Robert Hanssen

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 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".

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. 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, and were run by the same KGB officer, Victor Cherkashin. Hanssen also revealed a multimillion-dollar eavesdropping tunnel built by the FBI under the Soviet Embassy. After Ames' 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, 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. To avoid the death penalty, Hanssen 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 and was incarcerated at ADX Florence until his death in 2023.

Early life

Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Lutheran family that lived in the Norwood Park neighborhood. His father, Howard (died 1993), a Chicago police officer, was allegedly emotionally abusive to Hanssen during his childhood. 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.

Hanssen applied for a cryptography position at the NSA after graduating from college, but was turned down due to budget constraints. He enrolled in dental school at Northwestern University, but he 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 IA investigator, specializing in forensic accounting. In January 1976, Hanssen left the Chicago police to join the FBI.

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.

Career and espionage

FBI career and first espionage activities (1976–1981)

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 NYC when the bureau transferred him to its field office there. The next year, Hanssen was transferred to counterintelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the FBI.

In 1979, Hanssen approached the Soviet 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. 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.

FBI counterintelligence unit, further espionage activities (1985–1991)

In 1981, Hanssen was transferred to FBI HQ in 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.

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 provide intelligence to determine whether they were genuine or re-doubled agents. In 1985, Hanssen was again transferred to the FBI's field office in NYC, where he continued to work in counterintelligence against the Soviets. After the transfer, while on a business visit back to Washington, he resumed his espionage career.

On October 1, 1985, Hanssen sent an anonymous letter to the KGB offering his services and asking for $100,000 in cash, equivalent to $300,000 in 2025. 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, Ames had already exposed all three agents earlier that year. 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 he was exposed by Ames and Hanssen. 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. 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.

Hanssen was recalled to D.C., yet again 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; in effect, he was charged with searching for himself. Hanssen ensured that he did not reveal himself in his study, but he also gave the entire study—including the list of all Soviets who had contacted the FBI about FBI moles—to the KGB in 1988. 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.

In 1989, Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation into Felix Bloch, a DOS official suspected of espionage. Hanssen warned the KGB that Bloch was under investigation, prompting 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.

Later that year, Hanssen gave the KGB extensive information about U.S. planning for MASINT, a general term for intelligence collected through various electronic means, such as radar, spy satellites, and signal intercepts. 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 2025. On two occasions, Hanssen gave the Soviets a complete list of American double agents.