Upstream - S2E2: Breach (2007)

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Further to the theme of last episode's taught depiction of actual spy work, today we're taking a look at the dramatisation of the true story of Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent who spent decades spying for the USSR, and later Russia.  This is a well-acted, high stakes retelling that somewhat unfortunately was unwatchable for Abi, due to the protagonist being the spitting image of her childhood friend 'Paedo John'. Find bonus episodes at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond   *WEB DESIGN ALERT*  Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond

List this. I'd like you to imagine yourself back into the headspace of 2007 and you are going to the cinema to see a movie with the lads. It's you and all the lads, play gals is there. Tiff, Strutals, Dick Skin, Pido John, Spenlad and Elliot. Ibo, Rice. Yeah. All the real names of people I really hung out with. So, so where that we're going, we're going to the to the to the cinema. And Dick Skin points at a poster on the wall and he says,

how loud's pure spits, Pido John? And you look over and you realize that the actor in this poster really is the spitting image of your friend Pido John. And that actor's name is Ryan Philly. He looks exactly like your mate, Pido John. And all the lads and you have a lot of fun chatting about this. You like how Pido John didn't tell us you were in a film. You should take your girlfriend to go and see it when she turns 15. And that's how I know about this film is because me and the lads saw the poster for it and

that's how we ended up watching it because the main guy in it, Ryan Philly, looks spits of one of my high school mates, Peter John, who later became known as a homophobic John. A defendant. Oh, okay. He later became known as homophobic John and then much later after I stopped associating with him, I became known as John the rapist. So that's that would you would you like to like get into some details about the exact nature of your relationship with Peter. I remind you that you are under oath. Yeah, so about Pito John. Yeah, he was called Pito John because he was, he was dating a year-time.

And now he's a well-known leftist YouTuber, I believe. Hello and welcome to another episode of of Kill James Bond. Why is it that when we're not behind the paywall? We all... We got to stop. We got to stop. I was... No, no. Peter John, Peter John was religious, right? He had he had Christianity in a big way. So I stopped speaking to him around about the time

he said the gay people shouldn't get married. And I was like, you know what, Peter, John? We've been in a few foxholes together, but I just don't want to see any more man. And I don't know where he is now. I assume he's not still dating that girl. And if he is, then she must now be over 18 at least. No, you're not going to find that point.

Just about. I am at a school draw, Cali, joining me as always, a rapper girl at least. Just about. Just about. I am at the Skordwell-Kalley joining me as always a rapper girl Thorne and Devon. Hello. Joining us also are Dick Skin, Spendlads, Strythles, Legas, too. All the lads from when you went to the movies in 2007, when you were one of the lads.

That's right. And you went to see the Ryan Filippe Chris Cooper movie breach, which is about the FBI double agent Robert Hanson as the movie opens with a press conference explaining his arrest. He was an FBI agent for something like 25 years and from the 80s onwards was passing secrets to the Soviets and then to the Russians. No one knew about this until he was arrested in 2001. Yeah, he was a real guy.

Yes, yes. So this is based on a true story. Just up top, I have no fucking idea anything to do with a real guy. Everything I say is going to be strictly about this movie. I read two separate intelligence be strictly about this movie. I read two separate intelligence journal articles about this in order to do research for this. So Alice, Alice analysis rides again. Oh no. See a live here's a live, yeah. Yes, Robert Hansen is currently alive in ADX Florence Supermax prison in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. When you don't have a death penalty, when you're a civilized justice system as the federal

justice system in the United States is and you don't do the death penalty, you have to have something to threaten out the spies worth. And so what they threaten out the spies worth is we will just put you in a small concrete box for 23 hours a day and drive you totally insane. Yeah, we'll just touch you. We're going to put you in the hole. Yeah, exactly. And that's, which isn't good.

It's probably not good to do that. That's why this podcast supports the death. Well, right. Genuinely. Sometimes you just need to kill a motherfucker. I would, I would, I would sooner be executed than be in Supermax present. Uh, fully.

But yeah, so that's, that's where Robert Hansen is right now, but we need to see how he got there. So we see Robert Hansen was played by Chris Cooper, who you may remember from the board movies as those are the targets. Big, borrow pack tap black ass. I don't care what you do. He was also in serianas,

the down-home country-fried oil executive. He loves to play like a slightly dodgy, corrupt guy in a suit. He's the thing. I don't know if he does love to play it because with the best well in the world, and this isn't a knock on his other movies, really, this is the first time I've gotten to see him act. Oh, yeah, he's so good at this.

Like, really good. He does, he does a bit in like each of those roles, but for this one, it's really like it's a little character study. And he does a fantastic job with it. He really does. He actually really, really does do a good job. You were right.

He really sells rubber hands. This podcast has made me too soft on actors. Yeah, that's true. So we see him at church. He's a devout Catholic. We already see the shape this movie is going to take because he's wearing the classic DC spy movie fit of suit and tie with the overcoat over it because it's always winter. And I just know

ahead of time this is going to be a lot of people like talking in like in the dark next to the Lincoln Memorial about democracy. I was pumped for it. Yeah, I like this kind of movie. I want to see the Lincoln Memorial. Where in the traditional US in huge suit? Yes. Yeah, the classic big suit that they issue you at Quantico and you graduate from the FBI Academy. That's right. So we're in early 2001. This is like just before 911.

Yeah. Well, we're in 2000 at this point because there's a shot later on of them taking down the portraits of Clinton and Janet Reno and putting up Bush and John Ashcroft. That's right. As we move into, I guess that would be January 2000. But yeah, so we see Robert Hanson and we contrast him with Erika Neal, also a real person, ear played by Pido John. Mm-hmm.

And there's... I don't know if we can. I'm afraid if I'm not mistaken. If I'm not mistaken, I think we need to make a few more videos. I don't know if we can. If I'm right, if I'm not right. I think we need to make sure that's a lot like Abby's school friend, Pino Jones. Like, I can see him behind the counter now in the CCF mass.

So Ryan Filippe is a much younger surveillance operative. We see that there's like a different sort of different generations of espionage thing going on here because Robert Hanson is all sort of cold warrior. He was the Soviet guy for a long time. Whereas when we meet Ryan Filippe, he's spying on some Muslims having an argument in the street. But we see that he has two other like young surveillance operatives with him.

And two things. First of all, Ryan Philippe has a report about how to make the FBI's computers computer better. And he's shopping this around, but no one wants to hear about it because he's nobody. And the FBI is very conservative. Even his boys don't want to hear about it because he's nobody. And the FBI is very conservative and high. Even his boys don't want to hear about it, man. And his boys. Even his boys gets into a van with two other dudes and look exactly like him. Yeah, it's him. And Abigail Thorne.

Yeah. And TV is Abigail Thorne. Because really, they've called me that background kind of press the end of my... Yeah, to be fair, like in my memories, people call me Devon now. And I know that we're doing it at the time. For sure. It's very strange what this happens, but regardless, he's like, have you guys read this and they're like, no, and he's like, well, you're credited by name.

