Into the Mirror
The Life of Master Spy, Robert P. Hanssen
Chapter One
1944-1950
Shortly after the arrest, Vivian Hanssen, the spy's mother, now eighty-eight years old, was interviewed in Venice, Florida, where she had been living for nearly thirty years.
"He has always been very honest and upright," she said. There was a pause that grew uncomfortably long before she added: "Bob's father, however, was strict with him. I was easy. But I suppose most families are like that."
From the date of her son's arrest, February 18, 2001, it is fifty-seven years back to 1944, when Robert was born. The father and mother lived at the time in a modest house that they owned, on a street with tall elms, in Norwood, near the northwestern corner of Chicago, and this family of three -- mother, father, and son -- was still living there in 1950, when Robert turned six. He was tall for his age, a thin, gangling boy, terribly nearsighted and forced to wear thick-rimmed glasses with heavy lenses.
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