The US government took the death penalty off the table in exchange for Hanssens full cooperation. The KGB men searched the apartment all night. He had champagne and flowers waiting, a big basket of fruit, chocolates and a balloon. After his father was executed, Andrei kept working for Novosti. One eye twitched.. He asked if they were there to greet an important diplomat. It was the signal to launch his escape. A few days after Oleg Gordievsky was recalled to Moscow, the KGB flew his wife, Leila, and their two daughters there, and he broke the unwelcome news that they would not be posted back to London. His father, Leonid Poleshchuk, was a senior KGB counterintelligence officer, most recently the deputy rezident for counterintelligence in Lagos, Nigeria. May 10, 2002 - Is sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Minutes later, ONeill extracted it from the mans bag, along with a floppy disc and a flash drive, running everything downstairs for a tech team to copy. That happened several times.. I will never forget the day when I got home and she was singing songs, melodies, no words, and looking insane. Over the next few years, Hanssen sold numerous secrets to Cherkashin for several tens of thousands of dollars. The KGB told Andrei his fathers remains were cremated and there would be no grave. Children: Lisa, Greg, Mark, John Jack, Sue and Jane. 1999 - Resumes spying, this time for the Russian Intelligence agency. Bonnie and Robert have six children. Only what appears to be two children (playing in the yard) are shown in the movie Breach. This is because only two of the Hanssen's children, Lisa and Gregg, were still living at home in 2001. The rest were either married or away at college. Authorities said they are convinced that Bonnie Hanssen--unlike the wives of several other notorious U.S. spies who helped their husbands--was not involved in Hanssens spying. [5][6] Hanssen was sentenced to life in prison. He now had access to even more top-secret information on nearly every active operation, including names, funding, locations, and dates, as well as the activities of agents, spies, and informants. Has a U.S. President Ever Been Arrested Before. And its not entirely clear why he did what he did. He was like a walking dead man. Terms of Use In the letter, Hanssen revealed that he had dreamed of being a spy against his country since the age of 14, after reading a book about Kim Philby the British intelligence officer who was also a Russian double agent. At least the timeline based on what Ames said when he was debriefed.If it wasnt Ames, then it was someone else, so we began to search for the source of the compromise, Wiser said. Inside were three British intelligence agentsthe candy-bar man and two women, one of whom was Gordievskys MI6 case officer in London. He asked for a fictitious Greek employee. He stayed in safe houses in Virginia at first, then lived half a year in California to learn English, moved back East and consulted for the CIA and some U.S. companies. His fear mounted. By the time he was finally caught in 2001, Hanssen had given away countless secrets, led two U.S. informants to their deaths, and cemented himself as the most damaging spy in FBI history.. That raised a possibility that remains, even today, a subject of deep concern among counterintelligence agents, a problem privately acknowledged but little discussed publicly: That the three agents may have been betrayed by a mole inside U.S. intelligence whose identity is still unknown. To the residents of the quiet suburb of Vienna, Virginia, Robert Hanssen was the perfect neighbor. February 18 2021 Robert Philip Hanssen is a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. On 6 July 2001, Hanssen pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage. Furthermore, Hanssen was also **secretly making videotapes of his wife and himself having sex **and sharing the tape with his friends. He walked down the steps and shook hands with the waiting CIA officers.

He worked as an Investigative Specialist with the Special As the deputy chief, Bokhan was privy to all GRU spy operations aimed at Greece, the United States and the other NATO countries. The mole isnt just some guy who stole a few secrets. Hired by MI5at a time when there was If the device wasnt in Hanssens hand or on the desk in front of him, it was always in his left back pocket. Ultimately, investigators made a dramatic move to obtain a "smoking gun".

He wrote to them anonymously.