They're like quite... I printed this out in color for you. But we also see that the animating impulse of all of these young guys is they want to become an agent. They want to become an FBI agent. Like they want to be James Bond. This is like a confected thing, right? Like to the best of my knowledge, all of these surveillance guys are themselves FBI agents. You kind of have to be. But the movie uses it as like that's the constant motivation is everybody wants to make it to be an FBI agent. wants to make it to be an FBI agent. And we contrast this with a sort of like street espionage with Robert Hanson leaving his office and we get a great shot that like it's a little bit sort of it's a little bit it's a step up from baby's first themes it's like baby's third

themes. Yeah good. Where he he leaves he leaves the elevator in the parking garage and he walks past all of the parking spaces that are like reserved by name for the director in the parking garage, and he walks past all of the parking spaces that are reserved by name for the director and the deputy director. And we see him walk all the way down to his kind of shitty car. And he just has this little look, and then we get to the opening titles

when he slams his car trunk like slightly too hard. And he goes, oh, okay, this is going to be a movie about jealousy. Good. I like that you haven't just told me that. I like that you've left me to figure that out. It's really nice. We've learned a little bit about Eric as well, Peter John. Yeah, Peter John is in a 24-7DS relationship with an East German woman.

Yeah. She is old enough. It seems to be, which I know is a stretch for John to play this role with a woman who is old enough to have sex, but he does a great job with it. She's good too. Yeah, Julie is a method actor and this is terrible for him. Yeah, he practiced for five months. My only note is just everyone's fucking whispering. Everyone here has got to be spooked every dry really did. Yeah, but like basically the only lines that that she has like, she's like, I don't want to be like an FBI wife and he kisses her and goes like, Hi. Okay. Fine. Also, there's a line where he's he's showing a picture of the people that he's been spying on and she says, are they terrorists and he says they're targets? And I was like, oh, that's a, that's, that's

ideology right there. It's a heavy ideology. And she responds as, as girlfriends do in movies where they're going to get mad at you halfway through them for give you at the end, which is she responds to everything he says we like, wow, really? Yeah, so cool. So, but wrongfully gets called into the FBI. We have a special task for him. And this scene produces, I would say, about half the drops that I have. Because they sit down. They sit them down. It's this sort of zero dark 30 type agent called Kate Barrow's very blonde, very intense.

Laura Linney, an actress I'd love to see. Yeah. And she sits them down. She goes, what do you know about Dennis Hanson? Dennis Hanson? Excuse me. Dennis, it's Robert Hanson's brother and Robert Hanson's wife. Okay fine, just roast me so much that we can't cut it out. That's right. But it's not cool. Cool, Bax, there's no way to cut it out. She sits him down, she asks, what do you know about Robert Hanson?

And immediately, great line. She sits down to us, what do you know about Robert Hanson and Immediately great line Was he the one who act into another agent's hard drive is the best computer guy we've got is the best Composer guy we've got that's not the whole drop the whole drop is this is the best computer guy we've got He's also a sexual deviant That would also have been a great reply to the email that I received when I called to the staff. He's not that good a computer guy. No, not.

It's honestly, it's like, there's like a meeting going on about a trans woman that works for them that hasn't come out yet. And they're like, he's the best computer guy we've got. He's also a sex old deviant. Been posting on the internet. Yes, yes. Been posting on the internet. He's been posting on the internet. So, so the vibe is that Hanson is a bit of like a sex past. He's been harassing junior colleagues. He's also been like apparently posting on the internet. We don't know what.

It's horny. It's hor it's. It's horny online. He's horny online. The FBI, we take a profound anti-horny stance and we also hashtag believe women, therefore Ryan Faleep, because you're on your fucking FBI apprenticeship because you want your like FBI SVQ or your city and guilds or whatever. If you do this for us, if you go undercover as his new assistant and spy on Robert Hanson, we will make you a real boy. We will make you a real FBI agent. So they're like, this is depicted as not being a particular glamourous assignment,

like Ryan Phillips that what really, I just have to like take notes of the sky, like, Jack's off in his office, like that's it and then I yeah basically fine. You are basically like the FBI's HR department on this. So he goes to FBI headquarters where Robert Hansen has been reassigned and already we get some cool vibes because this is the fucking the puzzle palace right lots of very identical white hallways and And we get to office, 99.30. The entire movie is graded so fucking cold. Like there's not a single scene in this movie that doesn't have a heavy blue on it, which it does convey an effect,

but it also gets really grating on the eyes after a while. It's very blue and gray. The office is like windowless, it's solar, it's very small, it's really good. The lack of windows comes up a couple of times. Yeah, the other cool thing about the office is that we see all of the security involved. Here's the like punch in code and the sound of that code being entered will be a recurring sort of source of tension. Open it with a key. And then when he gets in, the door like seals a bit too much behind him.

Yeah. It closes a bit too intensely. And we get this sort of nice like half second shot of him looking over his shoulder like, oh shit, that's probably like soundproofed. And then we follow this up with an even better shot, which is that his new office chair, Squeaks. I really like this. As a little depiction of like organizational priorities, it tells you very, very sparsely. Just two liberal shots. Okay, this is an organization that cares a lot

about secrecy and a lot about security and not very much about comfort. That's right. That's right. Then he meets Dennis. He comes in. This is such a perfect, like, first interaction. Good. Yeah. Like he's really shifty. He doesn't make eye contact. Like he's making some really, really strong choices in the scene. Chris Cooper, I really love it.

There's a thing. There's a thing that I wondered was, was purposeful or not? And I like to figure out that it was. And that's that every time that Robert Hansen is talking, he has like, he's jingling his keys in his pocket. It's like a nervous habit. It's behind all of his dialogue. He's just like kind of quietly jingling his keys. And I just, I really like that as an expression of like control and like power, but also insecurity and nervousness. But he sort of is very avoidant.

He just, he like walks into a room and says things. It's sort of, there's a little bit to it of like, how Hollywood I think's an autistic person acts. And I'm curious to what extent that was like, I would be very interested to find out because I couldn't in the course of researching this whether that was something that Chris Cooper or the director was like trying to do or whether that's just how it came out trying to mimic Hanson sort of mannerisms. But he's it's it's very sort of alienating. And we yeah. The first interaction between these two is really good because Hanson walks into the room and uh, Eric's like, hi, good morning, and he goes, tell me five things about

you and four of them are true. And it's, it's completely silent. While Eric's like, what, uh, uh, my girlfriend is over 16. Uh, my girlfriend is over 16. He's like, this is wrong. Uh, and Eric's like, look, I'm not that good at bluffing. And Hansen leaves, but as he's leaving the room, he like looks over Sean goes, that would account as your lie. So we get a couple of things there. We see, we see that Hansen is very, very paranoid.

He's also very devout Catholic. He's got a big crucifix up in his office. And he explains the culture of the FBI to Ryan Fleet in a way that is very, very cogent, actually. I just pulled a lot of it as a drop. The FBI is a gun culture. Can't advance here unless you're part of it. Every director in the history of the Bureau has come from a law enforcement side. Guys who

shoot, guys make arrests. Never been a director from the Intel site. Never will be. And the whole time they're walking down the hallway. Yes. There are like walls of portraits for like distinguished service, meritorious service, the guys who get the corner offices. And there's also, there's a skiff, a secure compartmental information facility, which Hansen says is where they're looking for a mole inside the CIA or the FBI. And they don't know where to look

because they're all stupid. And he does, there's this great sort of like, building sense of like a career's worth of slites and resentments, just a little top over decades. Very much like a leftist YouTuber, actually. He's, fuck me. He's also, the entire time he's walking with Eric and like waxing poetic about why he won't ever get

like a promotion. He's constantly running Eric into objects. Yes. Eric's trying to follow along next to him and he just keeps getting like, he walks slightly too close to a wall. Eric has to drop behind him for a bit and it's, it's a pain so really good picture.

