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waiting to be activated for such a job, sleeper agents were instructed to build every detail of their cover identity so as to perfectly blend in with Americans.

To build this American network of sleeper agents took the better part of a decade. In 2005, this SVR’s “American” section in Moscow had begun methodically installing “sleeper agents” in the US. Almost all of them were all Russian citizens who had assumed new identities to better blend into their communities.

The CIA learned of this sleeper program through Poteyev soon after it began. The issue was how to exploit this knowledge. When I was writing my book on international deception, Angleton had pointed out to me that “the business of intelligence services is understanding precisely the relationship of their opposition to them.” His view, though his opponents inside the CIA would call it with some justification an obsession, was that an intelligence service had focus on the moves of its rivals. To accomplish this “business” in the first decade of the 21st century, the CIA had to establish why its new opposition, the SVR, was laying the foundation for an espionage operation. What were its priorities in the resumption of the intelligence war? Its inside man, Poteyev, in the SVR, provided it with a tremendous advantage in this relationship. It knew the links in a sleeper network that the SVR believed was safely hidden from surveillance. If they were followed, when they were activated they could expose whatever recruits the SVR had in the American government. The CIA duly shared this information about the sleeper ring with the FBI, which had the responsibility for the surveillance of foreign agents in the United States, The FBI, for its part, kept the Russian sleeper agents under tight surveillance—an operation which grew in complexity and expense as more SVR agents arrived in the US.

Meanwhile, in Moscow, Poteyev was following the unfolding operation. Part of his SVR job was to continue preparing these “Americans,” as they were called by the SVR, for their assignments. Some had been sent as couples, other as singletons. One of the singletons that Poteyev personally handled was Anna Kushchyenko. She was a strikingly beautiful Russian student, who changed her name to Anna Chapman by briefly marrying a British citizen she met at a rave party. After taking his name, she left him. After completing her training in Russia, the SVR sent her to New York City to establish herself as international real estate specialist. Other “Americans” under Poteyev’s watch became travel agents, students, and financial advisers. In all, Poteyev identified to the CIA twelve such sleeper agents. Since they had been instructed to simply act out their role, while awaiting an intelligence assignment, they presented no real threat. Even so, the cost of FBI surveillance over the years became sizable. Around the clock surveillance on the movements and communications of a single individual can cost, according to a former FBI agent, over $10,000 a day.

The situation suddenly changed when the CIA received Poteyev’s message in 2010. It warned that Russian military intelligence had asked the SVR to activate some of its sleeper agents for a highly-sensitive assignment. Such a move suggested that Russian intelligence had found a possible source that could supply it with valuable information. According to a former CIA

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