Vladimir Putin

Ahh only 10 more years. Totally fair.

Good question, and unfortunately, it's one that can't be answered very well here, since most of the critical years of Putin's career are within 20 years of present. The first mention of Putin in the New York Times, for example, is on April 27, 1992, and the next, doesn't come until Nov. 21, 1998, a few months after he became head of the Russian Federal Security Bureau. (Incidentally, that story features an FSB colonel who, after defecting, would be assassinated by a Russian agent ─ likely on Putin's orders.)

The CIA's FOIA reading room doesn't contain any mentions of Putin before 2000, and the FBI's FOIA reading room contains a similar lack of information. The Wikileaks diplomatic cable archive contains nothing before 2000. The Chronicling America newspaper archive run by the Library of Congress is unhelpful, as is Google's newspaper archive, and NewsBank contains nothing useful. (There is, however, a fascinating 1991 trip diary by David C. Turnley of Knight-Ridder News Service that features a brief quote from "[St. Petersburg] mayoral aide Vladimir Putin".)

That leaves us with speculation and educated guess, so let's work with that.

Putin was born in 1952 and lived what was a largely uneventful early life in Leningrad. He was apparently captivated by stories of Russian intelligence agents, however, and after he graduated from Leningrad State University in 1975, he joined the KGB. To this point, he likely would have been invisible to the state agencies of the United States, just as any ordinary American citizen would have been invisible to Soviet intelligence.

After he completed his training, however, he was assigned to KGB offices in his hometown and assigned to monitor foreigners visiting Leningrad. It's entirely possible that the U.S. identified him at this point as a known KGB agent, but it's just as possible that they did not. Putin would have been an entry-level officer at this point, barely distinguishable from an office drone.

After a few years of this work, Putin was reassigned to Moscow and training at the KGB's foreign intelligence training center. Putin already spoke fluent (or near-fluent) German, and so he was shipped off to Dresden, in East Germany, working there from 1985 to the collapse of East Germany.

There have been any number of examinations of Putin's work during this period. Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy recently published a book, * Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin* that examines his intelligence career, and we have Putin's own First Person, a book of essays published in 2000 when Putin became president, that describes his time in Dresden.

It's not entirely clear what Putin's mission in Dresden was, though it appears to have been multi-faceted. The Stasi archives, covered in this fascinating BBC look at Putin, show that Putin's duties included such things as mundane as arranging for a telephone hookup to a German informer. Putin, in effect, was tech support.

It's also possible he was doing more interesting things. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan visited Moscow. Presidential photographer Pete Souza took this picture of Reagan shaking hands with Soviet tourists in Red Square. At the far left side of the photo is a man who looks remarkably like Putin, and Souza has identified him as Putin. He also says that a Secret Service agent told him at the time that everyone Reagan met in Red Square was a Soviet agent, explaining why everyone asked Regan about American human rights abuses.

It seems far-fetched that Putin would have been recalled from Dresden to Moscow just as an extra hand to cover a presidential visit. It also seems, based on photographs in the Stasi archives, that Putin was already losing his hair in 1988, and this man has a much fuller head of hair.

Regardless of whether this person is Putin or not, it's entirely possible that Putin's Dresden experience brought him to the attention of U.S. intelligence agencies. In 1989, as East Germany collapsed, Putin intervened with a pistol to prevent demonstrators from attacking the KGB offices there. After the Soviet withdrawal, Putin and his then-wife drove back to Leningrad with a 20-year-old East German washing machine in their car ─ a parting gift from friends.

Back in Leningrad ─ then in transition to St. Petersburg amid the end of the Soviet Union ─ Putin was somewhat adrift. According to his former wife, he toyed with becoming a taxi driver. Instead, he fell in with his former college professor, Anatoly Sobchak, becoming an aide in 1990. The sources are confused, but Putin himself says he resigned from the KGB at the time of the 1991 coup; it's entirely possible that he served as aide while still officially on the KGB roles. Given the collapsing state, Putin was likely on reserve status and may not have been paid.

The switch to politics was a good move. Sobchak, a rising star in the new Russian politics, became mayor of St. Petersburg. Putin, riding his coattails, became an aide, then deputy mayor. If Putin had not already been identified during his Dresden term, he certainly was now. As the Frontline documentary Putin's Way points out, Putin used this position to enrich himself from public office. He also extended his reach, serving as head of the St. Petersburg branch of a nationalist political party, and dabbled with control of a newspaper.

In 1996, after the defeat of Sobchak in the municipal elections, he was called to Moscow and federal service, beginning his rise to the top.