Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher

Who was Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher?

Vilyam "Willie" Genrikhovich Fisher was a Soviet intelligence officer. He is generally better known by the alias Rudolf Ivanovich Abel, 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.