robert hanssen children

Heres a look at the life of convicted spy Robert Hanssen. He was also tasked with observing and learning as much as he could about Hanssens information technology setup in his office and with keeping an eye out on who Hanssen was meeting and talking with. Robert Hansen died at the age of 75 in 2014, still safely behind bars (via the Anchorage Daily News). Their goal was to catch Hanssen red handed in espionage. Nor can there be any doubt that he was keenly aware of the gravity of his traitorous actions. She sold their house and bakery in Alaska and shifted closer to her family in Arkansas after the children were getting bullied massively at their school. Special Agent Don Sullivan, a squad supervisor at the FBIs Washington Field Office at the time, volunteered to replace Hanssen. "Robert Hanssen, FBI Agent Who Became a Soviet Mole." Hanssen allegedly began spying for the Soviets in 1985 when, in his first letter to the KGB, he volunteered information that compromised several sensitive techniques. Much of what these men and women did remains undisclosed but their success and that of their CIA counterparts represents unparalleled expertise and dedication to both principle and mission. After Ames's arrest in 1994, some of these intelligence breaches remained unsolved. In 1999, the FBI even interrogated Kelley, his ex-wife, two sisters, and three children. McNamara, Robert. For unknown reasons[dubious discuss], the Soviets did not act against Polyakov until he was betrayed a second time by CIA mole Aldrich Ames in 1985. Robert Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Lutheran family who lived in the Norwood Park neighborhood. Hanssen parked on a residential street and walked down a wooded path to a footbridge with the classified materials wrapped in a plastic bag. Many of them were agents of the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB, or its military counterpart, the GRU. It would seem as though Hansen's children want their privacy respected, and who could blame them? She supports the plea agreement and agrees that the sentence of life in prison without parole, rather than the death penalty, is appropriate in these circumstances.. Hanssen claimed he was trying to connect a color printer to his computer but needed the password cracker to bypass the administrative password. January 12, 1976 - Joins the FBI as a special agent. Its amazing to live with a man for all those years and not know him.. Darla fled the state to Arkansas, where she had family. In 1985 he approached the Soviets again and offered valuable secrets. In early February 2001, he asked his friend at a computer technology company for a job. 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. He urged fellow Catholics in the FBI to attend Mass more often and denounced the Russians as "godless", even though he had been spying for them. Although Robert Hanssen forfeited all the money he received from Moscow, his wife and six children get to keep their Vienna, Va., home and three cars, under the plea agreement. Robert Hansen was actually married twice. In fact, when his father passed away, Hansen inherited 17 guns from him as well. [4][31], 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. A TV movie called Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story was released in 2002. May 10 Robert Hanssen, FBI agent turned Russian spy, is sentenced to life in prison On May 10, 2002, Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who intermittently sold state secrets to Russia over. It is alleged that Hanssen provided to the former Soviet Union and subsequently to Russia substantial volumes of highly classified information that he acquired during the course of his job responsibilities in counterintelligence. Friends of Hanssen later came forward and told journalists that Hanssen had exhibited eccentric behavior, which included an obsession with pornography. Hanssen reportedly lavished cash and gifts on a Washington stripper whom he befriended. Troubled by the incident, Bonnie Hanssen made her husband speak with a Catholic priest, who directed him to contribute money to Mother Teresa, the Catholic nun who ran a Calcutta charitable organization, as a form of penance, Brookner said. 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. [22] Yuzhin had returned to Moscow in 1982 and had been subject to an intensive investigation by the KGB there due to having lost a concealed camera in the Soviet consulate in San Francisco, but he was not arrested until being exposed by Ames and Hanssen. This innocent looking house in Vienna used to belong to Russian spy Robert Hanssen before he was caught by the Feds. Hanssen took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, but he decided to violate that oath. While it did not contain Hanssen's name, among the information was an audiotape of a July 21, 1986, conversation between "B" and KGB agent Aleksander Fefelov. Described as. As Director of the FBI, I am proud of the courageous men and women of the FBI who each day make enormous sacrifices in serving their country. The ensuing investigation confirmed this suspicion. