Anybody remember Robert Hanssen?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

He was an FBI agent in their counterintelligence division who sold information to the Russians for twenty-two years (1979-2001) before the FBI actually figured out what he was doing. He's now serving 15 consecutive life sentences. He was devout Catholic (Opus Dei) and very right-wing politically, but he didn't mind spying for his country's biggest enemy.

What else is going on in the FBI now?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

[lapfog_1]

1. The FBI has been infiltrated by facist alt-right assholes.

[DURHAM D]

2. He was in the same Opus Dei chapter at

the time as FBI Director Freeh.

[MADem]

4. Yes indeed--there was a thread or 3 here the other day discussing the very thing.

From assorted perspectives....

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512579184

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512580679

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028268919


http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512569411

[closeupready]

5. I watched the dramatization recently, with Laura Linney and Ryan Reynolds -

I forget the title, but it was chilling, from beginning to end.

EDIT to say, "Breach". Well worth watching.

[eleny]

10. +1

I thought Cooper did a good job with an intense demeanor.

[WillowTree]

17. Ryan Phillippe, not Reynolds.

[closeupready]

19. Oh right, thanks.

[Bear Creek]

6. More than

Just the FBI. They need to check right wing nut jobs who has security clearances.

[world wide wally]

7. Must be an epidemic

[burrowowl]

8. Yes!

Pope John XXIII didn't like Opus Dei but John Paul II did and even canonized their founder, I hope Francis doesn't like them, they re evil.

[hunter]

9. A twisted Christian.

However, at Hanssen's suggestion, and without the knowledge of his wife, a friend named Jack Horschauer, a retired Army officer, would sometimes watch the Hanssens having sex through a bedroom window. Hanssen then began to secretly videotape his sexual encounters and shared the videotapes with Horschauer. Later, he hid a video camera in the bedroom that was connected via closed-circuit television line so that his friend could observe the Hanssens from his guest bedroom. He also explicitly described the sexual details of his marriage on Internet chat rooms, giving information sufficient for those who knew them to recognize the couple.

Hanssen frequently visited D.C. strip clubs, and spent a great deal of time with a Washington stripper named Priscilla Sue Galey. She went with Hanssen on a trip to Hong Kong, and on a visit to the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia. He gave her money, jewels, and a used Mercedes-Benz, but cut off contact with her before his arrest, when she fell into drug abuse and prostitution. Galey claims that although she offered to sleep with him, Hanssen declined, saying that he was trying to convert her to Catholicism.

Right wing Catholics can be especially twisted. I think that's what made Antonin Scalia so creepy.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

11. Sure. It's a favorite case that I've read about

So why do you think Eric O'Neill really left the FBI?

[hfojvt]

13. funny to see this thread

right next to BLM's on the first page of GD.

"Anybody remember Robert Hanssen?"

"Why, yes I do, I think I read about him two seconds ago."

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. Sorry... I didn't see the first thread when it was posted.

Bad me.

[hfojvt]

15. no need to apologize

I am not offended or upset, just amused.

Not really laughing at you either. Just sometimes funny things happen, like the accident at that one moment that I happened to be reading for those two threads to be right next to each other.

And actually I had never heard the name, that I know of. A very odd story. There are some strange people in this world, and with positions of prestige and power too.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

16. Robert Hanssen was a BFD when he was finally caught.

He said he did it just for the money, but it also appeared that he did it just to prove he was smarter than everybody else at the FBI - he was basically a sociopath. There's a fascinating book about him, The Bureau and the Mole by David A. Vise, that describes what he did, how he did it, and how the FBI failed to act on all kinds of clues that he was up to no good. The agency was described as a dysfunctional mess - and the book was published in 2002. Sounds like not much has changed.

[CK_John]

18. There are universities that specialize in getting graduates into

departments that can be used to insure right wing policy is to hamper or push others forward. IRS, EPA, and FBI are favored.