Robert Hanssen, FBI agent who spied for Russia over more than 20 years – obituary
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Robert Hanssen, who has died aged 79, was an FBI counter-espionage agent who was jailed for life in 2002 after being exposed as the most destructive known traitor in FBI history; he was described in court as having done “megaton damage” to American intelligence.
Known as “the Mortician” to colleagues because of his dour manner, Hanssen began his 22-year secret life in 1979, working for the GRU, Soviet military intelligence; then for the KGB and, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). Code-named Ramon Garcia, he sold thousands of classified documents that, among other things, concerned US policies in the event of nuclear war and where US leaders would be relocated in a national emergency, and developments in weapons technologies.
He also revealed the details of a multimillion-dollar eavesdropping tunnel built by the FBI and the National Security Agency under the Soviet Embassy in Washington, compromising dozens of FBI technical operations. At one point he even directed a study of potential traitors in the FBI when he himself was the mole.
A later review of his treachery claimed he had betrayed more than 50 US spies. Notable among these was General Dmitri Polyakov of the GRU, code-named Top Hat, who had been spying for the US since the early 1960s and was regarded as one of America’s most important agents. Polyakov was executed in 1988.
Hanssen later admitted that he had told his Russian handlers about Polyakov in or around 1980, leading the FBI to conclude that Polyakov may have been “turned” by the Soviets into a triple agent, sending the West misinformation over the eight years before his execution.
Hanssen was spying at the same time as Aldrich Ames of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). For many years, despite evidence of multiple intelligence breaches, neither the CIA nor the FBI was willing to accept that there could be moles in their ranks.
In 1994 Ames was arrested after nine years of working for Moscow, during which at least 10 US sources had been executed in Russia due to his treachery, and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, two cases, including the embassy tunnel, remained unsolved. Ames could not have known about the tunnel as he did not work for the FBI. Moreover vital secrets continued to go astray. The search for another mole continued.
In the late 1980s Brian Kelley, a CIA counterintelligence officer, had uncovered evidence that Felix Bloch, a State Department diplomat, might be a Russian agent. Although Bloch was dismissed from his job in 1990, the suspicions were never confirmed. That the KGB had apparently been tipped off about the investigation led many, including Kelley, to believe there was another well-placed Russian spy in Washington.
The FBI, however, refused to countenance the possibility that it might have been sold out by one of its own and threw suspicion on Kelley himself. For three years FBI officers tried to trap him into confessing and built a circumstantial case against him.
A break in the investigation came in November 2000 when the FBI paid an informant $7 million to smuggle a secret KGB file out of Russia. The file contained a tape recording of a US spy talking to his Russian handler as well as his fingerprints on a bag used to deliver secret documents. The FBI was confident that the tape would seal their case against Kelley. But the voice on the recording was not Kelley’s.
Looking through the rest of the files, they found notes of the mole using a quote from General George S Patton about “the purple-pissing Japanese”. One analyst recalled Hanssen using the same phrase and, listening to the tape again, the voice was recognised as belonging to Hanssen.
It took the FBI some weeks to assemble more evidence, but in February 18 2001 Hanssen was arrested as he made a “dead drop” in a park near his home in Virginia. “What took you so long?” he asked.
At his trial Hanssen, who had mainly worked monitoring foreign diplomats in Washington, was described by his FBI superior as having access to “everything – all sources, all methods, all techniques, all targets”. Yet he had never been subjected to a polygraph (lie detector) test. In 1990 Hanssen’s brother-in-law, another FBI man, aired fears that Hanssen might be a spy after finding thousands of dollars at his home, but the FBI never investigated. He never fell under suspicion although he repeatedly used FBI computer systems to try to find out if he was being investigated.
There were several motives suggested for his treachery of which money was the most obvious; over the years he was reported to have been paid $1.4million in cash and diamonds by the Russians. He himself claimed to have told his handlers that he had been inspired as a 14-year-old by reading the memoirs of the British traitor Kim Philby, and texts of his communications with his handlers painted a picture of a man fascinated by “tradecraft”, who enjoyed chatting “spy-to-spy” and who was convinced he was more clever than his superiors, people who, he said, would go “all wet” when faced with taking a decision.
Hanssen pleaded guilty in July 2001 to spying for Moscow. Under a plea bargain agreement, he promised to cooperate with the authorities and in return the government agreed not to seek the death sentence. Although interrogators from the CIA and the Department of Justice expressed “serious reservations” about the deal, complaining of Hanssen’s claims to have a poor memory, in May 2002 he was sentenced to 15 consecutive sentences of life in prison. His wife, Bernadette, got to keep an FBI pension and the family home in suburban Virginia.
Robert Philip Hanssen was born on April 18 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, to a Lutheran family of Norwegian descent. His father was a police officer who at one time worked in an anti-communist unit. From William Howard Taft High School, he took a degree in chemistry at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. In 1971 he took an MBA in accounting and information systems at Northwestern University and in 1972 joined the Chicago Police Department, specialising in forensic accounting.
Four years later he joined the FBI, working first in Indiana, then in New York City, then at the FBI’s headquarters in Washington.
In 1985 he gave the Russians the names of three KGB agents working for the FBI: Boris Yuzhin, Valery Martynov, and Sergei Motorin. In fact the information only confirmed what Moscow had already been told by Aldrich Ames. Martynov and Motorin were subsequently executed; Yuzhin was imprisoned for six years.
Hanssen was not only not suspected, he was actually given the task of identifying the person who had betrayed Martynov and Motorin. Naturally he did not “find” the culprit but his report contained a list of all the Russians who had contacted the FBI about FBI moles. In 1988 he sent a copy to the KGB.
In 1968 Hanssen married Bernadette “Bonnie” Wauck, with whom he had three sons and three daughters. He converted to his wife’s staunch Catholicism (in prison he claimed he had periodically admitted his treachery in the confessional), and the couple were reported to be active in the traditionalist Roman Catholic group Opus Dei.
In spite of this Hanssen was known as a frequent visitor to strip clubs and spent much time with a Washington stripper called Priscilla Sue Galey, to whom he gave lavish gifts, though he claimed their relationship was not sexual and he had merely been trying to convert her to Catholicism.
Robert Hanssen, born April 18 1944, died June 5 2023
