Robert Hanssen: The Spy Within - An Interview with Major Garrett

November 17, 2023·45 min·4 clips

Hansen handed the Soviets the U.S. continuity-of-government plan — the locations where the president and top officials would hide after a nuclear attack.

The bonus episode opens with a status check. The hosts say season five is in progress for early 2024, but they want Criminal Conduct to stay active with bonus episodes. Major Garrett is the draw. Javier introduces him as a CBS News Washington correspondent known from White House press briefings, then turns to Garrett's pandemic podcast work on Robert Hansen. The podcast is named as The Agent of Betrayal: The Double Life of Robert Hansen. Hansen fascinates the hosts because the basic question is so blunt. He was an FBI agent tied to the D.C. area who gave or sold secrets to the Russians, and somehow he seemed to operate in plain sight. If the pieces were visible, why did no one put them together early enough to catch him? Garrett starts with personality. Hansen comes across as gruff, physically intimidating, gravel-voiced, and convinced he was the smartest person in the room. People avoided him. That matters, because an unpleasant colleague can become someone everyone quietly agrees not to study too closely. The episode does not dress him up as a glamorous spy. Garrett describes Hansen as unstylish and a drag, the kind of person who could turn casual contact into talk about philosophy, God, or the origins of man. Then the frame widens. Garrett ties Hansen's cover to the FBI's self-image, especially the bureau's long-running story about trustworthiness. The hallway detail lands well: movie posters inside FBI headquarters as a physical sign of how the bureau liked to tell stories about itself. A culture that sees itself as trustworthy may be slower to imagine betrayal from inside its own ranks. Garrett argues that Hansen understood that weakness and used the bureau's confidence, plus its reluctance to see a bad actor within, as practical protection. He also keeps the point balanced. The FBI's image is not completely empty; there are heroic, skilled agents. But the bureau also leaned into Hollywood's version of itself. The conversation brings in former FBI agent Jerry Williams and her book on FBI myths and misconceptions shaped by Hollywood, television, and film. The ending turns toward craft. Garrett is praised for securing interviews and building a story from real people rather than making it feel like a narrated audiobook. The result is measured and anti-glamour. The case plays less like a tradecraft puzzle than a failure of attention, ego, and institutional imagination.

As heard by us

A dry, careful spy story about how an ordinary-looking man stayed invisible.

Criminal Conduct uses a bonus interview with Major Garrett to revisit Robert Hansen, the FBI agent who passed secrets to Russia while, as the show frames it, hiding in plain sight.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Major Garrett walks you through the Robert Hansen case and the FBI blind spots around it.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Criminal Conduct