Finally coming clean about his 22-year history of selling secrets to the Russians, the disgraced former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleaded guilty yesterday to 15 counts of espionage and promised to co-operate fully with prosecutors investigating his crimes. Finally coming clean about his 22-year history of selling secrets to the Russians, the disgraced former FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleaded guilty yesterday to 15 counts of espionage and promised to co-operate fully with prosecutors investigating his crimes.
Under a plea agreement reached earlier this week after four months of tortuous negotiations, Hanssen will be spared the death penalty and his wife will get to keep the family house, three cars and federal government pension. In exchange, Hanssen will tell his former handlers at the Federal Bureau of Investigation everything he did and how he did it, his lawyer said.Appearing in a packed high-security courtroom in Virginia, a thin, visibly strained Hanssen calmly entered his guilty plea. Asked by the judge if he understood that his plea meant he would spend the rest of his life in prison, without possibility of parole, he replied: “Yes, they have all been gone over with me, sir.”Hanssen, who is 57, was arrested in February on suspicion of delivering the names of double agents to Moscow and of passing on numerous secrets about satellites, early warning systems and other installations. As a senior counter-intelligence official he had access to all of this and was in charge of ferreting out the very activity he was engaging in.A prosecutor, Larry Thompson, said: “Hanssen betrayed the trust of his country at the highest level imaginable.”It was originally thought that he began his activities in 1985, in the waning years of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev. But his lawyer, Plato Cacheris, revealed yesterday that Hanssen began in 1979.Mr Cacheris said his spying, for which he is believed to have received about $1.4m in cash and diamonds, was a sporadic affair, with long breaks from 1981 to 1985 and between 1992 and 1999 But the lawyer added: “He very much wanted to make amends.

That’s a big reason for this disposition today.”The Hanssen case has been a huge embarrassment for the FBI at a time when the agency’s reputation is in tatters. Last year, it was forced to admit that another alleged spy case, against the Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, was groundless. This year, the agency was found to have withheld crucial evidence from the trial of Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, prompting a month-long delay to his execution and narrowly averting a judicial re-examination of the most intensive criminal investigation in recent US history – an investigation many experts believe remains riddled with unanswered questions.Hanssen’s arrest provoked a security re-evaluation within the FBI, with lie-detector tests ordered for about 500 employees. The case also caused a diplomatic row between the US and Russia at a time when the Bush administration is making friendlier overtures to President Vladimir Putin.For a long time, Hanssen considered pleading not guilty. He also consulted a psychiatrist over the possibility of an insanity defence. Mr Cacheris said yesterday: “It would have been an uphill battle to plead innocent, because of all of the charges.” Under the plea deal, six of 21 charges have been dropped Sentencing has been scheduled for next January..

Unusually, in this particular mystery, there is a precise point at which the facts stop and the speculation begins. Unusually, in this particular mystery, there is a precise point at which the facts stop and the speculation begins.
That moment is 10.45am on Tuesday, 1 May, when Chandra Levy, an attractive, dark-haired 24-year-old woman who had just finished a temporary job with the Bureau of Prisons in Washington, e-mailed her parents in California. She said that she was coming home soon.And since then, nothing. Despite a weight of publicity and inquiry unmatched by almost any other missing persons case, there remains no sign of Ms Levy No sightings, no messages, no real clues. Police admitted this week they were no closer to finding her than they were two months ago.But yesterday, after almost 10 weeks of speculation but only snail’s-paced progress, the mystery was electrified by fresh details revealed by Ms Levy’s aunt concerning the one topic that has kept this story at the top of the bubbling Washington gossip pot: Chandra’s relationship with a married US Congressman.Soon after Ms Levy went missing, news broke that she had some sort of relationship with Gary Condit, a silver-haired House Representative from California, whose district includes her home town of Modesto. This alone was enough for the police to interview Mr Condit twice, stressing however, that the Democrat was not a suspect in what is still a missing persons case.Mr Condit, a 59-year-old with a penchant for riding Harley- Davidson motorcycles, decided not to comment publicly. Instead, in statements issued by aides, he insisted Ms Levy was “just a good friend”.Of course, no one believed him.

There were stories that Ms Levy was in love with him and that she used to spend nights at the Congressman’s flat, just 15 minutes’ walk from her studio apartment. And then other women emerged to talk of their relationships with the youthful-looking Congressman, whose wife, Carolyn, is said to be “chronically ill”.As the summer weeks have progressed, the speculation over the nature of Mr Condit’s relationship with Ms Levy has risen as inexorably as the mercury in the city’s thermometers. That buzzing reached new levels yesterday when Ms Levy’s aunt, Linda Zamsky, spelt out in precise detail just what her niece revealed of her relationship with the Congressman. The picture that emerged – relayed to The Washington Post – was of an intense but secret love affair that Mr Condit was desperate his wife or anyone else should not discover.”He was emphatic,” said Mrs Zamsky “It had to remain secret. If anyone found out about this relationship, it was done, over, kaput.”Ms Levy first told her aunt of the relationship during a Thanksgiving dinner last November “There was a look in her eyes She was excited. She said he’s here in Washington and he goes home occasionally She said he’s in government.” More details emerged.