1 of 5 Hanssen Badge and Business Card Photo: GETTY IMAGES/via BBC Hanssen Badge and Business Card Photo: GETTY IMAGES/via BBC
Robert Hanssen was one of the most pernicious spies in the history of the FBI, the US Federal Police. The former agent, who died in prison, spent nearly 20 years leaking confidential information to Moscow a betrayal that the agency says has cost lives. It took 300 agents to finally catch him. Two of them, who played a central role in the plan, tell the BBC how they did it.
In December 2000, FBI agent Richard Garcia received a curious visit from a colleague in charge of Russiarelated operations.
“He said, ‘Do you know a guy named Robert Hanssen?'” Garcia recalls. “I said no’.”
“Good. Because you’ll be right there.”
A few months later the whole country would know too, thanks in part to Garcia’s work as an undercover agent. Hanssen’s arrest in February 2001 shook the intelligence services and the extent of his double life made front pages.
Last Monday (6/5), more than two decades later, authorities announced that he was found dead in his cell at the maximum security prison in Colorado, United States, where he was serving a life sentence. He was 79 years old and the death is believed to be of natural causes.
Garcia, now 70 and a retired FBI employee, responded succinctly to the news. “It’s too late,” he said.
Deadly acts of treason
Hanssen studied Russian in college and began working for the FBI in 1976. Within a decade, he betrayed the agency: Beginning in 1985, Hanssen began operating as a destructive informant within the US government, selling topsecret documents to the then Soviet Union and then to Russia, thereby jeopardizing the identities of the infiltrated spies.
According to the 100page report detailing his crimes, Hanssen’s betrayal led to the arrest of three American sources and the execution of two others.
Among the classified documents leaked by Hanssen was a US intelligence assessment of Soviet attempts to gather data on US nuclear programs.
Hanssen passed information to the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret service, and later to the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service.
2 of 5 Hanssen in high school, 1962 and after (undated photo) Photo: GETTY IMAGES/via BBC Hanssen in high school, 1962 and after (undated photo) Photo: GETTY IMAGES /via BBC
In exchange, the Russians paid Hanssen $1.4 million — $600,000 in cash and diamonds and $800,000 in a bank account, the US said.
Because of his oldfashioned espionage methods, Hanssen went unnoticed for so long. He used dead drops, a method of transmitting information by physically hiding something—like a package in a bush or behind a garbage can—so a contact could pick it up. He chose inconspicuous locations in the Virginia suburbs around Washington to deliver the stolen intelligence data.
His contacts in Moscow did not know his identity. He went by the pseudonym “Ramon Garcia,” unrelated to Robert Garcia, who believes coincidence may have upset Hanssen when they first met.
Its activities continued long after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Until his arrest, he tried to communicate with the Russians.
But a series of intelligence discoveries brought the FBI and the US intelligence apparatus on his heels.
Identification of the informant
US intelligence officials had suspected they were a spy since the 1990s, but it took them a few years to track down Hanssen.
Until a Russian informant working for the US got access to a Russian dossier on her husband in Virginia. Inside, American intelligence agents discovered a recording of a phone conversation Hanssen had with his contacts, as well as fingerprints on garbage bags used for dead waste.
By November 2000, they knew who he was. But they had to prove it.
The FBI devised a plan to monitor Hanssen by transferring him from the State Department where he worked and setting him up in a bogus job with the FBI where agents could monitor him.
3 of 5 Press crowds outside the Virginia Courthouse in 2001 Photo: GETTY IMAGES/via BBC Press crowds outside the Virginia Courthouse in 2001 Photo: GETTY IMAGES/via BBC
“We wanted to gather enough evidence to convict him, and the ultimate goal was to catch him in the act,” recalled Debra Evans Smith, former deputy assistant director of counterintelligence, in a briefing on the FBI case.
This is where Garcia came in.
On December 8, 2000, the FBI’s Russia chief appeared to brief him on the plan to capture Hanssen.
Garcia, a veteran undercover agent, would be Hanssen’s fictional boss, a more bureaucratic boss.
“He hated me, let’s just say,” Garcia recalls. “I had to basically tie it together without it getting too ridiculous.”
Few FBI employees knew there was a spy among them.
A crucial “Palm Pilot”
Garcia recruited Eric O’Neill, a 26yearold undercover agent with hacking skills, as Hanssen’s administrative assistant.
“This was one of the most important events of my life, going undercover at a relatively young age and taking on the most damaging spy in US history,” O’Neill tells the BBC.
Over the next few weeks, the two became closer even if one was secretly investigating the other. At one point, O’Neill even accompanied the Hanssen family to church.
O’Neill describes his target as a narcissist with a huge ego. “He wanted to be a mentor. He wanted to pass on all his knowledge to someone.”
4 of 5 Illustration of Hanssen (left) in one of his first court appearances Photo: GETTY IMAGES/via BBC Illustration of Hanssen (left) in one of his first court appearances Photo: GETTY IMAGES/via BBC
During the investigation, Garcia took Hanssen (whom he described as a “gun freak”) to a shooting range while agents conducted searches, including his car, where they found confidential documents.
One day he took Hanssen to the shooting range while O’Neill frantically copied content from his Palm Pilot a precursor to the BlackBerry and smartphones.
O’Neill says he got the device in place just in time, just before Hanssen got back.
It sounds like a scene from a Hollywood movie, and it is the story was adapted into a spy thriller called Breaking Trust (2007) starring Ryan Phillippe, Chris Cooper and Laura Linney.
arrest and conviction
According to the FBI, as of February 2001, 300 agents were working on the case.
They waited for Hanssen to attempt another dead drop, and eventually he did.
Hanssen was arrested in Foxstone Park, Virginia, in February 2001 on charges of espionage. He pleaded guilty to 15 counts and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
5 of 5 Package Hanssen left for his Russian contacts in 2001 Photo: FBI/via BBC Package Hanssen left for his Russian contacts in 2001 Photo: FBI/via BBC
ThenFBI Director Louis Freeh called Hanssen’s betrayal “the most treacherous act imaginable against a country governed by the rule of law.”
The case strained relations with America’s Cold War rivals, and President George W. Bush expelled several Russian diplomats.
Hanssen was sent to prison in Florence, Colorado, where he remained for more than two decades until he died this week.
The historic case changed the lives of everyone involved.
O’Neill wrote a book on the case, Gray Day, and is now a “spy talker/spy catcher,” according to his website.
He tried unsuccessfully for years to interview Hanssen for the book. After hiding in a small office with Hanssen for weeks in the early 2000s, he had no access to it. Correctional officers refused to let him spend a moment in the spy’s cell.
Upon learning that Hanssen had died, O’Neill regretted not pushing harder to speak to him. “I would have asked him: Why did you do that?”
Garcia has his theory as to why Hanssen betrayed his country: ego. “He felt like he was God and could control the United States and Russia.”
He calls Hanssen the most destructive spy in US history.
“For the damage he caused to the US and Russia, for the people who died as a result of the information he shared. For doing this for so long. It was amazing that it happened that way.”