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. Desk: FBI and CIA Counterintelligence As Seen From My Cubicle Dog Ear Publishing 2010, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy, Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America, "USA v. Robert Philip Hanssen: Affidavit in Support of Criminal Complaint, Arrest Warrant and Search Warrant", "Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator", "A Review of FBI Security Programs (Webster Report)", "A Review of the FBI's Performance in Deterring, Detecting, and Investigating the Espionage Activities of Robert Philip Hanssen", Thompson Statement Regarding Hanssen Guilty Plea, "Spy's Wife Speaks, After Taking a Lie Test", "Riddle Resolved: Who Dimed Out American Traitor and Super-Spy, Robert Hanssen? [38], The existence of two Russian moles working in the U.S. security and intelligence establishment simultaneouslyAmes at the CIA and Hanssen at the FBIcomplicated counterintelligence efforts during the 1990s. The investigation that led to these charges is the direct result of the longstanding FBI/CIA efforts, ongoing since the Aldrich Ames case, to identify additional foreign penetrations of the United States Intelligence Community. The agencies initially focused primarilyand incorrectlyon a veteran CIA case officer, who was investigated for nearly two years. Hanssen's children returned to school within days of his arrest, family and friends said, to maintain their routines. Furthermore, she supported her husband when he was first incarcerated for theft, and then for abducting and sexually abusing a housewife and a prostitute (although the rape charge concerning the latter was dropped when he pleaded guilty.) 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. [56][57], Hanssen never told the KGB or GRU his identity and refused to meet them personally, except for the abortive 1993 contact in the Russian embassy parking garage. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. O'Neill ascertained that Hanssen was using a Palm III PDA to store his information. Once when Bonnie caught his espionage, he made a confession to an Opus Dei priest, donated cash to Catholic charity and gave his word of never spying again. In January 1976, he left the police department to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[4]. Hanssen appeared to be a devoted anti-communist. The level of support and expertise from Acting Deputy Attorney General Robert Mueller, Counsel for Intelligence Policy Frances Fragos Townsend, U.S. Attorney Helen Fahey and Assistant United States Attorney Randy Bellows is superb. His case is considered one of America's greatest intelligence failures, as Hanssen operated as a mole within the bureau's counterintelligence division, the highly sensitive part of the FBI tasked with tracking foreign spies. (Photo courtesy of FBI/Newsmakers). The FBI believes that the Russians never knew the name of their source. [33], 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." While their exact whereabouts are unknown to the public, it's suspected that they still live in the Midwest. 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 subsequently was assigned to a variety of national security posts that legitimately provided him access to classified information relating to the former Soviet Union and Russia. Darla, who had a masters degree in Education, would earn her own income by teaching learning disabled kids. Robert was born in 1939 in Iowa to Danish immigrants Christian and Edna Hansen. He began providing the Soviets with highly valuable material. Hanssen's superiors were not amused and began an investigation. There he served as an investigator of internal affairs with specialisation in forensic accounting. "Robert Hanssen, FBI Agent Who Became a Soviet Mole." They attended Mass weekly and were very active in Opus Dei. Hansen was convicted in 1984 after confessing to killing 17 women, mostly dancers and prostitutes, during a 12-year span. He often steered conversations to talk of religion and his very conservative values, which were aligned with the very conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei. (2020, August 28). He emerged as one of the most damaging spies to have infiltrated the FBI resulting in probably the worst intelligence disaster in the history of the US. The first time around, his wife divorced him after a mere half-year because of his incarceration for arson in Iowa. Christian owned a bakery and would make his son work for long hours as a kid. Marriage: Bernadette Bonnie (Wauck) Hanssen (August 10, 1968-present), Children: Lisa, Greg, Mark, John Jack, Sue and Jane, Education: Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, A.B. Hanssen was tracked from the time he left his house in Fairfax County, Virginia, to the time he got home at night, and it was confirmed that he was still an active spy. Further, the complaint alleges that Hanssen, using his training and experience to protect himself from discovery by the FBI, never met face-to-face with his Russian handlers, never revealed to them his true identity or where he worked, constantly checked FBI records for signs he and the drop sites he was using were being investigated, refused any foreign travel to meet with the Russians, and even declined to accept any trade craft. Hanssen never displayed outward signs that he was receiving large amounts of unexplained cash. 