Doomed to Fail - Ep 37: Betrayal Behind the Badge: Unmasking the Dark Secrets of Robert Hanssen

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

We start this week off with a devious tale of a post-cold-war spy, Robert Hanssen the American FBI Agent who sold secrets to Russia for, not that much money -- honestly how hard is it to be a spy? It sound like Robert walked around with his “I love the KBG” t-shirt and nobody noticed for 20 years! Turns out other spies, like, Aldrich Ames, were sharing the same info with Russia. Trust no one! For real, that’s our only message. Images via the creative commons & AI Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail]  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Great. We have banter now. All the banter we could possibly want. See you. Taylor. We'll go ahead and kick things off. Welcome to Doom to Fail. The podcast, we cover two stories, one historical, one true crime, about relationships that we're doomed to fail. I am Farr's today. You are Taylor. Uh-huh. I continue to be. Well, I nailed it this time. Messed up last week. Uh, loved it. How's, uh, how's your weekend

been, Taylor? It's been nice. We have, this is our last weekend of no plans before, um, really before soccer starts and then school starts and then, I don't know, stuff to do forever. So, yeah. Chaos begins. Hey, ask, drinking some water. Yeah, no, we did. Our town has like a really cute summer concert series and it's in on a field that is somehow grass and like the kids will like pull up the grass and I'll be like, this grass is a hundred and five outside. I can't believe it's a grass here. Like do not pull up this grass.

It's unbelievable that it's here. But on the grass is cooler and then the song goes down. And last night it was a group called the Hodads, which were some old men singing rock songs. And it was awful. That's lovely. Is it real grass? Yeah. Like it's a miracle.

I know. So, yeah, it was super cute. So we did that. And it's just so cute. Like, there's tons of, like, people that, you know, people we know. And there's, like, a lot of old people dancing, which is super cute. And then the kids just, like, go play. So it's like on a field.

And they're like, can we go play? And we're like, every 10 minutes will be like, do you see them? Like, yeah, I see them. Do you see them? Yeah, I see them. Like, they're just playing up their friends. And it's very small town cute. That is awesome.

That is awesome. vibes love it my weekend has been pretty uneventful and I kind of want like it that way yeah it's nice to have one it feels like everything is so scheduled now and the obligations just keep bracketing I would say you got to do this at this time then this time then this time then this time then this time and this weekend was just easy breezy and today's going to be easy breezy and I'm really really excited about it I love it good for you yeah same I just I wore my pajamas like Friday night all through Saturday and then I put them in the wash and I put them back up on. So I'm great. I did, I did watch Oppenheimer. Have you seen it? You said you saw it, right?

No, I haven't seen it yet. Okay. I'm going to posit an unpopular opinion that people can write to Doom to Philpod at gingwell.com to express how I feel about it. I didn't think that was that good. Really? I don't know. I also, I mean, like, I want to, I retweet it a re-tweeted a read whatever re Instagram or something like there's a whole story of like how they kicked a bunch of people off their land to build the you know in Los Alamos it wasn't just like a nothing town so all that I know they don't talk about um I did see like a funny thing on Instagram but it was like up and higher in 45 seconds and he was like it was like it was a woman like dressing like you know him and he was like I'm a sad genius boy and that was like most of it like it was really it was so it was well made but it was a I I don't know, like, Killian Murphy is obviously a really great actor and he did a really great job of basically portraying a sad boy genius, but it was basically just that, sad boy genius and it was just like, oh, God, I mean, I'm sure that that's a realistic part. I mean, I've never read American Permetheus. I'm sure it's accurate, but it's just like, God, can somebody hit somebody or do something? I don't know, like just like over and over getting some question. My father-in-law was reading American Prometheus, and we were talking about it a little bit. I haven't read it either.

But I do love that I learned about Prometheus because Mary Shelley called Frankenstein, the modern Prometheus. That's right. Because it's when you give humanity something that they may or may not deserve, you know. Yeah, yeah, totally. Don't let my judgment tainted. Once you watch it, let me know what you think. But I totally see. And I still think you should see Barbie and let me know what you think.

But I will definitely see it eventually. I saw a thing that said that Barbie out did. So Oppenheimer was at 300 million and Barbies at 700 million. And I was like, wow, that's a crazy disparity. But then after I watched Oppenheimer, I was like, yeah, because nobody wants to go pay money to be depressed. Exactly. Like if you're like, I can go to one movie. You're going to go to the fun one.

