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 eliminate