Editing Sleeper agent (section)

==Description==
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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{{dubious discuss|date=May 2025}})—then becoming active upon receiving a pre-arranged signal from the sponsor or a fellow agent.{{says who|date=May 2025}}<!--

The agent acquires jobs and identities, ideally ones that will prove useful in the future, and attempts to blend into everyday life as a normal citizen. Counterespionage agencies in the target country cannot, in practice, closely watch all those who may possibly have been recruited some time before.

In a sense, the best sleeper agents are those who do not need to be paid by the sponsor, as they are able to earn enough money to finance themselves, averting any possibly traceable payments from abroad. In such cases, the sleeper agent may be successful enough to become what is sometimes termed an "[[agent of influence]]".

Sleeper agents who have been discovered have often been natives of the target country who moved elsewhere in early life and were co-opted (perhaps for ideological or ethnic reasons) before returning to the target country. That is valuable to the sponsor, as the sleeper's language and other skills can be those of a native, thus less likely to trigger domestic suspicion.

Choosing and inserting sleeper agents has often been difficult, as whether the target will be appropriate some years in the future is uncertain. If the sponsor government and its policies change after the sleeper has been inserted, the sleeper may be found to have been planted in the wrong target.-->