The Spy Who Fooled the FBI

HISTORY This Week

The HISTORY® Channel

History, Education, Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2023

⏱️ 31 minutes

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Summary

May 10, 2002. Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life in prison without parole. His crime? Selling scads of top-secret information to the Soviets – and later, the Russians – over 22 years. How did Hanssen get away with his deception for so long, which led to the deaths of operatives working for the United States? Was he a criminal mastermind … or just a guy with incredible luck?

Special thanks to our guests: Elaine Shannon, author of The Spy Next Door: The Extraordinary Secret Life of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Damaging FBI Agent in U.S. History, and Eric O'Neill, author of Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The History Channel, original podcast.
0:04.8	History this week, May 10, 2002.
0:13.3	I'm Sally Helm.
0:19.0	Robert Hansen, wearing a dull green prison uniform, steps up to the microphone.
0:25.1	He looks pale and hollow-eyed. He twists his hands behind his back.
0:30.4	He knows that a lot of his former colleagues are in the courtroom today,
0:35.1	and that he has betrayed them.
0:40.3	Hansen served in the FBI for 25 years. For 22 of them,
0:45.6	often on, he was handing secrets to the Soviets.
0:50.5	In return, they gave him more than a million dollars in cash and diamonds.
0:56.7	But Hansen got caught.
1:00.9	Months before Hansen steps up to the microphone in this courtroom,
1:04.7	he pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and conspiracy.
1:10.1	There was talk of the death sentence.
1:13.1	After all, he was one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history.
1:18.3	But he's cooperated to an extent.
1:21.0	And so instead, he's sentenced on this day in May to life in prison.
1:27.6	Hansen has the chance to make a statement.
1:30.3	I apologize for my behavior, he says.
1:33.0	I am shamed by it.
1:35.0	He apologizes in particular to his wife and his six children, who are not in the courtroom.
1:40.9	He says, I have hurt so many, so deeply.
	...

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