KGB Atomic Spy Rudolph Abel: "The Hollow Coin" 1958 US Department of Defense

more at http://quickfound.net/

'This U.S. Army film describes a case of espionage against the United States by Colonel Rudolph Abel.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Abel

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Rudolf Ivanovich Abel (Russian: Рудольф Иванович Абель), real name William August Fisher (July 11, 1903 – November 15, 1971) was a Soviet intelligence officer. He adopted his alias when arrested on charges of conspiracy by FBI agents in 1957.

Fisher was born in the United Kingdom to Russian émigré parents. He moved to Russia in the 1920s, and served in the Soviet military before undertaking foreign service as a radio operator in Soviet intelligence in the late 1920s and early 1930s. He later served in an instructional role before taking part in intelligence operations against the Germans during World War II. After the war, he began working for the KGB, which sent him to the United States where he worked as part of a spy ring based in New York City.

In 1957, the U.S. Federal Court in New York convicted Fisher on three counts of conspiracy as a Soviet spy for his involvement in what became known as the Hollow Nickel Case and sentenced him to 30 years' imprisonment at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Georgia. He served just over four years of his sentence before he was exchanged for captured American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. Back in the Soviet Union, he lectured on his experiences. He died in 1971 at the age of 68...

Fluent in English, Russian, German, Polish and Yiddish, Fisher worked for the Comintern as a translator following his family's return to the Soviet Union. Trained as a radio operator, he served in a Red Army radio battalion in 1925 and 1926... before being recruited by the OGPU, a predecessor of the KGB, in May 1927...

After rejoining the KGB in 1946, Fisher was trained as a spy for entry into the United States...

However, on October 21, 1952, as instructed by Moscow, Reino Häyhänen left a thumbtack on a signpost in New York's Central Park. The thumbtack signaled to Fisher that Häyhänen, his new assistant, had arrived. Codenamed "VIK", Häyhänen arrived in New York...

For six months Häyhänen checked the thumbtack and no one had made contact. He also checked a dead-drop location he had memorized. There he found a hollowed-out nickel. However, prior to opening the coin Häyhänen had misplaced it, either buying a newspaper with it or using it as a subway token. For the next seven months the hollow nickel travelled around the New York City economy, unopened. The trail of the hollow nickel ended when a thirteen-year-old newsboy was collecting for his weekly deliveries. The newsboy accidentally dropped the nickel and it broke in half, revealing a microphotograph containing a series of numbers... From 1953 to 1957, though every effort was made to decipher the microphotograph, the FBI was unable to solve the mystery...

In 1954, Häyhänen began working as Fisher's assistant... Fisher was disturbed by Häyhänen's lack of work ethics and his obsession with alcohol. In the spring of 1955, Fisher and Häyhänen visited Bear Mountain Park, and buried five thousand dollars, (equivalent to $46,764 in 2018), destined for the wife of the Soviet spy Morton Sobell, who in 1951 was sentenced to thirty years in jail...

By early 1957, Fisher had lost patience with Häyhänen and demanded that Moscow recall his deputy... Upon hearing he was due to return to Moscow, Häyhänen was fearful that he would be severely disciplined or even executed... Prior to his departure, Häyhänen returned to Bear Mountain Park and retrieved the buried five thousand dollars for his own use... Häyhänen arrived in Paris on May Day... instead of continuing his journey to the Soviet Union he entered the American embassy in Paris, announcing that he was a KGB officer and asking for asylum...

They were not convinced he might actually be a Russian spy until he produced a hollow Finnish 5-mark coin. Upon opening the coin a square of microfilm was revealed. On May 11, the CIA returned him to the United States and handed him over to the FBI... they began verifying his story.

Upon his arrival in the United States, Häyhänen was interrogated by the FBI and proved very cooperative... Häyhänen was able only to provide Fisher's codename, "MARK", and a description... Häyhänen was also able to solve the mystery of the "hollow nickel," which the FBI had been unable to decipher for four years...