Actress, singer, and style icon Jane Birkin has died, French news outlet Le Parisien reports, stating that she was found dead at her home in Paris. In May, Birkin had to cancel a string of concerts scheduled for June at Paris venues due to health reasons. A cause of death has not yet been announced. Upon the news of Birkin’s death, France’s Culture Ministry referred to her as a “timeless Francophone icon.” Birkin was 76.
In September 2021, Birkin’s family told the Agence France-Presse that Birkin was recovering from “a minor form of stroke.” As a result, she canceled her appearance at the American Film Festival in Deauville, France, where she was set to discuss her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg’s documentary Jane by Charlotte. She had previously been diagnosed with leukemia in 2002.
Birkin was born on December 14, 1946, growing up in London with an actress mother and a high-ranking Royal Navy official as a father. She took on minor acting parts beginning in the mid-1960s before landing bigger roles in the counter-culture films Blowup, Kaleidoscope, and Wonderwall.
Birkin’s acting career led her to Serge Gainsbourg with 1968’s Slogan, and the two sang the film’s theme in addition to starring as its leads. Their 1969 single “Je t’aime moi non plus”—the opener of Jane Birkin et Serge Gainsbourg—caused a stir for its frank eroticism. The pair remained a couple for more than a decade, with Birkin appearing on the cover and singing on Gainsbourg’s landmark 1971 album Histoire de Melody Nelson. Birkin also starred in Je t’aime moi non plus, Gainsbourg’s debut film.
Gainsbourg and Birkin had a daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, in 1971; they never married, but separated in 1980. As a teenager, Birkin had been married to James Bond composer John Barry, and had a daughter named Kate with him in 1967 before their divorce the following year. In 1982, Birkin and her then partner, French filmmaker Jacques Doillon, welcomed their daughter—singer and actress Lou Doillon.
In addition to her acting career, Birkin continued her music pursuits beyond her relationship with Gainsbourg. She maintained her involvement in art throughout her life, including roles in Death on the Nile, Dark Places, and Evil Under the Sun. Her recording career continued well into the 2000s, a run that included more than 15 solo albums, in addition to a 2017 collection of songs by Serge Gainsbourg rewritten with orchestral arrangements. Her final album was 2020’s Oh! Pardon tu dormais….
Milan Kundera, whose dissident writings in communist Czechoslovakia transformed him into an exiled satirist of totalitarianism, has died in Paris at the age of 94, Czech media said Wednesday.
Kundera’s renowned novel, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” opens wrenchingly with Soviet tanks rolling through Prague, the Czech capital that was the author’s home until he moved to France in 1975. Weaving together themes of love and exile, politics and the deeply personal, Kundera’s novel won critical acclaim, earning him a wide readership among Westerners who embraced both his anti-Soviet subversion and the eroticism threaded through many of his works.
“If someone had told me as a boy: One day you will see your nation vanish from the world, I would have considered it nonsense, something I couldn’t possibly imagine. A man knows he is mortal, but he takes it for granted that his nation possesses a kind of eternal life,” he told the author Philip Roth in a New York Times interview in 1980, the year before he became a naturalized French citizen.
Aclose-up of Milan Kundera, in Paris, France on August 2, 1984
Francois LOCHON/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
In 1989, the Velvet Revolution pushed Communists from power and Kundera’s nation was reborn as the Czech Republic, but by then he had made a new life – and a complete identity – in his attic apartment on Paris’ Left Bank.
To say his relationship with the land of his birth was complex would be an understatement. He returned to the Czech Republic rarely and incognito, even after the fall of the Iron Curtain. His final works, written in French, were never translated into Czech. “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” which won him such acclaim and was made into a film in 1988, was not published in the Czech Republic until 2006, 17 years after the Velvet Revolution, although it was available in Czech since 1985 from a compatriot who founded a publishing house in exile in Canada. It topped the best-seller list for weeks and, the following year, Kundera won the State Award for Literature for it.
Kundera’s wife, Vera, was an essential companion to a reclusive man who eschewed technology – his translator, his social secretary, and ultimately his buffer against the outside world. It was she who fostered his friendship with Roth by serving as their linguistic go-between, and – according to a 1985 profile of the couple – it was she who took his calls and handled the inevitable demands on a world-famous author.
The writings of Kundera, whose first novel “The Joke” opens with a young man who is dispatched to the mines after making light of communist slogans, was banned in Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion of Prague in 1968, when he also lost his job as a professor of cinema. He had been writing novels and plays since 1953.
“The Unbearable Lightness of Being” follows a dissident surgeon from Prague to exile in Geneva and back home again. For his refusal to bend to the Communist regime the surgeon, Tomas, is forced to become a window washer, and uses his new profession to arrange sex with hundreds of female clients. Tomas ultimately lives out his final days in the countryside with his wife, Tereza, their lives becoming both more dreamlike and more tangible as the days pass.
A June 27, 1967 file picture shows Czech-born writer Milan Kundera in Prague.
AP Photo/CTK, Jovan Dezort
Jiri Srstka, Kundera’s Czech literary agent at the time the book was finally published in the Czech Republic, said the author himself delayed its release there for fears it would be badly edited.
“Kundera had to read the entire book again, rewrite sections, make additions and edit the entire text. So given his perfectionism, this was a long-term job, but now readers will get the book that Milan Kundera thinks should exist,” Ststka told Radio Praha at the time.
Kundera refused to appear on camera, rejected any annotation when his complete published works were released in 2011, and would not allow any digital copies of his writing. In a June 2012 speech to the French National Library – which was re-read on French radio by a friend – he said he feared for the future of literature.
“It seems to me that time, which continues its march pitilessly, is beginning to endanger books. It’s because of this anguish that, for several years now, I have in all my contracts a clause stipulating that they must be published only in the traditional form of a book, that they be read only on paper and not on a screen,” he said. “People walk in the street, they no longer have contact with those around them, they don’t even see the homes they pass, they have wires hanging from their ears. They gesticulate, they should, they look at no one and no one looks at them. I ask myself, do they even read books anymore? It’s possible, but for how much longer?”
His loyalty to the printed word meant that it was possible for readers to find criticism and biographies of Kundera to download, but not his works themselves.
