FBI Agent Robert Philip Hanssen is proven in this undated file photograph, unveiled by the FBI February 20, 2001.
FBI | Hulton Archive | Getty Pictures
FBI Agent-turned-traitor Robert Hanssen, who spied for the aged Soviet Union and later on the Russians, died Monday in the cell wherever he was serving 15 consecutive lifestyle sentences for betraying his place, federal jail officers stated.
Hanssen, 79, was “located unresponsive” around 6:55 a.m. at the federal “Supermax” jail in Florence, Colorado, the Bureau of Prisons mentioned in a statement.
Inspite of makes an attempt to revive him, Hanssen was pronounced useless by the EMS employees who had tried out to preserve him, the BOP explained.
The FBI was notified but the BOP did not indicate no matter whether Hanssen’s demise was below investigation.
Hanssen started spying for the Soviets in 1979, three a long time just after he joined the FBI.
Using the alias “Ramon Garcia,” the Chicago-born Hanssen bought “highly-classified countrywide safety data” to Moscow for $1.4 million in money, lender money, and diamonds, the FBI said on its formal heritage page.
Hanssen was arrested in 2001 right after generating a useless drop in a Virginia park while under surveillance by the FBI, which had been looking at him for months.
Caught crimson-handed, Hanssen pleaded guilty to selling thousands of labeled documents around the decades detailing U.S. strategies for nuclear war as perfectly as counterintelligence information and facts.
Hanssen also discovered to his Moscow spymasters the existence of an underground secret eavesdropping tunnel designed by the FBI under the Soviet Embassy.
At the time the Justice Office explained the scenario as “perhaps the worst intelligence disaster in US historical past.”
Due to the fact July 17, 2002, Hanssen experienced been a prisoner at the Supermax, the most safe federal jail in the nation — and house to other significant-profile inmates like Al-Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, failed “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, and “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.