11 spy network suspects, who were described by prosecutors as living under false identities in an effort to penetrate American society video
the Foreign Ministry issued another statement acknowledging that the suspects were Russian citizens.

“They have not conducted any activities directed against the interests of the United States,” the statement said.
It is both risky and very expensive work, since agents often spend years just developing a fake life story, known in Russian as a “legend,” and because the K.G.B. would often keep an agent in place abroad for years or even decades before he or she was able to gather useful information.

"The tantalising prospect right now is that all this is but an amuse bouche: that there are many more "illegals" out there, unseen as yet by the FBI. I understand Oleg Gordievsky is speculating at about some 50 other couples in deep cover in the US.

This leads me to think that perhaps the Russians do protest too much. In any organisation, any nation, nothing puts the cat among the paranoids more than the strategic and calculated exposure of traitors: faultlines and finger-pointing often ensue, along with chaos and recriminations. What better way to disrupt America than to hark back to the good old days, to let them know, for certain, that the reds aren't just under the bed; they have been in it – for years?" David Wolstencroft, screenwriter and novelist, is the creator of Spooks on BBC1. wolstencroft