Despite his fierce protection of his private life – he gave only a handful of interviews and kept his biographical information to a bare minimum – Kundera was forced to revisit his past in 2008, when the Czech Republic’s Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes produced documentation indicating that in 1950, as a 21-year-old student, Kundera told police about someone in his dormitory. The man was ultimately convicted of espionage and sentenced to hard labor for 22 years.
The researcher who released the report, Adam Hradilek, defended it as the product of extensive research on Kundera.
“He has sworn his Czech friends to silence, so not even they are willing to speak to journalists about who Milan Kundera is and was,” Hradilek said at the time.
Kundera said the report was a lie, telling the Czech CTK news agency it amounted to “the assassination of an author.”
In a 1985 profile – which is among the longest and most detailed on record, and examines Kundera’s life in Paris – the author foreshadowed how much even that admission must have pained him.
“For me, indiscretion is a capital sin. Anyone who reveals someone else’s intimate life deserves to be whipped. We live in an age when private life is being destroyed. The police destroy it in Communist countries, journalists threaten it in democratic countries, and little by little the people themselves lose their taste for private life and their sense of it,” he told the writer Olga Carlisle. “Life when one can’t hide from the eyes of others – that is hell.”
Mutulu Shakur—the Black liberation activist and stepfather to 2Pac who was imprisoned for over 35 years—died on Friday of cancer, NBC News reports. Shakur had been living with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that can damage the bones and kidneys. He was released from federal prison on parole last year for health reasons. Shakur was 72 years old.
Mutulu Shakur was born Jeral Wayne Williams on August 8, 1950, in Baltimore, Maryland. He was raised in Jamaica, Queens, by his mother, who was blind. Shakur’s political awakening began as he helped his mother navigate the unjust social service system. At age 16, he joined the New Afrikan Independence Movement, and, in the late 1960s, he worked with the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), a Black Nationalist group that promoted ideals of Black self-determination and socialist change nationwide.
Shakur was also a member of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, which sought to establish a Black state in the South, as well as an independent New Afrikan Republic. He also worked closely with the Black Panther Party.
Shakur was an acupuncturist who practiced holistic medicine and worked to strengthen his community, specifically working with Lincoln Detox, an addiction treatment program founded in 1970 in the South Bronx by the Black Panther Party. Shakur worked there as a political education instructor and later as a counselor. He also treated withdrawal symptoms with acupuncture. In the late 1970s, Shakur became the co-founder and co-director of the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America and the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture. Shakur’s acupuncture work has inspired Standing on the Corner’s Taíno Needle Science Institute.
In 1988, Shakur was convicted of leading a group of revolutionaries through a series of armed robberies in New York and Connecticut in 1981. One of the incidents left two police officers and a guard dead, and Shakur was sentenced to 60 years in prison. He was charged with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, bank robbery, armed bank robbery and bank robbery murder, as well as assisting fellow activist Assata Shakur in her escape from a New Jersey prison in 1979. Mutulu Shakur’s supporters have argued that he was a political prisoner and that authorities wanted to make an example of him due to his activism.
In 2016, 2Pac’s mother and Mutulu Shakur’s ex-wife, Afeni Shakur—who was also a political activist, philanthropist, former Black Panther—died of cardiac arrest.
Roy Herron, a longtime Tennessee state lawmaker and former chairperson of the state Democratic Party, died Sunday from injuries sustained in a jet ski accident. He was 69.
Herron died at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, according to a statement from his family. He had been hospitalized since a July 1 collision with another jet ski on Kentucky Lake, in which he suffered internal bleeding and extensive injuries to his arm and pelvis, according to his family’s Caring Bridge website.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency was investigating the collision, the details of which were not immediately available.
“Roy loved his family with all his might,” Herron’s wife, Rev. Nancy Carol Miller-Herron, said. “He passed doing what he loved most — spending time with our sons and their friends in the Tennessee outdoors where his spirit was always most free.”
Herron, an attorney from Dresden, Tennessee, served a combined 26 years in the state’s House and Senate, where he became floor leader and caucus chair for the Democrats. He never missed a day of session, except for when his youngest son was born, according to his website. He chaired the state Democratic Party from 2013 to 2015.
A graduate of the University of Tennessee at Martin, Herron was also one of the first students to earn joint degrees in divinity and law from Vanderbilt University. An ordained Methodist minister, Herron also authored three books, including one titled, “God and Politics: How Can a Christian Be in Politics?”
Funeral services were planned for Saturday at First United Methodist Church in Martin.
Condolences poured in on Sunday. On Twitter, former Vice President Al Gore called his fellow Tennessee Democrat “a dear friend and one of Tennessee’s most devoted citizens.” Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen called Herron “bright, diligent, and honest. A politician destined for greatness.” Republican Rep. David Kustoff said Herron ”dedicated his life to serving West Tennessee, and the entire Volunteer State.”
Tennessee House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison said on Twitter he was “the kind of guy that you couldn’t help but like.”
Joe Hill, a longtime Tennessee Democratic political operative who worked with Herron on multiple campaigns, said he “brought a zeal for making health care more accessible to disadvantaged Tennesseans” when he was elected to the state House. Hill said he also brought that commitment to “education, victims’ rights, environmental quality and so many other things that affect average people.”
“His legacy of advocating for ‘the least among us’ will represent the gold standard of service for Democrats and Republicans in Tennessee’s future,” Hill told The Associated Press on Sunday.
That nature applied to Herron’s friendships as well, Hill said. He recalled how Herron drove 140 miles (225 kilometers) to be with him and his family in Memphis, after one of Hill’s children was involved in a car crash.
“We left home in such a hurry and didn’t bring extra clothes,” Hill said. “My wife, Susan, was freezing in the cold hospital waiting room, and Roy gave her his shirt so she could be warm. That’s the kind of genuine human being he was.”
In 2010, after briefly running for governor, Herron became the Democratic nominee in Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District, when then-Rep. John Tanner announced his retirement, after more than 20 years in the seat. Herron ultimately lost the general election to Republican Stephen Fincher.
“I was hoping when I retired, that he would win the seat,” Tanner told the AP on Sunday.
