Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who took over $1.4 million in cash and diamonds to trade secrets with Russia in one of the most notorious spying scandals in American history, died Monday in prison.
Hanssen, 79, was found unresponsive in his cell at a federal prison in Florence, Colorado, and later pronounced dead, prison officials said. He is believed to have died of natural causes, a source familiar with the matter told the AP. He was not authorized to discuss details of Hanssen's death and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In an affidavit, Hanssen revealed a vasttrove of information about US intelligence-gathering, including extensive detail about how US officials had tapped into Russian spy operations since at least 1985.
He was believed to be partially responsible for the deaths of at least three Soviet officers who were working for US intelligence and were executed after being exposed.
The Russian government received more than $1.4 million in cash, bank loans, diamonds and Rolex watches in exchange for providing highly classified national security information to the Soviet Union and later Russia.
He didn t adopt a lavish lifestyle, instead living in a modest suburban home in Virginia with his family of six children and driving a Taurus and minivan.
Hanssen would later say he was motivated by money rather than ideology, but a letter written to his Soviet handlers in 1985 explains that a large payoff could have caused problems because he could not spend it without setting off warning bells.
He passed some 6,000 documents and 26 computer disks to his handlers, authorities said. They provided detailed eavesdropping techniques, helped to confirm the identity of Russian double agents, and spilled other secrets. He was also believed to have tipped off Moscow to a secret tunnel built under the Soviet embassy in Washington.
He went unnoticed for years, but later investigations found missing red flags. After he became the focus of a hunt for a Russian mole, Hanssen was caught taping a garbage bag full of secrets to the underside of a footbridge in a park in a dead drop for Russian handlers.
After pleading guilty to 15 counts of espionage and other counts, he had been serving a life sentence in prison without possibility of parole since 2002.
In 2007 the story was made into a film named Breach, featuring Chris Cooper as Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe as a young bureau operative who helps bring him down.
The Bureau of Prisons has received notification of Hanssen's death, according to the FBI.