Agent of Betrayal: The Double Life of Robert Hanssen
128 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 months ago - ★★★★★ - 333 ratingsAmid the nuclear threat of the Cold War, America's prized secrets were falling into the hands of its sworn enemy. The FBI's hunt for the leak led to an astonishing discovery—the mole was one of its own, special agent Robert Hanssen. For two decades, Hanssen masqueraded as a devoted patriot while ruthlessly selling out his country, trading classified intelligence to the Soviet Union and later Russia, in exchange for cash and diamonds. He was a whirlwind of contradictions—a self-proclaimed patriot and a traitor; a family man who sexually betrayed his wife; an ardent man of God and a sinner. Through interviews with Hanssen’s family, friends, and colleagues, CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett (Host of “The Takeout”) delves into the double life of Robert Hanssen and unravels the chilling truth about the most damaging spy in FBI history in “Agent of Betrayal: The Double Life of Robert Hanssen”.
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Episodes
Dosvedanya
November 16, 2023 05:00 - 52 minutes - 48.2 MBOn February 18, 2001, Robert Hanssen’s career as an FBI agent came to an end. His next tour of duty would be served in the federal penal system as inmate #48551-083. Supermax, the notorious Colorado prison housing terrorists and drug lords, would become his home for two decades. Life in prison also means death in prison. Drop us a line: [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sel...
Room 9930
November 09, 2023 08:01 - 49 minutes - 45.2 MBOnce the FBI zeroed in on Robert Hanssen as a suspect, the bureau set up an elaborate sting operation to catch him in the act. A fake promotion, a bugged office, and a daring mission led to an opportunity to finally catch Hanssen red-handed. For 22 years, Hanssen had beaten the FBI at its own game. Now the FBI was ready to strike back. Drop us a line: [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/pri...
The Art Dealer
November 02, 2023 07:01 - 36 minutes - 33.8 MBA Russian businessman arrived in New York in mid-2000, eager to export art to the United States. His counterpart in the deal, an American, appeared ready to do business, too. But neither man was exactly who they purported to be. Their encounter may have been just the break FBI mole hunters were looking for. Drop us a line: [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. ...
Wrong Man
October 26, 2023 07:01 - 39 minutes - 35.9 MBThe intelligence community knew it had a mole problem. It couldn’t account for lost assets and blown operations. So the FBI and CIA set out on another mole hunt – and this time, there was one suspect who fit better than the rest. He was a career CIA officer who had been around important cases that went sideways. The FBI tailed him for two years and then squeezed him and his family for almost two more. Just one problem: he wasn’t the mole. Drop us a line: [email protected]...
Plain Sight
October 19, 2023 07:01 - 36 minutes - 33.6 MBHow did the FBI allow a spy to operate in its midst for more than 20 years and do such devastating damage? Robert Hanssen’s tradecraft was good, but far from perfect. In fact, the FBI missed several chances to nab him. Drop us a line: [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Priscilla
October 12, 2023 07:01 - 42 minutes - 38.5 MBPriscilla Sue Galey was a dancer at a strip club about a 15 minute walk from the White House. Robert Hanssen told her that he'd never seen such grace and beauty. He gave her sapphires and diamonds, a Mercedes, a trip around the world. But what did Hanssen want in return? Even more surprising than an FBI agent’s emotional affair with a dancer: the voyeurism in Hanssen's bedroom at home. Drop us a line: [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and...
