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Robert Hanssen, F.B.I. Agent Exposed as Spy for Moscow, Dies at 79
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Big Mongo
Jun 5, 2023, 6:37:36 PM6/5/23
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https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/us/robert-hanssen-spy-dead.html
Robert Hanssen, F.B.I. Agent Exposed as Spy for Moscow, Dies at 79
Mr. Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison in 2002, bringing to a close one of the most lurid and damaging espionage cases in American history.
By Jesus Jiménez
June 5, 2023
Updated 5:35 p.m. ET
Robert Hanssen, a former F.B.I. agent who was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for spying for Moscow during and after the Cold War in one of the most damaging espionage cases in American history, was found dead in his cell in a federal prison in Colorado on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. He was 79.
The bureau said in a statement that Mr. Hanssen was found unresponsive at the United States Penitentiary Florence in Colorado just before 7 a.m. He was pronounced dead after lifesaving efforts by emergency medical workers.
The statement did not give a cause for Mr. Hanssen’s death.
Mr. Hanssen had been in custody at the Florence lockup, a maximum-security facility, since July 17, 2002, after he was sentenced to life in prison without parole in May of that year after pleading guilty to 15 counts of espionage.
Mr. Hanssen joined the F.B.I. in 1976 as a special agent and went on to hold several counterintelligence positions that gave him access to classified information. He began spying for the Soviet Union three years after joining the bureau, when he was assigned to a counterintelligence unit in New York, by walking into the New York offices of Amtorg, a Soviet trade organization that was known to be a front for the Soviet military intelligence agency.
He stopped spying for several years starting in 1980, after his wife, Bonnie, walked in on him in the basement of their home in Westchester County, N.Y., and he quickly tried to cover up his papers. He confessed to her and to a priest affiliated with Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic organization to which the couple belonged.
In 1985, he began spying again, providing information to the K.G.B. This time, he did a better job of covering his tracks, using encrypted communications and other secret methods. Identifying himself only by code names like B and Ramon Garcia, Mr. Hanssen told the K.G.B. about three of its officers who were spying for the United States and also revealed the existence of a tunnel that the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency had built beneath the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Government officials said his betrayal of the tunnel cost the United States hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mr. Hanssen’s work as a spy for Moscow went undetected for years as he collected more than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds in exchange for “highly classified national security information,” according to the F.B.I.
In the 1990s, after the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a C.I.A. agent who also spied for the Russians, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. realized that someone was still providing Russia with classified information. But it wasn’t until 2000 that the agencies were able to find Russian documentation that led them to Mr. Hanssen.
He was arrested in a Virginia park in February 2001 after he left classified documents for his Russian handlers.
Robert Hanssen, F.B.I. Agent Exposed as Spy for Moscow, Dies at 79
Mr. Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison in 2002, bringing to a close one of the most lurid and damaging espionage cases in American history.
By Jesus Jiménez
June 5, 2023
Updated 5:35 p.m. ET
Robert Hanssen, a former F.B.I. agent who was sentenced to life in prison in 2002 for spying for Moscow during and after the Cold War in one of the most damaging espionage cases in American history, was found dead in his cell in a federal prison in Colorado on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Prisons said. He was 79.
The bureau said in a statement that Mr. Hanssen was found unresponsive at the United States Penitentiary Florence in Colorado just before 7 a.m. He was pronounced dead after lifesaving efforts by emergency medical workers.
The statement did not give a cause for Mr. Hanssen’s death.
Mr. Hanssen had been in custody at the Florence lockup, a maximum-security facility, since July 17, 2002, after he was sentenced to life in prison without parole in May of that year after pleading guilty to 15 counts of espionage.
Mr. Hanssen joined the F.B.I. in 1976 as a special agent and went on to hold several counterintelligence positions that gave him access to classified information. He began spying for the Soviet Union three years after joining the bureau, when he was assigned to a counterintelligence unit in New York, by walking into the New York offices of Amtorg, a Soviet trade organization that was known to be a front for the Soviet military intelligence agency.
He stopped spying for several years starting in 1980, after his wife, Bonnie, walked in on him in the basement of their home in Westchester County, N.Y., and he quickly tried to cover up his papers. He confessed to her and to a priest affiliated with Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic organization to which the couple belonged.
In 1985, he began spying again, providing information to the K.G.B. This time, he did a better job of covering his tracks, using encrypted communications and other secret methods. Identifying himself only by code names like B and Ramon Garcia, Mr. Hanssen told the K.G.B. about three of its officers who were spying for the United States and also revealed the existence of a tunnel that the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency had built beneath the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Government officials said his betrayal of the tunnel cost the United States hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mr. Hanssen’s work as a spy for Moscow went undetected for years as he collected more than $1.4 million in cash and diamonds in exchange for “highly classified national security information,” according to the F.B.I.
