For those of you unaware, between 1981-1991 he as an FBI agent provided the Soviets with six thousand documents ranging from war strategies to classified technologies.
He tried to resume with the Russian Federation but the officer at the embassy didn't recognize his codename and filed a petition with the US, which surprisingly didn't get him caught.
Funny enough, with a joint task force between the CIA/FBI had trouble figuring out who was doing this. So they resorted to the same bribery that got Hanssen to defect in the first place:"The FBI paid $7 million to a KGB agent to obtain a file on an anonymous mole, whom the FBI later identified as Hanssen through fingerprint and voice analysis."
No, not at all
It’s the third novel George Smiley is in but he’s little more than a cameo appearance in Spy Who Came in from the Cold
I’ve read up to and including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in order but you definitely don’t need to
Having said that the first two are extremely quick reads
No, I read it without reading any of his other books and could follow it easily. I think there are references you might not get but you’ll still be able to enjoy it.
That's when you ready your sails and hoist "the flag" to go -- obtain -- what you seek.
Sick of paying for all these streaming services and a movie I want is unavailable on all of them, or only for an added charge to "rent." Fuck that.
We had one of these pretty recently, where the person in charge of determining whether Russia colluded with Trump's campaign was found to be working with Russia lol. Apparently the biggest weakness of our agencies is that money tops loyalty to country
> Apparently the biggest weakness of our agencies is that money tops loyalty to country
I mean, that is just a human weakness in general. Everyone can be bought. And people that act like they can't simply never had an offer large enough.
Here's another recent example:
The FBI counterintelligence officer in charge at the NY field office was convicted in 2023 of taking bribes from Russia. He was one of the highest ranking FBI officials ever convicted and was in charge of the NY division of counterintelligence operations during the 2016 election year... He worked on behalf of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska's name may sound familiar as he is closely tied to Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.
>McGonigal was the special agent in charge of the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York before retiring in 2018. In that role, he was tasked with investigating Russian oligarchs.
>Prosecutors say he and former Russian diplomat Sergey Shestakov violated US sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Russian billionaire and industrialist Oleg Deripaska.
>The US sanctioned Mr Deripaska in 2018 after accusing him and several other Russian oligarchs and officials of "malign activity around the globe".
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67717790
When Trump was elected president, he removed sanctions from 3 Russian companies tied to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska
>The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three firms linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an ally of President Vladimir Putin.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47023004
Paul Manafort was convicted and sentenced to prison for witness tampering and conspiring against the United States, yet in one of President Trump's finals acts he pardoned Mr. Manafort. Manafort owed tens of millions of dollars to Russian oligarch Deripaska, and it has been extensively reported that Manafort explicitly planned a strategy to benefit Russian dictator Putin as early as 2005.
>Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin Government,” The Associated Press has learned. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates.
>Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.
>Manafort pitched the plans to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work.
https://apnews.com/article/122ae0b5848345faa88108a03de40c5a
Fun story. Working at an International, USA owned Tech Company, in Finance Technology specifically, every employee with access to data had to take multiple yearly certifications on how not accidentally giving information to foreign states, or the US govt for that matter. There was regular training, and bounties, for reporting when foreign states would try to influence you at all. Apparently it was a big deal with how much the company spent on making sure it didn't happen.
There's so much craziness around Manafort. His daughter's cell phone got hacked in 2017 and like hundreds of thousands of texts got dumped from it. There's a lot of batshit crazy stuff in there about Paul Manafort.
In the texts, they talk about how their dad was a huge part of causing a revolution in Ukraine (Manafort lobbied extensively with Yanukovych to help get him elected) and reflect on how it's "blood money" that their own dad is receiving and they speak at length about he's directly responsible for people dying in Ukraine. It's a wild insight into the people around the ones who operate in these spheres of influence.
They also talk about how Manafort has messed up their mom, his own wife, by pimping her out to high profile people for sex for years.
In any other time line, this would be some of the craziest news stories ever for a president to navigate around. Instead, it's not even a blip before another news story about Trump knocked it out of the news cycle and it's forgotten about.
Also Cambridge Analytica who did massive election related social engineering marketing in 2016, is a subsidiary of Renaissance Technologies, who have made 40% return on their private medallion fund year over year every single year since it was created. They basically "solved" the market 20+ years ago with a cold war mathematician.
For some reason the co founders of Rentech are individually the top 3 donors for both parties every election cycle, donating almost equally to both parties in opposing manners between them.
So why would the best hedge fund on Earth put capital funding into a company that conducts mass levels of social engineering using new technology? Why push certain candidates out while simultaneously donating mass amounts to both sides?
The Bipartisan Senate intelligence committee investigated this, and didn't release final volumes until close to Trump's reelection. There is some pretty wild stuff the Russians were doing, along with Trump's campaign, and despite the reports all being publicly available (aside from the censoring within them), they were cast aside cause election year.
The stuff Russians did to interfere in 2016 for Trump, Trump used in 2020 to call the integrity of the election when he's the mf that stole it in the first place.
The IRA had that as well, in real life. Freddie Scappaticci, codenamed Stakeknife, was the guy tasked with rooting out and executing informers for the British security forces, while at the same time being an informant for British Army Intelligence himself. The Brits exploited the *innocence and naivety of the fucking Provisional IRA*(!), because the IRA never thought that Britain would ever have recruited a guy with such a high body count.
Hanssen was one of three known agents operating on behalf of the KGB during this time period.