And like, yes, I cried during Barbie, but it was about the patriarchy. Like Barbie's way, obviously, hopefully way more fun than Oppenheimer. It has to be. You know, be less. Yeah, that's not a movie I'm ever going to. or re-watch. But I mean, I'm glad I saw it, but I don't need to re-see it. So anyways, but I'll watch it. I'll watch it again or sometime. It played a role in my topic for today, sort of. But let's let's side into it. So today I go first, right? Right. So I have a,

I want to bring us back to being like a themed cocktail. And I didn't make this cocktail because I need a special bowl and more friends. But my cocktail is like a volcano that you get in like Hawaii where it's like a big bowl with like fire in the middle and like a bunch of like rum and juice around it and you drink it with friends and straws it's like it's not a DIY cocktail I can't do it at home I have to go to a restaurant I think we talked about cocktails that involved fire before and we've advised against them at your house I uh so when you come to Austin next there's a I told you about a place I want to take you to called the Roosevelt room because it's Roosevelt all that and they do old-timey cocktails it's all about like prohibitionary

cocktails and one of the cocktails they make they put like this giant open skull like it's a skull and the tops cut off and then they basically turn it into that and it's awesome that's what i'm thinking of that's the vibe i got i got today so okay we'll do that it'll take pictures when we do it together lovely lovely so my drink today i'm going to improvise and make it up on the spot i'm going to call it a martini a dirty martini we'll do a dirty martini Did you just invent a dirty martini or are you just, that's what you just picked? I'm the creator of a dirty martini. I read a gross New York Times article about martinis and then they're like, they're like,

oh, they're all different kinds now, which is cool. Like I like a different kind of martini, but there was one that was chicken soup and it had like chicken broth in it and that made me want to die. That sounds terrible. That is not my invention. Yeah. Okay. And the reason I'm doing that is, well, let me get into it and you'll see why.

So like I said, I watched Oppenheimer, and it got me into this whole headspace of thinking about large-scale conspiracies and stuff that's going on, government-wise, that we're not totally aware of. And it led me down this weird path. And somehow I landed on this article written by a guy named JJ Green. It's called City of Secrets about Washington, D.C. And in it, they talk about how, as of now, like today, the general consensus amongst intelligence officials is that there are approximately 10,000 foreign spies living and operating in Washington, D.C. right now? What? It's crazy, right?

That's a lot. And it made me think, is there a doomed to fail story about, like, SpyCraft in here? Because it just seems like a really fun topic. And there is. Fun. Spoiler alert, there is a story in here. And that's why I thought about the martini, because it was just like, it's such an old-timey drink that, like, you drink while you're, like, selling secrets and, like, doing stuff that's shady. and you go home.

And there's a lot of martini drinking in Oppenheimer, too. So, spoiler on that. I watched a docu-series on Netflix. It's currently on Netflix called SpyCraft. And I think the motivations for people to spy on their own country is kind of the doomed to fell part that I honed it on. And in SpyCraft, they talk about this acronym called MICE, which stands for money, ideology, compromise, and ego.

And my take on it was that's the part, like if you're somebody where you're in a position of doing or having access to information and you develop a relationship with the mice acronyms in a negative way, then you are destined to do horrible things and get caught for it and suffer horrible punishments, is what I think. Did they mention the Rosenbergs in Oppenheimer? Was there like a Rosenberg, like her brother, like secretly stealing stuff? Did they get to the Soviet connections and things? I don't know. Well, yeah, they definitely got a Soviet connection. They might have mentioned them in passing, but like, mostly it had to do someone who was like them in the background, you know? Yeah, mostly it had to do with like Oppenheimer-Soviet connections more than anything else. Because I mean, you listen to the podcast, like, you know, the Manhattan Project one, so you know all the details there.

