On a day known in intelligence circles as “Black Friday” at the end of 1948, Moscow suddenly changed all its codes, making all its messages once again indecipherable to the Army’s top secret codebreakers at Arlington Hall. The disaster can be traced back to a well-placed Soviet spy who never paid for his crimes.
After Raymond J. Batvinis retired from 25 years of chasing Soviet spies for the FBI, he added a new traitor to his personal most wanted list. In his new book Agent Link: The Spy Erased From History, counterintelligence expert Batvinis reveals the full treachery of William Weisband at last. Batvinis followed up his initial Freedom of Information Act request for all 2,000 pages of the Bureau’s files on the Weisband case with a similar request in 2002 with the National Security Agency for its file. Sixteen years later a package containing nearly 1,000 pages appeared at his front door. Using these records and notes taken from Weisband’s KGB file in Moscow (published after the collapse of the Soviet Union), Batvinis is now able to reveal the traitor in full. This evening, former Senior Executive on the National Security Council staff, John J. Quattrocki will interview Batvinis about his pursuit of Weisband and the impact that the man who supplied the KGB “large quantities of highly valuable material” had on US intelligence.
Agent Link will be available for sale and signing after the event.
The in-person event will have open seating available on a first-come, first-serve basis.
Assistive listening devices will be available for the in-person program.
Auto-generated closed captioning will be available for this program when viewed online.