After a tornado devastated his hometown of Dresden just before Christmas in 2021, Herron marshaled a fundraising effort, amassing more than $100,000 to aid recovery efforts.
“It’s an overused term — that he was a dedicated public servant — but that really was Roy,” Tanner said. “He worked tirelessly for causes that he took up, and he had a good heart.”
Actor Leandro De Niro Rodriguez, Robert De Niro‘s teenage grandson, has died, his family announced Monday.
Rodriguez’s mother Drena De Niro mourned her son in an Instagram post Monday, calling him “my beautiful sweet angel” who she loved “beyond words or description.”
“You have been my joy my heart and all that was ever pure and real in my life,” she said. “I wish I was with you right now. I wish I was with you . I don’t know how to live without you but I’ll try to go on and spread the love and light that you so made me feel in getting to be your mama . You were so deeply loved and appreciated and I wish that love alone could have saved you.”
Rodriguez’s father, artist Carlos Mare, posted a black image on his Instagrampages, and he reacted to his son’s death in a response to Drena De Niro’s post.
“Words aren’t enough to express the joy he gave us or the loss we now endure with our families and friends,” Mare said. “He is Godschild now. On this full moon his spirit luminates what could not be seen in the dark. You can’t spell LOVE without LEO.”
Robert De Niro said he was “deeply distressed” by the death of “my beloved grandson Leo,” in a statement provided to CBS News.
“We’re greatly appreciative of the condolences from everyone. We ask that we please be given privacy to grieve our loss of Leo,” De Niro said.
Asked about Rodriguez’s death, a New York City Police Department spokesperson told CBS News police went to a building in lower Manhattan on Sunday afternoon in response to a 911 call. An 18-year-old man was found unconscious and unresponsive, and he was pronounced dead by emergency medical services, according to the statement provided to CBS News. Some news outlets have reported Rodriguez recently turned 19.
The city’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner would determine the cause of death, the police spokesperson said.
Rodriguez and his mother appeared in the 2018 movies “A Star Is Born” and “Cabaret Maxime.” He was also credited with an appearance in 2005’s “The Collection.”
Rick Froberg, the singer, guitarist, and visual artist best known for fronting the influential post-hardcore band Drive Like Jehu, died Friday night (June 30). His friend and longtime collaborator John Reis confirmed the news on Instagram. He was 55.
“Rick passed away suddenly last night from natural causes,” Reis wrote. “His art made life better. The only thing he loved more than art and rock n roll was his friends. He will forever be remembered for his creativity, vision and his ability to bring beauty into this world. I love you, Rick. I will miss you for the rest of my life.”
Born in Los Angeles, for years Froberg lived in Encinitas, California, where he played in several bands in the San Diego area. He formed the band Pitchfork with Reis (who would later found Rocket from the Crypt) as a teen; after Pitchfork disbanded in 1990, the two formed Drive Like Jehu with Mike Kennedy on bass and Mark Trombino on drums, taking their name from a Biblical passage that describes a particularly aggressive chariot driver. They released their self-titled debut in 1991, the same year as Rocket from the Crypt’s Paint as a Fragrance.
The band was active for four years—dissolving shortly after the release of their major-label debut Yank Crime in 1994—but had an outsized influence on hardcore’s evolution into emo. While Reis would continue to perform with Rocket from the Crypt, he formed the band Hot Snakes with Froberg in 1999. The band was active until 2005, though they reunited to perform shows in 2011 and 2014. Their song “This Mystic Decade” was featured on the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack in Autumn 2013.
As an illustrator, Froberg created album art, promotional artwork, and merchandise designs for each of his bands, along with Rocket from the Crypt and Reis’ Swami Records label. After moving to Brooklyn, New York in the early aughts, he founded the band Obits in 2006 with former Edsel guitarist Sorab Habibion. Their most recent album Die at the Zoo was released in 2021. Froberg has also played with the Last of the Juanitas and Thingy. Two weeks before his death (June 14) he posted to Instagram that Hot Snakes was working on a new record and that it was “very near done.”
His family praised the former athlete for maintaining “a championship mindset” for nearly a quarter century. His loved ones added that Drozdov “lived every day to the fullest” before using his words as a testament.
“There is always another day,” Drozdov admirably proclaimed in the past, according to his family. “Just because I’m paralyzed and stuck in a wheelchair doesn’t mean my life is over. I’ve learned to live again, and my life is far from over.”
The New Jersey native reportedly had a brief football career with the New York Jets, Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos from 1993 to 1995. However, his claim to fame as a player came from vomiting on the field during a “Monday Night Football” match.
Drozdov was christened “Puke” for his so-called talent of vomiting on command.
Determined to reach his potential as an athlete, however, he joined Extreme Championship Wrestling in 1997. It only took a year for Droz to sign with their more famous WWE competitor, however, whose former CEO Vince McMahon once asked to see Droz puke.
On Oct. 5, 1999, however, Drozdov was severely injured in the ring while wrestling D’Lo Brown — and landed on his head. The accident saw Drozdov break two invaluable vertebrae in his neck, consequently paralyzing him for the rest of his life.
Drozdov later admitted that the condition was often overwhelming despite his courage to accept it, and said in 2014 that he was regularly forced to lay flat for long stretches and take dozens of medications daily for muscle spasms and pain.
“For some reason, even as a kid, I always had a strong premonition that I would die young,” he told Fox Sports. “I don’t know why, but I’ve had that feeling for as long as I can remember. I guess, in a way, when the accident occurred, that a large part of me did die.”
Drozdov notably added that cannabis helped rid him of the constant headaches.
“Drozdov captivated audiences in the late 1990s with his time spent in the Legion of Doom teaming with Animal and his Droz’s World vignettes,” the WWE wrote in their statement. “WWE extends its condolences to Darren Drozdov’s family, friends and fans.”
“Man, I’m so sorry to hear one of our ring brothers has passed away,” the ex-wrestler tweeted Friday. “We wrestled on a lot of cards together. Such an awesome dude. Great personality and great wrestling talent. We always talked about football and fishing.”
Johnson continued, “Sending love, strength, mana and light to his family. RIP brother.”