Yeah. Anyway, so it's worth noting that when we talk about like espionage, it sounds all sexy and James Bondi, but there's like some heavy-duty consequences to what these people ended up doing. You just mentioned it. You cover one of the most famous espionage stories of all time, which also coincides with Oppenheimer, as you just mentioned, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But I looked up other spies and what they did, and I'm going to hone in on one specifically,

but I want to do a little brief listing of the other top contenders for war spies in U.S. history. This is an article called 11 spies who did the most damage, the U.S. military by David Knive. I'm just going to list my. I'm not going to read off everything. So one is Nashir Gawaldi. This guy worked on the B2 bomber, commonly known as a self-bomber. He received 32 years for selling knowledge of this technology to China. There's Chimac. We don't know exactly what this guy did because the nature of the technology he worked on was so secret. But he ended up getting 24 years and the assumption that is that it had someone to do with how naval ship engines are designed. There's Anna Montez.

She worked for 17 years, so she provided a pretty wide range of strategic secrets to Cuba and was ultimately captured and sent us to 25 years. John Anthony Walker, this guy gave the Soviets info on the movement and activities of the U.S. naval fleet. And this is what I mean when I say that these people's actions have real-world consequences. The information he gave led the sinking of the U.S. as Scorpion, where 99 crewmen were killed. he ended up getting life in prison larry wuchin this guy was just a translator but he weirdly gave that that kind of gave him access to a lot of info that he really shouldn't have had shouldn't have for his pay grade he passed info on interrogations from prisoners of war

during the korean war to china and ultimately committed suicide before sentencing you have james nicholson this guy trained new officers at his cia and provided info on all new trainees and officer assignments to moscow he got 25 years the thing to note is where i'm saying like you provide information on these people they die like like right when you hand the name over to someone you know that you just basically sign their death warrant so that's right and say like these who are unconscionable in terms of how bad they are as humans there's george trochromfumov who is a colonel in charge of a safe house where soviet defectors were interviewed in deep brief this guy would sell the info to the kjv he also got

life and the most famous would be Benedict Arnold. He sold out the U.S. during the Revolutionary War for approximately $3 million in today's money. He provided the British with plans to West Point and agreed to disarmist defenses for a British attack. Those are about, yeah, I read, I have a book about Washington, I'm pointing to it, that they talk about the Benedict Arnold thing and it really was like a you fucker, you know. He was a big deal. Like he was a hero. We can't believe you did that. Yeah. Of all the people, like he was the one that was like the least likely to have done that essentially. Yeah, you like never would have expected it. So there are two more that I didn't list here.

And they basically did the same thing. And their stories overlap in very, very significant ways. The one I'm going to actually be covering really today is going to be Robert Hanson. But the other guy whose story overlaps directly with Robert Hansen's story is a guy named Aldrich Ames. The key thing remember here is that Ames and Hansen overlapped. by the in the years that they were spying on behalf of the KGB. It's also worth noting that Ames worked for the CIA while Hansen worked for the FBI. And they mostly had access to the same information.

The mostly part is the most important piece there. Okay. So this guy Robert was arguably the worst spy in US history. He did a lot of real trouble shit. You mean he's like great at being a spy? He did it for a very long. long period of time. The movie the show Spycraft mentions that 20% of US spies are caught within the first five years. This guy was operating from 1979 to 2001. So he and there's

a reason why he was good at it. The reason why he was good at it was because he was trained and was was supposed to be in charge of catching counter spies. So he knew what not to do and what to do. And also he wasn't super stupid the way that the Ames guy was. I'll explain how stupid that guy was here in a moment. So I want to skip past like his life. It's pretty boring, mundane shit. The most relevant thing being he, you know, he was married, he had six kids. That's, that's all I'm going to say about his personal life. Doesn't really matter that much. But he's, he's, he's American. He's American. Yeah. Yeah, born and raised. Okay. So let's get sort of with this. So when Hanson was 32, he joined the FBI as a special agent. This would have been

in 1976, and obviously in 1976, the Soviet Union was still a very real threat to the United States. China was expanding its global position as a communist superpower. Castro and the Soviet premier at the time, they just installed a communist leader in Angola. The world was basically on edge, and everybody was kind of waiting for death to come pouring down from up top. And so this was a really sensitive time to be a part of the intelligence community. It was with this backdrop that Hansen joined the FBI. He bounced from field offices, to, from Indiana to New York to Washington, D.C., and went from his special agent position, which basically means he just floated around.

Like, he just did whatever investigations had to be, had to happen. And that was kind of his role. His first attempt at espionage happened in 1979. So he was quick. Like, he was three years after he started, he was like, I'm going to start fine. He, I wrote, I should have wrote this down. I forgot what it was. So there's, it's so weird, Taylor.

