One of America’s maximum notorious spies, Robert Hanssen, used to be discovered lifeless on Monday at a most safety jail in Colorado, a Bureau of Prisons spokesperson informed ABC News.
Just sooner than 7 a.m. on Monday morning, Hanssen, 79, used to be discovered lifeless in his mobile, the professional stated.
The crimes Hanssen dedicated have been one of the crucial most deadly and egregious in American historical past. Beginning in 1985, Hanssen labored with handlers from the Soviet Union, the use of the alias “Ramon Garcia.” offering extremely categorised nationwide safety information in trade for $1.4 million, in keeping with the FBI.
Hanssen used encrypted communications, “dead drops,” together with one simply outdoor of Washington, D.C., at a park in Fairfax County, Virginia, and different learn how to supply information to the KGB and Soviet Union.
On greater than 20 separate events, Hanssen left programs for Russian government at quite a lot of drops across the Washington space, the FBI stated, totaling greater than 6,000 pages of categorised subject material. Some of the fabric used to be used to seek down confidential human resources in Russia, in keeping with the federal government.
After the FBI arrested CIA analyst Aldrich Ames, who used to be convicted on espionage fees, the businesses learned there used to be a mole throughout the FBI. Hanssen, who used to be running on the State Department when the FBI learned he used to be doubtlessly a spy, used to be moved again to FBI headquarters and given a bogus task, in keeping with main points from the case.
By 2001, investigators believed Hanssen used to be going to make a “dead drop” of information at a park in Virginia, simply outdoor Washington. Agents stated they noticed Hanssen business a plastic bag stuffed with categorised information for $50,000 in money.
“Robert Hanssen’s death brings a somber end to one of the most infamous espionage cases in U.S. history,” Javed Ali, former senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, stated to ABC News.
“While acting as a senior agent on the Soviet/Russian counterintelligence program at FBI headquarters, Hanssen betrayed his country for money and caused major damage to U.S. national security by revealing a significant amount of highly sensitive U.S. intelligence, the status of ongoing FBI investigations, and the identity of human sources,” he stated. “As reported by the media in the aftermath of his arrest, his actions led to the death of those sources in Russia or elsewhere, and most very likely made it difficult to replace their placement and access on intelligence topics for some period of time, if ever.”
Hanssen pleaded in charge to fifteen counts of espionage on July 6, 2001. On May 10, 2002, he used to be sentenced to lifestyles in jail with out parole.
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