Share

I’m the psychiatrist who met with turncoat FBI agent Robert Hanssen for a whole year after he went to jail in 2001, sentenced to life for spying for the Russians. For years I’ve specialized in the psychology of so-called insider spies, alongside my day job as a psychiatrist with a security clearance to treat intelligence community personnel. And that’s how I came to be interviewed, along with many others who knew Hanssen, for “A Spy in the FBI,” a two-hour special on the Reelz cable channel. The show dropped on February 14, Valentine’s Day, and while I watched the finished product, it was not without conflict for me.

Doing so violated my personal rule of not reading or watching anything about the story of Robert Hanssen except what I already knew myself from my meetings with him. I took the position of wanting to preserve as pristine my own impressions and memories of the time I spent interviewing Hanssen at the Alexandria, Va. Detention Center—altogether nearly 100 hours over a full y…