FBI double agent gets life

FBI agent Robert Hanssen - who became a Russian spy - has been jailed for life without parole.

The sentencing closes a chapter in one of America's most-damaging espionage scandals.

The 58-year-old, before Judge Claude Hilton in Alexandria, a Washington suburb, thanked his family, friends and co-workers who have expressed support.

Chastened FBI officials already have broadened the use of lie detectors and financial checks into the backgrounds of agents to try to prevent a recurrence of Hanssen's crime.

Judge Hilton told Hanssen he believed that life in prison was appropriate under sentencing guidelines and under a plea agreement that Hanssen reached with prosecutors.

The sentence will not allow parole or early release.

Authorities said that, over a period of two decades, Moscow paid Hanssen with two Rolex watches and €640,000 in cash and diamonds, and promised more had been deposited in a bank there on his family's behalf.

The FBI also recovered cash from the Russians when it arrested Hanssen in February 2001.

Hanssen's spying peaked at the height of the Cold War and officials said his activities were at least in part responsible for the deaths of at least three spies overseas.

They included a Russian Army general code-named Top Hat who was one of America's best intelligence sources and who was executed in 1986.