Convicted spy Robert Hanssen, the disgraced former FBI counterintelligence expert who passed US secrets to Moscow for 20 years, is to be sentenced to life in prison today at a federal court just outside Washington, DC.
Hanssen pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia last July to espionage and conspiracy charges that could have carried the death penalty.
He is believed to be the most damaging mole ever to pass US secrets to a foreign government, with thousands of classified US documents handed over to the Soviets, and later the Russians in exchange for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.
A 25-year FBI employee, Hanssen managed to walk out of the FBI building with documents and computer disks containing damaging top secret information, and to peruse the FBI's major investigative database at will.
Prosecutors have said that the former FBI agent, a devout Catholic and father of six, was a meticulous double agent so secretive he never met his Russian handlers and they never knew his real identity.
AFP