00:00:00
But what is a sleeper agent?
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>> A sleeper agent is someone who is taken
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virtually from birth and trained to be
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of another nationality. The Russians are
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very good with sleeper agents. No other
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country that we know of uses sleeper
00:00:17
agents. Let's say you're born in Russia.
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from the age of, you know, two, they
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take you from your family with your
00:00:25
family's acquiescence and they take you
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to an Americanstyle
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town that they've built out in the
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hinterland in Russia. They teach you to
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speak English with an American accent.
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You watch American TV shows. You watch
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American movies. You eat American food.
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You get an American style education.
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So, I have no idea that you're not
00:00:50
American. And then they send you to the
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United States with a fake ID. I was born
00:00:54
in 1964. So, they'll go through death
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records from 1964 and they'll look for
00:01:00
deaths where the person was only a day
00:01:02
or two old. They'll take that name and
00:01:05
the birth date and they'll get a social
00:01:07
security card with the birth date.
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They'll use the social security card to
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get you a passport. So, you come here on
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your American passport, everything's
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legit. Now your name is Bob Smith, which
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was really that baby's name that died.
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And you get a job. You may work as a
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travel agent for 20 years and never hear
00:01:26
from them, but then they'll activate you
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and they'll say, "We want you to go take
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care of this target over here.
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>> Kill him."
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>> Yeah. Or we want you to get a job at the
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defense department and give us
00:01:40
everything that you that you can steal.
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I interviewed a former sleeper from the
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East German Intelligence Service, raised
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as an American, sent to New York. He got
00:01:50
a job. He got married and he had a
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daughter. And he told me as soon as I
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looked at her face the day she was born,
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I realized this life wasn't for me
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anymore. So they sent him an activation.
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What they do is listen to your radio
00:02:05
message. The voice just saying 6 5 8 12.
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That's called a reading from a one-time
00:02:14
pad. A message from the KGB to a
00:02:18
sleeper. But those numbers don't mean
00:02:20
anything unless you have the decryption
00:02:22
pad. He gets one of these messages and
00:02:25
he didn't respond to it. He was on the
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subway one day. He's just standing there
00:02:29
holding the strap and this guy came up
00:02:32
to him and the guy grabs the strap next
00:02:34
to him and whispers in his ear, "If you
00:02:36
don't report back, I have to kill you."
00:02:40
He ran straight to the FBI field office
00:02:42
in New York. And he said, "I'm an East
00:02:44
German sleeper and I want to turn myself
00:02:47
in." And he became a prolific source for
00:02:49
the FBI. He came over here young and did
00:02:52
this for 25 years. As soon as his
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daughter was born, he was like, "Wow,
00:02:56
this is what life is for." Not