Man I’m so sorry to hear one of our ring brothers has passed away. Darren Drozdov aka Droz. We wrestled on a lot of cards together. Such an awesome dude. Great personality and great wrestling talent. We always talked about football and fishing. Sending love, strength, mana and…
Very sad to hear former WWE Superstar “Droz” Darren Drozdov has died. He was an amazing man with a great attitude. His own words sum up his relentless positivity in the midst of adversity: ‘There is always another day. Just because I’m paralyzed and stuck in a wheelchair,… pic.twitter.com/HcTBtmb23H
#RIP Darren Drozdov I didn’t know him well, but he was a fun guy to be around who always had a smile on his face and a positive attitude. He will be missed and remembered fondly.
Melle Mel, the hip-hop pioneer who was a member of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five who performed at this year’s Grammys, was arrested in Los Angeles on Monday, Rolling Stone reports and Los Angeles County Sherriff’s Department records confirm. He was charged with felony domestic violence and released after posting a $50,000 bond. A court date is set for July 17.
Jori Jordon, the woman accusing Melle Mel of striking her in the eye unprovoked, detailed her allegations in a public Facebook video viewed by Pitchfork. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Melle Mel said he and Jordon were together on the night of the arrest at his hotel after attending a 2023 BET Awards afterparty.
The rapper claims Jordon refused to leave when asked. He said he attempted to remove her from his room, at which point she allegedly grabbed her eye and asked him to accompany her to the hospital. He said that after he refused, he encouraged her to call the police, and Jordon then told the police he assaulted her.
“It’s very simple,” Melle Mel told Rolling Stone. “She said I punched her in the eye. She also said she had eye surgery a month ago. Had I punched her in the eye, especially with rings on, she would have had a cut eye. It would have been way worse. Something did happen to her eye, but I did not punch her. With me tussling with her and trying to get her away from me to get her out of the room, something happened.”
If you or someone you know have been affected by domestic abuse, we encourage you to reach out:
Former Arkansas quarterback Ryan Mallett, who also played for New England, Houston and Baltimore during five seasons in the NFL, has died in Florida after apparently drowning. He was 35.
Mallett died in an apparent drowning, according to the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office. Mallett was a football coach at White Hall High School in his native Arkansas, and the school district also confirmed his death in a post on its website on Tuesday.
Ryan Mallett #15 of the New England Patriots throws the ball prior to the game against the Miami Dolphins on December 2, 2012 at Sun Life Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
Joel Auerbach / Getty Images
Arkansas athletic director Hunter Yurachek said the university “lost an incredibly special person.”
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, friends and teammates of Ryan Mallett,” Yurachek posted on Twitter.
The Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office said deputies said a group of people in the water near the second sandbar had reportedly been struggling to make it back to shore. A man, who officials later identified as Mallett, went under and lifeguards said he was not breathing when he was pulled out.
He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Mallett played for the University of Michigan for one season before finishing his college career at Arkansas. He passed for 7,493 yards and 62 touchdowns in two seasons with the Razorbacks.
Mallett was selected by New England in the third round of the 2011 NFL draft. He appeared in four games with the Patriots during the 2012 season, completing 1 of 4 passes for 17 yards.
The New England Patriots are deeply saddened to learn of the sudden and unexpected passing of former quarterback Ryan Mallett.
Our thoughts are with the Mallett family, his former teammates and all who are mourning his loss. pic.twitter.com/TUpa7cpXoS
New England coach Bill Belichick said he was “extremely saddened by Ryan’s tragic passing.”
“My thoughts and prayers are with his family and the many people whose lives he touched,” Belichick said in a statement posted by the team on Twitter.
Tom Brady was among several of Mallett’s former Patriots teammates who reacted to the news on social media.
“We lost a great man. Thank you for everything Ryan,” Brady wrote in an Instagram story.
“Tough one to swallow,” former Patriots receiver Julian Edelman tweeted.
“Rest in peace Ryan Mallet!” former New England running back James White wrote. “Gone way too soon, sending my condolences to his family!”
Mallett made six starts in nine games with the Texans and two starts in eight appearances with the Ravens. He completed 190 of his 345 attempts in the NFL for 1,835 yards and nine touchdowns with 10 interceptions.
“Ryan was a part of us,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said in a Twitter post by the team. “I will always remember the love he had for his teammates and for making the most of, and enjoying every football day while here.”
In his first start on Nov. 16, 2014, Mallett directed Houston to a 23-7 victory at Cleveland. His first career TD pass was a 2-yarder to defensive end J.J. Watt.
“Horrible news to read about Ryan Mallett,” Watt posted on Twitter. “Gone way too soon. Rest in Peace brother.”
Former Boston Red Sox player Will Middlebrooks wrote on social media that he had lost his “best friend.”
I lost my best friend today. Someone who has stuck by my side since we were just kids. The most competitive, hard headed, fun loving person I ever met. Nothing prepares you for this. I was lucky to have him for as long as I did. Rest in Love One-Five. We love you. pic.twitter.com/u8GQ86rl2m
“I lost my best friend today,” Middlebrooks wrote. “Someone who has stuck by my side since we were just kids. The most competitive, hard headed, fun loving person I ever met. Nothing prepares you for this. I was lucky to have him for as long as I did. Rest in Love One-Five. We love you.”
The Germany free jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann has died, The Guardian reports, citing the musician’s label, Trost Records. A cause of death was not announced. The musician was 82 years old.
Peter Brötzmann was born in Remscheid, West Germany, in 1941, and, before breaking into the jazz world in the 1960s, he was studying to be a painter. He was seen as an acolyte of Fluxus because he assisted one of the movement’s pioneers, Nam June Paik, at a Galerie Parnass exhibition in 1963. “I took part in some Fluxus activities in Amsterdam the following year,” Brötzmann recalled in a 2019 interview. “At that time my goal still was to be a painter, music was always on the side and very important, but it was not the main thing.” Paik, he said, encouraged him to pursue music.
