11 Facts About Bill Weisband

Bill Weisband emigrated to the United States in the 1920s and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1938.

Bill Weisband was drafted into the United States Army in 1942, and was assigned to signals intelligence duties.

From 1941 to 1942, Bill Weisband was the NKVD agent handler for Jones Orin York, who worked at the Northrop Corporation.

The gregarious and popular Bill Weisband had access to all areas of Arlington Hall's Soviet work.

The codebreaker Meredith Gardner recalled that Bill Weisband had watched him extract a list of Western atomic scientists from a December 1944 NKVD message.

The Soviets apparently had monitored Arlington Hall's "Russian Section" since at least 1945, when Bill Weisband joined the unit.

Bill Weisband notified the Soviets that the Venona Project was on the verge of success.

Where Bill Weisband had sketched the outlines of US cryptanalytic success, British liaison officer Kim Philby received actual translations and analyses on a regular basis after he arrived for duty in Washington, DC, in autumn 1949.

Bill Weisband escaped prosecution for espionage, as authorities feared that a trial would divulge yet more information to Soviet intelligence on US intelligence "sources and methods".

Bill Weisband never revealed his status as an NKVD agent to anyone, and he remained in the United States, living quietly, and working as an insurance salesman until his death.

Bill Weisband died suddenly of a heart attack in 1967.