Today is Tuesday, February 18th, 2020.

On this day in 2001, FBI Agent Robert Philip Hansen was arrested and charged with espionage.

He'd been a double agent for the USSR and Russia for more than two decades.

Welcome to today in True Crime, a parcast original.

Today we're covering the arrest. Welcome to today in True Crime, a parcast original.

Today we're covering the arrest of double agent Robert Philip Hansen,

who sold intelligence to the Russians from 1979 to 2001. Let's go back to the afternoon of February 18th 2001 on a quiet road

outside Washington, D.C.

Robert knew this drive well, winding out of the city streets into the lush green Virginia suburbs,

then further towards Foxstone Park and the crisscrossing networks of quiet trails.

Even in February, he could hear the occasional bird or the rustle of some creature scurrying through the dense trees beside the road.

It wasn't so far from the city really, barely more than 30 minutes from the FBI's offices,

but it felt a world away. Still, not even the peaceful woods could

calm Robert today. His anxiety was at an all-time high, and this for a man who'd known decades of anxiety.

It wasn't easy to be a double agent, not at all.

Not when you were a husband and father of six, and a practicing Catholic

to boot.

He'd once even confessed to his espionage at his wife's insistence to their priest.

That was in 1980, just a year after he started working for the Soviets.

When his wife found him out, he'd quit. He committed to getting back on the straight narrow,

living within his salary, making his wife and children proud of their all-American hero.

His father had been a cop, and so was Robert before he joined the FBI.

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