Agent Link

Agent Link: The Spy Erased from History

Agent Link: The Spy Erased from History is a biography of William Wolfe Weisband who one colleague described as a “charter member” of America’s top-secret Cold War codebreaking pioneers. Every day for years he worked with cryptanalysts as they struggled to tease out secrets from a mind-numbing jumble of numbers. As breakthroughs emerged, codebreakers sought his help for insights and meanings before the startling revelations were passed to US policy makers. What no one knew, however, was that with every new breakthrough, Weisband was keeping his KGB masters informed about American progress. The Army Security Agency, NSA’s codebreaking predecessor, had simply swept the scandal under the rug. Government leaders said, “nothing about the case in public, and little in private either,” an NSA history recorded. America’s codebreaking hierarchy “simply wanted the case … to go away.” Weisband was air – brushed out of history and the new NSA organization wanted it kept that way. This one insider spy experts say “did greater damage to America’s national security” than later traitors like Jack Dunlap, William Martin and Bernon Mitchell, and Ronald Pelton: even more than Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. Weisband’s story has never been told. A half a century after his death, the mystery surrounding this man remains.