Ramon Garcia
October 05, 2023 07:01 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MB1985 was “The Year of the Spy.” The FBI arrested a raft of traitors spying for the USSR and other foreign governments. But that didn’t stop Robert Hanssen - or his KGB alias “Ramon Garcia.” Hanssen had developed an obsession with espionage and the result would be deadly. Drop us a line: [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The Spy Next Door
September 28, 2023 07:01 - 39 minutes - 36.2 MBRobert Hanssen lived in suburbia with six kids and his wife Bonnie. They had a dog, a nice house and went to church on Sundays. Outwardly, it appeared to be an ordinary life. And for the most part, it was. Until Hanssen, an FBI special agent, turned and offered his services to the Soviets. Drop us a line: [email protected] See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Introducing - Agent of Betrayal: The Double Life of Robert Hanssen
September 21, 2023 07:01 - 2 minutes - 2.48 MBRobert Hanssen was a conundrum - an FBI agent and self-proclaimed patriot who became the most damaging spy in the bureau's history. Amid the nuclear threat of the Cold War, America's prized secrets were falling into the hands of its sworn enemy—the Kremlin. The FBI's hunt for the leak led to an astonishing discovery—the mole was one of its own. In this 8-episode limited series, CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett delves into the life of Robert Hanssen and unravels ...
Introducing Missing Justice
November 22, 2022 11:00 - 2 minutes - 2.34 MBChristy Woodenthigh’s family rushed to her home on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation when they got the shocking news that the 33-year-old mother was dead. They arrived to find no police officers, no approaching sirens, and no sign of Christy. ”Missing Justice”, a new 6-episode limited series hosted by CBS News reporters Cara Korte and Bo Erickson, takes you inside what really happened that night and how the issues in Christy’s case connect to the larger Missing and Murdered Indigeno...
20 Years Later: Major's Experience Covering the 9/11 Attacks
September 08, 2021 04:00 - 6 minutes - 5.77 MBIn this mini-Debrief episode, Major reflects on his experience covering the September 11th, 2001 attacks as a member of President George W. Bush's travelling press pool, and the impact of 9/11 on American society and politics. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Inside the Beltway
May 11, 2021 04:00 - 20 minutes - 18.8 MBWashington, D.C. has a language all its own. Words that mean something here in the nation's capital mean something completely different or nothing at all everywhere else. We're talking about sequestration and reconciliation, fiscal cliffs and super-secret SCIFs. Even SALT, COLA and iced tea - things normally found in your kitchen - have alternate definitions in the federal city. It's the accumulated language of legislating and regulating, the vernacular of those in power. The...
2020 Vision: 1945
May 04, 2021 04:00 - 22 minutes - 20.6 MBWithout question, 2020 was a remarkable and remarkably miserable year for so many. It had a little bit of everything: disease, fire, political upheaval, social unrest, economic devastation. Oh, and murder hornets. More than 340,000 Americans died from covid-19. Unemployment reached nearly 15% and hunger in America surged. But there's another year in relatively recent human history that surpassed the suffering and significance of 2020. 1945. Between April and October that year...
The First 100 Days
April 27, 2021 04:00 - 23 minutes - 21.9 MB100 days is an unusual unit of measurement for anything. Normally, we'd just say "about three months." Is there anything besides a president's time in office we measure in 100-day increments? Candidates make pledges for steps they will take once in office during that timeframe. Pundits, political scientists, and historians count the bills signed, executive orders issued, promises kept and promises broken in those first few months. First coined by former President Franklin Delano ...
The Climate Crisis Part 2: Our People
April 20, 2021 04:00 - 30 minutes - 27.6 MBEven climate change skeptics agree global temperatures have risen and ice sheets are melting in the arctic and Antarctic. But they disagree that weather patterns are becoming more extreme and downplay the role of human activity on our warming planet. As Earth Day approaches, the second episode of our two-part series examines the impact of climate change not only on the planet but on people, and the debate over what to do about it. This week, Major Garrett speaks with experts in n...
The Climate Crisis Part 1: Our Planet
April 13, 2021 03:56 - 30 minutes - 27.5 MBThe Earth is changing at a faster pace than at any point in the history of human civilization. Industrialization and increased carbon emissions have caused the global temperature to rise by over a degree Celsius since the turn of the last century. This seemingly small increase has had a massive impact. Melting ice sheets are causing sea levels to rise. The oceans are warming due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Extreme weather events are becoming more and more frequ...