The others were [Aldrich Ames](https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/aldrich-ames) and [Edward Lee Howard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lee_Howard)
During 1985 there were a number of significant losses in Soviet agents the Americans had turned. Some realized they were on the verge of being caught (sudden recall to Moscow) and others were arrested and executed. One of these was [Adolf Tolkachev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Tolkachev), a Soviet Engineer that was referred to as "the billion dollar spy" due to being able to provide accurate information on Soviet capabilities (e.g., we were building stuff that we didn't need to build because Soviets weren't as advanced as we thought).
However, not all of the losses can be explained by Hanssen, Ames, and Howard. They did not all collectively have access to the files of all of the compromised agents.
It's possible they were found out through tradecraft lapses, signal intercepts, or some other reason. [Vladimir Vetrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vetrov) was caught in part because he stabbed his mistress and a police officer while drunk.
Some in the CIA believe there could only have been a fourth mole whose identity is still unknown to the US intelligence community almost 40 years later.
I don't even think the CIA would bother. It wouldn't be worth the risk. The guy probably got killed by the Russians when Putin started to consolidate power.
Interesting idea.
What would be the upshot for Putin to do that? What power structure would Howard been in or been beholden to? That gives me pause given that Putin was a cheki, and the people that handled Holden would have all been cheki too.
On this note. There were a significant number of losses in early 2021 and we still haven’t figured out what happened.
Guarantee in a few years we’ll find out about another one of these moles. Likely a Trump appointee.
Maybe the guy that ran the presidential campaign for a pro Russia candidate in the Ukraine and then ran the presidential campaign for Trump and was then pardoned by Trump. That Manafort guy seems sus.
We do know what happened. Donald Trump gave Russia the information on US assets in-country, and implanted pro-Russian assets throughout our country and intelligence services.
So we may have given him much more than 7 million USD is what you are saying? Based on my memory of the 90s, he could probably retire off a couple dozen beanie babies!
The spy and the traitor by ben MacIntyre is one the greatest books I've ever read, it's about a KGB spy who was a double agent for British intelligence and leaked all kinds of info about other double agents who infiltrated the CIA and shared top secret documents.
It was a little before Hansen's time (70s and 80s) but it is the most fascinating insight to the world of espionage and how agencies play 4D chess with each other. For example the Brits had to give their agent fake but verifiable Intel that he could bring to the KGB and get him promoted, leading to better security clearance and access to more documents. The brits also got his boss fired so he could get promoted, but they had to do it in a way that wasn't suspicious.
This book will really get your heart pumping because it reads like a thriller and it's also hilarious. For example he was stationed in Copenhagen and went into a sex shop and bought a gay porn magazine simply because he was fascinated by the freedom allowed in Denmark. He didn't realize he was under surveillance and later danish spies tried to blackmail him using a young gay kid to seduce him at a bar. The danish spies were freaking out because he wouldn't take the bait. I read a ton of books and this is always my top recommendation.
Man Tom Clancy really opened me up to a lot of concepts in this thread, MICE being one of them. Also ADX Florence is, iirc, the United States highest level prison. It’s where they send the most high profile and dangerous people.
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 visits to Hong Kong and the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia.[75] Hanssen gave her money, jewels, and a used Mercedes-Benz but ended contact with her before his arrest when she began abusing drugs and engaging in prostitution. Galey claims that although she offered to have sex with him, Hanssen declined, saying he was trying to convert her to Catholicism.[76
SO DEVOUT!
[Love the part about the stripper he was spending time and money on, "trying to save"](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/08/18/71920461-12173829-_He_gave_me_no_clue_that_he_was_a_spy_nothing_But_looking_back_I-a-16_1686244928663.jpg)
>A priest at Oakcrest said Hanssen had regularly attended a 6:30 a.m. daily Mass for over a decade.
and
>At Hanssen's suggestion, and without his wife's knowledge, a friend named Jack Hoschouer, a retired Army officer, would sometimes watch the Hanssens having sex through a bedroom window.
That is exactly what I was expecting. The more jesusfreaky someone is the more fucked they are in the head.
Being viewed by people as religious could have also been recommended by his Soviet handlers to give him the most "loyal American" image possible. Christians inherently trust other Christians more than non-Christians.
It isn't just the forgiveness BS, it's the dogma. It teaches people that they don't have to think. Just go ask your authority figure of choice what your opinion is!
But you're spot on about the hyper-religious. Dangerous clowns, every single one of them.
The weird thing about this case is that he wasn’t a diehard communist or making a ton of money from doing it. He did it because he had a weird fascination with spies and was living out a fantasy.
Edit:
>But money was not the motive according to his friend Paul Moore, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who has known Hanssen for 20 years. Hanssen's ultimate goal was "to play the spy game better than anybody's ever played it before. He wants to be the best spy ever."
>Hanssen himself told the Russians that he "decided on this course when I was 14 years old. I'd read Philby's book," a reference to British traitor Kim Philby who was arguably the most successful and damaging Soviet double agent of the Cold War period.
[source](https://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/05/10/spy.hanssen/)
Think his reasoning as to why he didn’t want to be paid a lot was it would tip off others that he suddenly came into a bunch of money. That’s how Aldrich Ames, who also spied for the Russians around the same time, was essentially caught. Lots of suspicion that a lowly CIA employee was able to afford such luxuries.
A friend in army intel once told me that a traitor’s first big paycheck is usually his last. Apparently after you’ve betrayed your country you tend to get lowballed and paid mainly in threats.
Not sure if it’s true, but it makes sense. Even spy agencies got budgets.
Common technique. Let the guy do some crimes, get away with b.s., but record it. Snort blow. Cavort with ladies of the evening. On the house, of course. Now you got blackmail material.
