Robert Hanssen: The FBI Agent Who Betrayed America

On February 18, 2001, veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen taped a garbage bag under a footbridge in a Virginia park and was swarmed by federal agents, asking only, what took you so long? Over 22 years he perpetrated what the Justice Department called possibly the worst intelligence disaster in United States history.This episode examines how an outwardly ordinary man operated in the shadows for decades, driven by money rather than ideology. From a harsh Chicago upbringing to a forensic accounting career and a counterintelligence role, Hanssen treated national security as a personal bank account while hiding behind a facade of extreme religious piety and living a fractured double life.His first approach to Soviet intelligence in 1979 and the exposure of assets like Dmitri PolyakovCompromising the multimillion-dollar embassy eavesdropping tunnel and being assigned to hunt himselfHow the simultaneous Aldrich Ames case provided an unintended smokescreen for yearsIgnored warning signs, from cash on a dresser to password-cracking software on his FBI computerThe obscure Patton quote on a Russian audio tape that finally unraveled two decades of espionage