ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Ghostly thin and graying, convicted spy Robert Hanssen made his final appearance in court Friday and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In the courtroom were many of the odd entrepreneurs who've made a cottage industry of the Hanssen case. Among them were a tour guide to important sites in the Hanssen spy saga, three authors of books about Hanssen and actor Ron Silver, who will play a friend of Hanssen's in an upcoming TV miniseries.

The tour guide is one of Hanssen's former FBI superiors, counterintelligence chief David Major. Major, now retired, gives $75 two-hour bus tours of the sites where Hanssen used to leave documents for his Russian handlers and pick up payments from them.

"I apologize for my behavior. I am shamed by it," Hanssen told Judge Claude Hilton after mentioning that his attorney had told him it would be appropriate for him to apologize before sentencing. "I have opened the door for calumny against my totally innocent wife and children. I have hurt so many deeply."

Prosecutor Randy Bellows, who said Hanssen "broke every promise he ever made to the FBI and his country," called the spy's sentence deal "the bargain of a lifetime."

Hanssen, questioned 75 times by investigators over a span of 200 hours, according to his lawyer, Plato Cacheris, received $600,000 in cash and diamonds from Russian spymasters but has never fully explained the motives behind his 22 years of espionage.

"I don't think even Bob Hanssen knows why he did it," the bulldog-faced Cacheris said. "Money, ego, it was probably a lot of things."

None of Hanssen's six children or his wife, Bonnie, attended his sentencing.

Laurence Schiller, co-author of "Into the Mirror," a book based on the screenplay for the upcoming CBS miniseries, talked up the TV show afterward.

Actor William Hurt will play Hanssen, said Silver, who wore a rumpled suit and sunglasses. Silver appears in the movie, he said, as a composite of several of Hanssen's friends.

Also in court were Elaine Shannon of Time magazine, author of "The Spy Next Door," and David Vise of The Washington Post, author of "The Bureau and the Mole."

Vise and Major, the retired FBI counterintelligence chief, have worked together in the Hanssen tour venture.

At the end of Major's first "SpyDrive" tour in February, commemorating the first anniversary of Hanssen's arrest, Vise offered tourists free signed copies of his book.

Weeks before, in an initiative revealed by The Washington Post, Vise had helped boost "The Bureau and the Mole" on best-seller lists by buying and then returning 17,500 copies. He kept 2,500, the Post reported.

Major, who described himself to reporters as Hanssen's boss's boss, is one of the characters Silver will play in the mini-series.

At the FBI, "Bob was a man in the shadows," Major said Friday. "A high-end thinker."

ON THE NET

Looking for the a "SpyDrive" tour? Go to www.cicentre.com and click on SpyDrive, or e-mail spydrive@cicentre.com.