The more you learn about this stuff, like there are businesses. an operation right now that like are fronts for other governments to spy on things. So there was one building in New York. I can't remember the name, but it sounded like a diamond exchange or something. I forgot exactly what it was. But it was obviously not like an outwardly government official site. But in 1979, this guy Hansen knew that it was an actual government KGV operation. And he ended up approaching them saying, I'm willing to sell you information on counter spies,

on the KGV side of things for in exchange for $50,000. They said deal, they gave him $50,000. And he gave up the name of a guy named Dimitri Polikov. This guy was apparently very beloved within the intelligence community, because he didn't really want money. He literally was only doing this for ideology. He just didn't think that the Soviet way of living

was the right way of living. And most of the time what he would exchange his information for was like fishing gear. Like he didn't want to get rich off this. He was trying to do what he thought was the best for the world. And he was also super, high ranking i think he was a general or a colonel and so he gave up this guy's information the guy was immediately caught and shot in the head like wow yeah it was like that's what i'm

saying like these guys are handing out death sentences um i i love that that um i just i hope that i mean i don't know life is so boring that i hope and exciting and i hope that there are places like in like john wick where like you know you walk into like a tea shop and then like you press a button and there's like umbrella guns yeah that's what this you know sounds like yeah it sounds that that sounds like what i want to be happening because fuck might as well might as well uh i couldn't find sources on this next bit of information outside of what that show spycraft mentioned but it was implied that hanson's wife caught when that he had done this and important to stop and that's why he did because there's a huge gap in his espionage activity from 1979 until 1985 so there's a six

here, hiatus. He does it once and apparently stops the, again, the only source I have is some FBI agent that was talking about this on that show. And he said that the wife basically found out and told him to stop. That's all we know. That's true. Yeah. All this would change again when he is transferred to Washington, D.C. And there, he has given access to various FBI programs that focused a great deal on wiretapping and digital espionage. It seems like with the FBI, you kind of earn your stripes and work your way up to more sensitive areas of its operations and apparently hansson was really good at the kind of work that he did and he worked his way up to working at the soviet analytical unit whose sole directive was to identify evaluate and capture

so this is good info if you are trying to sell information and you are also a spy the call is coming from inside of the house exactly in in in 1985 hanson reached out to the kgb and and asked for $100,000 in exchange for information, he could provide in his capacity of evaluating Soviet spies. And this is where our two stories kind of converge. OK, question. Yes. Did Robert Hansen want money or did he want to help the Soviet Union?

Money. Got it. And it wasn't a lot. That's the thing we're going to get to here in a minute. It's like he did it for the it was, I mean, it was a lot of money. But like, not enough in my opinion. Right. Or it's like people's lives that like were destroyed.

Okay, go ahead. Exactly. Exactly. So this is the part where the stories of Hansen and Ames kind of start coming together. So in the letter Hansen provided the KGB, he provided three KGB double agents. So these are people that were employed by the KGB who were actually selling information to the U.S. government. All three of these agents who were given up. by Hansen earlier that year had also been given up by Aldrich Ames and Hansen didn't know this like

they didn't know each other they were not friends one was the FBI one was the CIA but this KGB looks and says okay so this is the second time these guys these three are being called out there's something to this two of the double agents were executed immediately and the other served a year term before being released the reason those two were killed as a they were more junior and so they didn't really have much value to the KGB anyways and it's Russia and it's an awful place to be and all that stuff. The other guy got six years only because the Soviet Union collapsed. So during his, he was sentenced to 15 years, but during the 15 years sentence, the Soviet

Union collapses and the U.S. engages in this amnesty program with the new Russia and they exchanged this guy for their own people, essentially. That's why he was released. He lives in the U.S. now. we live in California. So the way the government starts honing in on double agents is at least in part because of things like this, because these double agents all have handlers in the countries they're cinching on.

So people check in on them and they discuss what they're trying to do. And so these handlers start learning that their sources go missing. They report them. And then the government says, okay, why are these people going missing? Like, what's the overlap here? The fact that Ames was operating and doing the exact same shit as Hansen was just pure dumb luck for Hansen. Again, Ames was with the CIA in 1985, which is the year Hansen got the idea to start

spying on the KGB. They were getting up the names of the double agents at the exact same time, and it was also the same names. Right. And obviously, all these guys were getting executed, so as Soviet assets are disappearing, these agencies start wondering, how could this be happening? Either the assets themselves were being careless, or there's a leak somewhere, or there's a mall.