Robert Phillip Hanssens 1962 high school yearbook photo, provided by William Howard Taft High School. He offered up the name of General Dmitri Polyakov, a high-ranking mole in GRU, which is the USSRs foreign military intelligence agency, in exchange for $20,000. Christian owned a bakery and would make his son work for long hours as a kid. Aside from any other points, either God will forgive him or he wont. When he began spying for the Russians almost a decade earlier, Ames was chief of the CIAs Soviet counterintelligence branch, entrusted with secrets that would be of incalculable value to the KGB. In order to put the double-crosser away forever, ONeill would need to put his life on the line again. December 2000 - The FBI begins surveillance of Hanssen. As it turned out, Hanssen had just been spotted by agents driving at a snails pace past the sign for Foxstone Park in Vienna, Va. Blood rushed to my face. He also expressed his trademark annoyance. The stories of Oleg Gordievsky, Sergei Bokhan and Leonid Poleshchukreported here in extensive new detail and based on interviews with Gordievsky, Bokhan and Andrei Poleshchuk, as well as former FBI and CIA officialssuggest the damage a mole can do. Hanssen reportedly lavished cash and gifts on a Washington stripper whom he befriended. Some of it just didnt add up, he says. First, when you join you understand that your assignment will be based upon the needs of the Bureau. By this, you may not want to go to LA, Miami, After arranging a sale of information, Hanssens KGB contacts would leave bags of money taped to the underside of footbridges like this one for him to retrieve. But the fast lifestyle came to a halt in December 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. His MI6 handlers assured him theyd picked up no sign anything was wrong. Bob Hanssen was about to retire from his life's work. I had no job. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Today hes a national-security strategist for the cyber-security company Carbon Black and runs his own investigative and security-services firm. After graduating from law school, O'Neill joined DLA Piper US LLP as a Senior Associate in the Government Contracts Group. Thats when they showed me a piece of paper with the words, I met Joe, Andrei told me. Its hard to know what to think. At what point does a man deserve to be repudiated by his family? Gordievsky was taken home, but Grushko confronted him at the KGB the next day. He was to stand on a certain Moscow street corner on a designated day and time until he saw a British-looking man who was eating something. CNN Sans & 2016 Cable News Network. And the intelligence culture is not going to let that go. According to her accounts, verified by lie detectors, the only thing she knew about was the incident mentioned by madmonk28. I never belonged.. Clearly the KGB had searched his flat. Brookner said that the only time Bonnie Hanssen harbored any suspicions about her husbands activities came around 1979 or 1980, when they lived in Scarsdale, N.Y. She walked in on him and he covered up some papers, so she got suspicious, Brookner said. Hanssens Wikipedia page indicates that his wife had some reason to suspect his spying, but overall, the family was portrayed as being very close. A 1998 research paper from Brigham Young University studied 139 spies and concluded that half of them did it for the money. After months of interrogation at Lefortovo, Andrei Poleshchuk told his captors he wouldnt answer any more questions unless they told him who his father worked for. It was the KGBs way of saying my father worked for the CIA, Andrei said. Im not aware of any public statements from the family, but I remember reading in the Washington Post that they had accepted that he was guilty and that he had betrayed his family in many ways. A devout Catholic, a loving father, and a dedicated employee of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, hardly anyone could have imagined the gentle 56-year-old being anything other than Bob, the all-American guy next door. Bonnie Hanssens first public statements on the case reveal both her anxiety over her husbands actions and her sense of relief over the fact that she and her six children will retain an estimated $39,000 a year from his government pension. But even as her life regains some sense of normalcy, Bonnie Hanssen struggles to understand the havoc that the last few months have wrought, Brookner said. U.S. counterintelligence agents have established that neither Howard nor Hanssen had access to the identities of all the American intelligence sources who were betrayed in 1985. With two children already out of school, the pension money will help Bonnie Hanssen support two children who are in college and two more still in high school, No, he was told, theyre here for you.. 1972 - Joins the Chicago Police Department. I saw the movie "Breach", so I was fascinated with this man who so easily betrayed his country. Finally, he warned: The US can be errantly likened to a powerfully built but retarded child, potentially dangerous, but young, immature and easily manipulated. It was scary.. I dont think you can pin it on one reason. Hanssen, who was convicted of espionage, is serving a life sentence in the supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado. By 1979, the Hanssens and their three children were transferred to New York City. He took the opportunity to divert attention from himself and throw mole-hunting teams off the scent. His assistant, Eric ONeill, was there to gather evidence and prove beyond a doubt that Hanssen was guilty of what he was accused of. The next day he ordered ONeill to drive him to a meeting. 