A sleeper agent is a
spy or operative who is placed in a target country or organization, not to undertake an immediate mission, but instead to act as a potential asset on short notice if activated in the future. Even if not activated, the "sleeper agent" is still an asset and can still play an active role in
sabotage
Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening a polity, government, effort, or organization through subversion, obstruction, demoralization (warfare), demoralization, destabilization, divide and rule, division, social disruption, disrupti ...
,
sedition
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, establ ...
,
espionage
Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...
, or possibly
treason
Treason is the crime of attacking a state (polity), state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to Coup d'état, overthrow its government, spy ...
(if enlisted to act against their own country), by virtue of agreeing to act if activated. A team of sleeper agents may be referred to as a sleeper cell, possibly working with others in a
clandestine cell system
A clandestine cell system is a method for organizing a group of people, such as resistance fighters, spies, mercenaries, organized crime members, or terrorists, to make it harder for police, military or other hostile groups to catch them. In ...
.
Description
In espionage, a sleeper agent is one that has infiltrated a target country and "gone to sleep", sometimes for many years, making no attempt to communicate with the sponsor or their agents (or to obtain information beyond what is public)—then becoming active upon receiving a pre-arranged signal from the sponsor or a fellow agent.
Documented examples
Real world
*
Jack Barsky was planted as a sleeper agent in the United States by the Soviet
KGB
The Committee for State Security (, ), abbreviated as KGB (, ; ) was the main security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1991. It was the direct successor of preceding Soviet secret police agencies including the Cheka, Joint State Polit ...
. He was an active sleeper agent between 1978 and 1988. He was located by US authorities in 1994 and then arrested in 1997. Barsky quickly confessed after being arrested and became a useful source of information about spy techniques.
Fictional
Sleeper agents are popular
plot devices in fiction, particularly in espionage fiction and
science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
. This common use is directly related to and results from repeated instances of real-life "sleeper agents" participating in spying, espionage, sedition, treason, and assassinations. Moreover, in fictional portrayals, sleeper agents are sometimes unaware that they are sleepers—they might be
brainwashed,
hypnotized, or otherwise conditioned to be unaware of their secret mission until activated.
Books and films
* Gustaf Skördeman's 2020 book ''Geiger'' shows a sleeper agent being activated in Sweden during the Cold War.
References
See also
*
Double agent
In the field of counterintelligence, a double agent is an employee of a secret intelligence service for one country, whose primary purpose is to spy on a target organization of another country, but who is now spying on their own country's organi ...
*
Mole (espionage)
In espionage jargon, a mole (also called a "penetration agent", "deep cover agent", "illegal" or " sleeper agent") is a long-term spy (espionage agent) who is recruited before having access to secret intelligence, subsequently managing to get in ...
*
Resident spy
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sleeper Agent
Spies by role
fr:Agent dormant