So we're going to be flipping back and forth on the storyline here between Ames and Hansen. Going back to Hansen, two years had passed since these two Soviet spies had disappeared. So the FBI recalls Hansen to D.C., and he is tasked with finding out who the mole is giving these people love. This is incredible. This is literally Matt Damon's character from The Departed. Wow. He's asked to search for himself. Wow.

I don't know, guys. It seems like maybe it was a woman. I'm going to just look at all the women. I know, right? So that's the interesting thing. It's like, in his mind, he's like, I'm looking for myself. But there's actually another mole in Ames that's out. It's so weird.

It's like a movie. Yeah. During this time, he's putting together measures so that the trail never leads back to him. There's also a Soviet effort to obfuscate his identity. So there's a thing called a triple agent, which is, let's say you get it, right? I kind of get it. I feel like you wouldn't know what to do. Like, I feel like you'd like wake up and be like, who am I today? I can't remember, you know? So imagine if you're like a KGB agent that flips the CIA. So you're giving KGB info to the CIA. Then the KGB finds out and then they tell you, cool, tell them you're still with them, but you're actually with us. And now give them counter information. That's what a triple agent does. And a triple agent basically told the CIA that you should be like, you should be like, looking for this guy in a CIA facility in Virginia. So far away from where Hanson's operating.

So that's what they end up doing. They change their focus and start looking over there. Hansen services to save Hanson? Yeah, because because these guys all want these guys to stay operational because that's how they can collect information. It's like one last guy you got to flip. Another thing is like, what if there was like two other guys that we don't even, never heard of?

There is always two other guys. right that is the most consistent thing i researched in all this is that all these guys were fucking each other over it's almost like there's no point to having there's like no point having these agencies because it's literally just like this like count it's just billions of dollars spent to negate everybody else's other billions of dollars that's all it really is so silly okay yes so hanson's service to the soviet union overlapped with the soviet union's eventual collapse obviously when a government collapsed a lot of things go missing the shuffle Part of those things seemed to have been Hansen's identity as a double agent for the KGB.

So when the USSR collapsed, the largest most active agency for intelligence gathering in Russia was the GRU, which is short for the main intelligence directive, which obviously is a different acronym in Russian, but that's what it is short for. Got it. This is incredible. In 1992, Hansen approached the Russian embassy in person. He went to the parking lot and walked up to a GRU official. and said, in essence, I'm Ramon Garcia, which is, which is his KGB code name.

He said that, yeah, he said, I'm an FBI agent, that he has classified material that he wants to share with the GRU in exchange for money. That guy drove over to the State Department and reported him, like directly. What's the fuck? It's like, it's nothing happened. So, like I said, this happened in 1982. He didn't get caught until 2001. So what? Okay. There are so many of these. I'm actually going to list this out. So there's so many times when he should have gotten cod that he didn't get caught. He was. Every article you read on this guy talks about what a super genius spy he was. He was like, I don't know what a super genius spy looks like, but it can't be this. Because I'm going to read this list. He can't be walking up to the first guy in the parking lot and being like, hey, I'm a spy. Give me money. Like that can't be it. It can be it.

Yeah, so when I lived in Queens and I had that terrible drug dealer on my street and he would like, he lived on my street and every day you'd walk by, he'd be like, pst, you want drugs? And I'd be like, I just, I'm not a drug dealer, but like I feel like you're going about this the wrong way. Just a little more discretion, please, just for your own sake, not mine. Yeah, be like, no thanks, you know. So here's a listing of all the things that he did outwardly that he should have thought better of. in 1988 he gave secret information to a soviet defector during an interrogation obviously that's a huge security he was giving classified information like this was an accident but it just showed his lapse in judgment of like what right he was like in our house exactly

exactly and and people notice this i'm like uh you shouldn't have said that and they reported to the supervisor nothing happened in 1989 a year later the fdi started investigating a state department official that's going to come up again later his name is felix block as a possible double agent hanson told the kgb about this to help protect block so think about that so he knows that this guy's under investigation he doesn't want him to get caught he tells his handlers and then the handlers tell block and then block stops doing secret shit and basically just disappears off of that he's never convicted of anything and later on this guy gets arrested and says robert hanson's a spy he literally says that to the guys who arrest him and nothing still nothing happens

