FBI Agent Turned Russian Spy | Going Undercover | 5

American Scandal

Wondery

True Crime, Exhibit C, Society & Culture, History, Documentary, History Daily, American History Tellers, Lindsay Graham

4.6 • 18.7K Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Eric O’Neill was a 27-year-old FBI surveillance operative when he first heard the name Robert Hanssen. It was the assignment of a lifetime: go undercover to bring down a mole that had been feeding secrets to the Russian government for more than two decades. O’Neill takes Lindsay behind the scenes of the operation that changed his life and led to the capture of one of the most notorious spies in American history. His book of the account is called Gray Day: My Undercover Mission to Expose America's First Cyber Spy.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wundry Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American scandal early and ad free right now.
0:05.7	Join Wundry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. from Wundery I'm Lindsay, and this is American scandal. On February 18th, 2001, after 22 years of espionage, FBI Agent Robert Hanson was finally arrested for spying on behalf of the Russians.
0:54.4	When camouflaged agents swarmed the park where Hanson left his final drop, he reportedly
0:59.3	asked his arresting officers, what took you so long?
1:03.0	For years, U.S. counterintelligence officials had known there was a mole lurking in the shadows.
1:08.0	But Hanson was a veteran agent, meticulous and detail-oriented,
1:12.0	one who had been able to evade even the FBI's dedicated spy
1:15.6	catchers.
1:16.8	The agency knew they needed to come up with a remarkable operation to catch the spy red-handed. Our guest today is former FBI operative Eric O'Neill
1:25.8	who was crucial to Hansen's capture. The first time O'Neill heard Robert Hansen's name,
1:31.2	he was a 27-year-old FBI agent, and when his supervisor showed
1:35.3	up unannounced on an early Sunday morning, O'Neill was shocked to discover that he was
1:40.1	tasked with an undercover operation that would change his life. He was assigned to work
1:44.4	as Hanson's assistant, spending weeks alone with him in a shared office and learning his every move.
1:51.1	O'Neill's efforts helped the FBI gather the final evidence they needed to prove that
1:55.5	Hansen was still actively spying for the Russians.
1:59.1	O'Neil shares a firsthand account of this investigation in his book, Gray Day, my undercover
2:05.0	mission to expose America's first Cyber Spy. It's a story so thrilling that it made
2:10.0	its way onto the big screen in the Hollywood movie Breach
2:13.3	starring Ryan Philippi as young FBI agent Eric O'Neil.
2:17.2	Our conversation is next.
2:19.8	Hiring. hiring with indeed
	...

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