Compensation: The NCAA's Big Dance
April 06, 2021 04:00 - 30 minutes - 27.9 MBAs the NCAA's March Madness ends, athletes for both men's and women's basketball teams face the harsh reality that has plagued student-athletes for years: their sweat, tears, and hard work draw millions of viewers, and millions more in revenue for the NCAA, television networks, and universities, but no money for themselves or their teammates. The Supreme Court is taking a new look at the NCAA's amateurism rules and should have a ruling by summer, but as state legislatures move to ...
Our Vote
March 30, 2021 04:08 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBLast week, Georgia's Republican governor signed into law sweeping changes to the state's voting procedures. The legislation, which passed with only Republican support, mandates photo ID for mail-in ballots, trims the window for requesting an absentee ballot and places new restrictions on ballot drop boxes, among other provisions. Iowa also adopted more restrictive voting laws earlier this month. Instead of 29 days to vote early in person, voters will now have 20 days, and polls wi...
The Pandemic and Paper
March 23, 2021 04:00 - 18 minutes - 17.3 MBWe wanted to mark the one-year anniversary of pandemic lockdown without doing a year-from-hell retrospective. So we decided to explore a relationship to something that might embody how the pandemic has changed our habits and led us back to some old ones. Perhaps no relationship with any common object has changed as much as it has with paper. Think about it. We're using less at work and more at home. Our screen-weary eyes long for printed books and puzzles. We're writing more let...
Children at the Border
March 16, 2021 04:00 - 31 minutes - 29.3 MBThe new administration is grappling with a decades-old problem: how to deal with the surge of migrants at the southern border. With President Biden’s new policy of not turning away unaccompanied minors, the number of children arriving at the border has rapidly increased, up nearly 30% in the last week alone. Over 4,200 children are currently being held in overcrowded Customs and Border Protection facilities, and nearly 3,000 have been in CBP custody for longer than the 72 hours re...
$2 Trillion For What?
March 09, 2021 05:45 - 26 minutes - 24.5 MBA trillion of anything is hard to fathom. It's a million millions. Or a thousand billions. Now double it. This week, the House of Representatives is expected to pass the nearly $2 trillion COVID relief package and a signature from President Biden will make it law. The legislation will send money just about everywhere - to families struggling to get by, to states and cities where tax revenue has fallen, to restaurants and to the unemployed. The White House is calling it the mos...
Ghost Kitchens
March 02, 2021 04:42 - 28 minutes - 26.5 MBLittle by little the restaurant industry has begun to creep back to life. At the low point of the pandemic-induced recession, more than half of the industry's 15 million employees were out of work, a haunting statistic. Roughly 110,000 eating and drinking establishments closed temporarily or for good. We all hate to lose our neighborhood favorites. But maybe during the pandemic you also found a brand new pizza joint that takes orders and delivers via app. Now what if that pizza...
Virus of Hate
February 23, 2021 05:00 - 38 minutes - 35 MBAs if the coronavirus pandemic hasn't wrought enough anguish on our country, there's a disturbing viral side effect that has no vaccine cure or therapeutic treatment. Americans are being attacked by other Americans. They're being beaten, spat upon, yelled at, shunned and hounded with racial slurs. Some have died, others have been hospitalized. The victims: Asian Americans. Their crime: the way they look. Roughly 3000 incidents of hate against Asian Americans have been recorded si...
The Big Lie Meets the Big I
February 16, 2021 02:59 - 22 minutes - 20.4 MBFor the second time in just over a year, the Senate elected to acquit Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, this time over his role inciting the lethal January 6th melee at the Capitol. The vote was the most bipartisan exercise of its kind. Seven Republicans joined all 50 Democrats and independents to convict the former president. The outcome, though never seriously in doubt, provided a view into the future of the Republican Party. Yes, Donald Trump's relentlessly loyal ...
