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argosciv ago

Hanssen | Opus Dei | Ruth Kelly

Robert Hanssen

Emphasis in the following, added by myself.

Early Life

Hanssen was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a family who lived in the Norwood Park community.[7] His father Howard, a Chicago police officer, was emotionally abusive to Hanssen during his childhood.[8][9] He 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.

Hanssen applied for a cryptographer position in the National Security Agency, but was rebuffed due to budget setbacks. He enrolled in dental school at Northwestern University[10] but switched his focus to business after three years.[11] Hanssen received an MBA in accounting and information systems in 1971 and took a job with an accounting firm. He quit after one year and joined the Chicago Police Department as an internal affairs investigator, specializing in forensic accounting. In January 1976, he left the police department to join the Federal Bureau of Investigation.[8]

Hanssen met Bernadette "Bonnie" Wauck, a staunch Roman Catholic, while attending dental school at Northwestern. The couple married in 1968, and Hanssen converted from Lutheranism to his wife's Catholicism, becoming a fervent believer and being extensively involved in the conservative Catholic organization Opus Dei.[12]


Personal life

According to USA Today, those who knew the Hanssens described them as a close family. They attended Mass weekly and were very active in Opus Dei. Hanssen's three sons attended The Heights School in Potomac, Maryland, an all-boys preparatory school.[58] His daughters attended Oakcrest School for Girls in Vienna, Virginia, an independent Roman Catholic school. Both schools are associated with Opus Dei. Hanssen's wife Bonnie still teaches theology at Oakcrest.[59]

A priest at Oakcrest said that Hanssen had regularly attended a 6:30 a.m. daily mass for more than a decade.[60] Opus Dei member Father C. John McCloskey III said he also occasionally attended the daily noontime mass at the Catholic Information Center in downtown Washington. After going to prison, Hanssen claimed he periodically admitted his espionage to priests in confession. He urged fellow Catholics in the Bureau to attend mass more often and denounced the Russians, even though he was spying for them, as "godless".[61]

However, at Hanssen's suggestion, and without the knowledge of his wife, a friend named Jack Horschauer, a retired Army officer, would sometimes watch the Hanssens having sex through a bedroom window. Hanssen then began to secretly videotape his sexual encounters and shared the videotapes with Horschauer. Later, he hid a video camera in the bedroom that was connected via closed-circuit television line so that his friend could observe the Hanssens from his guest bedroom.[62] He also explicitly described the sexual details of his marriage on Internet chat rooms, giving information sufficient for those who knew them to recognize the couple.[63]

Hanssen frequently visited D.C. strip clubs, and spent a great deal of time with a Washington stripper named Priscilla Sue Galey. She went with Hanssen on a trip to Hong Kong, and on a visit to the FBI training facility in Quantico, Virginia.[64] He gave her money, jewels, and a used Mercedes-Benz, but cut off contact with her before his arrest, when she fell into drug abuse and prostitution. Galey claims that although she offered to sleep with him, Hanssen declined, saying that he was trying to convert her to Catholicism.[65]

In the media

The story is mentioned in Ronald Kessler's book The Secrets of the FBI, both in Chapter 15, "Catching Hanssen," and Chapter 16, "Breach."[citation needed]

Eric O'Neill's role in the capture of Robert Hanssen was dramatized in the 2007 film Breach, in which Chris Cooper played the role of Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe played O'Neill.[66]

The 2007 documentary Superspy: The Man Who Betrayed the West describes the hunt to trap Robert Hanssen. Hanssen also was the subject of a 2002 made-for-television movie, Master Spy: The Robert Hanssen Story, with the teleplay by Norman Mailer and starring William Hurt as Hanssen. Robert Hanssen's jailers allowed him to watch this movie but Hanssen was so angered by the film that he turned it off.[67]

Hanssen is mentioned in chapter 5 of Dan Brown's book The Da Vinci Code as the most noted Opus Dei member to non-members. Because of his sexual deviancy and espionage conviction, the organization's reputation was badly hurt.[68]

Hanssen's story is reviewed on season 2, episode 4 of Mysteries at the Museum. Actual footage of his arrest by FBI agents is included. His story is the last segment of four included in this episode.

The American Court TV (now TruTV) television series Mugshots released an episode on the Robert Hanssen case titled Robert Hanssen - Hanssen and the KGB'.[69]


Opus Dei

Controversies about Opus Dei

Allegations of aggressive recruiting

The Jesuit priest and writer James Martin wrote that Opus Dei puts great emphasis on recruiting, and pointed to Escriva's writings which say "You must kill yourselves for proselytism."[11] David Clark, a consultant who specialises in helping people leave cults, claimed in 2006 that Opus Dei used a cult-like recruitment technique called "love bombing", in which potential members are showered with flattery and admiration by members of the organization in order to entice them into joining.

Opus Dei and politics

[John L. Allen, Jr.] states: "two of the most visible Opus Dei politicians in the world—(Paola) Binetti (a senator-elect) in Italy, and Ruth Kelly, the Minister of Education in England—are now women who belong to center-left parties," [1] "still there is a sociological reality that the kind of people attracted to Opus Dei tend to be conservative, theologically and politically."

Ruth Kelly: Secretary of State for Education and Skills: Sex offenders in schools controversy

On 9 January 2006, it came to light that Kelly’s department had granted permission for a man, Paul Reeve, who had been cautioned by police for viewing child pornography images and who was on a sex offenders register, to be employed at a school in Norwich on the basis that he had not been convicted of an offence. He, and an unknown number of others on the sex offenders register, were not on the DfES prohibited list, "List 99".[25] On 13 January, Kim Howells, a Minister of State at the DfES, admitted that it was he who had actually made the decision, in accordance with advice given to him by civil servants that the "person did not represent an ongoing threat to children but that he should be given a grave warning". In response to the critical media coverage surrounding the issue, Downing Street issued a statement confirming their confidence in Kelly and denying rumours that she was to be replaced.[26]

There was further controversy when it transpired that another teacher, William Gibson, 59, who had been cleared to work at Portchester School in Bournemouth despite the fact that he had been convicted in 1980 for indecent assault on a 15-year-old girl and had been previously removed from three schools. A letter from the Department for Education that suggested the Secretary of State had considered his case and found that although his past actions had been unwise and unacceptable, he had undertaken teaching work to good effect since.[27]