Ex-stripper claims infamous FBI agent who just found dead in prison was ‘grooming’ her to spy for Russians

A former stripper says the now-dead FBI traitor, Robert Hanssen, attempted to “groom” her to be a Russian spy.

Hanssen, a former FBI agent who was convicted of selling secrets to Moscow, was 20 years into his 15 consecutive life sentences when he was found dead in his ADX supermax prison cell in Florence, Colorado, on Monday.

According to the Daily Mail, Priscilla Galey, now 65, shared an 18-month “friendship” with Hanssen, who reportedly showered the stripper in cash and pricey gifts — including a Mercedes-Benz sedan — but refused to sleep with her.

“I’m certain he was grooming me to help spy for the Russians,” Galey told DailyMail.com.

Hanssen’s two-decade run as a traitor earned him $1.4 million in cash, diamonds, and foreign bank deposits. The 79-year-old former counterintelligence agent was finally arrested in 2001 following his delivery of a “dead drop” in a park near his Vienna, Virginia, home.

His egregious escapades became the subject of a 2007 movie titled, “Breach,” starring Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney, and Chris Cooper as Hanssen.

(Video: YouTube)

A married man, Hanssen was a reportedly devout churchgoer who saw Galey strip at a D.C. club in the summer of 1990.

For the next 18 months, a captivated Hanssen treated Galey to gourmet restaurants, gifts totaling $100,000, and a luxury Hong Kong excursion. He even arranged a secret trip for Galey to Quantico.

Galey now believes Hanssen was attracted to her because she “had the right props” and was “testing” her.

“I always told Robert I was a chameleon and could blend in anywhere,” she told DailyMail.com. “While we were together I pretty much proved that.”

“To him, I had the right props,” she recalled. “Those days, I looked good, I could carry myself, I could deal with situations.”

These days, however, Galey has struggled, both with destitution and a battle with crack cocaine. She maintains she didn’t know about Hanssen’s double life when they were together.

“He gave me no clue that he was a spy.. nothing,” she said. “But looking back I now believe he wanted to recruit me in his spying activities, maybe to assist him with drops or pick-ups.”

“Everything that we did together now feels like he was testing me in some way,” Galey said. “It was all part of some bigger plan.

“We had a purely platonic relationship, so what was in it for him?” she reasoned. “It had to be that he was grooming me for spying. What else?”

In hindsight, there were clues to Hanssen’s true profession.

“He would ask me crazy things, like do you think it would be exciting to be a spy?” Galey said. “I asked him in Hong Kong over dinner one night, haven’t you ever done anything wrong? Incredibly, he said, I changed some test scores once. That’s all he told me.”

“There was no real indication of his secret life,” she stressed. “If I had known, I would have got away from him – and fast.”

“However, he was a big part of my life. He was a lot of things. He made nearly two years very, very intensely special,” Galey said. “I mean, who does stuff like that for you?”

Hanssen’s treachery was described in a government report as “possibly the worst intelligence disaster in US history.”

Working against the United States with the Soviet Union starting in 1979 and, later, with the Russian Federation, the spy provided Moscow with more than 6,000 classified documents, including those detailing America’s nuclear secrets.

Nine double agents in Moscow were burned by Hanssen, two of which were executed, and dozens of intelligence programs — including one that involved a secret Washington tunnel under the Russian Embassy — were compromised.

“He did deserve to go to prison for what he did,” Galey, who had no communication with Hanssen while he was incarcerated, “but I believe it’s right that he was not given the death penalty.”

Today, Galey says she is free of drugs.

She became emotional when discussing Hanssen’s death, the details of which have not yet been released.

“Do people like that have funerals?” she asked. “I don’t know. But if there was one, I’d love to go. I know that’s unlikely.”

Melissa Fine

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