Today we have a story about an historical event from an unusual perspective.

The main character in our version was an exotic dancer who began dancing -- actually, stripping, let's just call it that -- in the 1970s, when she was 18 or 19, after she dropped out of high school. Her name was Priscilla. She started for the money, but she later said she came to enjoy it.

"I loved stripping. I really did," she said. "And I was really good at it."

I don't know how they judged these things exactly, but Priscilla won a contest as "Ohio stripper of the year" in 1980. She left for Massachusetts, where she continued dancing under the stage name, Traci Starr. Then, in 1984, at age 27, she moved to Washington.

She worked at a DC club called Archibald's, probably 1,500 feet from the White House (the club still exists), and then a place called Joanna's, near the Mayflower Hotel and the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. She developed a schtick: She'd walk into the club wearing a business suit and stride directly to the stage.

"I'd take off my glasses, let down my hair, set down the briefcase and go to work," she explained. "I think the guys all saw me as that secretary they worked with."

Around 1990, a customer sent her a $10 bill backstage at Joanna's, with a note: I never dreamed I'd find such grace and beauty in a place like this.

Perhaps Priscilla saw an easy mark, but she later said it was the nicest compliment she'd ever received. She came out to meet the man; he gave her his business card and asked her to lunch.

His job: FBI special agent. She recalled: "He said he already had my phone number and address," she recalled.

Look, I know what you're thinking. I agree. A strip club customer who says he's an FBI agent, and who asks out one of the dancers? There is no way this story can end well.

But for Priscilla, at least for a while, it did go well. Over the next 18 months, the man gave her gift after gift, including:

• $100,000 total in jewelry,
• a silver Mercedes-Benz,
• an American Express credit card, and
• the chance to travel the world.

And, I know what you're also thinking — yet, by all accounts, he never tried to touch her. He told her that he was happily married with a devoted family. He was reserved and proper to the comical extreme. He refused even to accept a friendly hug after giving her an expensive present.

Instead, he told her, his goal was to bring her closer to God. (He tried to get her to go to church. She considered it, but never followed through.)

When she needed dental work, he gave her an envelope with $2,000 cash. He gave her a laptop computer -- but oddly, it was password-protected and he wouldn't tell her the code. When she told him her dream car was a Mercedes-Benz, he surprised her with one.

"I drove 50 miles out of the way on the way home just to drive it," she recalled a few years later. "I spent two weeks peeking out of my apartment windows just to make sure it was there and it was real."

And, he showed up at the strip club one afternoon with an invitation to go to Hong Kong.

Priscilla didn't even have a passport, but he got her one in a single day. Even that trip was governed by a weird sort of propriety: she and the man flew on separate flights, stayed in separate hotel rooms, and met only for meals.

Other times, he wasn't very discreet—taking her on long walks around Washington, to the National Gallery of Art, to some kind of law enforcement social club. (It was on one such lunch date that she realized he carried a gun, when he was required to check it at the door.)

But, he also refused to allow her to take his picture. When he realized she had done so once, he ripped it up.

If I had to guess all these years later, I think Priscilla knew something very strange was up back then, but looked the other way. Maybe she told herself it had to do with his FBI job. Maybe he needed a cover. Maybe he really did care about her; maybe he had mixed motivations.

Maybe she just didn't want to stop the flow of money and gifts.

"I got the courage to ask him what was going on a few times, and he'd always laugh and say, 'I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you,'" she recalled.

Things slowly fell apart. The man became angry about a charge on the credit card. He contacted her less often. Then, she went home to Ohio for a visit. While she'd apparently stayed clean when she was younger, now she was flush with cash, and she blew some of it on drugs.

She started using crack cocaine. She got arrested, and her mother called the FBI agent asking for help.

No, the FBI agent told her mother. She made her bed. Now she has to lie in it.

Her life fell apart completely. She became addicted, and her existence was "just a small step from rock bottom," as reporter Josh White later put it, roughly eight years later:

(That final detail; wow.)

As for the FBI agent, years passed, and I can't tell if Priscilla had any idea what happened to him, or if she ever spoke with him again. But then, in 2001, some other FBI agents tracked her down. They peppered her with questions, and she finally learned part of the story.

• The agent who had connected with her at the strip club and given her so many gifts? His name was Robert Hanssen, and he had been arrested and charged with spying for the Soviet Union and Russia.
• The cash and jewelry? It almost certainly was from the KGB.
• The car and the trip to Hong Kong, and perhaps his entire relationship with her? It was all likely connected somehow to his espionage, which the Department of Justice called "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history."

Hanssen was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences without parole. He died this week, after 22 years, in the federal maximum security prison in Colorado. It's a sad ending, but given that his spying betrayed the United States and led to the deaths of multiple Soviets and Russians who had been providing intelligence to the Americans (Hanssen revealed their identities to Moscow), I don't think many people would argue he didn't deserve his punishment.

News of his death this week led Josh White, who was a Washington Post reporter back then, to reminisce about the reporting effort he put in to get this whole story, which he which he wrote for the Post back in 2001. (In case it's not clear, all the details above come from Josh's 22-year old story. I remember reading it back then, and he shared a link to it on social media.)

I tried for a bit on Tuesday to find out what happened to Priscilla. Based on the details back in 2001 and a few more recent pieces, I wouldn't have been surprised to find out that she was no longer with us. But, there are a few digital breadcrumbs on the Internet from just a few years ago suggesting she might still be alive. I just don't know.

So let's end this with the last words of both Hanssen and Priscilla, at least as far as reported:

• Hanssen, when he was officially sentenced to life in prison: "I apologize for my behavior. I am shamed by it. I have opened the door for calumny against my totally innocent wife and children. I have hurt so many deeply."
• Priscilla, in the 2001 story: "I believed he was everything he wasn't. He has taken away any faith I ever had."

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7 things worth knowing today

• A major dam in southern Ukraine collapsed Tuesday, flooding villages, endangering crops in the country’s breadbasket and threatening drinking water supplies as both sides in the war scrambled to evacuate residents and blamed each other for the destruction. (AP)
• The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday sued Coinbase (COIN.O), accusing the largest U.S. cryptocurrency platform of operating illegally because it failed to register as an exchange. The lawsuit is the SEC's second in two days against a major crypto exchange, following its case against Binance. (Reuters)
• A UPS strike is looming -- in a world grown reliant on everything being delivered everywhere all the time. Contentious labor negotiations now underway at UPS could become vastly more disruptive than the last time it happened in 1997, when a scrappy upstart called Amazon.com became a public company. (AP)
• An eerie, orange haze illuminated the skies across the East on Tuesday morning. As wildfire smoke from Canada spreads across the East, air quality alerts have been issued for a large swath of the Northeast. I can vouch for this; the sky looks strange and the air smells like smoke around my house near NYC. (Accuweather)
• The PGA Tour has agreed to merge with Saudi-backed rival LIV Golf in a deal that would see the competitors squash pending litigation and move forward as a larger golf enterprise. LIV Golf is backed by the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, an entity controlled by the Saudi crown prince and has been embroiled in antitrust lawsuits with the PGA Tour in the last year. The deal announced Tuesday would end all pending litigation. (CNBC)
• Speaking of golf ... People who were whisked away in golf carts to try out Apple's $3,500 headset are calling it 'magic' that is 'still searching for a purpose.' Related: I wore the Apple Vision Pro. It’s the best headset demo ever. (Insider, The Verge)
• 12 tips for choosing the perfect beach house rental. (The Points Guy)

Thanks for reading. See you bright and early tomorrow!