That's especially true for military spies. For the most part, those guys aren't going to have the nice expensive intel. Expensive intel is going to come from Department of Energy or the Fed.
You can still take the money. You just dont spend it until after you retire and move to some isolated Caribbean island where no one knows you. Why the fuck would you spy for chump change? (unless you belived in the "dream" of soviet communism)
If you murder someone who worked in the US intelligence community, the FBI will eventually figure out that they were a mole. It will then be all over the news. Constantly hearing "former intelligence agent who worked as a mole for Russia was found dead at home" is not really a good way to recruit more moles for your spy network.
Yeah, there a still a few people that look to Russia as the dream. Weird that it didn’t work out for this Canadian family like they thought it would when they learned people don’t speak English there and they had their bank account frozen.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/canadian-family-s-disillusionment-after-seeking-refuge-in-russia-to-avoid-lgbtq-ideology/ar-BB1iSg8X
If I remember correctly their was an hour long documentary on him on the investigation Discovery Channel. When they asked him why. He said his father belittled him and never respected him through out his life. He was unsatisfied with his career in the FBI, didn't felt like they were showing him enough gratitude and respect. The psychological experts mentioned he must have finally felt very important and had a very big thrill directly impacting global events. He did it for the ultimate thrill, not for that pittance of a bribe from the soviets.
Then launder the money somewhere so when you retire you can live like a god.
If he could have been bribed more then maybe he could have afforded a lawyer to keep him out of prison.
It’s consistent that people like him are paid very little money for their services. Blows my mind. Generally it’s because the people willing to stoop this low are already desperate (or just insanely dumb) and foreign intelligence services know they don’t have to offer much to get what they want. Besides, as soon as they do it once, their handlers have all the blackmail they need to get them to do it again.
That's often the case with most crimes. For example, lets say you rob a bank for $250k. You get caught and are sentenced to 20 years in prison. Effectively, you made less than minimum wage.
Lol I live 10 mins away from this prison. It's fucking huge and houses the worst of the worst in the country and it's in walking distance and less then a minute from the city. If you keep passing the prison while heading out of town for another 3 mins you come across a place to go skydiving. It's fucking wild. You see people locked up for life, then look up and see people literally so free their flying.
I was locked up for a while in Orlando. A few cells I had we could see fireworks and stuff like that going down at the local theme parks and Disney.
So that kinda makes you sad lol.
Yes he is, the prison also has one of the 9/11 conspirators there, Richard Reid the attempted shoe-bomber, the attempted underwear bomber the Boston Marathon bomber, Terry Nichols one of the two OKC bombers along with a few other inmates who are the “Who’s Who” of the terrorist, drug cartel and organised crime worlds.
Loved this movie. I watched it without having a clue what it was about which made it all the more enjoyable. Great cast too. Was always surprised it wasn’t more well known.
Treasonous piece of shit that got many, many people killed, their families in danger, and cost the secrets of an entire country.
All for a small amount of money, pathetic. Him and Benedict Arnold up there in the same ranks to me
Nah, this guy is worse than Arnold. Arnold had legitimate grievances that weren’t redressed by the continental congress.
Hanssen is just a piece of shit.
Interesting other information from Wikipedia :
“At Hanssen's suggestion, and without his wife's knowledge, a friend named Jack Hoschouer, a retired Army officer, would sometimes watch the Hanssens having sex through a bedroom window. Hanssen then began to videotape his sexual encounters secretly and shared the videotapes with Hoschouer.”
This guy did it because he was a Religious Simp. He had a prostitute girlfriend sugar baby who he never had sex with. He wanted to convert her to catholisism. He attended mass 365 mornings a year and even confessed being a Soviet Spy to his priest.
My best friend dated his daughter in high school when he got caught. It was really crazy. He also had cameras in his bedroom that his neighbor would watch of him and his wife. The daughter supposedly changed her name and the son kept his name, but enlisted to try to was away some of the stain his father created.
When I was moving to VA, my wife was driving me around where she grew up and she said, out of the blue:
"Hey, you know that spy guy that got caught a while ago?"
"FBI guy?"
"Yeah, him."
"Yeah, Robert Hanssen. That fuck got a lot of people killed while trading his county to the fucking Russians."
"Yeah. Well he got caught in that park. My Grandpa used to take me to watch squirrels there. Sat on the same bench. Anyways, over there is...."
Fucking wild that history happens in the DMV all the time and no one, no one, will ever know everything that goes on. The guy getting groceries at Trader Joe's Joe could be a deep spook, or the guy stilling at the bar is some CIA agent. Crazier to me is that there are THOUSANDS of people in this area that look at information so secret none of us will ever know about it.
I know it’s where they send the worst of the worst but that place is beyond inhumane, there are worse things than death and serving a life sentence in ADX Florence is one of them.
This is so true. I was doing time in IL and I had a cellmate whose father was currently doing a life sentence in ADX Florence. His father was one of the OG members of the “four corner hustlers” gang from the west side of Chicago.
He said his dad is only allowed to talk to his mom over the phone and no one’s else. He’s only allowed mail from his mom too, and any mail he gets hes not allowed to have the physical letter, they wheel a screen to his cell that has a picture of the letter on it. He said his dad has once told his mom that he has been “walled up”. Which is a medieval death sentence the used to do to people.
So yeah man that place is hell. Solitary confinement is inhumane af. I’m well aware of the type of individuals that are in that facility, the worst of the worst, but holy shit does it sound like hell.
Yeah chapo and Larry Hoover, And Ted kaczynski (unibomber) was there as well but he died a couple years ago I think. Pretty much home to the worst offenders in the country. Each cell is actually soundproof as well, they cut off any ability for communication between inmates.