It's only just doesn't really care about the person they're talking to. He's using it as a sounding board. He's kind of an in-sale, like an intelligence department seller, but he's like, oh, he's got down like giga-charts and stasis are always getting corner offices and I'm always being overlooked. But I'm going to show things up around here and they're going to know who it really is. He also encourages Eric to just like take a new computer.

He's like, oh, my computer's really shit. And like, he encourages him to kind of not be insuppordinate, but to like, kind of go around his experience. Absolutely bureaucracy, yes. Yeah. But like, mainly just it's to listen to him and to like prioritize what he wants. Yeah. And also like asset building in that way.

It's yeah. Eric also has the fun line because we see that Hanson is trying to get internet into his office. Oh, yeah. Oh, do you? I think we're going to have it. Well, I have one, but I'm not sure if it's the one that you want. What he does is he's standing on his desk trying to get internet, but slightly before that,

when he's asking him about the internet, Eric asks him like, what kind of sites do you like on the internet? What? Rick asks him like, what kind of search do you like on the internet? So why? You're redness, sir. Kind of. So on your upstairs in your house. But so I mean, he's right about the FBI. Like this line about the never having been an FBI director from the intelligence site.

He's still true. 20 years later, but we also are about to run headfirst into the other aspect of Robert Hansen's personality because this is a man who is just uncontrollably horny. Oh, absolutely. He and Ryan Philippe enter a lift in elevator in which there is an attractive woman. And there's this sort of moment

where he gets about 10 times more awkward. And knowing that he's a sexual deviant after she gets out, Ryan fully tries to like work him on a little bit. He goes like, oh, she was hot, huh? And he just gets what he gets back is a disapproval of women in pantsuits. It's great. Whenever he's uncomfortable, he gets more prudish and more cast. Really good. More Catholic, yeah, yeah.

The wall's kind of like come down a little bit. And Eric's like, oh, she was really hot. A little bit old for me, no. But we also, Hanson hates internal politics. He hates bureaucracy. He hates the CIA clowns. And he's also, he's really fucking Catholic, because he says, the reason we beat the Soviets is like, they were cleverer than us,

but they failed because they were atheists. And like, you should get more Catholic. Go to church. The specific start of the Soviet line is, what one point Eric leaves the office and stood outside by his car, Hansen who goes no other Russian empire collapsed, which Eric goes good morning. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah, yeah.

It doesn't like gay marriage. He doesn't like, well, anything really. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was like sense of resentment later on when they're in church and you go is I saw a woman from plan Parent out on television this morning There's been naturally defending gay marriage I almost ripped the cable out of the wall the delivery there, too. It's like great, but but so we see that his project

What he's been reassigned to do to head this new division what he's been reassigned to do, to head this new division, what he's been promoted to do, is to totally re-condition how the FBI's IT systems work, because they're years behind everyone else, because they won't cooperate with anyone. They're insular, they do internal politics, they won't listen to anything that he wants to do, which incidentally, he's a Linux guy, he wants them to put on like a red hat servers and stuff. But this takes on this whole new dimension when you realize that he is talking about the FBI and the culture of the FBI the year before 9-11. Oh, yeah, that is an interesting.

That he's saying like this works so poorly. Every other intelligence agency is so far ahead of us that FBI agents still use cardboard boxes to store caseloads. And you kind of get the sense, it's like he has a point here. Yeah, it's interesting that they don't portray him in the film as a massive evil traitor, that they do, I wouldn't say he's sympathetically portrayed, but he's humanized certainly.

Yes. But he invites Pido, John, to come to church with him. He's like, bring your wife, like, we'll make your wife more Catholic as well. Yeah. Like, come to church and then come to my house. We're a big, like, Catholic life. We've got to talk about the wife. At this point, at this point, I wrote down, I have a big Trad things counter that I've sort of like

incremented here. One is that he gets to the church and he genuinely flecks and Ryan Fletch forgets to. So Trad count number one. Trad count number two is he takes him to a Latin mass. Trad count number three is his wife is wearing a mantilla the whole time. She's like, actually, we find out that she's the one who got him into Catholicism. He was Lutheran,

and he really became like the sort of the Trad-Cath equivalent of born again. He joined Opus Dei because of her. And it's great because because you get this scene of, like, Juliana being incredibly freaked out by this, all of this trash shit. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because of course, she doesn't know that, like, her boyfriend is investigating her husband,

indeed, is investigating this guy. She thinks this is just like her husband's new boss. And she's like, why is, why is his wife trying to, like, seriously convert me to Catholicism? I don't really give a shit. There's a number of things regarding Juliana. All of them happen without her on screen, but when they're talking about the five things, right, he eventually does go back and give hands and his five things and he lists them off, doesn't really matter what they are, but the one

that was a lie, which is in the middle, is that his favorite drink is... Vod Katonic. Vod Katonic. He says that his wife is an East German lapsed Protestant and Hansen responds like he is just sworn directly in his face. Like he just goes gravely silent. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, so good.

The whole time, by the way, Ryan Filippe is getting badgered by his handler, Agent Burrows, who is, frankly, a terrible handler. Oh, absolutely. Basically, basically what she does is she pages him urgently on a page of which inevitably goes off and annoys the shit out of Hanson at the worst possible moment to go, where are my pages of reports? I need my pages of reports. Why aren't you writing them now? Where are they? And she just kind of like alienates him at the whole time that Ryan Flew comes to respect and

did Maya, Robert Hanson more and more as he starts to think. Yeah, he starts to think that he's misunderstood. He like snoops on his personal computer like, obviously expecting to find horny shit. And it's just full of Catholic stuff. This guy's just really Catholic and like, and then he does him a favor, right, which is, he had mentioned his, his mom had Parkinson's and Robert Hansen prints him out the fucking Wikipedia article for Parkinson's because that was a like a serious Imposition back in the days of 2000 And it's like hey, I did some research for you on the internet. Maybe you can you know Maybe there's some some stuff there that you didn't know about. And he genuinely touched by it.

Yeah, like really affects Eric, Eric. To the point where he immediately like calls his hand on his, like, what the fuck are we doing here? This is just a normal ask guy. One thing about this, about the sort of house of lies here that I really like, is if you did a rewatch of this, one thing you might notice is that when they're having this conversation, they are standing on top of an empty floor board in which Hanson has been storing cash that he has been sent by the Russians selling him secrets.

Yeah, because Eric goes back to his handler, Laura Linney, and he's like, look, what the fuck am I doing? This case is bullshit. Like, yeah, okay, he's a bit weird a bit awkward, but like fundamentally he's just a normal dude. Why the fuck am I spying on him? Like, okay, he jacked off to some porn one time in the office, okay, like big deal, whatever.

Yeah. And, and Laura Lee nintens, and he's like, he's a massive fucking traitor. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm gonna like drop the veil here. Again, this is like terrible handling because this is the thing, right? I feel like the speaks to a lack of confidence that the movie has in itself in that I would have put this later for pacing.

Wait, later, it happens before the halfway point. Yeah, because I think this movie has a thing where it wants to depict the FBI as being a cold, resentful place and as nest of jealousy. And it wants to do that and it wants to reinforce that by making Laura Lennie be quite cool towards Ryan Follett by having her be like, oh, you don't need to know that yet until she has to. I think a more confident movie would have allowed her to like try some more false charm and would have allowed us to get the experience of sort of right and free being the man in the middle who's being worked on both sides by two people

who are trying to manipulate him. I would have appreciated that, but instead he just goes into this conversation goes, you are trying to manipulate me and she goes, yeah, all right, fucking, I'll tell you everything, it was a secret kill squad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Honestly, it's fully like that. She just gives up immediately. This is the thing that they teach you in, in, in like US intelligence services is, the second you are confronted in a lie, admit everything, even stuff that wasn't even on the table.

