hi all. Time for another reminder of what sub we're in here: it's /r/AskHistorians so comply with the subreddit rules yo, or risk deletion.

Incidentally, to all you conspiracy theorists out there, no, no-one commenting here has been shadow-banned: the comments have been removed by the mods for not meeting subreddit rules.

Follow-up question- Were there areas it was easier to get sleeper agents into "successfully" than others? Certain cities, countries? I've heard it mentioned, probably here, that since the US was a "nation of immigrants" in a lot of ways, and in a lot of ways the USSR was not... things were lopsided when it came to spies. But the USSR was huge, so I'd be curious to hear about that on a finer scale if anyone knows anything.

A semi-related question: Do we have any definitive evidence for those sleeper agents in the US, or are they a just product of mass hysteria during the red scare/ McCarthyism? To clarify, do we have an idea of how many of the people supplying information to the Eastern Bloc were Russian plants, as opposed to being Americans, either bribed of 'converted' by the USSR? Also, did many of the foreign plants (if there were any) have extended periods when they just had to live as normal people, rather than pursing a specific mission?

Along the same lines as OQ, you always hear about the Aldrich Ameses and Rosenbergs and Kim Philbys, etc., highly-placed Westerners who turned out to be working for the Soviets. Did Western intelligence organizations ever manage to "turn" highly-placed Soviets?