Robert Hanssen, FBI Agent Who Spied For Russia, Found Dead In Prison

Washington:

Robert Hanssen, the previous FBI agent turned spy whom the bureau describes as probably the most damaging in its historical past, was discovered useless in his jail cell on Monday, U.S. authorities stated.

Hanssen, 79, was sentenced in 2002 to life in jail after pleading responsible to spying for the Soviet Union and later Russia for over 20 years.

Jail employees initiated life-saving measures after discovering Hanssen unresponsive on Monday morning however weren’t profitable, the Bureau of Prisons stated in an announcement. It didn’t present a reason behind loss of life.

Hanssen joined the FBI in 1976 and started promoting categorized info to the Soviet Union in 1985, in response to the FBI’s web site.

By the point of his arrest in 2001, he had been compensated with greater than $1.4 million in money, financial institution funds and diamonds, in trade for compromising quite a few human sources, intelligence strategies and categorized U.S. paperwork, the FBI’s web site says.

FBI investigators labored for years to attempt to determine the spy of their ranks. Within the weeks main as much as his February 2001 arrest, some 300 personnel had been engaged on the investigation and monitoring Hanssen, in response to the FBI.

An arrest group took Hanssen into custody after catching him making a “useless drop” of categorized supplies in a park in suburban Virginia, the FBI says.

He had been serving his life sentence in a most safety facility in Colorado.

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