And so she, she goes, oh, the jerking off stuff is also true, but I'm gonna take you into the secret Get Robert Hanson office, which has big pictures of him. Follow all. As if it's a get what he looks like. Yeah. 50 dudes working in the fucking department. This is an understatement, by the way.

I checked on this. Her line is, he asks her, how many agents do you have detailed on this? And she says 50. There were 300 agents following Robert Hanson. Guy like me, if I was selling secrets to the KJB, that's the KGB. So your secrets to KJB? What the fuck in the hell? I'm just going to go, well not in fucking solitary just Swing through the phone That was about a start

About a like for an episode just come on No, we good Yeah, a phone interview with around he and he's here tonight What about Hanson? Oh, a fucking hell what was I saying? Help me out I don't fucking know I thought you were going Oh, a fucking hell. What was I saying?

Help me out. I don't fucking know why. You were talking about selling secrets to the K-3. Telling to you. Yeah, guy like me, you could get three people looking into that and they would get me in like two days. Three years. The 100 is so fucking impressive to have made for like 10 years.

Here's the thing. Because he was one of their most trusted guys, because he was their, um, he's the best computer guy we've got. Well, they, they had a previous league, a guy called Aldrich Ames, who's a CIA, unless I believe, um, he was a CIA clown. Yes, he was a CIA clown. And in order to find that leak, they put their, he's the best computer guy we've got on it. And so the guy hunting for Ames was Robert Hansen.

He was that he was their guy trying to catch the Soviet and then Russian malt. But also they had him hunting himself at one point. Because he was in charge of the task of to find him, which was very funny. But I would have such a good time. We had the task force to find me. We find out that the reason why he's sort of like

so big of a traitor is because the movie doesn't actually say this, but for a time in FBI counterintelligence, he was in charge of the section that handled Soviet and Russian agents in the US who wanted to defect or who wanted to give information. So if you were a KGB agent who was stationed in Washington, DC and you were disaffected with the Soviet Union, you wanted to give information to the Americans. Yeah, if you were a coward. Yeah, if you're a traitor, your case would go to Robert Hansen and you would be killed

because he would betray you. And so we see that he has killed between three and 50 guys like this, more or less personally as close as you can personally. Pretty much. Yeah. He's like written to the Russians and said, hey, you know, this person's actually a mole for us and the Russians have then killed them. Yes. Yeah. And also his whole office, his entire office is like wired to the girls with microphone. They built him the hashtag. I really like this. So cool. I really, really like this because she just goes off handedly.

Oh yeah, 1993, we built that for him. And it cuts to them building it out from the walls. And because it's in the studs of drywall, it looks like a cage, it looks like a trap. It's perfect. And everything in there is wired. Oh yeah. And the reason that he's been allowed to kind of get away

with doing this for so long is they want to catch him red handed. Yes. This is the biggest intelligence leak ever. They want to catch him in the act of making a drop to the Russians, which as Peter John points out what he will be executed. Yes, yeah, they want to be able to give him the death penalty in order to, but they want to use it specifically to get to forces cooperation.

They think he will be able to name names if they are able to kill him if he doesn't. Yes. Yeah, they were listening off this guy's shit. They're like, okay, this guy is spying for the Russians. He likes rough sex and joy strippers. And I was like, this guy seems based. What are we doing here? Yeah, it's cool.

That's me. Yeah. The real, he was, he was a bunch. 300 guys trying to nail me. He was, he was much weirder sexually than the movie gives it credit for. His best friend was a US Army Colonel. Um, he set up a CCTV system with a camera in his bedroom so that from the bathroom, this guy could watch Hanson fuck his wife.

Yes, I'm seeing this. Um, did the wife know about us? I don't believe so. Oh, that's bad. Yeah, he he also gave a ton of money and a Mercedes to a stripper and then claimed that he was trying to convert her to Catholicism. He was a weird dude. That's not a good word. That's not a good word. But so we also, incidentally, get to add another counter to the guy you love to see in a movie alert, which is Dennis Hayes, but I love Dennis Hayes.

Yes. to see in a movie alert, which is Dennis Hayes, but I love Dennis Hayes. The president of first season of 24 watched two whole series of a borderline sitcom about Delphi Force called The Unit because he was in it, really good love the guy. And he's like on the squad that's gonna fucking track him. So we get a really, really nice moment because Eric, he's like, head is spinning from all this information, just finding out that his boss is a massive traitor. Now he's got to like

get ready to go into work tomorrow and like lie to him and everything goes home and Hanson is in his half. Yeah. And he just has to like build this den of lies to everyone in the room like he's lying to his wife about separate things. He lies to Hanson. He lies to Hanson's wife who is also fucking there. It's really, really good. Yeah, and they are in full tradcasts psychomode. And there's this great bit where they like, they sort of make them say grace around the table. And you get the sexual threat of Hanson

like holding out his hand to Juliana. And it's like, yeah. And then they have an argument after the Hanson's have left. And he's like, yeah. Yeah. And then they have an argument after the Hansens have left. And he's like, I can't tell you anything. Make sure the fuck up. Yep. Yeah. Hansens' allegiance work, you had a gaslight, wife.

It's, there's so much here about masculinity, right? Because all he needs to do is reassure his wife. And he can't do it. Like he doesn't even need to be like, okay, this is why this is happening. He just needs to be like, listen, you, you are American enough for me, you know, you, we, I do love you. This is, this is happening. Don't worry about it. This is just happening. It's going to be over at some point. He can't

do it. He just leaves. He, he, he very nearly joins the 41%. But instead, this is shouted as wife leaves and goes to see his dad for another. Dad who is America. Yes, another very pivotal conversation about masculinity and patriotism. Because one of the things, one of the things that he said before that we know is true, is he is the first man in four generations of his family not to have served in the military. So his dad has, his grandfather has, and he's sick of this shit. He wants to quit. And his dad

explicitly equates being an FBI agent to being in the military, you're serving your country. Quitting is unthinkable. It would be like desertion. And what you have to do is you have to get on the boat, do your job and come back home again. Because that's what I did, and that's what my dad did during the war. This is the most like you are definitely still part of the troops that we've had since the Humphor Red October. Yeah, he's like basically troops. Yeah, and that's what patriotism is. You do the hard thing, and you don't think too much about it. You don't overcomplicate it even when you're scared. You just do your job. and you don't think too much about it. You don't overcomplicate it even when you're scared, you just do your job and you don't think too much about what

your job might be. And that's what serving your country is and you have to do it. Sivir your country is don't think about it. Yeah, check it. No, no, no, no, no, I'll say to you, but the guy who plays his dad Bruce Davidson, you, you will recognize as the senator in X-Men who gets turned into a guy. That's his. That's where you'll know him from. He's America. Yeah, he just plays America. He's got what he wants. He knocks out the park. Does exactly what he needs to do. That's true. So at this point, we have to see that there's two things that the FBI wants Ryan for Leap to do. Number one, they want him to get and copy the contents of Hanson's palm pilots. Yes.