Disinformation: Part 2
February 09, 2021 07:00 - 33 minutes - 30.4 MBWhile we were putting this episode together, we quickly realized the vast, convoluted scope of QAnon, its tantalizing effect its followers and the bit players who conspired to propagate the lie were bigger and more twisted than we'd imagined. QAnon, we learned, is many things to many people. So we decided to focus on a question we kept encountering: what to do about the untold legions who have fallen for QAnon's intoxicating allure. Could they be disabused of their beliefs and bro...
Disinformation: Part 1
February 02, 2021 07:00 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBIf your friend tells you it's going to rain tomorrow, and it turns out to be sunny, that's misinformation. Your friend was misinformed or the forecast changed. But if your friend tells you it's going to rain lizards, that is disinformation. And disinformation – deliberate falsehoods spread to mislead the public – has never been more prevalent. The 2016 election was marred by a hostile foreign actor engaged in a coordinated disinformation campaign. In 2020, homegrown disinformatio...
Vaccination Nation
January 26, 2021 05:00 - 26 minutes - 24.7 MBIn a feat of human achievement, vaccine developers cracked COVID-19's scientific code in less than a year, testing and developing a shot that has so far proven effective against the deadly infection. What's proving difficult now is getting that vaccine out of manufacturing facilities and into Americans' arms. President Trump's Operation Warp Speed placed the onus on states and localities to figure out distribution. The Biden administration wants to the federal government to take ...
Inauguration Day
January 19, 2021 05:00 - 31 minutes - 29.2 MBEvery four years on January 20th, the United States sends a worldwide reminder: this is what democracy looks like. Our incoming and outgoing presidents traditionally share a limousine ride to the Capitol. They appear together before the assembled masses and then bid one another farewell. What will the inauguration look like in 2021? Will our example of a peaceful transfer of power still shine as brightly in the dark, autocratic corners of the globe? In the wake of the January 6th ...
Insurrection: Capitol Hell
January 12, 2021 04:17 - 31 minutes - 28.7 MBHistory will record Wednesday's assault on our democracy as one of the US's darkest, most shameful episodes. Mob rule was the ambition of the marauding, counterfeit American patriots who laid siege to the Capitol on a false premise: that Donald Trump had won an election he so clearly lost. For months, President Trump convinced his supporters that he could not lose. That if he did, the election was somehow rigged. And when he did, that widespread fraud in key states had tipped the e...
The She-cession
January 05, 2021 05:00 - 31 minutes - 28.9 MBAmerica's economy needs women. It also needs working parents. Coronavirus has taken a toll on both, but women with children have suffered more than men. They've lost more jobs, lost more in wages and some 2 million dropped out of the workforce entirely. In early 2020, there were more women on payrolls in America than men. Then, as coronavirus swept the nation, 11 million women lost their jobs. Even as some of those jobs came back, balancing the stresses of working remotely, childca...
Freight of the Union
December 22, 2020 05:00 - 25 minutes - 23.5 MBYes, whatever you ordered online is taking longer than usual to be delivered. Be patient. Listen to our podcast while you wait. Your shipment will get to you. Eventually. America's shipping networks are literally and figuratively filled to the brim. More people are shopping online because of the pandemic. Add to that peak holiday season gift-buying and millions of vaccines that need to get from the manufacturers into people's arms as soon as possible. By one estimate, the US Post...
Electoral College Clarity
December 15, 2020 07:30 - 34 minutes - 31.9 MBIf projections from news organizations felt insufficient and certified election results from state officials did not convince you, the electoral college has spoken. On Monday, 538 electors in 50 states and the District of Columbia confirmed Joe Biden will be the next president. Biden's 306 electoral votes equaled President Trump's total four years ago. On January 6th, congress will meet to tally those state totals and two weeks later, Joe Biden will assume the presidency. Despite ...
Our Hunger
December 08, 2020 05:00 - 29 minutes - 27.1 MBMore Americans are hungry now than at any time since the Great Depression. Let that sink in. The uptick is yet another awful consequence of the covid outbreak. Watch the evening newscasts recently and you've probably seen lines of vehicles snaked around stadium parking lots-turned-food distribution points. Maybe you've volunteered at one of those sites. Maybe you've waited in those lines yourself. By nearly any metric, hunger in America is at crisis level. Food banks are stretc...
