Hollow Nickel Case - Background

Background

On June 22, 1953, a newspaper boy (fourteen-year-old newsie Jimmy Bozart), collecting for the Brooklyn Eagle, at an apartment building at 3403 Foster Avenue in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, was paid with a nickel (U.S. five cent piece) that felt too light to him. When he dropped it on the ground, it popped open, revealing that it contained microfilm. The microfilm contained a series of numbers. He told the daughter of a New York City Police Department officer, that officer told a detective who in two days told an FBI agent about the strange nickel.

After agent Louis Hahn of the FBI obtained the nickel and the microfilm, the agency tried to find out where the nickel had come from and what the numbers meant. The nickel had a 1948 front, but the back was minted sometime between 1942 and 1945, based on the copper-silver alloys used. There were five digits together in each number, 21 sets of five in seven columns and another 20 sets in three columns, making a total of 207 sets of five digits. There was no key for the numbers. The FBI tried for nearly four years to find the origin of the nickel and the meaning of the numbers.

But it wasn't until KGB agent Reino Häyhänen (aka Eugene Nicolai Mäki) wanted to defect in May 1957 from Paris, that the FBI was able to link the nickel to KGB agents, including Mikhail Nikolaevich Svirin (a former United Nations employee) and Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher. Häyhänen was being recalled to Moscow for good, and defected on the way back in Paris. The deciphered message in the nickel turned out to be worthless, a personal message to Häyhänen from the KGB in Moscow welcoming him to the U.S. and instructing him on getting set up. He gave the FBI the information that it needed to crack the cipher, uncover the identity of his two main contacts in New York (Svirin and Fisher), and a nearly identically made Finnish 50 Markka coin.

In addition to Svirin and Fisher (code name "Mark"), Häyhänen (code name "Vic") told the FBI about Vitali G. Pavlov, a former Soviet embassy official in Ottawa; Aleksandr Mikhailovich Korotkov; and U.S. Army Sergeant Roy Rhodes (code name "Quebec"), who had once worked in the garage of the U.S. embassy in Moscow. The Soviets were able to get to Rhodes because it had "compromising materials" about him. Häyhänen and Fisher were in the United States mainly looking for information on the U.S. atomic program and U.S. Navy submarine information.

Svirin had returned to the Soviet Union in October 1956 and was not available for questioning or arrest.

When Fisher was arrested, the hotel room and photo studio that he lived in contained multiple modern espionage equipment items: cameras and film for producing microdots, cipher pads, cuff links, hollow shaving brush, shortwave radios, and numerous "trick" containers.

Fisher was brought to trial in New York City Federal Court and indicted as a Russian spy in October 1957 on three counts:

• Conspiracy to transmit defense information to the Soviet Union;
• Conspiracy to obtain defense information; and
• Conspiracy to act in the United States as an agent of a foreign government without notification to the Secretary of State.

Häyhänen testified against Fisher at the trial.

On October 25, 1957, the jury found Fisher guilty on all three counts. On November 15, 1957, Judge Mortimer W. Byers sentenced Fisher to three sentences to be served concurrently:

• 30 years' imprisonment;
• 10 years' imprisonment and $2,000 fine;
• 5 years' imprisonment and $1,000 fine.

On February 10, 1962, Vilyam Fisher (aka Abel) was exchanged for American Central Intelligence Agency Lockheed U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was a prisoner of the Soviet Union.