And number two, they want to keep him out of the office for a few hours while they extremely search his car. And by search his car, I mean, disassemble his car. Oh yeah, no. Oh yeah, no. And so in order to get him, in order to get him out of the office room for enough time to copy over the palm pilot, what he does is they arranged his portrait to be taken for the wall of his the end of service. It's got to be a step at the end of service. And unfortunately, the guy that they get to do it is noticeably gay. He's not sure about noticeable. He's just like kind of ambiguously gay.

He's like slightly effeminate. And that is enough to fucking activate the tradcath lobe. And so because he hates being scrutinized, a thing which they undercut by later having him say, I hate being scrutinized. Just because. And because he's homophobic, he's like, he's sitting there getting more and more and more uncomfortable. They have to put makeup on him and he hates that. He has to like think about how he's sitting and looking.

It's great. There's like watching someone fucking piloting a human-shaped mech suit, you know, and just realizing that for the first time. But so he gets out early and there's about to come back and intercept Ryan for leave. And one of the other FBI guys has to offer to take him to the shooting range to reimpose that like gun club thing from earlier. And it's great because we see that Robert Hansen is he's a very good shot. He's also fucking, he's doing man out of time shit. He's got this big wide like isosceles stances like away from him. He's got like a snub nose, 38. And so he's just kind of like, it's so good. It's really good. Like every aspect of

it is such like a great fucking character decision that they've gone for it. It really tells you everything you need to know about him without saying it. But occasionally we do laps and have him just say it. But most of the time, really good. Yeah, that's the weakest part of this movie, I feel, is when it doesn't trust itself enough. It'll do something reasonably deftly, and then it'll go back and say it again for the people in the audience who might not have got it. Eric manages to download the contents of Hanson's palm pilot. He finds that he's just got like a thousands of hours

of the Kill James Bond podcast. And also he's been sending a bunch of like weird, creepy DMs to early transition trans girls onto Twitter, who's very odd. But he almost gets caught. And then he covers it by, he's in a Hanson's office when Hanson comes back. And he pretends to be praying, which is what I really like.

That was like brazing it out. But I also liked the kind of, because what he does is he switches it back. And then he, he like starts to doubt himself. Hanson, the real case, has like four sort of like pretty identical pockets. And he gets this kind of like undercover neurosis where he like his goes back and puts in a different one and then puts in a different one in case that was

wrong. And it's I really, really like that actually. But so to an earlier scene where there was a shot of handsome putting his palm pilot in the pocket, like a very specific one that's really highlighted in the movie earlier. Yeah. But so he gets him out of the office so that they can disassemble his car. He'll like give some a lift and ride for Leaps Car. Yeah, they just go on a little like, like, full of spy gay date. It's cool. They just go around places for a bit, you know, time to remove the take this card. You fucking.

Well, they're supposed to go and meet the CIA clowns. Yeah, the DIA clowns, the defense intelligence agency clowns, but too many fucking agencies. Yeah, tell me about it. But when the DIA IT guy, I keep getting my handlers mixed up is the problem. Oh, I can never mind. Put that out. getting my handlers mixed up is the problem. Oh, but you never mind. Put that out.

So the DIA guy gets like a gets like a double booking. And because he's paranoid and because he's only able to interpret stuff within the lens of FBI internal politics, and so it's like, you me and my twinker leaving this instance, don't, don't ever talk to me again. Yeah, for real. This is clearly a power play. And they sort of they argue in the car. But the whole time you get this like tense bit with like,

Hansen is trying to get back earlier while they're disassembling his car. Yeah, you get a phenomenal bit where like they get the message from the guys at a training number. Like he's leaving, he's coming back now, we give it like 20 minutes before he gets back home. And like this car is lying completely like factory disassembled and the line that is said is like, all right, zip it up.

Just put it back together now real fast. Just fucking. We also see that Hanson's boot of his car is absolutely full of hacked. Hacked. Yeah, fucking spirit. Nasty gun collection. And you know, one thing he's based, I don't.

One sort of wonders if this could have been sort of, if he could have been a workplace shooter. It's like, anyway. The film muses on it for a bit, but doesn't really have an answer. Yeah, it doesn't. But that's fine. I don't really need it to.

So, Ryan Flee gets some stuck in traffic. And Hanson just tries to walk back. And in order to get him back in the car, Ryan Flee has to lie to him. He has to tell him, actually, I was this way and getting and got a stuck in traffic Because I was trying to take us to the church because I was trying to make Julianna be more Catholic And what what follows is a fucking a Catholic version of you have to tell me if you're a cop Lee Because Hanson goes like,

You got to tell me. Yeah. And Hanson goes say, well, I say, I swear to God. Say it. Mother fuck. I'm not going to say that. Because it's like doing the, um, the cop has to say they're under cover cops. So they say, yes, sarcastically.

Yeah. 100%. Where he goes, I'm not going to say that because you're cops, so they say yes sarcastically. Kind of 300%. Where he goes, I'm not gonna say that because you're an asshole and you've never trusted me. And you know, why don't I get to ever confront you about shit? And you're so fucking weird. Which I like. Definitely Catholic.

I, just the ideas are very, it's like, I believe in the teachings of Catholic and everything that he's doing. Okay. So on the ideas out there is like I believe in the teachings of calf all and everything that he's So I on the one hand I like this, but on the other like I'm annoyed that he doesn't have to like Disavow he doesn't have to like incriminate himself in that way Yeah, this could have been an interesting thing It would have picked up a theme that we get too later if If part of the cost of catching Robert Hansen is, you have to fucking lie using your religion. And that's something that it just costs to do that.

But instead, Robert Hansen gives him this envelope to mail. And like an idiot, he immediately goes home, opens it, steams it open and finds it's a VHS tape, and just pops it in the VCR. Yeah, this is a baffling thing. I've no idea why he would do that. I don't know if he did this in real life. I don't know if this was a movie invention,

but it's such a f**king baffling thing to do. Yeah, very odd. And the VHS tape is, of course, Robert Hanson having sex with his wife for the consumption of one of Robert Hanson's weird friends and then our FBI counterintelligence operatives is so fucking contrived immediately gets outplayed by his wife Yeah, yeah, this this whole scene is is shit

It's really really very like fucking does this completely out of character. Open to the people in the fucking tape player. It's and so does this. And immediately his his wife comes in through the door and is like, what are you watching? And he goes nothing. And then she's like, yeah, could you go and get the rest of my fucking like shopping from the car? And he goes, yes, man, leaves and walks back in. And she's obviously watching the fucking tape.

More on. And then she's like, what are you doing, man? And he goes, I can't tell you and leaves. And it's like this whole scene was shit. Just tell your wife, just be like, I can tell you what it is. It's work. Again, like I get all do. I get it if like you had gone a little bit stronger

earlier on the theme of this will also cost you your faith. If it had gone to this will cost you your marriage. But instead what he does is he just goes to Kate Barros' handless apartment and goes, hey, is being an FBI agent like being a kind of samurai? It's just like a mere heart. Do we have to follow the like feudal code of Bichido? Is it worth it?

And she kind of like looks around at her totally empty apartment. She's like, I don't know. It's probably fine for most people, it's not for me. She makes a joke, but she's like, I don't even have a cat. There's a great bit that she has, there's one thing about Kate that I like, which is earlier on when she's showing him the like Hansen operation center. She goes, I don't mind that he fooled us.

What annoys me is that like, I came to work every day and he was just undoing everything I did and I might as well have just stayed home. And I really like, really like that was good. But yes, so he's, they're getting the closing in on Hanson now. But he sends a letter to his Russian handlers saying, it's been real lads, but so long. And I'm not, I'm not going to do it anymore.