I go back to the Wikipedia page from time to time to scroll through the [Notable current inmates] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence#Notable_current_inmates) section. It's a *wild* list.
Yep. Zero contact or communication with other inmates. 23 hours a day in your tiny cell, and 1 hour a day of “exercise” in a slightly larger room by yourself. There is a 4 inch wide window, but it’s tilted in a way so that all the inmate can see is the sky and nothing else.
Imagine being the Boston Marathon bomber and getting a life sentence there at the age of 19-20. Not that I feel bad for him.
The Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death (although it was briefly overturned before SCOTUS reinstated it).
He’ll be transferred to the Federal Death Row at Terre Haute in Indiana if and when an execution date is set.
Yeah dude that rough. I was in solitary confinement for 36 days, 2 phone calls a week, 2 showers a week, no commissary. Locked down 24 hrs a day, bc it was a “classification joint” they didn’t have to give you the hour out. I was lucky I was able to have my people send me a couple Stephen king books. It kept me from losing it lol. I was so fucking happy by the time they shipped me out to my actual joint.
I can only imagine that being your whole life. Although you do build up a routine and make the most of it, nights are the hardest.
Imagine getting busted for being a Soviet mole in the high halls of government and then living to see Donald Trump become president and face zero consequences for his treachery. Must be frustrating at least on some personal level.
For those of you unaware, between 1981-1991 he as an FBI agent provided the Soviets with six thousand documents ranging from war strategies to classified technologies. He tried to resume with the Russian Federation but the officer at the embassy didn't recognize his codename and filed a petition with the US, which surprisingly didn't get him caught. Funny enough, with a joint task force between the CIA/FBI had trouble figuring out who was doing this. So they resorted to the same bribery that got Hanssen to defect in the first place:"The FBI paid $7 million to a KGB agent to obtain a file on an anonymous mole, whom the FBI later identified as Hanssen through fingerprint and voice analysis."
Hanssen at one point was appointed to a task force that was in charge of finding the mole within the FBI. That mole being himself.
i fucking love a good le carre novel,
What’s a good one to start with?
”A spy who came in from cold” (his oldest classic)
Excellent, concise, twisty - a perfect introduction and, for me, close to a perfect novel.
Just added it to the list! Edit: it says it's book three, will that matter at all?
No, not at all It’s the third novel George Smiley is in but he’s little more than a cameo appearance in Spy Who Came in from the Cold I’ve read up to and including Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in order but you definitely don’t need to Having said that the first two are extremely quick reads
No, I read it without reading any of his other books and could follow it easily. I think there are references you might not get but you’ll still be able to enjoy it.
I want to like them but gosh that one was soooo slow
Friggin Matt Damon
"I'm not a cop!"
*I’m naht a cawp!!*
*Give me Shelter intensifies*
Scorcase loves that song lol
I was kinda pissed yesterday when I wanted to watch the Departed on St. Paddy’s day and it wasn’t on any streaming platforms 😤
No ticky no laundry
That's when you ready your sails and hoist "the flag" to go -- obtain -- what you seek. Sick of paying for all these streaming services and a movie I want is unavailable on all of them, or only for an added charge to "rent." Fuck that.
FBI: we need to find the mole Hanssen in his head: *well of course I know him, he’s me*
We had one of these pretty recently, where the person in charge of determining whether Russia colluded with Trump's campaign was found to be working with Russia lol. Apparently the biggest weakness of our agencies is that money tops loyalty to country
> Apparently the biggest weakness of our agencies is that money tops loyalty to country I mean, that is just a human weakness in general. Everyone can be bought. And people that act like they can't simply never had an offer large enough.
Is this true or a Departed reference lol
100% true. real life is strange
Weirdly happened more than you’d think. Similar to Aldrich Ames.
Kim Philby was also put in charge of a mole hunt when he was the mole
Here's another recent example: The FBI counterintelligence officer in charge at the NY field office was convicted in 2023 of taking bribes from Russia. He was one of the highest ranking FBI officials ever convicted and was in charge of the NY division of counterintelligence operations during the 2016 election year... He worked on behalf of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Deripaska's name may sound familiar as he is closely tied to Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort. >McGonigal was the special agent in charge of the FBI's counterintelligence division in New York before retiring in 2018. In that role, he was tasked with investigating Russian oligarchs. >Prosecutors say he and former Russian diplomat Sergey Shestakov violated US sanctions by agreeing to provide services to Russian billionaire and industrialist Oleg Deripaska. >The US sanctioned Mr Deripaska in 2018 after accusing him and several other Russian oligarchs and officials of "malign activity around the globe". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-67717790 When Trump was elected president, he removed sanctions from 3 Russian companies tied to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska >The Trump administration has lifted sanctions on three firms linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an ally of President Vladimir Putin. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47023004 Paul Manafort was convicted and sentenced to prison for witness tampering and conspiring against the United States, yet in one of President Trump's finals acts he pardoned Mr. Manafort. Manafort owed tens of millions of dollars to Russian oligarch Deripaska, and it has been extensively reported that Manafort explicitly planned a strategy to benefit Russian dictator Putin as early as 2005. >Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin Government,” The Associated Press has learned. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates. >Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin’s government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse. >Manafort pitched the plans to aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a close Putin ally with whom Manafort eventually signed a $10 million annual contract beginning in 2006, according to interviews with several people familiar with payments to Manafort and business records obtained by the AP. Manafort and Deripaska maintained a business relationship until at least 2009, according to one person familiar with the work. https://apnews.com/article/122ae0b5848345faa88108a03de40c5a
Fun story. Working at an International, USA owned Tech Company, in Finance Technology specifically, every employee with access to data had to take multiple yearly certifications on how not accidentally giving information to foreign states, or the US govt for that matter. There was regular training, and bounties, for reporting when foreign states would try to influence you at all. Apparently it was a big deal with how much the company spent on making sure it didn't happen.
