FBI sleeper‑agent arrests in 2010 may have thwarted a Russian effort to recruit an NSA insider and inadvertently exposed CIA mole Poteyev

149 intelligence official who later became involved in the case, the assignment involved preparing these agents to service a potential source in the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland. If true, it suggested that Russian intelligence either had found or was working on a means of penetrating the NSA. In 2010, the NSA’s “Q” division handled such security and espionage threats. It reportedly initiated a counter-espionage probe at the NSA’s Fort Meade headquarters on receiving the tip. But since the NSA’s cryptological service had in 2010 no fewer than 35,000 military and civilian contractor employees, the search for a possible leak was no easy matter. According to a subsequent note in the NSA’s secret budget report to Congress, it would require “a minimum of 4,000 periodic investigations of employees in position to compromise sensitive information” to safely guard against “insider threats by trusted insiders who seek to exploit their authorized access to sensitive information to harm U.S. interests.” According to a former executive in the intelligence community, that amount of investigations far exceeded the budgetary capabilities of the NSA. So while the investigation found no evidence of SVR recruitment, it remained possible that Russian intelligence had found a candidate in the NSA. Meanwhile, in June 2010, to pre-empt such a leak in US intelligence and avoid any potential embarrassment that could result, the FBI decided it could no longer engage in this sort of an intelligence game with the sleeper network. It arrested all 12 sleeper agents identified by Poteyev. After receiving a great deal of public attention (which led to them inspiring the FX series: The Americans,”’), the sleeper agents were deported back to Russia. This move had both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage was that it severed any communication link between the putative person-of-interest in the NSA and Russian intelligence via the sleeper agents. The main disadvantage was that it eliminated the possibility that FBI surveillance of the illegals might lead the FBI to a possible recruit in the NSA or elsewhere. The pre-emptive arrests also had an unforeseen consequence. They resulted in accidently compromising the CIA’s own mole, Poteyev. In entrapping Anna Chapman, who was one of the more active of the sleeper agents, the FBI agent had used a password to deceive her into believing she was speaking to a SVR officer (when in fact she was speaking to an FBI agent who was impersonating one.) That unique password had been personally supplied to her by Poteyev. So Chapman had reason to believe Poteyev had betrayed her, When Chapman returned to Moscow after the spy exchange, she was taken to a well- publicized dinner with Putin. Afterwards, she informed her debriefer at the SVR that only Poteyev had been in a position to know the password that the FBI agent used. This brought Poteyev under immediate suspicion. Tipped off by the CIA to the FBI’s error, Poteyev managed to escape by taking a train from Moscow to Minsk in Belarus. The CIA next exfiltrated him out of Belarus and to the United States. Poteyev had been saved from prison—or worse, but he was no longer useful to the CIA as a mole. Without the services of Poteyev in the SVR in Moscow, US intelligence was unable to find out further details about the mission to which Poteyev’s sleeper HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020301