agency that had been part of the USSR KGB. On December 1, 2010, commentator and researcher Bill Gertz quoted a "former intelligence official close to the National Security Agency" (NSA) as saying that the FBI and the NSA were conducting a counterintelligence probe at the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, in a top-secret hunt for a Russian agent, believing that the spy ring was likely acting as conduits for information coming from "one or more Russian spies that NSA is convinced reside at Fort Meade and possibly other DoD offices, like DIA". Bill Gertz's report prompted the Russian intelligence expert Andrei Soldatov to question the quasi-official version about Poteyev's responsibility. In a Larry King Live interview, aired by CNN about the same time, Russian prime minister Putin maintained that the Russian agents "deserved unconditional respect"; according to him, no harm had been done to U.S. interests, and that they would only become operational "in crisis periods, say, in case of a breakup of the diplomatic relations." On December 16, 2010, prime minister Putin, when answering the question during a televised call-in show about whether he ever signed assassination orders, said that hit squads had long been abolished in Russia; speaking specifically of the turncoat allegedly responsible for exposing the ten sleeper agents, he denounced him as a "brute" and a "pig" saying that "the traitors will croak all by themselves", adding that a traitor's life is miserable and regrettable. On May 3, 2011 in Moscow, Alexander Poteyev was indicted on high treason and desertion charges and later put on trial in absentia. On June 27, 2011, he was found guilty in absentia on both charges and sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment; the judge's verdict said that Poteyev was recruited by the CIA in 1999. His court-appointed advocate said that Poteyev's remuneration from the US government might have reached $55 million. In July 2012, new details about the agents' activities were revealed that suggested that some of them planned to recruit their children to become agents. See also Rudolf Abel, Gary Powers, and Frederic Pryor – swapped in 1962 Russian influence operations in the United States The Americans – a 2013 period drama TV series about Soviet deep-cover agents inspired by the events of the Illegals Program Allegiance – a TV series Little Nikita – a 1988 movie starring Sidney Poitier and River Phoenix, about Soviet deep cover agents.