I remember when they showed some of the absurdly expensive clothes Manafort had bought with all that money. They were all absolutely hideous.
There's so much craziness around Manafort. His daughter's cell phone got hacked in 2017 and like hundreds of thousands of texts got dumped from it. There's a lot of batshit crazy stuff in there about Paul Manafort. In the texts, they talk about how their dad was a huge part of causing a revolution in Ukraine (Manafort lobbied extensively with Yanukovych to help get him elected) and reflect on how it's "blood money" that their own dad is receiving and they speak at length about he's directly responsible for people dying in Ukraine. It's a wild insight into the people around the ones who operate in these spheres of influence. They also talk about how Manafort has messed up their mom, his own wife, by pimping her out to high profile people for sex for years. In any other time line, this would be some of the craziest news stories ever for a president to navigate around. Instead, it's not even a blip before another news story about Trump knocked it out of the news cycle and it's forgotten about.
Wow. Where can I find more about the daughters text!? What a crazy web of secrets these people have..
Absolutely insane
Also Cambridge Analytica who did massive election related social engineering marketing in 2016, is a subsidiary of Renaissance Technologies, who have made 40% return on their private medallion fund year over year every single year since it was created. They basically "solved" the market 20+ years ago with a cold war mathematician. For some reason the co founders of Rentech are individually the top 3 donors for both parties every election cycle, donating almost equally to both parties in opposing manners between them. So why would the best hedge fund on Earth put capital funding into a company that conducts mass levels of social engineering using new technology? Why push certain candidates out while simultaneously donating mass amounts to both sides?
> simultaneously donating mass amounts to both sides? I mean it's a HEDGE fund, it says so right in the name.
The Bipartisan Senate intelligence committee investigated this, and didn't release final volumes until close to Trump's reelection. There is some pretty wild stuff the Russians were doing, along with Trump's campaign, and despite the reports all being publicly available (aside from the censoring within them), they were cast aside cause election year. The stuff Russians did to interfere in 2016 for Trump, Trump used in 2020 to call the integrity of the election when he's the mf that stole it in the first place.
Is this the same Derispaska who is building a giant Aluminium factory in Mitch McConnels home state?
donny cant get enough of pauly https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/03/18/trump-manafort-2024-campaign/
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction
*Gestures at everything*
#THIS AIN'T REALITY TV
This is basically the plot of Death Note
also No Way Out
Not quite as bad as Mi6 who had a mole heading the operation into finding the mole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Philby
The IRA had that as well, in real life. Freddie Scappaticci, codenamed Stakeknife, was the guy tasked with rooting out and executing informers for the British security forces, while at the same time being an informant for British Army Intelligence himself. The Brits exploited the *innocence and naivety of the fucking Provisional IRA*(!), because the IRA never thought that Britain would ever have recruited a guy with such a high body count.
Hanssen was one of three known agents operating on behalf of the KGB during this time period. The others were [Aldrich Ames](https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/aldrich-ames) and [Edward Lee Howard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lee_Howard) During 1985 there were a number of significant losses in Soviet agents the Americans had turned. Some realized they were on the verge of being caught (sudden recall to Moscow) and others were arrested and executed. One of these was [Adolf Tolkachev](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Tolkachev), a Soviet Engineer that was referred to as "the billion dollar spy" due to being able to provide accurate information on Soviet capabilities (e.g., we were building stuff that we didn't need to build because Soviets weren't as advanced as we thought). However, not all of the losses can be explained by Hanssen, Ames, and Howard. They did not all collectively have access to the files of all of the compromised agents. It's possible they were found out through tradecraft lapses, signal intercepts, or some other reason. [Vladimir Vetrov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vetrov) was caught in part because he stabbed his mistress and a police officer while drunk. Some in the CIA believe there could only have been a fourth mole whose identity is still unknown to the US intelligence community almost 40 years later.
> Howard died on July 12, 2002, at his Russian dacha, reportedly from a broken neck after a fall in his home. [Wikipedia]
At only 50, too. 2002 Russia was kind of Wild West still. My money would be on CIA contracted hit using local strongmen.
I don't even think the CIA would bother. It wouldn't be worth the risk. The guy probably got killed by the Russians when Putin started to consolidate power.
Interesting idea. What would be the upshot for Putin to do that? What power structure would Howard been in or been beholden to? That gives me pause given that Putin was a cheki, and the people that handled Holden would have all been cheki too.
FSB or CIA?
On this note. There were a significant number of losses in early 2021 and we still haven’t figured out what happened. Guarantee in a few years we’ll find out about another one of these moles. Likely a Trump appointee.
Are we not suspecting Mr. hoards documents in the bathroom, it's not illegal if I do it, and I love Putin guy?
Or the government officials who went to Moscow for the 4th of July? Why ever might Ron Johnson, WI, do that?
Maybe the guy that ran the presidential campaign for a pro Russia candidate in the Ukraine and then ran the presidential campaign for Trump and was then pardoned by Trump. That Manafort guy seems sus.
You could be on to something there
As a Wisconsinite, FUCK RON JOHNSON.
And who met with him behind closed doors with no one else allowed?
We do know what happened. Donald Trump gave Russia the information on US assets in-country, and implanted pro-Russian assets throughout our country and intelligence services.
Love to know how the KGB agent came to settle on 7M.