COVID-19 Vaccines
November 24, 2020 04:57 - 28 minutes - 26.4 MBThis month, three major vaccine developers reported preliminary data showing their covid-19 vaccines were highly successful in protecting participants in late-stage clinical trials. This news may feel like a lone bright spot in a year of ugly - and deadly - pandemic-related headlines. In a matter of weeks, the Food and Drug Administration could sign off on emergency use of these vaccines, making them available to vulnerable populations, health care and frontline workers and eventua...
Contested Elections
November 17, 2020 05:30 - 33 minutes - 30.6 MBFor those who lived through it, the presidential election of 2000, might seem comparable to what is going on now. It is not. Then, fewer than 600 votes in Florida separated George W. Bush and Al Gore. Voter intent was in dispute (hanging chads anyone?). The election hung on the outcome of the vote in one state. Today, thousands - and in some cases tens of thousands of votes - separate Joe Biden and President Trump in several states. Voter intent is well-established. President ...
The 46th President
November 10, 2020 05:32 - 31 minutes - 28.8 MBElection night in America is usually just that. A night. Just one night. Not in 2020. Not in a pandemic-afflicted year when so few things seem normal. This is the story of the people at CBS News who brought you Election 2020 coverage that started on Tuesday and ended Saturday. At 11:25 AM eastern time, CBS News Elections and Surveys Director Anthony Salvanto piped into the internal communication channel at CBS News with a historic projection, "Joe Biden: win, Pennsylvania. Joe Bi...
The Fax Machine Election
November 03, 2020 04:28 - 19 minutes - 18.1 MBThe last time an incumbent president lost re-election, Google, Netflix and friend weren't verbs. The year was 1992. And it was Major's first time covering a presidential race - incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush against Arkansas Governor and Democratic upstart Bill Clinton. Let's be clear: we don't know who is going to win in 2020. But the parallels between the 1992 and 2020 elections are striking. In this episode, Major reflects on the Bush-Clinton race, what's changed and wh...
Election Fever
October 27, 2020 04:00 - 27 minutes - 24.9 MBAmerica is voting. And it's doing it in record numbers. With a week to go before Election Day, early voting totals have eclipsed 2016 levels. Turn out in Texas is already 82% of overall participation four years ago. In Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, it's 66%. Experts predict turnout will only accelerate the closer we get to November 3rd. Our debut episode in July examined the challenges posed by voting in a pandemic. Would there be enough poll workers? How about enough fundin...
Is This Robert Bork's Supreme Court?
October 20, 2020 07:00 - 23 minutes - 21.8 MB"To Bork" someone, according Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, is "to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification." The phrase entered the lexicon after Ronald Reagan's nominee to the Supreme Court, Robert Bork, faced a bruising confirmation process in 1987. By all accounts, Bork was a qualified jurist, but Senate Democrats, then in the majority, feared his conservative ideology woul...
Presidential Health
October 13, 2020 03:03 - 31 minutes - 28.4 MBPresident Trump's campaign stop in Florida Monday marked the first time he'd left the White House after checking into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center ten days earlier. The president announced his positive covid-19 test result on October 2nd. Thereafter, his doctors provided cherrypicked details about the president's condition that painted a picture of the 74-year old president triumphing over a disease that has killed more than 210,000 Americans. Missing were key detai...
Polls, Projections and Winners
October 06, 2020 03:56 - 25 minutes - 23.6 MBAttention political junkies: we are taking a poll. How many of you like to know trends and results of the presidential race on election night? How about who’s up or who’s down during the race? Or what sorts of voters voted for a given candidate? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you can thank a pollster. For this episode of “The Debrief with Major Garrett,” we pull back the curtain on polling and election night projections. How do they do it and why is it - mostly - ...
Can The President Do That?
