Linn Farrish
| Olympic medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Men's rugby union | ||
Representing the  United States
| ||
 |
1924 Paris | Team competition |
Linn Markley Farrish (October 3, 1901 – September 11, 1944) was an American rugby union player and alleged spy.[1]
Rugby
[edit]Farrish competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics. He was a member of the American rugby union team, which won the gold medal.[2]
Espionage
[edit]Farrish was a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War. While acting as the OSS liaison officer to Josip Tito's Yugoslav Partisans, as part of Maclean Mission (Macmis), he submitted an assessment of anti-Nazi resistance. [3] He was also allegedly serving Soviet intelligence. Farrish is referenced in the following Venona project decryption: 1397 KGB New York to Moscow, 4 October 1944. His code name in Soviet intelligence, as deciphered in the Venona project, was "Attila". He died in an aircraft crash in the Balkans in September 1944.[4]
Biographer Mark Ryan states "Patriotic Farrish would never do anything to harm his beloved USA."[5] Fitzroy Maclean jocularly referred to him in his memoir Eastern Approaches as "my American chief of staff". Farrish was also referred to as "Lawrence of Yugoslavia" (as was William M. Jones).
Sources
[edit]- John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press (1999), pp. 194-195.
- M. Stanton Evans, Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies, Random House (2007), pp. 95-97.
References
[edit]- ^ "Linn Farrish". Olympedia. Retrieved 31 October 2021.
- ^ profile Archived 2007-08-30 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Evans, Blacklisted by History (Random House, 2007).
- ^ "Olympians Who Were Killed or Missing in Action or Died as a Result of War". Sports Reference. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
- ^ For The Glory – Mark Ryan (JR Books)
- 1901 births
- 1944 deaths
- American rugby union players
- Rugby union players at the 1924 Summer Olympics
- Olympic gold medalists for the United States in rugby
- United States international rugby union players
- People of the Office of Strategic Services
- American spies for the Soviet Union
- American people in the Venona papers
- World War II spies for the Soviet Union
- Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1944
- Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in Yugoslavia
- Medalists at the 1924 Summer Olympics
- American civilians killed in World War II