use it for eavesdropping but never did for fear of being caught. Hanssen disclosed this information to the Soviets in September 1989 and received a $55,000 payment the next month, equivalent to $140,000 in 2024.[24][33] On two occasions, Hanssen gave the Soviets a complete list of American double agents.[34]
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. Bonnie had previously told her brother that Hanssen once talked about retiring in Poland, then part of the Eastern Bloc. Wauck also knew that the FBI was hunting for a mole and spoke with his supervisor, who took no action.[3][35]
Later FBI career, continued espionage activities (1992–2001)
[edit]When the USSR disbanded in December 1991, Hanssen, possibly worried that he could be exposed during the ensuing political upheaval, ended communications with his handlers for a time.[36] The following year, after the Russian Federation assumed control of the defunct Soviet spy agencies, Hanssen made a risky approach to the GRU, with whom he had not been in contact for ten months. He went to the Russian embassy in person and physically approached a GRU officer in the parking garage. Hanssen, carrying a package of documents, identified himself by his Soviet code name, "Ramon Garcia", and described himself as a "disaffected FBI agent" who was offering his services as a spy. The Russian officer, who evidently did not recognize the code name, drove away. The Russians then filed an official protest with the U.S State Department, believing Hanssen to be a triple agent. Despite having shown his face, disclosing his code name, and revealing his FBI affiliation, Hanssen escaped arrest when the FBI's investigation into the incident did not advance.[37]
Hanssen continued to take risks in 1993 when he hacked into the computer of a fellow FBI agent, Ray Mislock, printed out a classified document from Mislock's computer and took the document to Mislock, saying, "You didn't believe me that the system was insecure." Hanssen's superiors were not amused and began an investigation. In the end, officials believed his claim that he was merely demonstrating flaws in the FBI's security system. 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.[38]
In 1994, Hanssen expressed interest in a transfer to the new National Counterintelligence Center, which coordinated counterintelligence activities. When told that he would have to take a lie detector test to join, Hanssen changed his mind.[39] Three years later, convicted FBI mole Earl Edwin Pitts told the FBI that he suspected Hanssen due to the Mislock incident. 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.[40]
IT personnel from the National Security Division's (NSD) Internet Information Services (IIS) Unit were sent to investigate Hanssen's desktop computer after a reported failure. NSD chief Johnnie Sullivan ordered the computer impounded after it seemed to have been tampered with. A digital investigation found that an attempted hacking had occurred using a password cracking program installed by Hanssen, which caused a security alert and lockup. After confirmation by the FBI Computer Analysis Response Team (CART) Unit, Sullivan filed a report with the Office of Professional Responsibility requesting the further investigation of Hanssen's attempted hack. Hanssen claimed he was trying to connect a color printer to his computer but needed the password cracker to bypass the administrative password. The FBI believed his story, and Hanssen was merely given a warning.[41]
During the same period, Hanssen searched the FBI's internal computer case record to see if he was being investigated. He was indiscreet enough to type his name into FBI search engines. Finding nothing, Hanssen decided to resume his spy career after eight years without contact with the Russians. He established contact with the SVR (a successor to the Soviet-era KGB) during the autumn of 199