The Betrayal and Deception of Robert Hanssen

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The United States was subject to betrayal and deception at the hands of Robert Hanssen. Betrayal is commonly defined as one would say “throwing someone under the bus”. Deception would better be defined as the act of falsely misleading someone either by appearance or statement. Betrayal and deception are two concepts that in most scenarios go hand in hand. In the notorious case of Robert Hanssen it turned out to be just like that. He deceived the United States and betrayed the trust the country placed in him for his own personal agenda.
To fully understand how Robert Hanssen’s case relates to the core idea of Unit 5 you first must be introduced to his background. Robert Hanssen was an agent of the FBI for 25 years from 1976 – 2001 when he was eventually caught (http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/osg/spystory/hanssen.htm). He was a church going father of six and was the son of a Chicago PD officer, whom he was proud of. During Hanssen’s early life he shared a love-hate with his father. His father constantly belittled him at any chance given to him. On several occasions he put his son, Hanssen, through physical and emotional abuse, mostly emotional, and even bribed a friend at the driver’s license center to fail his son just so that he could make fun of him. Despite the abuse Hanssen was still very proud of and admired his father because of his job as a police officer. Later on he would bounce from college to college in search of his “calling” ofr what he wanted to do in life. He decided to work with the Chicago PD for a couple of years. After the Chicago PD job, Mr. Hanssen decided to seek out a job with the FBI, which he eventually acquired.
Hanssen was an intelligent mind according to those who knew or worked with him. Yet, what he ...

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...rned his back on his country when he felt unappreciated. He sold off top-secret documents to the Soviet Union’s intelligence agencies. In 2001 he was apprehended by the FBI. His means in no way justified his ends. Hanssen was sentenced to life without possibility of parole, which after analyzing everything he had done was too lenient for his treason against his country. His means were him aiding an enemy intelligence agency in gathering information against his own country and his end wasn’t as severe as it should have been for something committing such a treacherous act.

Works Cited

n.d. 11 05 2014. .
n.d. 11 05 2014. . http://www.dhra.mil/perserec/osg/spystory/hanssen.htm. n.d. 12 5 2014. .

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