‘Breach’ tells story about infamous FBI operative
When they sat down to write “Breach,” Adam Mazer and William Rotko thought their research might help them understand the main motive of former FBI operative Robert Hanssen, who sold secrets to Russia and became one of the most destructive spies in history. They were wrong.
“I can give you a lot of reasons why he might have done it,” Rotko said during a telephone interview from his Los Angeles office.
“He was filled with self-loathing, suffered from sexual repression and had a grudge due to a lack of advancement in the FBI.
“Hanssen felt he wasn’t respected (professionally). I think it was a mixture of ingredients, not just one thing. Part of it may have been his upbringing, because he had a very tough father who constantly tested him.
“But many people have tough fathers, and they don’t turn out to be traitors.”
In “Breach,” which opens Feb. 16, Oscar-winner Chris Cooper (“Adaptation”) plays Hanssen and Ryan Phillippe (“Crash”) co-stars as Eric O’Neill, the young agent-in-training picked by the FBI to help draw Hanssen from his deep cover. (Hanssen was found guilty of treason against America in February 2001 and is now serving a life-sentence in a maximum-security federal penitentiary.)
According to Mazer, Hanssen may have begun spying for the Russians, who paid him about $1.4 million in cash and diamonds over 22 years, just to maintain a certain lifestyle.
“On a smaller level, Hanssen needed the money to keep up with the Joneses,” Mazer said. “He had six children and wanted to put them in good schools.
“I think the bigger issue that drove him, though, was his ego. He felt disrespected at the FBI and felt no one was hearing him. At the end of the day, he did fly under the radar because he wasn’t ‘one of the boys’ over there (at FBI headquarters).”
He also acted out in some strange ways, such as having a fixation on actress Catherine Zeta Jones and secretly filming himself having sex with his devoutly religious wife (played by Kathleen Quinlan of “Apollo 13”) and then sending the tapes overseas to a friend in Germany.
“Hanssen got some sort of sick, perverted pleasure (out of making the tapes and having another man watch them),” Rotko said.
“He was even posting some of the images on the Internet. He had sexual issues that we weren’t able to put in the film.
“He was devoted to the church, but at the same time liked strip clubs very much and frequented them.”
Although the screenwriters felt some sympathy for Hanssen due to the man’s personal demons, Mazer and Rotko expressed nothing but disdain for the way he sold classified information to enemy governments.
Those secrets lead to the deaths of agents and cost the government billions, including the expense generated by a team of more than 500 FBI agents assigned to find the mole in the bureau.
And what did the FBI learn from Hanssen’s spying?
“More than they’d like to admit,” Rotko said. “They probably learned that Hanssen (whose ideas on security were ignored) was right about some of the things he said.
“Hanssen taught us that the government agencies have to communicate better with each other on how to defend this country.
“The CIA was not helping the FBI look for a mole in the bureau. I think that 9/11 was a terrible wake up call telling us we must all work together,” he added.