in 19 in 1990 hanson's brother-in-law told the fbi that his sister-in-law had found a huge pile of cash in dressers in their house the brother-in-law was also an fbi agent who was aware that the fbi was searching for a mole at the time in 1993 hanson hacked into a colleague's computer and access classified material he told his supervisor he did this to prove how insecure their systems were in reality he did it because he was searching for himself and see if he's under investigation without using his own right oh my god this this that part he does again and again in 1994 he is asked to join a new unit of the fbi but was told he to have to take a lie detector test to do so after which he changed his mind so there was there was another computer

tampering incident he blamed it on needing to use a color printer and having to bypass fbi security protocols to do it and people were like what the fuck you can do they pounded his computer there was another incident where he actually used his own computer to do another search on his own name there was an incident where an fbi double agent revealed that he was also a double agent separate to the block incident and all of this gets reported to supervisors and nobody does anything you know what i think i read a book called the kill chain maybe i mentioned it before but it's about um the like a chain of command and information sharing in the in the u.s military but i feel like so many problems of the government could be resolved and they just had like a

really good CRM seriously you know that's what they keep saying about why there's not many serial killers now is if you if you could have just done command F for name for like Bundy Gacy whatever else you have caught these guys immediately same same story here but but you know it goes back like the justification of the justification but it goes back to like why we think things like Oklahoma City ended up happening is because like these agencies have pride in like them being the ones finding the people and they don't want to share information details so yeah it's true so we're going to flip back to Ames the story because we're at 1993 now and in this case the FBI and the CIA have actually joined forces to form a task force to figure out who the mole was.

At this point, AIMS had received $4.6 million from his work giving secrets to the USSR. And he was very flamboyant with throwing this money around. Like he very flamboyant. Like he drove like an ice car. There was one story I read where he had these like really premium level credit cards that had like monthly minimum spend requirements on them. and the monthly minimum spend requirements were more than his total monthly salary. But it was like very flashy shit.

Nobody will know. Okay, FBI, special agent salary. I'm just want to see. So if you're a special agent, it says 91 to 130 per year now. Yeah. So picture what, 1993. I think his salary in 1993 was 60,000. Yeah.

It's a good job, but it's not like a millionaire job. He was driving a Jaguar. Yeah, he had a Jaguar job. Yeah, he had like tailored suits. They bought a $550,000 house in 93. That's like fucking $7 million today. Yeah. I can't do math.

But like, that's right there. No, 100%. That's exactly, exactly right. So here's what I'm going to say, like the whole difference between Hanson and Ames is interesting. Ames was operating in this capacity for it, have been nine years it made four point six million dollars hanson was operating from 79 to 2001 and in total made 1.4 million oh my god dumb like all these people were killed and died over 1.4 million over the span of whatever many years that is what is that 22 years yeah like what

is that in the monthly basis hold on uh 1 4 divided by 22 that's $63,000 a year, which I guess in today's money would be a lot more, but like still, that's like not that much money. Especially the people are getting so much more money. It's like when you talk about your salary, you can find out someone's making more money than you. Like that's what kind of what's going on. Yeah, basically. Yeah. They should have had a union and been like, they should have had a union and then it could have been like these guys need to organize.

Oh, for real. So it was the flashing of the money everywhere that made everybody be like, how was this guy living this way? It's like, we know we have a mole. This guy is wearing Armani suits every day, driving his Jaguar work, what's going on? And that's why they focus on Ames. So in 1994, the DOJ arrested Ames and he was formally charged with espionage. So the government thought, we got him.

We're good. Like we got, we got already. This is the only guy, right? This is it. We're done. And Ames and Hanson, because they knew the same people, they'd been fairly consistent with the overlap in terms of the information they'd been given. But there were two incidences that Ames could never have been responsible for that the government knew about. Ames was with the CIA.

Hansen was with the FBI. That guy I mentioned earlier, Felix Block. He was under investigation by the FBI. So Ames wouldn't have known about him. In addition, in 1977, the Soviet Union began working on a new embassy in Washington, D.C. The FBI had dug a tunnel underneath it with the intent of listening and on conversations in the decoding room.