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. He works as a computer programmer. Within two weeks after his flight to the United States, he had a new name, a fake background, a Social Security number and a 9-millimeter Beretta. [1][2][3], O'Neill graduated from Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C., in 1991. Then he kissed his wife and daughter goodbye. He had graduated from school and found a good job, and he wanted to live on his own. After that, read about the exciting and strange stories of historys most famous spies. All the while, the FBI tasked him with recruiting potential moles and sniffing out likely spies. Alleman explained to ONeill that the smoking gun would be an actual information drop for the Russians. "[2][7], Following the Hanssen case, O'Neill decided to leave the FBI in order to focus on law school. We know very well that youve been deceiving us for years, he said. These things have to be run to ground.. Through Hanssen, the KGB learned about a secret tunnel that had been dug underneath the Soviet embassy in Washington. Webrobert hanssen childrenruschell boone family. All Hanssen said was, What took you so long?. Timeline. Meanwhile, once those moles Hanssen had given up returned to Moscow, they were promptly executed. He turned off the highway onto a side street, trying to persuade Hanssen that it was faster even though, as he writes, anyone who has lived in the DC area for two weeks could call bullst.. Hanssen was arrested on February 18, 2001, at Foxstone Park near his home in Vienna, Virginia, charged with selling American secrets to Russia for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds over a 22-year period. During the 1960s, a corrosive mole hunt led by James J. Angleton, the CIAs counterintelligence chief, led to institutional paranoia, paralyzed operations aimed at the Soviet Union, and disrupted the lives of many innocent CIA officers who were fired or sidetracked in their careers. (Howard, Russian authorities reported in 2002, died of a fall in his KGB dacha near Moscow. A moment later, a dark shadow crossed his door. I said, No way we are taking your beat-up, boring, outdated old Ford Taurus to the DIA. As a devout Catholic, Bonnie Hanssen feels that he needs time [in prison] to pray for forgiveness and be redeemed in some way, the wifes attorney, Janine Brookner, said in an interview. Agents find a bag nearby containing $50,000 that they believe is Hanssens payment for the documents. Playing to Hanssens ego, the underling, a newlywed, said he needed relationship advice about his wife wanting to wait to have children. Andrei was allowed to visit him in prison only once, after he was sentenced to death. Wikimedia CommonsBetween Hanssen and CIA agent Aldrich Ames, countless U.S. secrets concerning federal technology and counterintelligence operations reached Moscow. She is also challenging some of her husbands credit card bills. Some avowed deeply religious people seem to have an awfully low opinion of the Man Who Lives in the Clouds. It doesnt matter, he said, and quoted a Russian proverb: S milym rai i v shalashe. If you love somebody, you will have heaven even in a tent. Fast Facts: Robert Hanssen Full Name: Robert Phillip Hanssen Known For: Worked as a mole for Russian spy agencies while serving as an FBI counterintelligence You have the wrong number, he was told. I just watched Breach, the movie based on the capture of the mole Robert Hanssen, whose passing of information to the Russians constituted perhaps the most serious damage to U.S. national security. ONeill noticed that Hanssen was using a Palm III personal computer to store information, and on Feb. 15, 2001, he took the computer from Hanssens office and handed it over to a team of specialists, who downloaded and decoded the contents. In December 2008, O'Neill left DLA Piper and accepted a position as General Counsel of Global Communities, formerly CHF International, a global humanitarian relief non-profit organization. When I found a job, the KGB called and they fired me. The Soviets had arranged for the apparent good news to reach his wife through a friend and former co-worker in Moscow, who wrote to her in Lagos. This promotion came with perks including a private office and a personal assistant. After Ames was arrested and charged with espionage, his attorney, Plato Cacheris, negotiated a plea bargain with prosecutors: Ames wife, Rosario, an accomplice in his spying, would be spared a long prison sentence if he cooperated fully with the authorities. He had never told his wife that he was working for the CIAit would have put her in mortal dangerbut now he had to say something. Anything else while were at it? Between Hanssen and CIA agent Aldrich Ames, countless U.S. secrets concerning federal technology and counterintelligence operations reached Moscow. O'Neill's subterfuge had apparently deceived Hanssen, as part of the dead drop contained an evaluation of O'Neill's possibly replacing Hanssen as a mole when he retired. Alternatively, do they think that his actions were somehow justified, that he was doing something good? He tried again, following the fallback plan, and this time a man carrying a dark-green bag from Harrods, the upscale London department store, walked by eating a candy bar. Reiser was waiting in a car at the other end.