Brötzmann released his debut album, For Adolphe Sax, in 1967 through his own label, Brö. He recorded the album, titularly dedicated to the inventor of the saxophone, with bassist Peter Kowald and drummer Sven-Åke Johansson. The following year, the Peter Brötzmann Octet released the landmark free jazz album Machine Gun. The record’s title came from a nickname that trumpeter Don Cherry had given Brötzmann. Revisiting Machine Gun for Pitchfork in 2017, Mark Richardson wrote:
Machine Gun is a roaring mass of energy that serves as an auditory Rorschach test: Given its title and its initial release during a violent, tumultuous, and war-wrecked year, the album can easily inspire fear, horror, and images of violence. But its spirit of collective invention, and the sheer delight of musicians pushing their instruments beyond their design, also yields an equally vivid joy. It’s the sound of eight creative people confronting musical barriers and working together to annihilate them.
Members of the octet—namely tenor saxophonist Evan Parker, drummer Han Bennink, and pianist Fred Van Hove—reconvened with Brötzmann the next year for his final record of the 1960s, Nipples. Over 50 years later, Jimmy Fallon featured Nipples in The Tonight Show’s “Do Not Play List” segment, which neither amused nor bothered Brötzmann. “We both know that the world is full of ignorants and stupidos, one more or less, who cares,” he said.
Throughout his career, Brötzmann released over 50 albums as a bandleader. His most recent releases, Catching Ghosts and Naked Nudes, came out this past April and March, respectively. Brötzmann also recorded with Cecil Taylor, Keiji Haino, and more, and he was beloved by former President Bill Clinton, among many others.
John Waddington, a founding guitarist of post-punk greats the Pop Group, has died, the band announced on social media. No cause of death was given. Waddington was 63 years old.
The Pop Group formed in the English city of Bristol in 1977, and released their landmark debut, Y, the same year. Led by Mark Stewart, the band mixed dadaist lyrics and anti-Thatcher agitprop with avant-garde compositions that expanded the prevailing punk sound. Frantic riffs combined with reggae legend Dennis Bovell’s production to channel dub and funk into a style that defined the postpunk era, as well as influencing early 2000s dance-punk revivalists like Liars.
In 1980, the Pop Group released the similarly adventurous—and more brazenly political—For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder? on Rough Trade, before disbanding, leaving Stewart to work with dub producer Adrian Sherwood on 1983’s Learning to Cope With Cowardice. Though Waddington did not join subsequent reunions, he played with Maximum Joy on their 1981 debut, Station MXJY, also produced by Sherwood, and contributed guitar to New Age Steppers and Judy Nylon records the same decade.
In its statement, the Pop Group called Waddington “an influential musician, and an integral member of the group.” The statement continued, “His energy and friendship will be sorely missed, and his unforgettable musicianship will always be remembered.”
Teresa Taylor (aka Teresa Nervosa) has died of lung disease, her former bandmates in Butthole Surfers announced. The drummer and actor known for her role in Richard Linklater’s 1990 Slacker was reportedly placed in hospice last year. Taylor was 60 years old.
Taylor was born in Arlington, Texas, in 1962. In high school, she took up the drums after playing in various marching bands in Austin and Fort Worth alongside fellow Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey. Taylor joined the band in 1983 after letting the band members practice in a warehouse space she was renting at the time. Taylor played with the band through much of the 1980s, performing on Psychic… Powerless… Another Man’s Sac, Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis, Rembrandt Pussyhorse, Locust Abortion Technician, and Hairway to Steven, among others.
After a period of extensive touring, Taylor left Butthole Surfers in 1989 after experiencing light-induced seizures that led to her diagnoses with a brain aneurysm. In 1993, she underwent brain surgery and was able to perform again, joining Coffey’s band Rubble.
In between bands, Taylor made a brief appearance in Richard Linklater’s breakthrough film, Slacker, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 1991. Credited as Pap Smear Pusher, Taylor’s character attempts to sell a jar containing a pap smear she claims belongs to Madonna to two friends on the street. The character is featured on official posters and packaging for the film, which has since become associated with the culture of downtown Austin during the 1980s and 1990s.
“I don’t get recognized. Nobody recognizes my face,” Taylor told Salon in 2006. “But when I’m in public, and I’m going off on something, people will be, ‘Are you the chick from Slacker?’ But it’s always because I’m ranting and raving about something.”
Houston rapper Big Pokey, an integral part of the local scene and an original member of the collective Screwed Up Click, has died, his publicist told local news station Fox 26. He fainted while performing at Pour 09 Bar in Beaumont, Texas just after midnight on Sunday (June 18). Big Pokey was rushed to a hospital, where he later died. His cause of death is pending awaiting autopsy results. The rapper was 45 years old.
“It is with deep sadness that we share the news of the passing of our beloved Milton ‘Big Pokey’ Powell,” reads a statement from the rapper’s publicist on behalf of his family, who asked for privacy. “Big Pokey passed away on June 18, 2023. He was well-loved by his family, his friends, and his loyal fans. In the coming days, we will release information about his celebration of life and how the public can pay their respects. We ask that you respect his family and their privacy during this difficult time. Big Pokey will forever be ‘The Hardest Pit in the Litter.’”
Born Milton Powell in 1977, Big Pokey gravitated towards Houston’s chopped and screwed rap scene while he was a teenager in school, and he was instantly recognizable with his hypnotic baritone voice. DJ Screw invited him and other local rappers to freestyle over many of his early Screw Tapes; Big Pokey would go on to become a founding member of that collective, hailed as the Screwed Up Click. One of his most famous freestyles, a six-minute long appearance on the 1996 epic “June 27th,” has since gained legendary status in the Houston scene and beyond, serving as a classic introduction point to Southern-style rapping. When asked in 2001 interview about how he started rapping as a child and ended up recording with DJ Screw, Big Pokey explained: “We were just playing around. Once I got in with Screw and we got to do it on the table, we were always doing it for the fun of it. I was never doing it for things to blow up.”
After leaving to study at Blinn College, Big Pokey returned in 1999 with his debut full-length album, Hardest Pit in the Litter, which further earned him fame outside of his hometown city. He followed it up with D-Game 2000 the next year. After collaborating with acts like the Wreckshop Wolfpack and Big Moe in 2001, he released his third solo album, Da Sky’s Da Limit, in 2002. Paul Wall invited him to hop on his single “Sittin’ Sidewayz” in 2005, which would mark his first time charting on the Billboard Hot 100. Over the years, Big Pokey would go on to release five other solo albums, the most recent of which was 2021’s Sensei, and release joint records with artists like Chris Ward, E.S.G., J-Dawg, and others. Last year, joined Megan Thee Stallion on her Traumazine song “Southside Royalty Freestyle” alongside a slate of fellow Houston rap legends.
