Robert Hanssen biography: 13 things about FBI agent born in Chicago, Illinois

Robert Philip Hanssen was a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent of Norwegian descent. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, United States to Lutheran parents Vivian Hanssen and Howard Hanssen, a Chicago Police Department officer.

Robert grew up in Norwood Park, Chicago. He and his wife Bernadette “Bonnie” Wauck have three sons and three daughters together.

The three sons attended The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland, USA. The three daughters attended the Oakcrest School for Girls in Vienna, Virginia, USA where Bonnie worked as a theology teacher.

In 1962, Robert graduated from William Howard Taft High School in Norwood Park and in 1966, he graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.

In 1968, Robert married Wauck, a Roman Catholic, and he converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism. Here are 13 more things about him:

1. In 1971, he graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois with a master’s degree in accounting and information systems. In 1972, he joined the Chicago Police Department as an internal affairs investigator, specializing in forensic accounting.
2. On January 12, 1976, he became an FBI agent and was transferred to the bureau’s field office in Gary, Indiana, USA. In 1977, he was transferred to counterintelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the bureau.
3. In 1979, he approached the Soviet Union’s Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije (Main Intelligence Directorate) and offered his services. He provided a significant amount of information to the GRU, including details of the FBI’s bugging activities and lists of suspected Soviet intelligence agents.
4. In 1981, he was transferred to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., USA and he relocated his wife and children to Vienna.
5. In 1984, he was transferred to the FBI’s Soviet analytical unit. In 1985, he was transferred to the FBI’s field office in New York, USA where he continued to work in counterintelligence against the Soviets. On October 1, 1985, he sent an anonymous letter to the Soviet Union’s Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti offering his services and asking for $100,000 in cash.
6. In 1987, he was transferred again to the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. In 1989, he warned the KGB that U.S. Department of State official Felix Bloch was suspected of espionage and was being investigated.
7. In 1990, his brother-in-law Mark Wauck, an FBI employee, recommended to the FBI that he be investigated for espionage.
8. In 1993, he hacked into the computer of his fellow FBI agent Ray Mislock, printed out a classified document from Mislock’s computer, took the document to Mislock and said, “You didn’t believe me that the system was insecure.” His superiors began an investigation. In 1994, he expressed interest in a transfer to the new National Counterintelligence Center but changed his mind when told he would have to take a lie detector test to join.
9. On February 18, 2001, FBI agents arrested him in Virginia.
10. On July 6, 2001, he pleaded guilty to attempted espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage and 13 counts of espionage.
11. On May 10, 2002, he was sentenced to 15 consecutive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He served his sentence at the ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colorado, USA in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day.
12. In 2020, his wife Bonnie retired from teaching theology at Oakcrest School for Girls in Vienna. On February 14, 2021, Reelz released “A Spy in the FBI“, a documentary about him.
13. On June 5, 2023, he was found dead in his jail cell at the ADX Florence. He was 79.