FBI Agent Turned Russian Spy | World of Secrets | 1

American Scandal

Wondery

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

4.6 • 18.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2024

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1976, at the height of the Cold War, Robert Hanssen joins the FBI to work in their counterintelligence division. Hanssen is valued for his technical skills, and put in charge of databases containing some of the country’s most valuable secrets. But he’s socially awkward, and constantly passed up for promotions and field work, leaving him resentful of his employers. Soon, he decides to turn to another source of income: selling information to his country’s greatest enemy, the Soviet Union. Over the course of several decades, he’ll become one of the most damaging spies in US history.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Wonder. It's December of the year 2000 at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C.
0:21.2	Neil Gallagher steps out of the elevator and makes his way toward the Bureau's fingerprint
0:25.2	lab.
0:26.2	Gallagher is the FBI's National Security Division Chief.
0:30.2	He's been with the Bureau for nearly 30 years, and during that time he's worked some of the agency's biggest cases including the Oklahoma City bombing in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
0:41.0	But he's never had a case as frustrating or embarrassing as the
0:44.9	one he's working now. It started 15 years ago when in the mid-1980s U.S.
0:51.4	intelligence realized that some of America's biggest secrets were being leaked
0:55.7	to its greatest rival, the Soviet Union.
0:59.6	Over time, the FBI realized the leak was coming from someone working inside the Bureau itself.
1:05.2	They've spent years trying to identify and apprehend this mole, but without success.
1:10.6	Now, after more than a decade of false leads and dead ends, there's finally been a break in the case.
1:17.0	A retired KGB agent recently delivered a file containing a tape recording of the Mole's voice.
1:24.8	From that recording, Gallagher has identified a probable suspect.
1:28.9	But before he can take action, he needs hard physical evidence confirming the mole's identity.
1:34.0	Today he hopes to get it, thanks to something else that the former KGB agent handed over,
1:39.0	a single shred of a black garbage bag which the mole used 10 years ago to deliver documents to a Soviet
1:46.3	contacts.
1:47.3	Gallagher knows this piece of evidence is far from perfect.
1:51.4	It's traveled back and forth between two continents and may have been
1:54.8	handled by any number of KGB operatives, which means the FBI technicians could
1:59.5	find a hundred different fingerprints on the bag or none at all.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -361 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Wondery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Wondery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.