On Feb. 18, 2001, Hanssen left a package presumably full of classified documents wrapped in trash bags underneath a bridge in Foxstone Park, then placed a piece of tape at a nearby location, indicating the drop had been made. I think its also bullshit that they get to keep part of his pension. After Gordievsky escaped, a Soviet military tribunal sentenced him to death in absentia. In June 1986, Leonid was tried and, predictably, convicted. In her statement, Bonnie Hanssen thanked government officials for allowing her to retain the pension and for recognizing that she and the children clearly are innocent victims.. The new couple committed to send each of their six children to private schools and to tithe a portion of their income to the charitable works of their parish. 1981 - Hanssens wife catches him with classified documents and convinces him to stop spying. Robert Hanssen being arrest near his home on Feb. 18, 2001 in Vienna, Virginia. Hanssen, a former counterintelligence supervisor for the FBI, pleaded guilty last week to 15 espionage-related charges and admitted that he had sold the Russians thousands of pages of national security secrets in exchange for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. Housing in Moscow was nearly impossible to find, even for a KGB officer, but sometime that May, hed received a seemingly miraculous letter from his father. They urged him to go to Moscow, but they also provided him with an escape plan in case he signaled that he was in danger. O'Neill earned a J.D. (I have come about as close as I ever want to come to sacrificing myself to help you, and I get silence. In April 1985, he has said, he told a Soviet contact in Washington the names of two or three double agents who had approached the CIA but who were actually working for the KGBdangles, in intelligence parlance. He then went to work as an accountant before applying to the Chicago Police Department in 1972, where he was quickly accepted as an undercover investigator for the internal affairs division. In 2001, he was arrested by the FBI which he had been an employee of since 1976 for being a Soviet spy. A feature film called Breach was released in It shortened her life, he said. Despite the low pay, long hours, and even longer commute, the FBI entrusted him with more responsibility. I always thought there was another one, he told me.

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(AP Photo/Doug Mills) In all, by the time he was arrested in February 2001, Hanssen collected an estimated $1.4 million for giving lists of American undercover agents abroad, the identities of Russian double agents, documents showing the U.S. was intercepting Soviet Eric Michael O'Neill (born March 3, 1973) is an American former FBI counter-terrorism and counterintelligence operative. Web2 was schooled at Oxford, which educated many agents, and worked in 1930s Shanghai, a hotbed of soon-to-be spies and Soviet recruiters. e: thats a pretty interesting account of his life, BTW. 1981 - Is assigned to the Intelligence Division at FBI headquarters in DC. The Hanssens are active members of Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group. As such, Roberts credit card bills, mortgage payments, and debts piled up, even as he was forced to move his family further away from Manhattan as his family grew. He drove around Athens in his BMW for close to an hour to make certain he wasnt being followed, then walked into a 100-foot pedestrian tunnel under a highway. I love him and Ill pray for the salvation of his soul every day for the rest of my life.. Finally, in 1975, he applied to the FBI and received a call back. Advertising Notice They raved to friends about his big FBI job, happy marriage, six children and regular churchgoing. Should I get him to confess?. The women fed the dogs potato chips to distract them.