Daniel Ellsberg, the anti-war activist who copied and leaked documents that revealed secret details of U.S. strategy in the Vietnam War that became known as the Pentagon Papers, has died, his family confirmed in a statement to CBS News on Friday. He was 92.
Ellsberg died early Friday morning at his home in Kensington, California, of pancreatic cancer, his family said. He was diagnosed in February and revealed the diagnosis in March.
His family said he wasn’t in pain and was surrounded by loved ones when he died.
“Daniel was a seeker of truth and a patriotic truth-teller, an antiwar activist, a beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, a dear friend to many, and an inspiration to countless more,” his family said. “He will be dearly missed by all of us.”
In a tribute on Twitter, his son Robert Ellsberg recalled how his father once said he would want his gravestone to say, “He became a part of the anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear movement.”
At one point he said, if he were to have a gravestone, that he would say: “He became a part of the anti-Vietnam and anti-nuclear movement.” By chance, my interview about him, for release this Father’s Day weekend, was posted today. https://t.co/NoxgQzSXov
Until the early 1970s, when he revealed that he was the source for the stunning media reports on the 47-volume, 7,000-page Defense Department study of the U.S. role in Indochina, Ellsberg was a well-placed member of the government-military elite.
He was a Harvard graduate and self-defined “cold warrior” who served as a private and government consultant on Vietnam throughout the 1960s, risked his life on the battlefield, received the highest security clearances and came to be trusted by officials in Democratic and Republican administrations.
He was especially valued, he would later note, for his “talent for discretion.”
But like millions of other Americans, in and out of government, he had turned against the yearslong war in Vietnam, the government’s claims that the battle was winnable and that a victory for the North Vietnamese over the U.S.-backed South would lead to the spread of communism throughout the region. Unlike so many other war opponents, he was in a special position to make a difference.
“An entire generation of Vietnam-era insiders had become just as disillusioned as I with a war they saw as hopeless and interminable,” he wrote in his 2002 memoir, “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.” “By 1968, if not earlier, they all wanted, as I did, to see us out of this war.”
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.
Mike Batayeh, a comedian and actor who appeared on several television shows, including the acclaimed hit “Breaking Bad,” has died, his family announced. He was 52.
Batayeh died of a “massive heart attack” at his home June 1, his five sisters said in a statement to CBS News on Friday. His manager told CBS News he died in his sleep.
“He was a kind, sensitive, intelligent, and gifted soul,” Batayeh’s sisters said. “This is such a devastating loss of a huge life and Mike will be missed by us and so many people in all parts of the world.”
“Breaking Bad” fans knew Batayeh as Dennis Markowski, the manager of an industrial laundromat that served as the front for a meth lab on the award-winning show starring Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn and Aaron Paul. Batayeh played the role for three episodes in Season Nos. 4 and 5, according to IMDb.
Batayeh appeared in several other TV shows, including “CSI: Miami,” “JAG” and “Everybody Loves Raymond.” He also appeared in the Adam Sandler movie “You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.”
As a comedian, Batayeh performed in the U.S. as well as the Middle East, and he was in a comedy special for Showtime Arabia, according to his sisters’ statement. He also performed at a comedy festival in Jordan’s capital of Amman at the invitation of the Jordanian royal family, according to the statement.
He was preceded in death by his sister Jeannie, and his parents.
Pat Robertson, a popular televangelist and founder of The Christian Broadcasting Network, diedThursday at age 93.
Robertson was a prominent figure in conservative Christian political and entertainment circles, and for years promoted sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic ideas on his CBN show, “The 700 Club.”
His death was announced by his broadcasting network. No cause was given.
A former Southern Baptist minister and son of a U.S. senator, Robertson founded CBN in 1960 as the first television network dedicated to Christian broadcasting in the U.S. CBN is one of the largest television ministries in the world, according to Robertson’s website, producing programming in 200 countries and 70 different languages.
“The 700 Club,” which CBN is perhaps best known for, started in 1966 and is one of the longest-running religious television shows. Robertson began hosting the show in 1972 and retired from the show in 2021 at the age of 91.
Robertson, shown here in 1994, launched the Christian Coalition, a conservative religious advocacy group, in 1989.
Wally McNamee via Getty Images
Robertson founded several other organizations and corporations, including International Family Entertainment Inc., Regent University, Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corp., American Center for Law and Justice, and The Flying Hospital Inc.
The majority of his endeavors aimed to promote conservative Christian values in U.S. education, media and law. The ACLJ, Robertson’s website boasts, “focuses on pro-family, pro-liberty and pro-life cases nationwide.”
Robertson’s upbringing played a large role in his development as a conservative and a Christian. His father, Absalom Willis Robertson, was a Democratic U.S. senator from Virginia in the years before the liberalizing trend that took place in that party during the middle 20th century.
Robertson also pointed to a lineage of Christian leaders in his family as evidence of his inherited calling as a minister. “Although I may have had flowing in me the blood of statesmen, noblemen, and warriors, I had even stronger in me the blood of priests and men and women of God,” he wrote.
Robertson in his senior year at the McCallie School in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1946.
But Robertson didn’t initially set out to be a religious leader. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from Washington and Lee University and served in the Marine Corps.
He went on to get a law degree from Yale Law School, where he met his wife, Dede Robertson. The two had four children, and Dede died in 2022.
Robertson didn’t pass the New York bar exam, and he later decided to pursue ministry.
“For the first time in my life I felt satisfied, knowing I was in the will of God,” Robertson wrote of his first year at The Biblical Seminary in New York.
Robertson was ordained a Southern Baptist minister in 1960 ― a title he shed in 1987 when he announced his bid for the Republican presidential nomination. A statement from his Virginia campaign headquarters at the time said Robertson was stepping away from ministry to appease concerns that a Robertson administration would inhibit “the free exercise of religion by any of the people.”
Robertson lost to George H.W. Bush after enjoying some initial success with primary victories in Washington, Nevada, Alaska and Hawaii.
