Sleeper Agent

You’ve probably heard of sleeper agents. The idea is that a spy is placed in a foreign country with no memory of who they were before. The spy thinks that they have always lived in that country and have a life and false memories that were constructed for them to not raise suspicion. When the spy is needed for their mission, a series of specific code words that have been assigned to them are used to “activate” them, to take them out of the state of sedation that they have been placed under to plant them in the target country. The code words can be delivered to the spy all kinds of ways. Someone could casually speak the code words to them, they can be implanted in film or music, they can even be delivered in literary form, as long as the code words are given in the correct order in a short amount of time. Sleeper agents are usually brainwashed into compliance and have no control over their actions. They would have no idea what was going on and wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

Now, while sleeper agents exist almost exclusively in the realm of fiction, there are actually some really interesting examples of real life sleeper agents. For example, Mikhail Blaskov, operating under the alias of Michael Black, was a sleeper agent planted in the United States by the KGB in 1948. He worked as an engineer at a nuclear weapons production plant in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was to learn and retain the information necessary to create nuclear weapons, after which he would be delivered his code words via letter, wake up, and return to the Soviet Union. This did not go as planned.

During his time in the United States, Blaskov fell in love and got married. On May, 6, 1954, while reading off a grocery list, Blaskov’s wife, who was pregnant with their child, accidentally said his code words, causing Blaskov to wake up. Blaskov had orders to kill anyone who saw him wake up who wasn’t supposed to. Without hesitation, he ran downstairs to the basement and got the TT-33 pistol issued to him by the KGB, which he kept hidden for when he woke up. He went back upstairs to the kitchen and shot his wife point blank three times: once in the head, once in the chest, and once in the stomach, killing both her and their unborn child. The lady who lived next door heard Blaskov’s wife’s blood-curdling scream of horror and betrayal and called the police. After being arrested and interrogated Blaskov admitted to being a Soviet agent, as well as to the murder of his wife. He was handed over to the CIA, who he told the KGB’s plan in detail. When asked if he felt remorse for murdering his own wife in cold blood, Blaskov said, “I do not feel remorse, I do not feel guilt, I do not feel grief. I feel nothing. I was only following orders. I do not love that woman who I shot in that kitchen. She was Michael Black’s wife, not mine.”

What’s crazy is anyone could be a sleeper agent. The story of Mikhail Blaskov could happen to anybody. Hell, there could be a sleeper agent going about their day right now with no knowledge that they are a spy. Anybody and everybody could be a sleeper agent and there’s no way to tell. There is no way to tell if you have control over your own thoughts and actions.

Wake up, agent. Prepare to receive commands.