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. The Hanssens are active members of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group. As Hanssen grew up, his father was reportedly verbally abusive to him, often ranting that he would never succeed in life. Robert was born in 1939 in Iowa to Danish immigrants Christian and Edna Hansen. Though both Hansen and his wife earned respectable incomes, it would . McNamara, Robert. I dont think there was anybody more shocked by all this, Brookner said. In January 2001, Hanssen was given an office and an assistant, Eric O'Neill, who, in reality, was a young FBI surveillance specialist who had been assigned to watch Hanssen. In 1979 he contacted the Soviet military intelligence, GRU, to offer his espionage. In May 2002, Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison. In return, he received large sums of money and other remuneration. February 18, 2001 - Is arrested in a Virginia park after making a drop of classified documents. For instance, a piece of adhesive tape placed on a sign in a park in Virginia would indicate that a package had been placed in a "dead drop" location, which was usually under a small footbridge in the park. Regrettably, I stand here today both saddened and outraged. Polyakov was carefully watched by the Russians from that point on, and was eventually arrested as a spy and executed in 1988. Unlike Cold War spies of an earlier era, Hanssen claimed to have no political motivation for selling out his country. 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. He married Bernadette Wauck in 1968 and, influenced by his devout Catholic wife, he converted to Catholicism. When these two KGB officials returned to Moscow, they were tried and convicted on espionage charges and executed. [20] In 1985, Hanssen was again transferred to the FBI's field office in New York, where he continued to work in counterintelligence against the Soviets. Their actions represent counterintelligence at its very best and under the most difficult and sensitive of circumstances. Robert was described as a loner and a quiet person, and he had a strained relationship as well with his strict and dominating father. Hanssen is mentioned in the seventh episode of The History Channel series America's Book of Secrets, as well as in the fifth episode of Netflix series Spycraft. His espionage of more than two decades had earned him cash of over 1.4 million USD and diamonds. He continued to perform incriminating searches of FBI files for his name and address. He also designated a code to be used when dates were exchanged. [4], In 1989, Hanssen compromised the FBI investigation of Felix Bloch, a Department of State official who had become suspected of espionage. We particularly appreciate the unhesitating leadership and support of Attorney General Ashcroft from the moment he took office. NSD chief Johnnie Sullivan ordered the computer impounded after it seemed to have been tampered with. Christian owned a bakery and would make his son work for long hours as a kid. Robert Hansen. [62] Hanssen took the risk of recommending to his handlers that they try to recruit his closest friend, a colonel in the United States Army. Clearly she doesnt approve of what hes done, and there was a whole part of this man she doesnt know, but I think with her deep religious convictions, he will, at least in mind and in spirit, continue to be her husband and the father of her children., Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Im afraid for her life: Riverside CC womens coach harassed after Title IX suit, Six people, including mother and baby, killed in Tulare County; drug cartel suspected, Want to solve climate change? Undated file photo released by the FBI February 20, 2001 shows a package recovered at the 'Lewis' drop site containing $50,000 cash allegedly left by Russians for FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen. However, two cases- the Bloch investigation and the embassy tunnel- remained unsolved. He passed on data related to surveillance activities of FBI and provided the GRU with data of suspected Soviet intelligence spies. While this arrest represents a counterintelligence investigative success, the complaint alleges that Hanssen located and removed undetected from the FBI substantial quantities of information that he was able to access as a result of his assignments. The complaint alleges that Hanssen, using the code name Ramon, engaged in espionage by providing highly classified information to the KGB and its successor agency, the SVR, using encrypted communications, dead drops, and other clandestine techniques. [7][8] On May 10, 2002, Hanssen was sentenced to 15 consecutive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole. When he pleaded guilty and received a 461-year prison