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FBI Agent Robert Hanssen

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Robert Hanssen joined the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in 1976. He was an FBI Special Agent for 25 years. He was married to Bonnie Hanssen for 33 years and has six children. Prior to joining the FBI, he worked for the Chicago Police Department for four years. Hanssen was big on his Catholic religion and went to church every day at 0630 hours prior to work. Opus Dei is the religious group Hanssen belonged to. Growing up, Hanssen was always infatuated with James Bond and espionage. Hanssen betrayed his country and began his double agent career in November 1979. There were plenty of red flags that should have indicated that something was off about Hanssen, but over time these indicators were brushed aside and not investigated. Hanssen was assigned to a Criminal Task Squad for his first duty assignment at the FBI New York Field Office. Hanssen requested to work with the Soviet Counterintelligence (CI) Team almost immediately after arriving to his new assignment. Even before he was actually assigned to the Soviet CI Team, Hanssen would go into a closed off office with no surveillance, no supervision, and read Soviet espionage files for hours. No employee for the FBI should try to gather intelligence information outside of their duty scope. In the FBI and other government agencies, if you do not have “the need to know”, you are not privy to that information. This was the first of many indicators to come. Hanssen constantly mishandled sensitive and

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