Robertson speaks to about 1,000 cheering supporters in Manchester, New Hampshire, on Oct. 2, 1987, after officially entering the Republican presidential race. He said be would support putting prayer back in schools and would never negotiate with terrorists.
He launched the Christian Coalition, a conservative religious advocacy group, in 1989.
CBN was courted by former President Donald Trump and granted access to the White House during his administration. Robertson interviewed Trump during his first year in office, in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and Trump’s popularity among evangelical Christians.
“That’s why I do interviews with you, you have a tremendous audience,” the president told Robertson. “You have people that I love — evangelicals and sometimes you say ‘the evangelical Christians.’”
In turn, Robertson told Trump that “thousands and thousands” of evangelical Christians were praying for him.
But after his 2020 election loss, Robertson became more critical of Trump and said it would be a “mistake” for the former president to run for the White House in 2024.
“And I think it would be well to say, ‘You’ve had your day and it’s time to move on,’” he said on “The 700 Club” in December 2020.
Donald Trump (left), then a GOP presidential candidate, speaks with Robertson at a campaign event at Regents University in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in February 2016.
Joshua Roberts via REUTERS
Through his years as a Christian broadcaster, Robertson proved himself to be anything but welcoming of those with beliefs different than his own.
When it was revealed during Trump’s presidential campaign that the candidate had joked about sexually assaulting women and grabbing them “by the pussy,” Robertson brushed off the comments as “macho talk.”
“What he lacks in self-awareness, he makes up in confidence,” Christian writer Jonathan Merritt said of Robertson in a 2016 article. “But somewhere along the line, Robertson seemed to completely detach from reality, exhibiting bizarre behaviors and making strange statements. … forcing [Christians] to qualify their faith to friends and neighbors: ‘Yes, I’m a Christian. But I’m not a Pat-Robertson-kind-of-Christian.’”
NEW YORK (AP) — Françoise Gilot, a prolific and acclaimed painter who produced art for well more than a half-century but was nonetheless more famous for her turbulent relationship with Pablo Picasso — and for leaving him — died Tuesday in New York City, where she had lived for decades. She was 101.
Gilot’s daughter, Aurelia Engel, told The Associated Press her mother had died at Mount Sinai West hospital after suffering both lung and heart problems. “She was an extremely talented artist, and we will be working on her legacy and the incredible paintings and works she is leaving us with,” Engel said.
The French-born Gilot had long made her frustration clear that despite acclaim for her art, which she produced from her teenage years until five years ago, she would still be best known for her relationship with the older Picasso, whom she met in 1943 at age 21, his junior by four decades.
The union produced two children — Claude and Paloma Picasso. But unlike the other key women in Picasso’s life — wives or paramours — Gilot eventually walked out.
“He never saw it coming,” Engel said of her mother’s departure. “She was there because she loved him and because she really believed in that incredible passion of art which they both shared. (But) she came as a free, though very, very young, but very independent person.”
Françoise Gilot, a prolific and acclaimed painter who produced art for well more than a half-century but was nonetheless more famous for her turbulent relationship with Pablo Picasso — and for leaving him — died Tuesday in New York City.
Gilot herself told The Guardian newspaper in 2016 that “I was not a prisoner” in the relationship.
“I’d been there of my own will, and I left of my own will,” she said, then 94. “That’s what I told him once, before I left. I said: ‘Watch out, because I came when I wanted to, but I will leave when I want.’ He said, ‘Nobody leaves a man like me.’ I said, ‘We’ll see.’ ”
Gilot wrote several books, the most famous of which was “Life with Picasso,” written in 1964 with Carlton Lake. An angry Picasso sought unsuccessfully to ban its publication. “He attacked her in court, and he lost three times,” said Engel, 66, an architect by training who now manages her mother’s archives. But, she said, “after the third loss he called her and said congratulations. He fought it, but at the same time, I think he was proud to have been with a woman who had such guts like he had.”
Born on Nov. 26, 1921, in leafy Neuilly-sur-Seine in suburban Paris, Gilot was an only child. “She knew at the age of five that she wanted to be a painter,” Engel said. In accordance with her parents’ wishes, she studied law, however, while maintaining art as her true passion. She first exhibited her paintings in 1943.
Gilot wrote several books, the most famous of which was “Life with Picasso,” written in 1964 with Carlton Lake. An angry Picasso sought unsuccessfully to ban its publication.
Andrew Toth via Getty Images
That was the year she met Picasso, by chance, when she and a friend visited a restaurant on the Left Bank, amid a gathering that included his then-companion, Dora Maar.
“I was 21 and I felt that painting was already my whole life,” she writes in “Life With Picasso.” When Picasso asked Gilot and her friend what they did, the friend responded that they were painters, to which Picasso responded, Gilot writes: “That’s the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. Girls who look like that can’t be painters.” The two were invited to visit Picasso in his studio, and the relationship soon began.
Not long after leaving Picasso in 1953, Gilot reunited with a former friend, artist Luc Simon, and married him in 1955. They had a daughter — Engel — and divorced in 1962. In 1970, Gilot married Jonas Salk, the American virologist and researcher famed for his work with the polio vaccine, and began living between California and Paris, and later New York. When he died in 1995, Gilot moved full-time to New York and spent her last years on the Upper West Side.
Her art only increased in value over the years. In 2021 her “Paloma à la Guitare” (1965) sold for $1.3 million at a Sotheby’s auction. Her work has shown in many prominent museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Her life with Picasso was illustrated in the 1996 movie “Surviving Picasso,” directed by James Ivory.
Françoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso, pictured in the early 1950s.
Lipnitzki via Getty Images
Simon Shaw, Sotheby’s vice chairman for global fine art, said it had been gratifying to see, in the past decade, Gilot’s paintings “achieve the recognition they truly deserved.”
“To see Françoise as a muse (to Picasso) is to miss the point,” Shaw wrote in an e-mail. “She was established on her course as a painter when first she met Pablo. While her work naturally entered into dialogue with his, Françoise pursued a course fiercely her own — her art, like her character, was filled with color, energy and joy.”