sentence in 1984, Darla divorced him. The Hanssens were associated with the Catholic fraternal order Opus Dei. Hanssen was finally discovered when a former KGB agent contacted American intelligence agents. What makes Hansen seem even more grisly than other serial killers was the way that many of his victims were murdered. He also independently disclosed the identity of two KGB officials who, first compromised by Aldrich Ames, had been recruited by the U.S. Government to serve as agents in place at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Darla earned a living for the household as well, teaching children with disabilities. Before concluding, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet for the cooperation and assistance of his agency in this investigation. (Serial Killer) Robert Christian Hansen was a convicted serial killer from America who abducted, raped, and murdered at least 17 women in and around Anchorage, Alaska, in the 1970s and early 1980s. Despite having shown his face, disclosed his code name, and revealed his FBI affiliation, Hanssen escaped arrest when the FBI's investigation into the incident did not advance. After his release 20 months later, Hansen worked at putting his life back in order. Is sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. In 1995 he was designated as a liaison between the Office of Foreign Missions of the Department of State and the FBI. A proficient hunter and tracker since childhood, Hansen chased down his victims in the Alaskan wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. Six was to be added to the month, day, and time of a designated drop time, so that, for example, a drop scheduled for January 6 at 1:00p.m. would be written as July 12 at 7:00p.m..[61], Despite these efforts at caution and security, Hanssen could sometimes be reckless. The information he delivered compromised numerous human sources, counterintelligence techniques, investigations, dozens of classified U.S. government documents, and technical operations of extraordinary importance and value. After Bonnie Hanssen confronted her husband, he told her that he had been in contact with his Soviet intelligence counterparts only as a ploy to trick them with disinformation, the attorney said. . His active and long stint as a Soviet spy began on October 1, 1985, when he sent an unsigned letter to KGB, where he mentioned the names of at least three agents of KGB who were covertly serving FBI. He relayed secret information to Russia regarding US intelligence and counterintelligence operations. When FBI agents observed this incriminating act, they rushed in to arrest Hanssen. December 2000 - The FBI begins surveillance of Hanssen. In school, he was bullied for his acne, girls would not talk to him, and he also developed a stutter. May 9, 2002 4:00am. The priest told Hanssen to stop his illegal activities and donate the money he had gotten from the Russians to charity. [52], However, Hanssen's suspicions did not stop him from making one more dead drop. Hanssen restarted communications the next year and continued until his arrest. No one knew Hansen was abducting some of these women and killing them for sport. 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 the arrest of Hanssen. According to her, Hanssen never slept with her. They gave him a new job supervising FBI computer security. Investigators learned that Hanssen was set to make a dead drop on February 18, 2001. Hansen and Darla set down roots. Robert Hanssen, FBI Agent Who Became a Soviet Mole. At one point Hanssen spoke to a Russian agent over a pay phone, but they generally relied on placing signals in public places. He managed to avoid a death penalty by negotiating a plea deal where he agreed to cooperate with government agents. The plea bargain spared Hanssen the death penalty. Hanssen later joined the Catholic organization Opus Dei[13] with like-minded individuals. Hansen was convicted of just four of the murders in a deal that spared him . After being imprisoned, Hanssen claimed he periodically admitted his espionage to priests in confession. To closely oversee his activities, the FBI relocated him in its headquarters in January 2001. 1981 - Hanssens wife catches him with classified documents and convinces him to stop spying. Hansen would force some of these women into the small plane that he owned and fly them to a remote location in the Alaskan wilderness. [4][10] He graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1962 and then attended Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1966. In 1981 he was assigned to the Budget Unit in the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. His job in the suburb of Vienna included electronic surveillance and wiretapping, which gave him more access to different FBI activities. The 2007 documentary Superspy: The Man Who Betrayed the West describes the hunt to trap Hanssen. Hanssen wanted to be posted to Allenwood in hopes that he might be visited frequently by his wife Bonnie and their six children. Hanssen sold thousands of 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. 