Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher

Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher

Vilyam "Willie" Genrikhovich Fisher (Russian: Вильям "Вилли" Генрихович Фишер) (July 11, 1903 – November 15, 1971) was a Soviet intelligence officer. He is generally better known by the alias Rudolf Ivanovich Abel (Рудольф Иванович Абель), which he adopted when arrested on charges of conspiracy by FBI agents in 1957.

Born in the United Kingdom to Russian émigré parents, Fisher 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, Fisher 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, for his involvement in what became known as the Hollow Nickel Case, the U.S. Federal Court in New York convicted Fisher on three counts of conspiracy as a Soviet spy and sentenced him to 45 years' imprisonment at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Georgia. Fisher served just over four years of his sentence before he was exchanged for captured American U-2 pilot Gary Powers. Back in the Soviet Union, he lectured on his experiences before dying in 1971 at the age of 68.