The Worst Intelligence Disaster in FBI History

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In 1986, a chilling revelation sent shockwaves through the FBI's Soviet counterintelligence section in Washington. Two prized Soviet informants, Valery Martynov and Sergei Motorin, had been compromised. Once exposed, the men were lured back to Moscow, and brutally executed - a bullet in the head for each, the KGB's grim signature for traitors.

The loss of the two agents referred to affectionately within the FBI as ‘M&M’ marked an abrupt end to what had become routine covert meetings and intelligence exchanges.

Parallel to this, the CIA, ensconced across the Potomac in Langley, grappled with its own nightmare. Over the years, dozens of their operatives in the Soviet Union had suddenly gone dark, were executed or imprisoned.

The FBI scrambled to form an elite investigative team to unravel the mystery. Yet, as the years wore on and the puzzle remained unsolved, the unsettling possibility of the traitor being one of their own lingered in the air like a bad smell.

Determined to root out the mole, experienced analysts within the FBI’s Soviet unit delved into archives of debriefings and reports, searching for a pattern, a clue, anything that might reveal a link to the betrayer. They honed in on an innocent agent, meanwhile the culprit, who was outwardly a devout Catholic, a loving husband, father of 6, and a trusted FBI agent, harboured a perilous secret.

Robert Philip Hanssen’s decades-long path of treachery is considered the worst intelligence disaster in FBI history.