Early life Hanssen was born in Chicago Illinois to a family of mixed Danish Polish and German descent His father a Chicago police officer was emotionally abusive to Hanssen during his childhood 7 Once for no known reason Howard Hanssen arranged for his son to fail a driver s test In later life Robert Hanssen speculated that his father had done this in order to toughen him up The elder Hanssen constantly disparaged his son and said that Robert would never make anything of his life 8 Hanssen graduated from William Howard Taft High School in 1962 and went on to attend Knox College in Galesburg Illinois where he earned a bachelor s degree in chemistry in 1966 While at Knox he took an interest in Russian through elective courses It was also at this time when Hanssen applied for a cryptographer position in the NSA but was rebuffed due to budget setbacks Originally set to become a doctor Hanssen took the opportunity to enroll in the dental school at Northwestern University 9 He did well academically but said that he didn t like spit all that much 10 He switched his focus to business after three years 11 and received an MBA in accounting and information systems in 1971 After graduating he took a job with an accounting firm but quit to join the Chicago Police Department as an internal affairs investigator specializing in forensic accounting Hanssen left the department after two years joining the FBI in January 1976 7 Hanssen met Bernadette Bonnie Wauck while he was attending dental school in Chicago Bonnie was one of eight children from a staunchly Roman Catholic family The couple married in 1968 After Hanssen married he converted from Lutheranism to his wife s Catholicism becoming a fervent believer and being extensively involved in Opus Dei edit Early FBI career and first espionage activities 1979 1981 Hanssen joined the FBI as a special agent on 12 January 1976 and was transferred to the field office in Gary Indiana In 1978 Hanssen and his growing family of three children and eventually six moved to New York when the FBI transferred him to its field office there 12 The next year Hanssen was moved into counter intelligence and given the task of compiling a database of Soviet intelligence for the Bureau It was then in 1979 only three years after joining the FBI that Hanssen began his career as a Soviet and later a Russian spy That year Hanssen approached the GRU the Soviet military intelligence agency and offered his services Hanssen never indicated any political or ideological motive for his activities telling the FBI after he was caught that his only motivation was the money 13 During his first espionage cycle Hanssen told the GRU a significant amount including information on FBI bugging activities and Bureau lists of suspected Soviet intelligence agents His most important leak of information was the betrayal of Dmitri Polyakov code named TOPHAT Polyakov was a CIA informant for more than twenty years before his retirement in 1980 and passed enormous amounts of information to American intelligence while he rose to the rank of General in the Soviet Army For unknown reasons the Soviets did not act on their intelligence about Polyakov until he was betrayed a second time by CIA mole Aldrich Ames in 1985 Polyakov was arrested in 1986 and executed in 1988 Ames was officially blamed for giving Polyakov s name to the Soviets but Hanssen s role remained unknown until after his arrest in 2001 14 Hanssen was nearly exposed in 1981 when Bonnie Hanssen caught her husband in their basement writing a letter to the Soviets Hanssen admitted to her that he d been giving information to the Soviets motivated purely by his need for money and that he had received US 30 000 as payment but he lied and said that he was only passing along false intelligence Knowing this Bonnie insisted that her husband go to confession as is required in the Roman Catholic faith for those who have committed serious sins The Opus Dei priest who allegedly heard Robert s confession is said to have told him to give the money to charity as an act of penance This remains unconfirmed as under the Seal of Confession it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner for any reason Canon 983 1 under penalty of latae sententiae excommunication Canon 1388 1 Hanssen told his wife that he gave the money to Mother Teresa but it is unknown if he actually did so 15 Hanssen then stopped spying for the Soviet Union until 1985 edit FBI counterintelligence unit further espionage activities 1985 1991 Ellis dead drop site in Foxstone Park used by Hanssen including the day of his arrest Hanssen was transferred to the Washington D C office in 1981 and moved to the suburb of Vienn