Longest prison sentence for espionage

The longest prison sentence for espionage was handed down to FBI agent and Russian mole Robert Hanssen (USA) on 10 May 2002. Hanssen, who had been providing information to the Soviet Union and later Russia since 1979, was given 15 consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole.

It is thought that Hanssen first approached the Soviet Union's GRU intelligence agency in 1979, shortly after the three-year-veteran agent had been transferred from Virginia to the FBI's New York office. He provided intelligence for a time, but seems to have largely stopped when he was transferred back to Washington, D.C., in 1981.

Hanssen resumed his spying activity in 1985, shortly after he was transferred back to New York City. On 1 October he wrote to the KGB offering his services in exchange for large cash payments. Intelligence he provided, which often unknowingly duplicated information leaked by the CIA mole Aldrich Ames, was used to identify and capture numerous US intelligence assets in the Soviet Union, several of whom were subsequently executed by the KGB.

He continued to make routine deliveries of material to the KGB throughout the 1990s, using dead-drops to leave caches of documents for his handlers. Despite his value to the KGB, his handlers never knew his name (he used the alias "Ramon Garcia") and only rarely interacted with him directly.

He was captured on 18 February 2001, when FBI agents caught Hanssen red-handed depositing classified documents at a dead-drop location near his home. They had been investigating him since November 2000, when a KGB informant known as "Mr Pim" (aka Aleksandr Shcherbakov) handed over a suitcase-sized dossier on "Ramon Garcia". Included in this dossier was a recorded phone call that FBI agents identified as Hanssen, and a bag with Hanssen's fingerprints on it.

Faced with this overwhelming evidence, Hanssen decided to plead guilty, choosing to spend the rest of his life in prison rather than risk death row.

Robert Hanssen evaded detection for so long because he was such an unlikely double agent. He was an ultra-conservative Catholic who lectured his colleagues about the dangers of the "godless" Soviet Union, and a committed career officer with a spotless disciplinary record. Compared to his contemporary, the CIA mole Aldrich Ames, Hanssen did little to draw attention to himself.

Hanssen's motivations remain unclear. Money was undoubtedly an important factor – it is likely no coincidence that his contact with Soviet Intelligence were both initiated soon after assignment to New York, where the high cost of living caused financial problems for many federal employees on nationally standardized salaries – but he did not seem to take any pleasure from extravagant spending.