On February 18, 2001, FBI agents confronted Robert Philip Hanssen outside Foxstone Park in Vienna, Va. — minutes after he completed his final dead drop for Russian intelligence. Hanssen wasn’t a stranger skulking around the edges of the Bureau. He was a decorated FBI Supervisory Special Agent, trusted at the highest levels, who sold America’s secrets across 22 years of betrayal.
In the course of investigating Hanssen, I learned what he called “Hanssen’s Law”: The spy is always in the worst possible place. He is that person with access to the most damaging information and the wherewithal to deliver it to those who will pay the most. Back then, the worst possible place was inside the FBI’s most sensitive rooms and most trusted circles. Hanssen occupied that space with devastating effect.
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