I'm not going to give you any more information. So they can't catch him red handed if he doesn't fucking do it. There is. I think the FBI are onto me so long, thanks for all the fish. Yeah, what was one of the... What was one of the... The car that they have now filled with fucking tracking devices

keeps interfering with his radio. And this is the world's most paranoid man. So just like suddenly his car is making weird noises and he's like, yeah, fuck this, fuck this man. Yeah just like suddenly his car is making weird noises and he's like, yeah, fuck this, fuck this man. Yeah, I'm immediately blown. There are two things to point out here in terms of historic accuracy. One is that as far as I know, the FBI tried really hard, they could not reproduce any of the sounds that he claimed to be hearing. So there is, there is a decent chance that this was some like

fucking extra sensory narrative perception that he had developed where he just kind of like knew beyond knowing that he was being spied on. The other thing is that in this letter to the SVR or the FSB, one of the things that Robert Hanson did in real life, KJB, was to recommend that they cultivate Erika Neal as an agent. He just fucking puts Ryan Filippe in the thing, like, oh, you should get this guy. He's good. He'll be the next me. That's very funny. But so he realized he's using the age of his girlfriend. Yeah, this is real cool and normal. You should definitely.

Yeah. But Eric says, well, because Eric's talking to his handlers, and they're like, look, if we don't get them to make the drop, then all we've got is the contents of his palm pilot. And he's going to turn around and say, oh, that's just notes for a spine level that I'm writing. It's all made up. Yeah.

Is it a crime to dump cryptic letters in a park where they could be read by anybody? No. So that's it. Miss, you misshandle a classified information five years, those days. Yeah, they get that. So, Eric says, I think I can persuade him to make the drop. I think he wants to do it. I think he wants to rub your faces in how clever he is.

And I think he wants to be caught. So then, Hanson just turns up outside his flat drunk, which is quite funny. It's really good. Like he acts drunk so well. He gets in the car with him and you just see that his eyes are totally red. And he just kind of goes, can I trust you in a tone that we haven't heard him use before? It's really this moment of vulnerability and mistrust, but you do get the sense that there's this ego that's driving him. There's this bit.

That we skipped over a bit, but when he's talking about the portrait that he's going to get put up on the wall, he says, that's fine. That'll be my memorial. I'll know what I did. Even if no one else remembers me, I'll know what I did. That reminded me a little bit. That kind of like, my memorial here is, I know I was fucking all of you over. And my picture is on the wall, sort of like, lauded. It reminded me a bit of like the espionage version of Jimmy Savile's Tombstone, you know? He thought he had gotten away with it and he had arraigned this tombstone for himself that was like, beloved by all and shit.

Yeah, just like, it's like a last joke at your expense, right? To be like, oh yeah, actually, I was great, wasn't I? Just a final fuck you as you're going out the door. Yeah, I don't know what it says on Jimmy Savo's tune. So I wasn't looking when I was pissing on it. But when you were there with that hammer. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so they drive into the park

and Hanson just like starts randomly firing a gun into the park. Is that, can I trust you? I don't know if I can trust you or not. Like, what the fuck's going on? This is what it means to be an FBI agent which again the agent thing is really confected. Yeah. And Eric calls him out. He's like you're a shithead. You're paranoid. Nobody's telling you

nobody's watching you. It's saying, dear girl. It's quite insane. So why would they you don't fucking matter? Like yeah, he's like, okay, you did not do that important 20 years ago, but you're not that important. Like no one gives a shit. And then that gets him. Yeah, it's a great line. It's because I matter plenty. Yes. And that was his line of line before he leaves the fucking park.

And immediately after fucking Eric goes home and he calls his hand and goes, he's gonna make a drop. 100% is gonna do it. So there's this thing that you may be aware of in motivations for human intelligence assets for spies. It's kind of out of fashion now. It's been replaced by something called Rascals by and large, but it used to be a saccharin and called mice, right? The four things, mice, mice, mice, the four things that motivated us by money, ideology, coercion, or ego, you would be in paid to do something.

It's better than scum actually. Yeah. You were being paid to do something, you believed it was the right thing to do something, you were being blackmailed to do something or you wanted to do it for the excitement, you wanted to do it for you. And this movie makes explicit that the sort of the sin going on here, the thing that motivates Robert Hansen to do what he does is ego. It contrasts him with Aldrich Ames, who is a money guy. He was paid some number of millions

by the Russian intelligence services. And Robert Hansen, he does it because he wants to, he does it because it takes it out on people who think who think themselves better than him, it humiliates his enemies, and it humiliates an organization that he never fit into. What does Rascal stand for then? What's the new one? It's sort of the opposite end of the same thing. It's stuff that you as a handler

are meant to offer to an agent. So reciprocation, authority, scarcity, consistency, liking and social proof, doesn't really come up in this. But the fucking stone off the dough. Well, Alice, that's what you gave us when we started this podcast. That's right. I'm trying to do all of them all. And that's what we're giving you, the listener.

That's right. Because we are training you to join us in working for the intelligence services. That's true. That's right. So you're like to have a number of things. One thing we skipped over is a drop that I actually do have a point I'd like to make about, but I don't know if we should. So there's a point where, and this reminded, it's not a great point. It's very funny to me though. Like the fuck?

There's fuck you earlier on when Eric is like reading everything that Hanson has said about like the United States, all of his dealings and that. There is one line in particular which this is a slur to be clear. This is the arse. Oh, the forbidden drop. Yes, I'm going to use the fin drop. You read this line. The US can be early likened to a powerfully built but retarded child Which which is a real Hanson quote? But while that audio is being played it the shot is of Eric reading and as the word is said he shakes his head Just so you know he doesn't agree or

I found to be so fucking fun. This this this, this was a real thing is that like, Roman Hansen, when he sent information to, to the KGBO, to the SVR, he would include, along with the classified documents, a shitload of like unwanted personal essays about how he thought they should be doing. Oh, he just like me for real. He just kind of, he would just sort of post. And he was a reply to me.

He was a really poster. There was a bit where he knows one letter to them where he said that they should adopt the management styles of Mayor Daly of Chicago. Just baffling. Yeah. A lot of things to say. In fact, one of the ways that they identified him was they had purchased this document,

this dossier, one of his posts that he had been sent. And they pulled his fingerprints off of it, but they also pulled a like a voice print analysis, which was Hansen reading a George Patton quote about, and this is verbatim, the purple pissing Japanese which calls someone to recognize his voice. He does mention pissing purple. He actually says that line in the movie even when he threatens Eric like going in his office the first time.

So yeah, I can see that. So because he wants to like get his like last his last era, he walks to the drop sign. We can't. The worst thing that you can imagine and I read it in the perfect Rose voice. We get a black title card that just says a date and time and I was like, oh, yeah. Yes, never a good fucking sign. And one thing I like is that the thing that it shows is the gun guys get to have their fun, right? Or be it that he has been outplayed by the intelligence side when he gets back to his car, it's the guys who like to like jump

out of black SUVs and point guns at people who get to make the arrest. There's a number of really good parts about this. The first is all the shots of him doing the final dead drop are handheld. It really gives you the rest of it. There final dead drop are handheld. So it really gives you the impressive. The rest of us is all been like fucking dollies, dry pods, all very, very steady, all very, all of them doing this is handheld. So it's like, it gives you the impression that he is being watched. It's beautiful. Real nice. There is no one else around. Like no cars pass. There's like a dog barking and it gets his attention because it's the only sound yes and the other thing that I really like is after they arrest him

they drive off in like three different cars someone takes his car and they are gone off that street like nothing has happened the whole thing is like it cleans up after itself. Yeah, they're very efficient. Yeah, they'll jump out of the van at him. They've all got guns and he's just like, all he says is twice he goes, guns won't be necessary. He puts his arms behind his back, he's ready to be arrested. And as they're arresting him, he very quietly too quietly for me to get as a drop, he just goes, services how it goes. And it's such a, like, he knew this would happen. Like, he was ready for this, and he accepts it immediately. Yeah.

