he needs to go mano a mano with donald trump and i can t see how he will get to do that. i don t think trump wants to share a debate stage with him. that would be pretty toxic to watch. appreciate it all. programming note on this coming monday the 12th i ll be hosting a town hall with presidential candidate chris christie. it will air live at 8:00 p.m. monday 8:00 p.m. so i ll be able to ask him that question, will he commit to supporting the nominee because that is the rule now for anybody to participate in this republican debate. coming up tonight, a dam collapses in ukraine and there s major flooding threatening an area that is seeing increased fighting. two live reports on the disaster prompting evacuation, also tonight a retired fbi agent, eric o neal and his incredible story of exposing robert hanssen as a spy, his thoughts now on hanssen s passing in the supermax prison. shelves smart enough to see, sense, react, reststock.
his skill set was as an analyst and was adept at analyzing large amounts of data and distilling it down to that one actionable intelligence point that would allow someone like me to do what i did. he was angered at the fbi because he warranted to be james bond and they made him a librarian in his mind. you have a disgrunted employee with a large rigo who had financial problems which is a triggering event and those are all the ingredients you need for a trusted insider. he was not recruited by the russians. he volunteered his services and maintained a code name, never let the russians know who i was for his 22 years of espionage. and so that was how he protected himself and lasted that long. how did he get brought down? a kgb source was identified by a joint fbi/cia task force, a former kgb intelligence officer, the kgb was disbanded when the soviet union collapsed and he had been a guy in business and
john, good to see you. we go way back. it was a difficult investigation as you said, i was 25. i was an fbi ghost so catching spies following them, surveilling them, that s what i was used to but working fac face-to-face in fbi headquarters in the most unique case they had ever run in its history up till then was certainly daunting. hanssen was a very difficult person. he was a narcissist, had a huge ego, a very quick temper and he was quick to call me a moron when he didn t like me. i had to do the overt job of building cybersecurity at the same time i did the covert job of investigating hanssen and trying to find the information that was going to give us a slam dunk case to put him away forever. was he ever suspicious of you. he had to be suspicious. so hanssen had been sent to the state department to a liaison job and was supposed to end out his career and was supposed to retire in april of 2001. we only learned about him in
december of 2000. so he s brought back to fbi headquarters, promoted to executive service, given his dream job and given one person to work with him to build cybersecurity for the fbi and that happened to be me so he had to be suspicious that this was an investigation. but until he was able to confirm those suspicions, he had to assume that it was real so my number one job was don t screw up. john, just put in perspective, how damaging was hanssen to america? i think robert hanssen was singular in the type of damage, you know, you could look at edward snow den who released entire nas program but hanssen gave names of spies that the fbi and the cia had spent years trying to recruit who were operating both stateside and in russia. these are people who were called back home or captured in russia who were likely tortured, at
senior federal prosecutor in your city. as the post puts it, quote, the addition of raskin to the team handling the mar-a-lago probe is another direction of the seriousness with which the justice department officials view the case and underscores the high stakes for both trump and those task with investigating him. joining me now, ryan barber, justice correspondent for the author of the fbi way, inside the bureau s code of excellence. frank figliuzzi, your thoughts on the addition of raskin to the investigation tells you? this is significant. let s be clear here, david raskin is one of the most experienced national security prosecutors within the oj umbrella. and why is it significant? he is not assigned to washington d.c.. he s not assigned to the u.s. attorney s office in washington. he s not assigned to the justice department headquarters in washington. he s from kansas city, missouri.