Kansden had revealed us the Soviet Union and somehow the FBI learned about this. And they looked at that and was like, okay, all these people dying got it. It could have been either one of it. It could have been aims. But these two things could never have been him. He never would have known about these two things. So again, the FBI and the CIA come back together. They form the joint task force throughout where this league is coming from.

they ended up paying about seven million dollars to a kgb double agent to provide them with information on a u.s double agent essentially and he produced a file in one called named b like his nickname was just a letter b the file contained an audio recording which the investigating officer said he thought was familiar like the voice on it was really familiar but he just couldn't place it in the file there were transcripts of the conversation had by b and his handler which included a kind of troublesome phrase which came from general patent the phrase was quote the purple pissing japanese which is not good i don't know what that means but it's not good i don't know how that's racist but i'm positive it is a hundred percent is yes and another fbi analyst

investing in the case where calls that hanson use that quote like you would say that phrase for some reason or another and then you get that's how you get caught it's like having your cake and needing it too. Yeah, exactly. If you don't have a catchphrase, if you're not trying to get caught, people are going to know. Exactly. Exactly. This is 101 stuff, Hansen. Just so everybody knows we're referring to Ted Kaczynski because he used the wrong phrase to say that and that's how he got caught. Well, his brother turned him in, but like that's how his brother figured out that was him. Anyways, so this FBA analyst listened to this and heard this phrase. It was like, hey, Hansen used that phrase. They re-listen to the tape. And we're like, yep, that's his

voice. That's definitely Robert. There are parts of the story that almost feel like a Mel Brooks movie and this is kind of one of them. So at this point, the FBI was sure that Hansen was a guy and they decided to promote him. They gave him a new high profile job at a new division within the FBI. They gave him an amazing corner office. It was just like making him feel like everything was doing great, all that good stuff. And they also gave him an assist him. But this guy was actually another special agent who sole job was to find incriminating information on Hansen, this guy noticed that Hansen always carried around a personal palm pilot. He, like, clutched this thing.

Like, it was like, there was like a reason why he was so attached to this thing. I remember this. And he suspected that this is probably where he is, what he's using to save and transmit this classified information. And somehow, some way, Hanson leaves a Palm Pilot. and like his suit jacket goes somewhere this guy decides this is my one chance grabs the the palm pilot runs it down to the to the tech staff to do a download they basically reverse encrypt whatever it and then download the content and he's able to return it that one note that they

mentioned is that the guy forgot what pocket he took it out of and he was like shit if i put this in the wrong pocket this guy's gonna know the jig is up and like he might just kill me because he's a done because like you use it an fbi agent i love that i have a couple things to say kids a palm pilot was like a notebook that you had in your hand that was digital essentially all you could do was like take notes on it and do a calendar you couldn't like email you can even email people could you whatever either way old-fashioned phone and i love that that's so funny because you imagine being at work and not being able to trust fucking anyone like right now you're like oh i i don't trust Faris because I think he might be trying to like, you know, take my job, but like not,

I don't trust Faris because he might be an international Soviet spy trying to break down America and share nuclear secrets. Or like maybe my assistant is whatever. Like at work, you'd just be like, everyone's a spy. So it's some way or another. The thing is like it all interconnects. Like there were like 15 other stories that segue off of the Robert Hansen. story into like so many different people that like like in the middle of um trying to catch robert hanson they caught like one or two other u.s spies to the kgb like it was just like all this people getting ensnared in this whole thing everybody's a stitch everybody's a rat everybody's trying to fuck that country over apparently for real anyways this guy gets the palm pilot back

in the right suit jacket uh at this point it didn't seem like robert was like any wise wiser to like what was going on it only seemed like a few days later where he was just like man people were being like weirdly nice to me and like super interested in what i'm up to but you just think that's when it started dawning on that something might be going on and it was february 18th of 2001 this is five weeks before his scheduled retirement he performs his last dead drop he goes to a park in virginia and his signal to his handler was he would leave a white piece of tape on a sign and that would mean that there was something at the dad drop so go check it and then it's me robert hanson i left something here yeah he was a little bit less more than that i dropped

i dropped us off here it wasn't that was his tell no but he would be kind of smart because what was it he would add a six to every date so like if he was going to drop single off at like on january 1st at 1 p.m he would write it and as July, wait, July, May June? No, he would write it as like June, you know, seventh or whatever. Like, you don't mean like, you just add a six to everything. He would kind of encrypt his stuff a little bit and decode it, but not that great. So he takes a garbage bag full of classified information and duct tapes it underneath a footbridge in this park.