It's fun as well, because he says, when they put him in the car and drive him away, like, his boss, the guy who's in charge of the investigation, is like, what the fuck, man? And he just says, maybe now you'll listen, which it was just like, ah, yeah. Yeah, because Saddam Fruzler. I have one big criticism of this movie, which is end the film here.

Yeah, I should have ended it on that line. It's like an hour and 20 minutes. That's sure. That's good. That's a tight movie. Instead, what they do is another half hour. They do the bit where they don't have confidence in what they're saying. And so he gets to sit in the back of the car.

Oh, this is really weird. Yeah, it's the same. I think it was ego. Everybody trying to guess the identity of a mole and all the while, it's you, they're after you, they're looking for a mocus. Like this thing about this, this line line. I'm gonna brush right over that That like we know this we have already like this has been said to us loud and clear by the movie thus far But they just find it necessary to again have him do his fucking like villain speeches is being arrested and it's Like they always say show and tell I don't know whether this was a reshoot or if it was in there from the start but it feels like a reshoot feels like something that was added on because people were like I don't get it

it kind of undercuts what we've been seeing so far anyway they take him in and then Peter John goes home to his wife and it's all fine, I guess. He goes and he goes, um, a Juliana, not a character. Basically just exists to show the toll. This is taking on Eric. He goes home and it's just like, immediately walks in the door,

it just walks up to a gif's that are hard going to kiss. And she just fully accepts that it's fine again. I like he's like, why would, oh, they... Marital tension over now. But so he goes back to the now being dismantled trap office where he meets Kate. And we finally get to put a hat on all of those. Like, is it worth it the way of the FBI

samurai sort of themes? She's like, congratulations agent agent, Pido John. Yeah. And deleted your SVQ. And the answer to is it worth it is no. No, no, no, it's not. Well done. You finished at Yuccavete and my FBI award. And he's like, Chuck, you I'm resigning. I'm going to be a lawyer, which he did. Yeah. He quits for Giuliana. The line from his handler is like, she she'll get used to it eventually and he goes, I don't know if I want her to, which is nice. She expressed the very stuff, which is nice.

He finally listens, he takes him an hour and 49 minutes to listen to his wife and then we really, really have to have another scene that outstays it's right. It's too much. On the way out by pure coincidence, he bumps into an arrested Hanson in the drive. This is enabled, this is like in order to enable a shot of Chris Cooper crying, which is nice. And he just goes pray for me because he's a Catholic and also a giant hypocrite. Now that ends the movie. And Ryan Fleeft says, going down.

Woo! Oh! She did it laughter. Yeah, did it, did it. I do, I do, before we... He brings out air hornicas. Yeah. But before we get into what this says about masculinity,

I do wanna talk about how much this movie is a white wash of the FBI. Three. Because one of the things that they say about Robert Hansen and his movie is that he is the best computer guy we've got. Now I can see that in 2000 being the best computer guy might not have been too difficult. But seems like it was very easy. Some of the things that Robert Hansen did with his computers included hacking into another agent's computer, printing out a classified document, and then handing it to him to go, see, I just broke into your computer.

No, I'm sorry, that rules. He wants that space. That's so sick. That's so funny. He wants to... Thank you. He's a man out of time in two directions. He would have been such a good poster.

He wants broke his own office computer installing password cracking software on it. And when confronted by the FBI's computer team about this, said that he needed to do it in order to hook a color printer up to his computer, which they believed. He was apparently constantly 100 guys trying to catch this man. Yes. Yeah. He constantly searched his own name in FBI databases to say. That's a really nice little character.

My own name. And no one noticed that he did that. He was reported to the FBI months before the start of the first investigation by his brother-in-law, who was also an FBI agent, because he was spending a suspicious amount of money. And this also gets to the heart of what I think it gets wrong about Hanson, which is, yes, Hanson was most evaded by ego, but probably the reason why spies don't talk about mice anymore is because it's very determinative and it makes you want to put someone in one of four boxes.

And he was paid millions of dollars in cash in bonds, in diamonds for all of his work. cash in bonds in diamonds for all of his work. And at every turn, often cartoonishly irresponsible, he stopped giving information to the Soviets when the Soviet Union collapsed. And in order to make that introduction again, he went to a Soviet spy at the US Embassy and said, I am an FBI agent. This was my code name. I'm standing in like daylight so you can see my face. I want to give you information again. And the Russians were so convinced that this was a trap that they reported it to the FBI and they gave them a description of the guy who had introduced himself by code name as an F.E.I.A. agent. Stickly by the Russians to be like, all right, we'll fucking test you out here.

This is a fucking freak. And the FBI did not notice what the FBI did do was surveil for a year, a CIA agent called Brian Kelly. And the reason why they had decided Brian Kelly was the mole was because they had brought the FBI's behavioral analysis unit in to build a psychological profile of the mole, which was nonsense. I mean, he's the identity of the I don't know. They spy on him for a year. They interviewed his family, they interviewed his friends, they interviewed his neighbors. And then as a final gambit to try and flush him out, they sent an FBI counter intelligence

agent to his door with a what what records only describes as a foreign accent. So you go, I know, you're covered some spying for me. I assume, I assume they're like, kill me. Yeah, almost. And that because he came to the door went, hello, your cover is blown. You must go to Metro station immediately where the fucking SWAT team is waiting to arrest him.

And instead, he calls the FBI to report him. What a legend. The thing that we get wrong. I'm gonna see a movie about that. Yeah. They get called the intelligence services, but what people don't realize is that there was a strong span of about their entire existence,

where every single intelligence officer was just doing the John Malaney bit about getting away with crimes was really fucking easy back in it. A pool of blood on the floor and a guy walking me like, huh, gross, clean that up. Now back to my hunch, they would just do this. I'm just doing documents. But you did me help carrying those documents out of the office. documents. Hey, Bob, you did me help carrying those documents out of the office. I want to see, I want to see like the James Franco-Jona Hill movie about them investigating the wrong guy. There's also, there's also one thing, which is, which is not proven, but I do get this from the newspaper of Bob Hanson's old university, Knox University, which

is that when he was melting down when he started drinking, he went and he confessed to his priest because his wife found out and his wife got him to confess. And the priest went, okay, we have to turn yourself into the authorities. Hanson thought about it for a while. When went and confessed again and the priest goes, well, it's probably fine so long as you give some of the money you're getting to a suitable charity. So some, some of money a month went to the church in order to preserve the fucking seal of the confession.

I love people, man, we're so bad. The Swiss sucks so fucking well. Incidentally, the FBI is still paying Hanson's pension to his wife. So that was part of the play deal, was that she gets his executive pension, which they don't usually do. That's nice, isn't it? Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, the movie also ends with the classic thing that these true story-ass movies always end with, which is a fully black screen with what happened happened to each character afterwards and I was like

I don't care it like it flashes up a rubber-handsome busted 30 fucking 50 secret agents and I was like whatever And he's like in prison. I'm like I don't get my spine bunch of guys who like fucking losers No one should guys who betray each other complaining about when the people that they get to betray each other get killed by other people that they've tried to betray each other for. As far as it's like this exact fucking situation reversed would be like, down as guys are here. It's like, fuck a shut up dude. Spying is the absolute can't get the can't get pussy better.

