Elizabeth Nix at History.com
offers a look back at Robert Hanssen.
One of the most damaging
double agents in modern American history, Robert Hanssen gave the Soviets, and
later the Russians, thousands of pages of classified material that revealed
such sensitive national security secrets as the identities of Soviets spying
for the U.S., specifics about America’s nuclear operations and the existence of
an FBI-built tunnel underneath the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
Hanssen’s double life began
in 1979 and ended in 2001, when he was arrested after the FBI discovered,
thanks to help from an ex-KGB officer, that Hanssen was a mole. A church-going
father of six, Hanssen is thought to have been motivated by money rather than
ideological beliefs. While covertly working for Moscow on and off over the
years, he was paid $600,000 in cash and diamonds, with another $800,000
supposedly held for him in a Russian bank. Hanssen was only the third agent in
FBI history charged with spying.
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