Or have they reconciled themselves to the fact that he is a criminal and a traitor and deserves punishment? As soon as Gordievsky landed in Moscow, he picked up signs that he had gambled wrong. WASHINGTON Convicted FBI spy Robert Hanssen, whos set to be sentenced to life in prison tomorrow, asked his best friend to drug and have sex with his Hanssen warned them when their spies were under suspicion and gained extensive lists of double agents working for the United States. Usually, Not much..in so many show we are portrayed as a**holesor jerks. In other shows they make us our to be invincible,which we are not. Bein But something went wrong and when the two men showed up in the parking garage, the FBI car wasnt there. Although the elder Hanssen encouraged his son to become a doctor, his son was uninterested in studies of any kind, and eventually received a degree in chemistry in 1966. On the other hand, so far as I know, Hanssen doesnt seem to have shown any remorse.

Impossible. They never lived the high life; they never even went out to dinner, she said. WebThe Inside Story of the FBI and Robert HanssenAmerica's Most Damaging Russian Spy By Lis Wiehl Published by Pegasus Books LIST PRICE $27.95 PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER Get a FREE ebook by joining our mailing list today! That Friday, Gordievsky received a cable ordering him to report to Moscow urgently to confirm his promotion and meet with the KGBs two highest officials. Sure enough, just weeks later, the ad was answered. The plea bargain allows Bonnie Hanssen to receive about 55% of Hanssens pension, which will total an estimated $39,000 per year. But the CIA and FBI debriefers soon recognized a glaring anomaly in Ames account: It was clear that those three agents had fallen under suspicion in May 1985before Ames insists he handed over the documents. I left that memo in your inbox, ONeill replied. But instead of Did you see it?. After a career as a counterintelligence and counter-terrorism field operative, O'Neill was assigned to report to Hanssen in the newly established Information Assurance Section. 1991 - Breaks off relations with the KGB. As he went to his car with the money in hand, two vans screeched to a stop nearby, and armed agents poured out to arrest him. Id answer neither. If I was waiting for the elevator, they went down the stairs. Nic Rowan. March 11, 2023. As if foreshadowing things to come, Robert Hanssen took Russian language classes at Knox and decided there that hed catch Soviet spies one day. O'Neill notes that he could not recall which pocket he had taken the device from, and has speculated that had Hanssen detected the disturbance of his device, he would have realized that all hope of continued freedom was lost and might have shot O'Neill dead on the spot. Hanssen had a reputation for being wildly arrogant and dour. But instead of receiving a gold watch or a modest pension like most employees, he would instead be getting $50,000 in non-sequential $100 bills. Before getting caught in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison, he sold thousands of pages of sensitive material to the Soviet Union and ruined massive U.S. intelligence plans. :dubious: Does anyone see some weird contradictions here? And its not entirely clear why he did what he did. But dont be fooled by that appearance. It was in my fathers handwriting. Leonid Poleshchuk knew his first CIA case officer, who had recruited him in Nepal, as Joe. [1][2], In February 2009, O'Neill co-founded The Georgetown Group, an investigative and risk management company. He decided to leave Athensbut not for Moscow. In five more weeks he would also be retiring from his day job"as an FBI agent. Not only was he responsible for the deaths of several people who were responsible for the nations security, but he also undermined the efforts of thousands of others. But it was only a matter of time. The wildest part? Please be aware how deeply Mrs. Hanssen regrets the damage that her husband, Robert Hanssen, has caused to our country and to their family, the statement said. A TV movie called Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story was released in 2002. He is a public speaker and security expert who currently[as of?] Anything different goes against biology.. FBI mole Robert Hanssen - How has his family handled it. After work each day, ONeill would secretly meet with his actual boss, Special Agent Kate Alleman, recalling everything Hanssen said and did which, as it turned out, would be nothing pleasant. The ones who pretend to be closest to god are the real perverts. in Chemistry, 1966; Attended Northwestern University Dental School, 1966-1968; Northwestern University, M.B.A. in Accounting and Information Systems, 1971. A Russian TV documentary shows a shadowy figure picking it up, but Andrei said it is an actor, not his father. Robert Hanssen made over $1 million spying for the Soviets until he was caught in 2001. Hanssen was a devout Catholic, a daily communicant, and married father of six children. I hate silence . This story is a selection from the November issue of Smithsonian magazine. