Image source, Getty Images
An FBI agent-turned-Russian mole who is infamous as one of the most destructive spies in United States history has actually been discovered dead in jail.
Robert Hanssen was found at a maximum-security center in Florence, Colorado, on Monday early morning.
Hanssen, 79, received more than $1.4m in money, diamonds, and money paid into Russian accounts. Three hundred representatives dealt with his case.
He was sentenced in 2002 to life in jail for espionage.
A cause of death has yet to be validated.
Hanssen resided in a modest four-bedroom house in rural Virginia with his partner and 6 kids prior to his arrest.
Because of his counterintelligence function, he had actually access to categorized details and in 1985 he began his criminal activity, sending out product to Russia and the previous Soviet Union.
Hanssen, who ended up being an FBI officer on 12 January 1976, utilized the alias “Ramon Garcia” when referring his handlers.
According to the FBI’s website, he “jeopardized many human sources, counterintelligence methods, examinations, lots of categorized United States federal government files, and technical operations of remarkable value and worth”.
While there was some suspicion around his uncommon activities periodically, he was not captured for many years.
After the spy Aldrich Hazen Ames was apprehended by the FBI in 1994, the bureau understood categorized details was still being dripped, which is what prompted the examination into Hanssen.
He had actually been because of retire so the FBI acted rapidly in an effort to capture him “red handed”.
“What we wished to do was get adequate proof to convict him, and the ultimate objective was to capture him in the act,” said Debra Evans Smith, previous deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division.
To lure him back to FBI head office for closer tracking, he was offered a phony task.
Hanssen started operating in his brand-new workplace – total with covert electronic cameras and microphones – at FBI head office in January 2001.
A month later on, detectives discovered he was scheduled to make a dead drop at a park.
A dead drop is when a single person leaves product for another individual to later on get at a pre-determined area, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Image source, Getty Images
Hanssen resided in a modest four-bedroom house in rural Virginia
On 18 February 2001, Hanssen went to Foxstone Park, situated in Virginia, with a plastic bag filled with classified products.
The FBI had actually seen him regular the park prior to and as he went back to his vehicle, he was apprehended and nabbed.
During his arrest, he asked FBI representatives, “What took you so long?”
He informed interrogators that the FBI security was useless, however he worked together to prevent the capital punishment.
Friends and neighbours said they were shocked by his arrest and explained him as peaceful and simple.
His family drove to mass every Sunday in a 10-year-old van, and was said to be a rigorous dad, who restricted tv for his kids.
But behind this façade lay a sexual fascination. Hanssen covertly shot adult videos of his partner and revealed them to a friend.
During the time of his arrest, CBS News, BBC’s United States partner, reported that he would regular strip clubs where he attempted to transform strippers to Catholicism.
Additionally, he would publish raunchy stories about him and his partner online and share naked images of her.
After maturing in Chicago, he said in a letter included in an FBI affidavit that he was influenced by the British spy, Kim Philby.
“I selected this course when I was 14 years of ages,” he composed to his Russian handlers, according to the affidavit.
He pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and in May 2002 was sentenced to life without parole.
The jail, ADX Florence, is among the most secure federal jails in the country, which hosts other high profile prisoners like al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
