People often use very descriptive, emotion-filled words for those who show no gratitude, no loyalty, for the group to which they belong or those who have helped them become what they are. I’ve heard words like “turncoats, sellouts, betrayers, defecting, deserting, double-crossing, Judas-like-snakes-in-the-grass used to describe these types of people. You know the kind. They are those who sell-out. They are those who turn their backs on those who provide for them, those who have helped them, those for whom they should feel a debt of gratitude. Those like…well, you fill in the blank. I’ll just tell you the story of one such individual.
Today he is known as federal prisoner #48551-083. He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at ADX Florence, a Supermax federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. He spends 23 out of every 24 hours in solitary confinement. That will be his daily routine for the rest of his life. Who would have ever thought that it would end this way for the man who was once highly respected by those in his community?
Robert Hanssen was born in 1944. He landed his dream job working with the FBI as a special agent on January 12, 1976. He held “Top Secret” clearance from his very first day on the job. Just two years later Hanssen was transferred to the New York field office. Just one year after his transfer, Robert was assigned to counterintelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the Bureau.
For 25 years Robert Hanssen worked for the Bureau, but what the Bureau didn’t know, was that for the majority of those years, Robert was also working for the Soviets, as well. He was selling the secrets of his own country to Moscow—highly sensitive secrets. Who would have ever suspected him?
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