12/29/2023 0 Comments Breach movie chris cooper![]() “Hanssen was so well trained in undercover work like this, that if I was using the typical undercover tool bag, he might have sniffed that out,” O’Neill says. In the end, his inexperience turned out to be an advantage. He wasn’t trained for this kind of up-close-and-personal work, and he knew it. In the film, Laura Linney plays special agent Kate Burroughs, a boss of FBI operative Eric O’Neill (Ryan Phillippe).Īs an FBI operative, O’Neill was used to undercover street operations, in which he followed suspects from an unmarked car, sticking to the shadows. Washington, D.C., was the backdrop for the movie Breach, but GW Law School-where O’Neill was pursuing his JD at night-isn’t mentioned. Instead, he learned that he was being tapped to take on one of the most highly classified investigations in the country. ![]() It was a cold January Sunday when O’Neill’s boss made an unusual visit to his home, waking him up in the early hours only to insist they talk in his car. Freeh as being “the most traitorous actions imaginable.”įor two months, O’Neill served as Hanssen’s assistant, waiting and watching for the next drop. The damage he did to the organization and country was described by then-FBI Director Louis J. Overall, Hanssen gave the Russians more than 6,000 pages of classified documents and revealed the identities of two double agents working for the United States, who were later executed in Moscow. Agents discovered that he had sold highly sensitive information to the Soviet and Russian governments since 1985, wrapping up documents in trash bags before hiding them in designated spots around Foxstone Park in Vienna, Va. He had worked at the bureau for 25 years. secrets.Ĭomputer whiz Hanssen, a devout Catholic and family man with a wife and six children, pleaded guilty to espionage and conspiracy in 2001. The film, which O’Neill helped pitch to Hollywood before taking on a position as a special consultant, recounts his role in helping to snag Hanssen in the act of sharing U.S. Now 34, O’Neill is reliving his undercover days with the February movie release of Breach, a thriller starring Ryan Phillippe as O’Neill and Chris Cooper as Hanssen. The high-pressure environment worked for O’Neill, who-after five years at the FBI as an undercover operative-went into the more stable world of government contract law as an attorney for DLA Piper in Washington, D.C. In later semesters, I found out my recall of what the professor said in any given lecture was pretty good.” ![]() “That eventually helped me out in law school. I tried at one point to keep notes in the office, but I realized it was too dangerous, so I had to just start memorizing everything,” says O’Neill, JD ’03. “I think more often than not, I’d ignore the professor and just copy down everything did for the day while my recollection was still fresh. The photographic memory that allowed O’Neill to graduate with honors also helped the then-26-year-old take down Robert Hanssen, a notorious double agent who had been selling the country’s most sensitive secrets to Russia for 15 years.ĭuring two cold winter months in early 2001, the classroom became a cozy escape where O’Neill could meticulously transcribe Hanssen’s actions and words, away from the windowless gray office he shared with the suspected spy. The movie, which O’Neill pitched to Hollywood producers, was released in February.Īs others took copious notes on jargon-laden lectures, O’Neill, a night student at GW Law School, was logging the daily actions of the most damaging spy in U.S. When he had a break from his day job as an FBI undercover operative, Eric O’Neill went to class.Įric O’Neill was the inspiration behind the movie Breach, starring Ryan Phillippe as FBI undercover operative O’Neill and Chris Cooper as spy Robert Hanssen. ![]() history.Īlumnus Eric O’Neill worked undercover to snag a super spy and inspired the movie Breach. While attending night classes at GW Law School, Eric O’Neill, JD ’03, worked a grueling FBI undercover job and helped take down Robert Hanssen, the most damaging spy in U.S. ![]()
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