Under Putin, spies activity increased.
Robert Hanssen,double agent to Russian,allow $500 million falls to Russia hands through Oil for Food Irag program under U.N
The astonishing plot and arrests could rival the FBI's famous capture of Soviet Col. Rudolf Abel in 1957 in New York.
Also a deep cover agent, Abel was ultimately swapped to the Soviet Union for downed U-2 spy pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1962.
That was during the Cold War - and since then relations have improved.
Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama shared a cordial visit just last week - even stopping off for a hamburger during an unannounced visit to a diner.
Yet neither side has dropped its guard completely.
According to Washington officials, Russia's covert foreign intelligence operations against America have reached Cold War levels under the watch of Mr Putin, below.
White House advisers believe that there is no other nation on Earth that is so determined to get intelligence on the U.S., with the possible exception of China.
Defence officials are particularly concerned by the SVR, the latest incarnation of the KGB's intelligence arm, which has a network of undercover agents in America.
Targets include research projects and military equipment in development .
The activities of the SVR are rarely put in the spotlight, but in 2007 a Russian man who posing as a Canadian citizen was caught and deported.
The alleged SVR agent had been living under the name Paul William Hampel and claimed to be a lifeguard and travel consultant, but was thought to be attempting to get information on the aerospace industry in Montreal.
He was held carrying a fake birth certificate, £3,000 in five currencies and several encrypted pre-paid mobile phone cards.
The two most prominent cases involving the SVR in the past decade may have been those of Robert Hanssen, right, the FBI counter-intelligence agent who was convicted of passing along secrets to the agency, and Sergei Tretyakov, deputy head of intelligence at Russia's U.N. mission in 1995-2000.
Tretyakov, who defected in 2000, claimed in a 2008 book that his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein.
He said he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam's regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program and allowed Russia to skim profits.
One of the Cold War's most famous defectors says Russia may have as many as 50 deep-cover couples spying inside the United States.
Oleg Gordievsky, an ex-deputy head of the KGB in London who defected in 1985, said Mr Medvedev would be aware of the precise numbers of so-called illegal operatives in each target country.
The 71-year-old ex-double agent said Medvedev would know numbers but not necessarily their names. He also claimed the undercover operatives were often too timid to recruit high-ranking agents.
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