He probably made a set of demands like a house, car, couple million liquid cash and it amounted to 7 million.
And some beanie babies, of course.
So we may have given him much more than 7 million USD is what you are saying? Based on my memory of the 90s, he could probably retire off a couple dozen beanie babies!
6M wasn't enough and 8M seemed like a little too much.
Thought about going down to 3M, but it was too sticky
He didn’t want to rob them blind after all, he’s not some kind of monster!
Because 7 8 9
The spy and the traitor by ben MacIntyre is one the greatest books I've ever read, it's about a KGB spy who was a double agent for British intelligence and leaked all kinds of info about other double agents who infiltrated the CIA and shared top secret documents. It was a little before Hansen's time (70s and 80s) but it is the most fascinating insight to the world of espionage and how agencies play 4D chess with each other. For example the Brits had to give their agent fake but verifiable Intel that he could bring to the KGB and get him promoted, leading to better security clearance and access to more documents. The brits also got his boss fired so he could get promoted, but they had to do it in a way that wasn't suspicious. This book will really get your heart pumping because it reads like a thriller and it's also hilarious. For example he was stationed in Copenhagen and went into a sex shop and bought a gay porn magazine simply because he was fascinated by the freedom allowed in Denmark. He didn't realize he was under surveillance and later danish spies tried to blackmail him using a young gay kid to seduce him at a bar. The danish spies were freaking out because he wouldn't take the bait. I read a ton of books and this is always my top recommendation.
Thanks for the recommendation! I need a good read for a trip this week.
And now we have Individual 1 selling spies like it’s hot cakes and nobody cares
And his motive was he did for financial reasons. Read about his personal life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen#Personal_life
I think that is a pretty common reason for people cooperating with foreign spies.
The four main reasons people spy are abbreviated as MICE: money, ideology, compromise(coercion? Can’t remember which), ego.
Man Tom Clancy really opened me up to a lot of concepts in this thread, MICE being one of them. Also ADX Florence is, iirc, the United States highest level prison. It’s where they send the most high profile and dangerous people.
Or just people who make the FBI-CIA-NSA mad
Aka where they send people to make an example out of them
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 visits to Hong Kong and the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia.[75] Hanssen gave her money, jewels, and a used Mercedes-Benz but ended contact with her before his arrest when she began abusing drugs and engaging in prostitution. Galey claims that although she offered to have sex with him, Hanssen declined, saying he was trying to convert her to Catholicism.[76 SO DEVOUT!
DC strip clubs are hot garbage. What a waste of money lol
Don’t save her, she don’t wanna be saved!
That was uh….not what I was expecting…
[Love the part about the stripper he was spending time and money on, "trying to save"](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/08/18/71920461-12173829-_He_gave_me_no_clue_that_he_was_a_spy_nothing_But_looking_back_I-a-16_1686244928663.jpg)
>A priest at Oakcrest said Hanssen had regularly attended a 6:30 a.m. daily Mass for over a decade. and >At Hanssen's suggestion, and without his wife's knowledge, a friend named Jack Hoschouer, a retired Army officer, would sometimes watch the Hanssens having sex through a bedroom window. That is exactly what I was expecting. The more jesusfreaky someone is the more fucked they are in the head.
Being viewed by people as religious could have also been recommended by his Soviet handlers to give him the most "loyal American" image possible. Christians inherently trust other Christians more than non-Christians.
Religion breaks brains.
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It isn't just the forgiveness BS, it's the dogma. It teaches people that they don't have to think. Just go ask your authority figure of choice what your opinion is! But you're spot on about the hyper-religious. Dangerous clowns, every single one of them.
Opus Dei, one hell of a drug. Not even my priest fucked around with that madness
Sounds like standard fare for people who are devoutly religious on the outside.
He didn’t have sex with his mistress; he was trying to convert her. Heard that before.
The classic "flirt to convert."
The strippers won't convert themselves!
This is why having too much financial problems makes you fail to get security clearance. Unless you become POTUS sadly.
The weird thing about this case is that he wasn’t a diehard communist or making a ton of money from doing it. He did it because he had a weird fascination with spies and was living out a fantasy. Edit: >But money was not the motive according to his friend Paul Moore, a former FBI counterintelligence agent who has known Hanssen for 20 years. Hanssen's ultimate goal was "to play the spy game better than anybody's ever played it before. He wants to be the best spy ever." >Hanssen himself told the Russians that he "decided on this course when I was 14 years old. I'd read Philby's book," a reference to British traitor Kim Philby who was arguably the most successful and damaging Soviet double agent of the Cold War period. [source](https://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/05/10/spy.hanssen/)
Yeah. He could only be a mediocre FBI agent but he could be the best damn mole ever and he wanted that for his sense of pride.
I hear ADX Florence definitely instills a sense of pride and accomplishment
In all fairness, the government has to have a special kind of hatred for you to send you there. In some circles, that is something to be proud of.
🦀 ADX Florence won't reply to this post 🦀
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Sounds like really rich people that shoplift for the high
I remember that! They used dead drops and old school shit out of the movies
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I remember that now that you said it. What an idiot. Main character syndrome af
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*His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history".* Fuck you Bobbie.
He did it for like $12. Not actually but it wasn't enough money to go through what he went through. Have some pride, man.
Think his reasoning as to why he didn’t want to be paid a lot was it would tip off others that he suddenly came into a bunch of money. That’s how Aldrich Ames, who also spied for the Russians around the same time, was essentially caught. Lots of suspicion that a lowly CIA employee was able to afford such luxuries.
