In his prison cell, a former FBI agent who had been found guilty of spying on the US for Russia had been discovered dead.
According to the Bureau of Prisons, Robert Hanssen, 79, was discovered unconscious in his supermax federal prison unit on Monday about 6.55am.
According to CBS News, Kristie Breshears, director of communications for the Bureau of Prisons, said that “staff requested emergency medical services and life-saving efforts continued.”
His cause of death was not immediately released.
Hanssen was serving a life sentence at a federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. He was among spies who inflicted the most damage ever to the US.
The Soviets approached Hanssen three years after he started working for the FBI. He began spying for the KGB, the former Soviet secret police, in 1979, as well as the successor SVR.
Hanssen’s employment with the FBI allowed him to access virtually any classified documents. He assumed the alias Ramon Garcia in sending US intelligence to spy agencies via dead drops and encrypted messages.
He stepped back from spying several years after starting, when his wife confronted him, but picked it back up in 1985. He sent information on the US’s secret nuclear war preparations as well as a tunnel used for eavesdropping beneath the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC.
In exchange for feeding US intelligence, Hanssen received more than $1.4million in foreign bank deposits, cash and diamonds. He never met face-to-face with the Russians he sent information to.
Hanssen was arrested in 2001 after making a dead drop in Virginia. He pleaded guilty to selling highly classified documents to the Soviet Union and Russia.
He was convicted of espionage, conspiracy to commit espionage and attempted espionage, and sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences. Hanssen had served 20 of those years.
No other inmates or staff were injured as Hanssen’s body was discovered and there was no threat to the public.