Robert Hanssen

At the FBI

According to media and secondary accounts · not confirmed by official sourcesAccording to Britannica, he was born on 18 April 1944 in Chicago.³

He took the oath as an FBI special agent on 12 January 1976.²

In November 1979, about eight months after transferring to a counterintelligence squad in New York, he began spying for Soviet military intelligence, the GRU – as the Justice Department’s Inspector General established.¹

For the KGB and the SVR

In October 1985 he volunteered to the KGB. According to the Inspector General, he then disclosed the true names of the FBI’s most important Soviet sources, the KGB officers Sergey Motorin and Valeriy Martynov, and contributed to the execution of at least three sources.¹

After a $12,000 payment in December 1991 he broke off contact, and in July 1999 he re-established it. In all he received more than $1.4 million in cash, bank funds and diamonds.^1,2

He passed highly classified information, including FBI documents, to the KGB and its successor, the SVR. He compromised numerous human sources, counterintelligence techniques, investigations and technical operations.²

Detection and sentence

In 2000 the FBI and CIA obtained original Russian documents about an American spy who appeared to be Hanssen. Further investigation, including computer forensics and covert surveillance, confirmed the suspicion.^1,2

On 18 February 2001 he was arrested at Foxstone Park near Vienna, Virginia, as he returned from a dead drop.²

On 6 July 2001 he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage, and on 10 May 2002 he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He died on 5 June 2023, aged 79.²

Assessing the damage

The then FBI Director, Louis Freeh, called the damage exceptionally grave and said its full extent was unknown. In August 2003 the Justice Department’s Inspector General published an unclassified summary of a review of how the FBI deterred, detected and investigated such betrayal.^1,2