In the 1990s, after the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a C.I.A. agent who also spied for the Russians, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. realized that someone was still providing Russia with classified information. But it wasn’t until 2000 that the agencies were able to find Russian documentation that led them to Mr. Hanssen.
He was arrested in a Virginia park in February 2001 after he left classified documents for his Russian handlers.
radioacti...@gmail.com
Jun 6, 2023, 2:44:00 AM6/6/23
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This Robert Hanssen case was certainly an interesting one, if only because it proved what we're told is an article of faith in the Soviet/Russian espionage community--that is, that unlike typical Russkie would-be spies, Americans can always be tempted because we capitalists will just be in it for the money.
Well, Hanssen DID have six children, after all; a religious man of (switchable) faith, Hanssen converted to Catholicism from Lutheranism to join his [fully innocent] wife's church.
His activities were of special interest to me, as the late Hanssen was from Norwood Park, the neighborhood of northwest Chicago I lived in 1998-2000 while working in local television news. But the Hanssen home isn't as near as my place was to the John Wayne Gacy home's infamous crawlspace...merely a 4-wood tee-shot due east off the roof of my five-story apartment building on Cumberland Blvd.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=====================================
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
Well, Hanssen DID have six children, after all; a religious man of (switchable) faith, Hanssen converted to Catholicism from Lutheranism to join his [fully innocent] wife's church.
His activities were of special interest to me, as the late Hanssen was from Norwood Park, the neighborhood of northwest Chicago I lived in 1998-2000 while working in local television news. But the Hanssen home isn't as near as my place was to the John Wayne Gacy home's infamous crawlspace...merely a 4-wood tee-shot due east off the roof of my five-story apartment building on Cumberland Blvd.
BRYAN STYBLE/Florida
=====================================
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
Cathy Drumobich
Jun 6, 2023, 9:24:47 AM6/6/23
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On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 1:44:00 AM UTC-5, radioacti...@gmail.com wrote: STYBLE/Florida
> =====================================
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
He should have been executed.
> =====================================
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen
He should have been executed.
danny burstein
Jun 6, 2023, 9:49:58 AM6/6/23
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In <658789d0-c6f0-4d22...@googlegroups.com> Cathy Drumobich <tmwell...@aol.com> writes:
>On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 1:44:00=E2=80=AFAM UTC-5, radioacti...@gmail.co=
>m wrote: STYBLE/Florida=20
Better to hold onto them for trading
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
>On Tuesday, June 6, 2023 at 1:44:00=E2=80=AFAM UTC-5, radioacti...@gmail.co=
>m wrote: STYBLE/Florida=20
Better to hold onto them for trading
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
radioacti...@gmail.com
Jun 6, 2023, 12:28:31 PM6/6/23
to
I think your too-tradable-for-execution point is a fine one in general, Danny--but I doubt it would have been applicable to Hanssen, simply because I don't think he would have gone for it.
Hanssen sounded terribly remorseful at sentencing--which is a good thing--and through it all seemed a profoundly American family man, so I suspect if a spy-for-spy trade was offered to him, he would not have agreed. He just might have preferred his spartan life in the supermax-prison regimen to living in Russia where couldn't ever see his family, however seldom or restrictive supermax rules allow even glass-partitioned visitation.
Oh, and how did someone take that Florence-cell photograph in Hanssen's Wikipedia entry? I've NEVER seen ANY photos of ANY other federal prisoners once inside, other than their released mug shots. So maybe there's hope that we'll sooner or later see "how he's aging" photos--smuggled out or legitimately-released--of his fellow Florence felons Terry Nichols [Tim McVeigh's bomb-making confederate] and accomplice-lacking Montana mountain man Ted Kaczynski ?
STYBLE/Florida
Hanssen sounded terribly remorseful at sentencing--which is a good thing--and through it all seemed a profoundly American family man, so I suspect if a spy-for-spy trade was offered to him, he would not have agreed. He just might have preferred his spartan life in the supermax-prison regimen to living in Russia where couldn't ever see his family, however seldom or restrictive supermax rules allow even glass-partitioned visitation.
Oh, and how did someone take that Florence-cell photograph in Hanssen's Wikipedia entry? I've NEVER seen ANY photos of ANY other federal prisoners once inside, other than their released mug shots. So maybe there's hope that we'll sooner or later see "how he's aging" photos--smuggled out or legitimately-released--of his fellow Florence felons Terry Nichols [Tim McVeigh's bomb-making confederate] and accomplice-lacking Montana mountain man Ted Kaczynski ?
STYBLE/Florida
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