Russian spy ring inside the U.S. |
The CIA has
sleeper agents who infiltrate into unfriendly countries and 'go to sleep',
sometimes for years before being activated- he/she does not communicate with
his or her sponsor or with existing agents, or with U.S. embassies or staff.
They remain invisible.
Sleeper agents have always been around.
Some countries are more successful than others in forming them in different foreign environments.
Sometimes they are teams, but they may be individuals who go about living their
life, blending in under deep cover, and who do nothing until an event triggers
their activation.
Just after WWII ended, the CIA wanted to spy on the American people
because the Russian KGB spy agency managed to plant hundreds of female ‘sleepers’
inside the U.S. They targeted and married U.S. military officers at the end of
WWII. I guess you could say these female Russian spies went to ‘sleep’ with
both their husbands and with the KGB. They were “activated” periodically as
needed.
I enjoyed the Cold War spy drama
“The Americans”, which is based on a true story. In 2010, a cell of Russian sleeper agents who had been hiding
in plain sight inside the U.S. for decades was busted by the FBI. They were
later sent back to Russia in a spy swap. They were able to stay under the radar
of U.S. intelligence (for a long while) by varying their daily pattern and staying
within their cover. They always assumed they were under surveillance, and
frequented different places and varied the routes they took to avoid becoming
predictable. They got coffee from a different café, left the house earlier (or
later), and drove different routes to work.
THE SHADOW WAR
spy thriller in Amazon Kindle Vella portrays how a former Russian KGB spymaster
set up a network of sleeper cells throughout America. Here’s three Snippets:
Snippet 1: “OK, thanks Mark.” CIA operative Corey
Pearson returned to his seat to study the intel report. Bocharov revealed that
Andrei Vavilova, while operating in East Berlin, formed sleeper cells
throughout West Berlin and inside the U.S. He worked without diplomatic cover
and shied away from visiting the Russian embassy.
What was most bothersome in Bocharov’s
debriefing was when he swore that the Invisible Killer created operational
sleeper cells inside the U.S. while stationed in East Germany… over forty years
ago.
Snippet 2: Mark yelled back from
the cockpit. “Houston’s approaching. Landing in five minutes.”
Corey buckled his seatbelt and sipped his
Vesper martini. The sleeper cells are no doubt still in operation and the
Invisible Killer is lurking somewhere within America’s heartland… by the order
of POTUS, I must hunt him down and kill him.
Snippet 3: “I already had a nice
sleeper cell network inherited from Corey. He recruited hotel desk clerks
throughout Havana, paying them to monitor the hotel registers for anyone on the
CIA’s ‘hit list’. I just expanded it a bit. Whenever a Russian spook or
terrorist checks into a room, I’m notified.”
End of Snippets
In 2010, there were big busts of Russian
sleeper cells in both the U.S. and in Germany. At the time, I happened to be
watching the spy thriller SALT, starring Angelina Jolie. In the movie, a
Russian defector named Oleg Vasilyevich Orlov walked into Jolie’s office at the
CIA. During her interrogation of him, he revealed that Russia has permeated the
U.S. and claimed that a "Day X" was approaching, where these highly
trained Russian sleeper agents known as "KAs", which were lurking
undercover inside the U.S., would execute a plan to destroy the U.S. government.
I fantasized whether “KAs” were truly set
up in Germany, since at the time of the release of the movie SALT, a
married couple was arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia, the first
such case on German soil since the cold war. They were a sleeper cell that worked
undercover for the Russian secret service for more than 20 years before a commando
unit from the German Federal Office of Criminal Investigation (BKA) raided
their home, finding plenty of false documentation.
The couple was suspected to have begun
spying for the KGB since 1988, before the Berlin Wall fell. Since reunification
they maintained their sleeper cell status and answered to the SVR, Russia's
foreign intelligence service, a successor spy agency to the KGB.
Their fake identity papers claimed that
one of them was born in Argentina and the other in Peru, but both had Austrian
passports. Inquiries with the Peruvian and Argentinian authorities revealed
that the couple had lied about their birthplaces, and that although the husband
claimed to speak English, Spanish, and German, he spoke with a Russian accent.
The wife had been listening to coded
messages on a shortwave radio linked up to a computer when the German commandos
stormed in and arrested them.
I finished watching the movie SALT
with Angelina Jolie, and I didn’t take the plot with a grain of salt. It seemed
so tangible.
Fast forward to November of 2022, when a former British MI6 agent announced that Britain was infiltrated by a large network of Russian sleeper agents. I’m beginning to think they are everywhere.
Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and enjoys writing about the U.S. Intelligence Community. He authors the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster series. Check out his latest spy thrillers: MISSION OF VENGEANCE.
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