He died at 79 years old Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who was a longtime Soviet spy during the Cold War period. The case involving him is considered one of the greatest disasters in the history of US intelligence and a great cause of embarrassment for the FBI, which still today defines Hanssen “the most compromising spy in the history of the agency.” He was found dead of unexplained causes in Florence, Colorado, where he was serving a life sentence.
Hanssen began working as an FBI agent in 1976 and over the next few years he held increasingly important roles, which granted him access to classified information. He became a Soviet spy three years later, while working in New York: for the next twenty years, with some breaks, he continued to pass information on US intelligence operations to the Soviet government in exchange for nearly 1.5 million dollars in cash, diamonds and other bank deposits.
Among other things, he revealed to the Russians that the United States government had dug a tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington to be able to intercept communications inside the building more easily; he also reported on three KGB agents spying for the United States.
That Hanssen was a Soviet spy was discovered only at the beginning of 2001, as part of the investigations following the arrest of Aldrich Ames, a former CIA agent who was discovered to be a Soviet spy himself. He was arrested the following February in a park near his home, just outside Washington, where he lived with his family. He said he was pushed to spy for economic reasons, but according to some witnesses the fact that he didn’t feel appreciated enough in his office was also involved. Moreover, Hanssen was a practicing Catholic, he was a member of the Opus Dei group and declared positions as a staunch anti-communist.
After his arrest, he was found guilty of 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Since July 2002 he had been in the maximum security prison in Florence, considered the most secure in the federal system in the United States.
His story has inspired numerous books and films, including Breach – The infiltratorin which his role is played by US actor Chris Cooper.
– Read also: The story of Ana Montes, one of the most famous spies of the Cold War