And that's where the FBI saw him do it. They immediately came in and arrested him. and then they actually didn't take the bag away they sat there for like it would have been two days they sat there for two days waiting for his handler to show up and he never showed up and then at that point they finally announced the media that we caught this incredibly i'm sure they're watching yeah totally and he uh he would have gotten the death penalty but he ended up taking a plea plea agreement he ended up getting he pled guilty to 13 counts of espionage who was sentenced to 15 life sentences he was to do his play

his time like the worst place on earth ADX Florence or ADX Florence in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day that's where Chapo Guzman is being held like it is the worst worst place in the 23 hours a day is a lot it's crazy there's a picture of him at ADX and like he just looks like he's been crying like all day long like he looks it looks really bad and again that was five weeks before he was supposed to retire he this is kind of topical so this guy actually died like almost two months ago today so he died in my birthday yeah oh june 5th yeah there you go yeah he died on june 5th and it's august 6 today so yeah two months ago so kind of topical a huge comeback a lot of people died because of what he did and there was a oh you go down so many rabbit holes

when you research stuff like this like that first guy that he ratted on the the the general that ended up getting shot in the back of the head that guy the information he passed on like was hugely consequential. Part of it had to do with the fact that how Russia and Chinese relations were not good. They weren't doing good with each other. And that was like a big reason

why Nixon thought it was a good idea to open up relations with China and to kind of like bring down that wall, which like now you look at the downstream impact of that and how impactful China is, like the U.S. economy, the global economy, like all of it. It's all in our world.

woven and interconnected and so again like it's partially fun and sexy and interesting and all that but the other part is like it's like world consequences are involved which is totally like so many people get hurt that's crazy that audrey games guy they suspect 25 people were killed directly because of the information he gave wow just so you could drive a jag Like, it's insane. Just to take it, wear it's dumb suit. $6,000 suit. Come on. So anyways, that's my story.

I am going to continue watching SpyCraft. And there's a movie about this story. Yeah. It's called Breach. Ryan Felipe plays the FBI agent, who was his assistant, who stole the Palm Pilot. So it should be pretty good. But breaches, yeah,

Breach is now on my list of movies that I need to watch and make popcorn. FBI upstart Eric O'Neill enters to a power game. with his boss robert hanson no i totally want to watch that yeah that guy's kind of like that guy ericoneal turned out to be like a pretty interesting character in his own but he ended up i mean stuff like this makes you a celebrity yeah it's fun so lor lennie's in it i love her cool and the guy who plays hansom that movie i can he's the

dad who um in uh american beauty yeah chris cooper yes we're like he looks like the ideal guy to play hanson himself yeah there's a whole side track here that i didn't go into this guy was an opus day member like remember that remember obis day rober hinson yeah yeah he would do he would do like gross things like he um he would record him and his wife having sex and like give it to his buddy like without her knowing about it he had like he had like a prostitute he would like fly around and visit with like he was like a he was just gross i don't know yeah i know he's a bad person he's a bad person yeah he seems like a bad guy well wow so but that's my uplifting story of the day well wow well wow trust no one

is really the answer there especially for the FBI oh my god imagine if you like had a best friend your best friend's not really your best friend trust no one not your family not your friends spouses anyone they're all out to get you 100% um well cool thank you for sharing that was awesome it sounds like there's a lot more i'll watch that spy craft show that sounds really fun it is fun and now we have reached the point of our podcast where through the magic of editing we are going to stop talking and start anew but i have one more thing just to mention at the end of this one. We joined TikTok this week, which is hilarious.

Like we have four followers, but whatever, because I can put, like, I can make cute little collages of our videos. So those are going up right now. And I'm also adding our transcripts to our podcast. They're not perfect. They're, like, the automated ones. But if you do want one that is perfecter, like a little bit better, let us know.

And I can prioritize making them better. But right now, there's just decent transcripts available. Is there any list for mail? No. People write to us. It's fun to get those emails. Just write and say, just write and say, you know, I listen today or some, I don't know, whatever. Yay.

Well, tell your friends, please give us stars if you like it, and we're looking to grow. So please let people know. We appreciate you. So I'm going to go ahead and cut it off here. Thanks. You know, I'm going to be able to be.