Notorious FBI double-agent Robert Hanssen, who fed US secrets to Russia, dies in prison
- Called ‘the most damaging spy in bureau history’, he traded government secrets and the identities of US moles for diamonds and hundreds of thousands of dollars
- Hanssen, 79, was found unresponsive at an ultra-high-security facility in Colorado, where he was serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole
Robert Hanssen, the notorious FBI double agent who secretly fed Russia some of America’s deepest secrets in the 1980s and 1990s, died in a top-security prison on Monday, prison officials said.
Offering himself to Soviet military intelligence in 1985, Hanssen traded government secrets and the identities of US moles in the Soviet and Russian governments in exchange for diamonds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Because he was in the FBI’s crucial New York counter-intelligence department, tasked with chasing down foreign spies, he was able to cover his tracks as he ostensibly investigated Moscow’s agents in the United States.
He was finally caught at a dead drop for exchanging messages with his Russian handlers in suburban Virginia just outside Washington on February 18, 2001. A year later he was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Hanssen, 79, was found unresponsive early Monday in the ultra-high-security US prison in Florence, Colorado, and was later pronounced dead, according to a prison statement.