Ryan Phillippe and Eric O’Neill. – AP
No sooner did Eric O’Neill, the former FBI agent who brought down traitor Robert Hanssen, open his mouth at a speaking engagement Thursday than he assured the audience that there was nothing to worry about in his personal life, despite what people may have seen in the movies.
Recommended Stories
He acknowledged the “tension” that hovered over his and his wife Juliana’s relationship, as portrayed in “Breach,” the film based on his experience going mano a mano with Hanssen.
“In the end, [the marriage looks] a little iffy,” he acknowledged, but now “we have a baby.”
The beaming O’Neill has a 3-month-old, and he’s looking forward to his first Father’s Day on Sunday.
Now a lawyer with DLA Piper, O’Neill spoke at Il Mulino New York to a luncheon of the Association of Legal Administrators on the topic of “economic espionage.”
“Every country out there is after us,” he told the crowd. As an example, he said that Air France was “training its stewardesses to listen in on passengers in the first-class cabin” and bug them.
But his conversation kept returning to his experience in the FBI and the film it spawned.
He said he couldn’t have been more pleased with the cast and the movie’s outcome. Once he and his wife learned that Ryan Phillippe and Caroline Dhavernas would be playing them, “we went on Netflix and ordered everything they’ve ever done.” He said heand Phillippe have since become friends — especially after the actor agreed to dye his hair brown for the film to match O’Neill’s.
One detail the filmmakers got wrong? Just how small their Eastern Market apartment was. He explained that the crew built the set to scale, but “found they couldn’t move the cameras around,” so they had to rip it up and start over.
He said his one regret was never getting to meet with Hanssen after his arrest. He said he’d like to tell the spy, “I’m going to get this question asked 10 million times, so I want to get it from your lips: Why’d you do it?”
He never did get to ask the question, but he has his own theory. “I think he was in it for the excitement and the sexiness and the James Bond-iness of it,” he said.
