FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who spied for the former Soviet Union and later for Russia, died Monday in prison where he was serving fifteen consecutive life sentences for betraying the United States.
Hanssen, 79, was “found unconscious” around 06:55 local time (12:55 GMT) in the federal jail “super max” in Florence, Colorado, the Bureau of Prisons reported in a statement.
The note does not provide details about the reason for his death, although it does specify that no prisoner or prison staff members were injured and that there was no danger to the public at any time.
The prisoner was pronounced dead by emergency services workers who treated him at the scene.
Hanssen was arrested in 2001 and pleaded guilty to fifteen counts of espionage for selling highly classified material to the Soviet Union and Russia during the waning years of the Cold War. He had been in a Colorado prison since 2002.
On its website, the FBI describes it as “the most harmful spy“of his story, as he gave the Russians national security information”in exchange for US$1.4 million in cash, bank funds and diamonds”. His espionage activities began in 1985, nine years after he joined the FBI.
Hanssen operated under the nickname “Ramón García” with the Russians and provided sensitive information, which compromised “numerous human sources, counterintelligence techniques, investigations, and dozens of classified government documents”, among others, to the KGB and the agency that succeeded it, the SVR, indicates the FBI.
Thanks to his experience and training, Hanssen went under the radar for years, although his activities raised suspicions during his time with Moscow.
In the 1990s, after CIA agent Aldrich Ames was arrested for working for the Russians, the agency and the FBI realized that there must be another Russian spy in their ranks who was sharing classified information. until they found Hanssen.
The American was arrested after he was caught in the act in a Virginia park, where he was trying to contact another Russian spy.
Months later, he pleaded guilty to selling thousands of classified documents to Moscow with data on the United States strategy against a nuclear war and with counterintelligence information, among other things.
Hanssen also alerted the Russians to the existence of a secret tunnel built by the FBI under the Russian Embassy in Washington for wiretapping and was accused of compromising dozens of Russians who had collaborated with the United States, some of whom were executed.
At the time, the Justice Department described this situation as “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in the history of the United States.”
Source: EFE
Source: Gestion
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