Agents who helped to bring down one of the most notorious Cold War spies tell us how they did it.
For nearly 20 years, FBI agent Robert Hanssen was leaking highly sensitive material to the Soviets. Then the US came up with an elaborate plan to stop him.
Some of the top-secret documents that Hanssen handed over included a US intelligence assessment of Soviet attempts to gather intelligence on American nuclear programmes. Hanssen gave information to the KGB, and later its post-Soviet iteration, the SVR.In exchange for his deceptions, the Russians paid Hanssen $1.4 million - $600,000 in cash and diamonds, and another $800,000 placed in a bank account.
But a series of intelligence breakthroughs eventually put the FBI and the US intelligence apparatus onto his tail.US intelligence officials had suspected a spy in their midst since the 1990s, but it took a few years to zero in on Hanssen. "This was one of the most major events in my life, going undercover at a relatively young age and going up against the most damaging spy in US history," Mr O'Neill told the BBC.Over the next two weeks, the two got to know each other well - though one was covertly investigating the other. At one point, Mr O'Neill even accompanied Hanssen's family to church.
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