It's a good reason company excluded of course. The caption comes up. Peter John later became known as Hermaphobic John, John the Rayfist. That's right. Peter John's girlfriend went on to date, someone over an appropriate age. Dick'skin, I think, became a farmer. I think Elliott and Strudel's birth became doctors. Tiff is a writer now.

I don't know what's going on. The girl's born is the host. Yeah, I feel James Bond. I don't know what I don't know what Spenlaid is doing' lawn is the host of... Yeah, I feel James Bond. I don't know what I don't know what Spenlar is doing, but we have a science-based system on this podcast. We do. We do. Smarm, cultural, insensitivity,

unprovoked violence, misogyny. The mice system. That's right. Can I get Sandra Armstrong saying mice? Do you have that? I really want to hear it. I do have mice. It'll just be a second while I scroll all of the way down

when we're out cutting it. Just edit this back in when I said it to mice. Beautiful. Yeah, the mice system. Yeah, I'll cut that back in earlier when you talk about mice. So how much I feel like this movie is like negative, smart. Well, I think I might want to maybe take a broad of you as smal and say it. As smal is when the movie is like jacking itself off.

That's no longer just like James Bond being smal. The characters aren't very smal. But the movie does kind of jack itself off a little bit. It's out of America. About America, but also like how extra seen the fact that it keeps like telling telling us things that's already shown us Nothing maybe a two or three I if we're putting it that way I think it could go to a three. Yeah, I can see that absolutely Cultural insensitivity. I mean literally shaking your head to show that you don't agree with it

shaking your head to show that you don't agree with it. It's so funny. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what do you, would you say that that's a culture? I would say that it's being perhaps insensitive to tradcasts. I just don't care. I don't think it's being unfair. I kind of want to give it one point for the fact that we are introduced to Eric surveilling a Muslim family for like seemingly no reason. And this is never criticized. And the line, of course, that is like a these terrorists that targets run very start. Yeah, we get like all of the things we're hands into as something racist in the movie makes a little frowny face. But whenever only I was like racist also, it's like thumbs up. Yeah, it flashes up in like big, big letters on the screen.

This is bad. Oh, and Neil does it. This is sort of like, you know, the diverse FBI as well. Yeah. Not sure. How about it too? I'll go to, certainly. All right. I'm provoked violence.

I mean, it's really none. None. Unless you count, like, as a sort of remote act of getting someone else killed for selling secrets, there are. Well, the movie doesn't even say that that's good. So fucking one of none. Yeah, zero. Flat zero. Misogyny.

OK. So now this is going to be tough because I'd like to fold fold all of the isms into misogyny because I think that's true. Putting over for game culture and activities a bit weird. Yeah, the scum system for smart cultural and sensitivity, underroads, violent and miscellaneous isms. Yeah.

Sure. Which, yeah, it's got a lot of them. Sure does. The whole of your dance of frowny face. It does, it does. But also the character of his wife of Peter John's wife is just like, she's just wife, that's her character. Oh, yeah, she does not have a character at all.

Yeah, she gets out with him for like plot reasons only. Hmm. She's there basically as like an easy way to tell like how much this is taking a toll on Eric and like no other reason at all. I can't suck. Hanson's wife Bonnie is even less of a character. She's just kind of like. Yeah, it's interesting the way that she's not really portrayed

as being one of his victims. No. I mean, his primary crime is, I'm just kind of far enough given that it's a spy movie. His primary crime is against America and we kind of don't really acknowledge that it was a major violation to just like videotape her getting far and send it out to people.

It's kind of shit. We don't hear what she thinks at the end of the film She just kind of disappears, which I think is an opportunity to last. Yeah, sure Kate is an interesting character the backdell tests really because he does have two women talked Which are about they're talking about Jesus who is a man? So yes, he was yeah doesn't count Kate is an interesting character Yes, you was, yeah, doesn't count. Kate is an interesting character. Because I think she's sort of in some ways

a prototype for the sort of mold that we'll see later in 0.30 of. I don't know. We're going to have to. It's very important. If the sort of girl bus CIA agents, and like, I don't know, we have this sort of moment where we talk like the costs of being

an FBI agent are only ever explained to us through her. We don't get to see what fucking Dennis Hayes but wife thinks about all of this shit. We only get to see her apartment with no cat. Yeah, and it's specifically the cost of being an FBI agent in her case is that she doesn't have a man or a relationship like even a cat or any children. It's very much a kind of this will somehow spoil your femininity. I don't think that's intended by the film, but it's unfortunate that as you say, Alice, she's the only character who we really see the cost through. Yeah, for sure. And it's, yeah, no, and like she has this sort of line towards the end,

which is like, you know, most FBI agents are married. We're not all like this. And it really, that feels like sort of like a fig leaf. Yeah. It's, it's, it's a, not a great decision to use her for this specifically, I think. So for, so misogyny and miscellaneous isms now, now it's two m's, I think. So for misogyny and miscellaneous isms, now it's two M's, I guess. What do we think?

We think like four? I was thinking four, yeah, yeah, sure. After that. Higher than we've been in a minute, to be honest, I think we've only gone like two or three from misogyny late. Well, because it has a zero on unprovened violence, which is very strong, I guess it's a total of nine,

which is the same as seriana, and pretty darn lower compared to what we've got. Still the best film we've ever seen was the Born Identity on six. Yes, I don't know if you've read that into the record, because we didn't do scum for that. We did. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, we did. But the best one ever was the Born Identity. And the best Bond film ever was for you to a kill with Roger Moore. That's right. So this film not quite as good as Roger Moore,

but nevertheless breaks. It's getting there. If only they had had Roger Moore as Robert Hansen and this. I would have loved to see that. We need to watch more Roger Moore films actually. It's the only guy we've not watched. We stopped doing it. We need to watch more films that are just like connected via bond.

I see you. I hear you and we will be going back for more old Conor. Yeah, we're going to do folks. My pick is next after the bonus and I would like Abbey to be able to talk shit about actors again. So I'm bringing those right back to the 70s to talk about three days of the condor. Ooh, excellent, excellent, okay, fantastic. Well, thank you for subscribing if you do, if you don't, do, and we will see you on the

next episode. Thank you for listening. Why? Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Kill James Bond. Sorry this one wasn't funny, and also sorry that I was so off-kilter at the start, but I did gain my mojo back. By the end, of course next week's bonus episode will be OSS Somdeset, the one in Rio. I haven't got the title of it right now and I know it's in French. So for new listeners you will finally know what the fuck we are talking about when we frequently reference OSS Somdeset.

And we have the wonderful Maddie Bupchanski on that episode, and that will of course be available for free as this is June, as this is Pride, as this is the banquet of forgiveness, but that'll be the last one that you get for free. So, if you are hit-lated by this weekly content, why not head on over to our Patreon at the start of next month and sign up today to join these wonderful people. Christine Fox, Fox Winchester, Paint with Palette, Jack Holmes, George Rohack, Thomas Oberhardt, Yarich, Carolyn Tankersley. But, where? I think Thomas- I think Thomas might have swapped two of the letters around in their surname

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