Breach

FBI trainee Eric M. O'Neill arguably works harder than most of his colleagues to make agent. In February 2001, agent Kate Burroughs recruits O'Neill for a special mission to work as the assistant to twenty-five year veteran agent Robert Hanssen in the newly formed Division of Information Assurance, Hanssen both a Russian and information systems specialist. The true mission is on Hanssen, with O'Neill to report directly to Burroughs on Hanssen's day-to-day activities. Burroughs tells O'Neill nothing more than that Hanssen is a sexual deviant. O'Neill, in accepting the job on the inference that it will help in making agent, is to tell no one, not even his wife, student Juliana O'Neill, formerly of East Germany, of the true nature of his new work. O'Neill finds the work difficult, not only because of Hanssen's gruff and uncompromising nature, which includes railing against FBI bureaucracy, but because O'Neill is uncertain what is looking for in observing Hanssen. Things becomes more complicated when he begins to admire Hanssen and dislike Burroughs the more he is kept in the dark, then learns directly from Burroughs the allegations against Hanssen. Having this knowledge makes O'Neill's life more difficult in needing to balance his on-the-surface work to Hanssen and reporting to Burroughs, whose demands on him are greater and greater as he is in the know about the allegations. Things get even more complicated as Hanssen inserts himself and his devoutly Catholic wife Bonnie Hanssen into the O'Neills' private life, Juliana who knows nothing and who intensely dislikes her husband's boss. O'Neill's work ends up being a game of cat and mouse, it never too clear if Hanssen or he having the upper hand. If Hanssen does, it could place both of the O'Neills' lives in danger.