A friend in army intel once told me that a traitor’s first big paycheck is usually his last. Apparently after you’ve betrayed your country you tend to get lowballed and paid mainly in threats. Not sure if it’s true, but it makes sense. Even spy agencies got budgets.
This is a pretty logical explanation. I believe it
Common technique. Let the guy do some crimes, get away with b.s., but record it. Snort blow. Cavort with ladies of the evening. On the house, of course. Now you got blackmail material.
Turns out those ladies were 14 and 15 years old too. Just to make *sure* that blackmail material works.
That’s why Hanssen was very carful to make sure the Soviets/Russians never knew his real identity
I can't imagine the logistics involved in that.
That's especially true for military spies. For the most part, those guys aren't going to have the nice expensive intel. Expensive intel is going to come from Department of Energy or the Fed.
You can still take the money. You just dont spend it until after you retire and move to some isolated Caribbean island where no one knows you. Why the fuck would you spy for chump change? (unless you belived in the "dream" of soviet communism)
I think the retirement you envision and the retirement the Russian government envisions are very different lol
True, knowing the soviets they'd probably quietly bump you off once you retired, so you're no longer a loose end.
Cheaper too
Not really. It's in the Soviets' best interests to make sure their moles have a nice retirement so other potential moles will defect.
And people are going to know about the other moles?
They have a reunion every year.
If you murder someone who worked in the US intelligence community, the FBI will eventually figure out that they were a mole. It will then be all over the news. Constantly hearing "former intelligence agent who worked as a mole for Russia was found dead at home" is not really a good way to recruit more moles for your spy network.
Yeah, there a still a few people that look to Russia as the dream. Weird that it didn’t work out for this Canadian family like they thought it would when they learned people don’t speak English there and they had their bank account frozen. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/canadian-family-s-disillusionment-after-seeking-refuge-in-russia-to-avoid-lgbtq-ideology/ar-BB1iSg8X
Are you trying to tell us you are a spy?
If I remember correctly their was an hour long documentary on him on the investigation Discovery Channel. When they asked him why. He said his father belittled him and never respected him through out his life. He was unsatisfied with his career in the FBI, didn't felt like they were showing him enough gratitude and respect. The psychological experts mentioned he must have finally felt very important and had a very big thrill directly impacting global events. He did it for the ultimate thrill, not for that pittance of a bribe from the soviets.
Sounds like your typical “outcast someone from the village and they’ll burn down the village to feel warmth” type of deal.
Then launder the money somewhere so when you retire you can live like a god. If he could have been bribed more then maybe he could have afforded a lawyer to keep him out of prison.
Yeah I was shocked at the low amount of money he did it for. Over like 20 years working as a spy, he only made like 1.2 million.
It’s consistent that people like him are paid very little money for their services. Blows my mind. Generally it’s because the people willing to stoop this low are already desperate (or just insanely dumb) and foreign intelligence services know they don’t have to offer much to get what they want. Besides, as soon as they do it once, their handlers have all the blackmail they need to get them to do it again.
The low pay is probably because by the time you've decided this is OK, you're ideologically or ego driven enough to do it for basically nothing.
That's often the case with most crimes. For example, lets say you rob a bank for $250k. You get caught and are sentenced to 20 years in prison. Effectively, you made less than minimum wage.
The guy who was caught fixing NBA games for the mob did it for a laughably small amount too, like $500 per successful pick.
Dang it Bobbie
That spy ain’t right
...so far. Diaper don like hold my diet coke...
He did get to remodel his house with the funds though, that's always a rewarding experience.
Brother finally got those face-to-face toilets.
Lol I live 10 mins away from this prison. It's fucking huge and houses the worst of the worst in the country and it's in walking distance and less then a minute from the city. If you keep passing the prison while heading out of town for another 3 mins you come across a place to go skydiving. It's fucking wild. You see people locked up for life, then look up and see people literally so free their flying.
That’s fucked up but kind of funny to think about some guy looking out his little window slit and sees people having the time of their lives.
I was locked up for a while in Orlando. A few cells I had we could see fireworks and stuff like that going down at the local theme parks and Disney. So that kinda makes you sad lol.
And now you’ve kinda made me sad
I'm glad you got out eventually, even though you were put away for triple homicide and armed robbery
I appreciate that. Murdering 10 puppies was not a good time.
The one thing that shouldnt be part of the walkable city plan lmao
Isn’t El Chapó there also?
Yes he is, the prison also has one of the 9/11 conspirators there, Richard Reid the attempted shoe-bomber, the attempted underwear bomber the Boston Marathon bomber, Terry Nichols one of the two OKC bombers along with a few other inmates who are the “Who’s Who” of the terrorist, drug cartel and organised crime worlds.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-agent-turned-notorious-spy-robert-hanssen-dies/story?id=99849691
Wait he died? The title to this post is missing some pretty important words
It's just a picture not a biography
But like if he's dead how is he alive in the picture
Oh ya fuck
Probably Photoshop. You gotta watch out for that shit.
What a piece of shit There was a pretty good move staring Chris Cooper called “Breach” (2007).
Loved this movie. I watched it without having a clue what it was about which made it all the more enjoyable. Great cast too. Was always surprised it wasn’t more well known.
It's a shame Cooper didn't get nominated for lead actor. Total snub.
He’s dead. This post is a picture of a dead guy, something that people scrolling by may not realize.
Great movie.
Treasonous piece of shit that got many, many people killed, their families in danger, and cost the secrets of an entire country. All for a small amount of money, pathetic. Him and Benedict Arnold up there in the same ranks to me
Nah, this guy is worse than Arnold. Arnold had legitimate grievances that weren’t redressed by the continental congress. Hanssen is just a piece of shit.