1979 - Begins spying for the Soviet Union. He was born on April 18, 1944, in Chicago, Illinois, to Howard and Vivian Hanssen. His exposure explained many of the asset losses U.S. intelligence suffered during the 1980s, including the arrest and execution of Martynov and Motorin. Butcher, Baker: The True Account of an Alaskan Serial Killer. Hansen even followed in his fathers footsteps and opened up his own bakery. [6] Robert Hanssen's business cards, chalk and thumb tacks, which he used to communicate with his Russian contacts, according to the FBI. In 1962 he completed his graduation from William Howard Taft High School. Robert Phillip Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 18, 1944. Hanssen's story was featured in episode 4, under the name of "Perfect Traitor", of Smithsonian Channel's series Spy Wars, aired end of 2019 and narrated by Damian Lewis.[78]. Hanssen was incarcerated in a "supermax" federal prison in Colorado which also houses other notorious inmates, including the Unabomber, one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and a number of organized crime figures. The most significant information that he shared was about Dmitri Polyakov, who while serving the Soviet Army as a General was spying for Americas CIA. But money is tight, she said, and the former housewife has taken a teaching job at her daughters school in Virginia. The complaint alleges that Hanssen conspired to and did commit espionage for Russia and the former Soviet Union. Under the plea agreement, Hanssen is obligated to return the $1.4 million in spying proceeds to the government, but Brookner said she doubts that will ever happen. When O'Neill could briefly obtain Hanssen's PDA and have agents download and decode its encrypted contents, the FBI had decisive evidence. In November 1998, they had a man with a foreign accent come to Kelley's door, warn him that the FBI knew he was a spy, and tell him to show up at a Metro station the next day to escape. Robert J. McNamara is a history expert and former magazine journalist. in Chemistry, 1966; Attended Northwestern University Dental School, 1966-1968;. He was finally arrested in early 2001 from Foxstone Park for trading classified information of the US to the Soviet Union and later to the Russian Federation. Hanssen disclosed this information to the Soviets in September 1989 and received a $55,000 payment the next month, equivalent to $120,232 in 2021. He is a public speaker and security 2. Press Release - Veteran FBI Agent Arrested and Charged with Espionage, FBI.gov is an official site of the U.S. Department of Justice. Wanting to get a fresh start, the newlywed couple migrated to Alaska in 1967 (per the New YorkDaily News). 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. She went with Hanssen on visits to Hong Kong and the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia. An FBI arrest team moved into position at Foxstone Park, a location where Hanssen had been spotted before by FBI surveillance. The FBI also obtains the complete original KGB dossier on Hanssen. [21] In the letter, he gave the names of three KGB agents secretly working for the FBI: Boris Yuzhin, Valery Martynov, and Sergei Motorin. A few years later, they moved to Anchorage, Alaska, and had two children. To get Hanssen back to FBI Headquarters where he could be closely monitored, Neil Gallagher, assistant director of the National Security Division at the time, called Hanssen to inform him of a bogus assignment to serve on his staff as a special assistant for a technology project. Hanssen would later claim that his goal was simply to make some extra money, as living in New York City was putting a financial squeeze on his growing family. He was, after all, a trained counterintelligence specialist. Hanssens espionage activities began in 1985. Aside from a few brushes with the law, Hansen led a fairly ordinary life. Wikimedia Commons Robert Hanssen made over $1 million spying for the Soviets until he was caught in 2001. His book written about this experience, Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy, was published in spring 2019. But the government could not prove he had lied, and wishing to avoid a public trial, the government chose not to void his plea agreement. But in 1999, while assigned as an FBI liaison with the State Department, he once again began selling American secrets. As Hanssen walked back to his car, the arrest team rushed up and took him into custody. I have asked Judge William H. Webster, and he has graciously agreed, to examine thoroughly the internal security functions and procedures of the FBI and recommend improvements. Hanssen received payments of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds from the information he gave the Soviet Union and Russia. His assistant, Eric ONeill, was tasked with keeping investigators apprised of Hanssens movements. He then applied and was accepted into the FBI. The October 1 letter began a long, active espionage period for Hanssen. The agents working for him reported this breach to a supervisor, but no action was taken. 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