Engel noted that although the relationship with Picasso was clearly a difficult one, it gave her mother a certain freedom from her parents and the constraints of a bourgeois life — and perhaps enabled her to pursue her true dream of being a professional painter, a passion she shared with Picasso above all else.
“They both believed that art was the only thing in life worth doing,” she said. “And she was able to be her true self, even though it was not an easy life with him. But still she was able to be her true self.”
And for Engel, her mother’s key legacy was not only her creativity but her courage, reflected in her art, which was always changing, never staying safe.
“She was not without fear. But she would always confront her fears and jump in the void and take risks, no matter what,” Engel said.
George Winston, the pianist and guitarist known for foundational solo piano recordings at the dawn of New Age, died Sunday (June 4) after a decade-long battle with cancer. Over a career spanning more than 50 years, Winston released 16 solo piano albums—including the Grammy-winning 1994 album Forest—as well as records from a number of Hawaiian slack key guitarists on his record label Dancing Cat. He was 73.
After a successful bone marrow transplant for Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) in 2013, he continued to record and tour while in recovery, but had been forced to postpone many of his 2023 shows due to declining health.
Born in 1949 in Hart, Michigan, Winston was raised in Montana, Mississippi, and Florida. He cites the New Orleans pianists James Booker, Henry Butler, and Professor Longhair as early foundational influences; in the early ‘70s he discovered the stride pianists Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson. Winston released his first solo piano album, Piano Solos, on John Fahey’s Takoma label.
After moving to the Bay area and signing with William Ackerman’s Windham Hill label, Winston had his breakout with three platinum albums: Autumn, Winter Into Spring, and December (which went 3x platinum). He followed up that run with a collaboration with Meryl Streep, accompanying the actress’ reading of children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit on piano.
Later in his career, Winston recorded more tributes than original tunes. He released two albums of music by Peanuts composer Vincent Guaraldi, and in 2002 he shared an album-length tribute to the Doors called Night Divides the Day. Last year’s Night, his final release, featured songs popularized by Leonard Cohen, Allen Toussaint, and Laura Nyro.
While on tour, Winston encouraged his audiences to bring food donations to his concerts, raised funds for the nonprofit Feeding America, and donated proceeds from shows to local food banks. He also donated proceeds from his 2001 album Remembrance to the families of victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Winston was nominated for five Grammys—his only win coming in 1994 for Forest—and sold more than 15 million albums. While many consider his work in the ‘80s and ‘90s to be largely influential in the formation of New Age music, Winston himself resisted the label, referring to his style as “Folk Piano” or “Rural Folk Piano.”
“Any other labels, including anything having to do with anything philosophical, or spiritual, or any beliefs, are also not accurate, as I have no interest in those subjects,” he wrote on his website, in response to whether his music had ever been mislabeled. “I just play the songs the best I can, inspired by the seasons and the topographies and regions, and, occasionally, by sociological elements, and try to improve as a player over time.”
Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who was one of the most damaging spies in American history, was found dead in his prison cell Monday morning, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
Hanssen, 79, was arrested in 2001 and pleaded guilty to selling highly classified material to the Soviet Union and later Russia. He was serving a life sentence at the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.
Robert Hanssen
FBI
Hanssen was found unresponsive and staff immediately initiated life-saving measures, Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Kristie Breshears said in a statement.
“Staff requested emergency medical services and life-saving efforts continued,” Breshears said. “The inmate was subsequently pronounced dead by outside emergency medical personnel.”
Hanssen appears to have died of natural causes, according to two sources briefed on the matter.
Three years after he was hired by the FBI, Hanssen approached the Soviets and began spying in 1979 for the KGB and its successor, the SVR. He stopped a few years later after his wife confronted him.
He resumed spying in 1985, selling thousands of classified documents that compromised human sources and counterintelligence techniques and investigations in exchange for more than $1.4 million in cash, diamonds and foreign bank deposits. Using the alias “Ramon Garcia,” he passed information to the spy agencies using encrypted communications and dead drops, without ever meeting in-person with a Russian handler.
Eric O’Neill, who went undercover for the FBI during its investigation into Hanssen, told CBS News that Hanssen came from a complicated background and had troubles with his father, who wanted him to go into medicine. But Hanssen, who did go to dentistry school, wanted to be in law enforcement.
“He really wanted to catch spies. He was a James Bond fanatic, loved the movies,” O’Neill said. “He could quote them chapter and verse. He wanted to be a spy. He was joining the FBI to do that — not to spy against the U.S., but to go in and hunt spies.”
But he was angry when he didn’t get the exact job he wanted at the FBI, and taking care of his growing family while living in New York and later the Washington, D.C., area was expensive.
“And that led him to decide that he was going to get everything he wanted — become a spy,” O’Neill said.
His job in the FBI gave him unfettered access to classified information on the bureau’s counterintelligence operations. His disclosures included details on U.S. nuclear war preparations and a secret eavesdropping tunnel under the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C. He also betrayed double agents, including Soviet Gen. Dmitri Polyakov, who were later executed.
Hanssen was arrested after making a dead drop in a Virginia park in 2001 after the FBI had been secretly monitoring him for months. His identity was discovered after a Russian intelligence officer handed over a file containing a trash bag with Hanssen’s fingerprints and a tape recording of his voice.
In letters to the KGB, Hanssen expressed concern that he might one day be caught, and he often checked FBI computers for any sign that it was investigating him.
“Eventually I would appreciate an escape plan. (Nothing lasts forever.),” he wrote in 1986, according to the FBI affidavit.
Hanssen never revealed his motivation for spying. But O’Neill, who wrote a book about the investigation to nab Hanssen, has some theories.
“He truly didn’t respect Russia very much, at least not in his conversations with me,” O’Neill said. “But he was able to use them very effectively to solve his other problems. One that he was angry at the FBI for not placing him in the position of authority and gravitas and respect that he believed he deserved. And two, he needed money. He was financially having problems and he needed money and you solve both those problems by becoming a spy.”
“At some point, spying and being the top spy for the Soviet Union, while within the FBI, became the thing that made him belong to something much bigger than himself,” he added. “I think that at some point, even more than the money that became what was so important to him.”
Hanssen’s life in prison was “absolutely horrible,” O’Neill said. He spent 23 hours a day alone in a tiny cell.