September 29, 2020 04:03 - 25 minutes - 23.7 MBDuring his convention speech in 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump proclaimed, "Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it." Not congress, nor the courts, nor the states or any other institution we vest with power. Just a would-be President Trump. The bounds of presidential power have been defined and redefined since the nation's founding. George Washington and Alexander Hamilton sparred with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison over then-President Washin...
Presidential Debates: The White Hot Arena
September 22, 2020 04:00 - 29 minutes - 27.2 MBIn one week, President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden will meet on the same stage in Cleveland for the first of three presidential debates this fall. In a political year marked by so much that is abnormal, the debates should finally look like something recognizable. For this week's episode, Major Garrett dives into the relatively short history of presidential debates and how they've changed since John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon in 1960 in a made-for-televis...
Mega Sports Equinox
September 15, 2020 03:06 - 32 minutes - 29.6 MBOn March 11th, the sports world - led by the NBA - started to shut down. Coronavirus fears prompted the NCAA to cancel March Madness. The Masters was postponed. Baseball, hockey and basketball, put on hold. What followed was perhaps the quietest spell in modern sports history. By midsummer, professional sports started to creep back to life and this past Thursday they reached a crescendo when all four major sports leagues - the NBA, NHL, NFL and MLB - held competition along with go...
Planes, Trains and COVID-19
September 08, 2020 06:00 - 25 minutes - 23.2 MBThe economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic are all around us - millions out of work, businesses shuttered for good, gridlock on Capitol Hill preventing more aid from flowing to those in need. The trillion-dollar travel industry has been hit as hard as any. International routes, which used to account for about half of American carriers' business, are virtually non-existent now. Here at home, airline passenger volume and hotel occupancy are limping along. Without help fro...
The March
September 01, 2020 04:00 - 30 minutes - 27.7 MBFifty seven years after Martin Luther King, Jr. led the March on Washington for civil and voting rights legislation, protesters returned to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial last week to demand justice for African Americans killed by police. The event, organized by King's oldest son Martin the third and Reverend Al Sharpton, attracted tens of thousands of demonstrators including the families of several victims. Between a global pandemic, outcry over the police-involved deaths of Ge...
Lost Summer
August 25, 2020 03:25 - 29 minutes - 26.6 MB8 months into the coronavirus pandemic, Major explores the question: was this a lost summer? It was certainly a summer of loss. Carefree summer fun, travel, social gatherings: lost. Students' ability to learn: lost. Millions of jobs: lost. Tens of thousands of lives: lost. On Episode 5 of "The Debrief," Major looks at where we stand in the fight against COVID-19 — what we've learned about the virus, what opportunities we missed, and what progress we've made as we prepare to head i...
Crossover Voters
August 18, 2020 10:33 - 27 minutes - 25.6 MBThe Democratic convention Monday night featured four prominent Republicans who will be casting ballots this fall for former vice president Joe Biden. Critical to Donald Trump's election in 2016 was a coalition of Democrats - especially in the industrial midwest - who abandoned their party loyalties and boarded the Trump train. Will they stick with the president in 2020 or come home to Biden and the Democrats? Are they up for grabs? On Episode 4 of "The Debrief," Major looks at pa...
School Daze
August 11, 2020 04:00 - 28 minutes - 25.8 MBIt is perhaps the biggest question on the minds of Americans these days. How can we re-open schools safely? After just a few days of in-person classes at North Paulding High School in Georgia, and photos that showed crowded hallways with maskless students, the school shut down for a two-day deep clean. Classes went online temporarily. Nine teachers and students tested positive for coronavirus. Across the country, teachers, students, parents and administrators are grappling with th...
Unconventional Conventions
August 04, 2020 04:00 - 19 minutes - 17.6 MBUnder normal circumstances, delegates would be dancing in Charlotte and Milwaukee in a matter of days. But in the era of coronavirus, gone are the balloon drops, the back slapping, the ladder climbing and the back stabbing. Instead, social distancing, masks, hand washing and uncertainty. Major Garrett explores what this year’s Republican and Democratic National Conventions will look like and how we got here. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy ...