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