It was “the most harmful spy in the history of the FBI”. Robert Hansen, as described on the federal police websitedied on Monday, June 5, at the age of 79 in the prison where he had been incarcerated since 2002, announced the American prison services.
This American agent, in charge of counterintelligence within the FBI, had sold himself to the Soviets during the Cold War and had delivered to Moscow some of the best kept secrets of the 1980s and 1990s in exchange for 1.4 million dollars and of diamonds.
He was found unconscious on Monday morning in his cell at the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, where he was serving a life sentence. Efforts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful, according to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
After starting out with the Chicago (Illinois) police, Robert Hanssen was recruited by the FBI in 1976. A few years later, he joined the counterintelligence section of the New York office, responsible for tracking down spies. Russians on American soil and to recruit Soviet diplomats to the United Nations.
long unsuspected
Taking advantage of this key position, Hanssen had quickly offered his help to the intelligence services of the USSR, operating discreetly under the alias “Ramon Garcia” without his dealing officers knowing his true identity.
Alternating posts in New York and Washington, he delivered to the Soviets and then to the Russians thousands of pages of documents, including military plans, counterintelligence software and the names of several double agents operating for the United States. .
Although the FBI quickly became aware of the existence of a mole in its services, Hanssen remained unsuspected for a long time. Married, father of six children, he lived without being noticed, while maintaining close ties with the Catholic elite of the capital.
Caught in flagrante delicto
The federal police had finally been notified in 2000 by a Russian who had also defected, but in the opposite direction. When Robert Hanssen was to retire, the FBI then offered him a new position at headquarters so that they could monitor him.
“What we wanted was to get enough evidence to convict him, and the ultimate goal was to catch him in the act”said Debra Evans Smith, former deputy director of the counterintelligence division.
Placed under surveillance in an office secretly equipped with microphones and cameras in order to study his doings and gestures, he was finally arrested in February 2001 after having deposited secret documents for Russian agents in a park in Virginia.
Robert Hanssen avoided the death penalty by agreeing to cooperate with investigators. Admitting to having acted out of greed, he underwent 200 hours of interrogation. In May 2002, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of early release. “The FBI entrusted him with some of the most sensitive secrets of the US government, and instead of maintaining that trust, he abused it and betrayed it”deplores the federal police on its website.