William Weisband (1908–1967) was an American cryptographic code analyst and Soviet NKVD agent (code name 'LINK'), best known for his role in revealing U.S. decryptions of Soviet diplomatic codes to Soviet intelligence. 1908 (MCMVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ... Soviet redirects here. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The Soviet Union had a succession of secret police agencies over the course of its existence. ...

Background

Weisband was born in Odessa, Russia in 1908 of Russian parents. He emigrated to the United States in the 1920s and became a naturalized American citizen in 1938. He joined the United States Army in 1942, and was assigned to signals intelligence duties. ODESSA (German: Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen, Organization of Former SS Members) is the name commonly given to an international Nazi network alleged to have been set up towards the end of World War II by a group of SS officers. ... // Possession of citizenship U.S. citizens have the right to participate in the political system of the United States (with most U.S. states having restrictions for felons, and federal restrictions on naturalized persons), are represented and protected abroad by the United States (through U.S. embassies and consulates), and... The United States Army is the largest branch of the armed forces of the United States. ...

Espionage Career

From 1941 to 1942 Weisband was the NKVD agent handler for Jones Orin York, who worked at the Northrop Corporation. After joining the Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) in 1942, he performed signals intelligence and communications security duties in North Africa and Italy, where he made some important friends before returning to Arlington Hall and joining its "Russian Section." Although not a cryptanalyst, as a "linguist adviser" who spoke fluent Russian, he was working closely with cryptographers. The gregarious and popular Weisband had access to all areas of Arlington Hall's Soviet work. Meredith Gardner recalled that Weisband had watched him extract the list of Western atomic scientists from the December 1944 KGB message mentioned earlier. Agent handler is a generic term common to many intelligence organizations which can be applied to Case Officers, those who aspire to be Case officers, controllers, contacts, couriers and other assorted trainees. ... In 1950 Jones Orin York told the FBI that he had passed secrets to the KGB since the mid-1930s including plans for a new airplane engine of his own design and documents on the newest fighter developed by Northrop Corporation. ... The Northrop Corporation was a leading aircraft manufacturer of the United States. ... The Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) was the United States Army codebreaking division, headquartered at Arlington Hall. ... Arlington Hall Arlington Hall was the headquarters of the US Armys Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) cryptography effort during World War II. It was named for its location in Arlington Hall Station, Arlington, Virginia—a private girls school which was commandeered during the War. ... Meredith Gardner (1912 - 2002) was a linguist and codebreaker, who was born in Mississippi and grew up in Austin, Texas. ...

The Soviets apparently had monitored Arlington Hall's "Russian Section" since at least 1945, when Weisband joined the unit. Weisband's earliest reports on the work being done by U.S. crypto-analysts on Soviet diplomatic code systems were probably sketchy, but after Weisband began passing information on their work at the Russian section, Soviet authorities changed their code system and the Venona project decryptions dried up. His role as a Soviet agent was not discovered by counterintelligence officers until 1950, by which time the damage had been done. Where Weisband had sketched the outlines of the cryptanalytic success, British liaison officer Kim Philby received actual translations and analyses on a regular basis after he arrived for duty in Washington, D.C. in autumn 1949. Until a thorough review of Soviet KGB archives is made, the full scope of Weisband's role as a Soviet agent will probably not be known. The Venona project was a long-running and highly secret collaboration between intelligence agencies of the United States and United Kingdom that involved the cryptanalysis of messages sent by several intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. ... Harold Adrian Russell Kim Philby or H.A.R. Philby (OBE: 1946-1965), (1 January 1912 – 11 May 1988) was a high-ranking member of British intelligence, a communist, and spy for the Soviet Unions NKVD and KGB. In 1963, Philby was revealed as a member of the spy... Nickname: Motto: Justitia Omnibus (Justice for All) Location of Washington, D.C., in relation to the states Maryland and Virginia Coordinates: , Country United States Federal District District of Columbia Government  - Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D)  - D.C. Council Chairperson: Vincent C. Gray (D) Ward 1: Jim Graham (D) Ward 2... The KGB emblem and motto: The sword and the shield KGB (transliteration of КГБ) is the Russian-language abbreviation for Committee for State Security, (Russian: ; Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti). ...

While suspended from SIS on suspicion of disloyalty, he skipped a federal grand jury hearing on the Communist Party USA. As a result, in November 1950 Weisband was convicted of contempt and sentenced to a year in prison. Weisband escaped prosecution for espionage because under the 1947 National Security Act "sources and methods" by law cannot be revealed, and authorities feared at the time that Weisband's trial would provide yet more information to Soviet intelligence. Weisband never revealed his status as a NKVD agent to anyone, and he remained in the United States, living quietly and working as an insurance salesman. He died suddenly of a heart attack in 1967. This article does not cite any references or sources. ... -1...

References

• "Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957"
• Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America--the Stalin Era, (New York: Random House, 1999) ISBN 0-679-45724-0

Allen Weinstein is the Archivist of the United States. ... // Random House is a publishing house based in New York City. ...

External link

• David A. Hatch with Robert Louis Benson, The Korean War: The SIGINT Background, National Cryptographical Museum, 2001