Sleeper agents are spies who are placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but rather to act as potential assets if activated at a later point in time. Sleeper agents are popular plot devices in fiction, in particular espionage fiction and science fiction.
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Sleeper agents in espionage
In espionage, a sleeper agent is one who has infiltrated into the target country and 'gone to sleep', sometimes for many years. That is, they do nothing to communicate with their sponsor, any existing agents, nor to obtain information beyond that in public sources. They can also be referred to as deep cover agents. They acquire jobs and identities--ideally ones which will prove useful in the future--and attempt to blend into everyday life as a normal citizen. Counter espionage agencies in the target country cannot, in practice, closely watch all of those who might possibly have been recruited some time before. In a sense, the best sleeper agents are those who don't even need to be paid by the sponsor as they are able to earn enough money to finance themselves. This avoids any possibly traceable payments from abroad. In such cases, it is possible that the sleeper agent might be successful enough to become what is sometimes termed an agent of influence. The Soviets managed to recruit several people after World War I who reached high positions in Britain and in the U.S. Those sleeper agents who have been discovered have often been natives of the target country who moved elsewhere in early life and been co-opted (perhaps for ideological or ethnic reasons) before returning to the target country. This is valuable to the sponsor as the sleeper's language and other skills can be those of a 'native' and thus less likely to trigger suspicion. Choosing and inserting sleeper agents have often posed difficulties as it is difficult to predict which target will be appropriate some years in the future. If the sponsor government (or its policies) change after the sleeper has been inserted, the sleeper might be found to have been planted in the wrong target.
Examples
- Otto Kuhn and family were installed in Hawaii by the German Abwehr before WWII. It is not quite clear what was intended as Hawaii was hardly at the center of predicable German interests in case of war, and in any case, they were unmistakably German. However that may have been, he (and his family) seem to have been used primarily to aid an ally—the Japanese—in the period before the Attack on Pearl Harbor. They seem to have been less than useful, even to the Japanese.
- Kim Philby was recruited by the Soviets while at university and may have been a sleeper agent for some years until going to work for the British government. By the end of WWII, he was operating as the liaison between the British Secret Intelligence Service and several U.S. intelligence operations. He was an agent of influence by then, but had not been a sleeper agent for several years.
Fictional sleeper agents
In fiction, particularly science fiction, sleeper agents fall into two categories. The first is an extension of the real world sleeper agent where an enemy agent is substituted for a person already in a trusted position. The second and more common category involve people who have been subjected to mind control techiques, such as drugs, torture, psychological conditioning, implanted devices, and even telepathic manipulation who then are either released, or allowed to escape back to friendly territory. These sleeper agents are then used by enemy forces to spy, conduct sabotage, assassinate certain targets, or for other operations the enemy has in mind for them. The substitution sleeper agent was often surgically altered to appear as someone else but more recent versions tend toward androids or clones. Activation of the second kind of sleeper is, at least in novels and stories, done by approaching the agent and uttering a long ago memorized password or pass phrase, or by mailing a postcard with a significant picture to the sleeper. Once a sleeper becomes active, counter intelligence agencies can, at least in principle, become aware of the sleeper as intelligence is collected and transmitted, as instructions are passed, and so on.
Examples
There are a number of examples of sleeper agents found in science fiction and other forms of entertainment. Examples of sleeper agents include:
- In Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) it is revealed that the Voice of Terror is really a German officer who was used because of his strong resemblance to a captured British officer. The substitution occurred during WWI.
- In Black Dragons (1942) a doctor is hired to use plastic surgery to alter Japanese officers into the images of key American Industrialists. Once Japan attacks Pearl Harbor they go about slowing down production and having accidents happen at their plants.
- One of the earlier uses of the second type of sleeper agents in fiction is in Richard Condon's 1959 novel, The Manchurian Candidate, which has twice been adapted to film. Both the original and the remake is about a group of people 'programmed' to be sleeper agents. One of the sleeper agents is part of a Presidential election campaign, which if won will produce a Vice President controlled by sinister forces. One of his fellows would then be ordered to assassinate the President, allowing these forces to control the Executive Branch of Government.
- In the Outer Limits episode "Hundred Days of the Dragon" a chemical that allows flesh to be molded like clay for a short time is used to allow a Chinese officer replace a candidate that eventually becomes President.
- In the Six Million Dollar Man/The Bionic Woman/Bionic Woman crossover "Kill Oscar" it is revealed that Oscar Goldman has standing orders to be killed rather than rescued for fear the enemy would turn him into a double agent. In disobeying that order Steve Austin unknowingly brings back an android sleeper agent.
- The plot of Walter Wager's novel Telefon and its subsequent film adaptation revolved around long-term, deep-cover sleeper agents planted by the Soviet Union all over the United States in the 1950s; spies so thoroughly brainwashed that even they didn't know they were agents; they could only be activated by a special code phrase (a line from Robert Frost's poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"). Their mission was to sabotage crucial parts of the civil and military infrastructure in the event of nuclear war.
- In the season 3 finale of the 2004 sci-fi series Battlestar Galactica, it is revealed that Samuel T. Anders, Tory Foster, Saul Tigh and Galen Tyrol are Cylon sleeper agents.
- In the video game BioShock, it is discovered that the player's embryo was genetically modified with mind control, which was later used by Atlas to his advantage in order to kill Andrew Ryan.