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine Despite his clear passion for mechanical things, Hanssen abided by his fathers wishes and briefly attended dental school before marrying Bernadette Bonnie Wauck. What he didnt know was that the promotion was really an excuse to keep him in Washington, where he could be watched. Think of the family. In his new book, Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose Americas First Cyber Spy (Crown), ONeill tells his story of risking his life in 2001 to bring down the operative. His children were good students, and he believed they might in the future be part of a holy war that would remerge God and country, whose leaders would then ban abortion, divorce and other evils of the world that he and Opus Dei opposed. 1979 - Begins spying for the Soviet Union. 1980 - Begins working for the counterintelligence unit, focusing on the Soviet Union. Stay calm, he recalls telling himself. You can call me sir, or boss, Hanssen said. ONeill needed to stall, but without arousing further suspicion. She next asked ONeill to retrieve Hanssens keys so the FBI could copy them, but his boss kept his keys on him at all times. [10], O'Neill is portrayed by Ryan Phillippe in the 2007 thriller Breach, which depicts O'Neill's role in the investigation and capture of Hanssen. He did so, but nothing happened. They had a sumptuous lunchBokhan knew it might be his last meal with his familyand Maria bought a stuffed Greek doll called a patatuff. Hanssen received payments of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds from the information he gave the Soviet Union and Russia. Leonid and his wife, Lyudmila, had been back two weeks when the KGB showed up at their door. He even encouraged his KGB handlers to recruit his childhood best friend, a lieutenant colonel in Army intelligence. Although Gordievsky has written that he climbed into the trunk of one of the cars, a former CIA officer says he actually crawled into a space in a specially modified Land Rover. This story has been shared 104,792 times. I think what he did was worse, and if his wife knew he did that, she should be in jail too. Imbecile! On September 21, 1985, Howard eluded FBI surveillance and escaped into the New Mexico desert with the help of his wife, Mary, and a pop-up dummy in his cars passenger seat (a technique he had learned in CIA training). Robert admitted that he had already spent most of the GRU money, but Bonnie insisted that he repay to charity the full original amount. When Eric ONeills supervisor turned up unannounced at his Washington, DC-area home early on a Sunday morning, the still-groggy FBI employee was perplexed. The FBI also obtains the complete original KGB dossier on Hanssen. In the history of U.S. intelligence, only three major molesmen whose betrayals had lethal resultshave been identified. There they found definitive evidence that Hanssen had betrayed his office. Discovery Company. Enraged to the point that his fist was clenched in a tight ball, Hanssen ran through his usual list of insults Idiot! FBI and CIA personnel who debriefed Hanssen about his 21 years as a spy for Moscow found him a prickly, uncooperative character and won't be sorry to see him pulling hard time in a distant lock-up. 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. His areas of interest include the Soviet Union, China, and the far-reaching effects of colonialism. Now, he feared, the KGBs counterspies had become suspicious and were recalling him to confront him. On the other hand, hes not the BTK killer. Ever since his childhood days in Chicago, Bob Hanssen had been something of a loner. And he would have to pick it up in a local park. One that stood out to me was this rather poignant quote: His hero, Kim Philby, may have explained his mind best. The plea bargain spared Hanssen the death penalty. After five years working at the bureau as a ghost following suspects for a living he would be stepping out of the shadows: spying on someone in plain sight. They spent a fortune to catch him. The only place he really did belong was Opus Dei, and he used most of the money he made from selling secrets to put his six children through expensive Opus Dei After buying a $150,000 house in Vienna, Virginia, Hanssen turned back to espionage to make ends meet. He was even assigned to track down the person responsible for what was, by now, clearly a gaping hole in U.S. counterintelligence, a hole which he and Aldrich Ames had opened. His true role was to learn as much as possible about what information Hanssen had divulged to the Soviet Union and Russia. Long after the massive losses in 1985, the lingering questions still gnaw at their counterintelligence experts. I think you are looking for links to what his family thinks, not just our blind opinions, so I am moving this thread from IMHO to General Questions. He knew instantly that the cable was a ruse. Camel p.oop cleaner talks about spies, isn't it something.

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