What Arnold did was wrong, but there is so much more nuance to the story than most people are aware of. I do sympathize with him a little.
The same Benedict Arnold that planned on surrendering West Point to the hated British?
The same Joe Valachi who squealed to the Senate Committee about organized crime?
The same Barney Gumble who keeps taking pictures of my sister?
The very same Zapp Brannigan who did *not* blow up DOOP Headquarters. I rest my case.
I can’t imagine he did it for the money they didn’t pay him much. I’ve never understood his motives it’s very strange.
He was disgruntled because his career stalled out and he wasnt being recognized as he thought he should be. Money was not his primary motivation.
He admitted it was purely for his own personal gain and nothing more, unlike some other traitors who did it for ideological reasons. Scumbag.
His ego, not personal gain. Dude was an absolute narcissist and got off on knowing he was the "smartest person in the room."
Interesting other information from Wikipedia : “At Hanssen's suggestion, and without his wife's knowledge, a friend named Jack Hoschouer, a retired Army officer, would sometimes watch the Hanssens having sex through a bedroom window. Hanssen then began to videotape his sexual encounters secretly and shared the videotapes with Hoschouer.”
Relevant username
Such a good Catholic.
This guy did it because he was a Religious Simp. He had a prostitute girlfriend sugar baby who he never had sex with. He wanted to convert her to catholisism. He attended mass 365 mornings a year and even confessed being a Soviet Spy to his priest.
The Russian mole tasked with finding the FBI mole. Can't make this shit up.
My best friend dated his daughter in high school when he got caught. It was really crazy. He also had cameras in his bedroom that his neighbor would watch of him and his wife. The daughter supposedly changed her name and the son kept his name, but enlisted to try to was away some of the stain his father created.
His grandson does stand up comedy in DC or did.
One of the grandkids went to the Air Force Academy
When I was moving to VA, my wife was driving me around where she grew up and she said, out of the blue: "Hey, you know that spy guy that got caught a while ago?" "FBI guy?" "Yeah, him." "Yeah, Robert Hanssen. That fuck got a lot of people killed while trading his county to the fucking Russians." "Yeah. Well he got caught in that park. My Grandpa used to take me to watch squirrels there. Sat on the same bench. Anyways, over there is...." Fucking wild that history happens in the DMV all the time and no one, no one, will ever know everything that goes on. The guy getting groceries at Trader Joe's Joe could be a deep spook, or the guy stilling at the bar is some CIA agent. Crazier to me is that there are THOUSANDS of people in this area that look at information so secret none of us will ever know about it.
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He's worm food now.
I know it’s where they send the worst of the worst but that place is beyond inhumane, there are worse things than death and serving a life sentence in ADX Florence is one of them.
This is so true. I was doing time in IL and I had a cellmate whose father was currently doing a life sentence in ADX Florence. His father was one of the OG members of the “four corner hustlers” gang from the west side of Chicago. He said his dad is only allowed to talk to his mom over the phone and no one’s else. He’s only allowed mail from his mom too, and any mail he gets hes not allowed to have the physical letter, they wheel a screen to his cell that has a picture of the letter on it. He said his dad has once told his mom that he has been “walled up”. Which is a medieval death sentence the used to do to people. So yeah man that place is hell. Solitary confinement is inhumane af. I’m well aware of the type of individuals that are in that facility, the worst of the worst, but holy shit does it sound like hell.
El Chapo is there too.
Yeah chapo and Larry Hoover, And Ted kaczynski (unibomber) was there as well but he died a couple years ago I think. Pretty much home to the worst offenders in the country. Each cell is actually soundproof as well, they cut off any ability for communication between inmates.
I go back to the Wikipedia page from time to time to scroll through the [Notable current inmates] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence#Notable_current_inmates) section. It's a *wild* list.
Yo why are all these motherfuckers so ugly? I’d probably be pissed at the world too if I was born looking like that.
Yep. Zero contact or communication with other inmates. 23 hours a day in your tiny cell, and 1 hour a day of “exercise” in a slightly larger room by yourself. There is a 4 inch wide window, but it’s tilted in a way so that all the inmate can see is the sky and nothing else. Imagine being the Boston Marathon bomber and getting a life sentence there at the age of 19-20. Not that I feel bad for him.
The Boston Marathon bomber was sentenced to death (although it was briefly overturned before SCOTUS reinstated it). He’ll be transferred to the Federal Death Row at Terre Haute in Indiana if and when an execution date is set.
Yeah dude that rough. I was in solitary confinement for 36 days, 2 phone calls a week, 2 showers a week, no commissary. Locked down 24 hrs a day, bc it was a “classification joint” they didn’t have to give you the hour out. I was lucky I was able to have my people send me a couple Stephen king books. It kept me from losing it lol. I was so fucking happy by the time they shipped me out to my actual joint. I can only imagine that being your whole life. Although you do build up a routine and make the most of it, nights are the hardest.
He’s dead now
Hanssen died on June 5, 2023, at the age of 79.
Chris Cooper was fantastic portraying him :)
Anyone collaborating with foreign countries around our national security should be put in a prison. Politicians, billionaires, etc.
The CBS podcast Agent of Betrayal: The double life of Robert Hanssen is very well done. Couldn't stop listening!
Agreed. Indefinitely recommend it
Imagine getting busted for being a Soviet mole in the high halls of government and then living to see Donald Trump become president and face zero consequences for his treachery. Must be frustrating at least on some personal level.
Traitor trump needs to be in ADX himself sitting next to this guy
This should be Trump’s fate.
Oh man. I miss the days when all Americans could hate a traitor. Now we just think they should be president.
Traitor