Difference between revisions 341276843 and 341280317 on enwiki

'''Ilya Elliott Wolston''' was an American citizen who enterlisted the [[U.S. Army]] in [[World War II]] and became a [[military intelligence]] officer. Allegedly, Wolston began reporting to [[NKVD|Soviet intelligence]]. Wolston allegedly provided the Soviets with information abouserved as a Russian interpreter. 

After the war, Wolston became a language teacher and professor. He was libeled in the book "KGB", where it was stated that the organization, curriculum, and personnel at the Army's intelligence school at [[Fort Ritchie, Maryland]].

After the war, Wolston worked for the [[KGB]] network run by his uncle, [[Jack Soble]], which included Soble's brother and Wolston's uncle [[Robert Soblen]].  [[Boris Morros]] wrote in his autobiography that Soble told him that Ilya, whose cover name Morros remembered as Slava, had done work for the Russians in [[Alaska]].

There is a Slava in a 1945 message (Venona 325 KGB [[Moscow]] to [[New York City|New York]], April 5, 1945); it clearly is not Wolston but someone connected to the [[Julius and Ethel Rosenberg|Rosenberg]] spy ring. This also suggests that by that time Wolston had a different cover name.

==Venona==
Wolston  is referenced in the following Venona project decrypts:

*777–781 KGB New York to Moscow, 26 May 1943
*893 KGB New York to Moscow, 10 June 1943
*325 Moscow to New York, 5 April 1945. (It is not clear that the Glory in the 1945 message is "Glory"/Wolston as in 1943).was convicted of espionage; he sued. His case went to he U.S. Supreme Court (Wolston v. Readers Digest) and they declared that Wolston was not a public figure and therefore his assertion of libel would stand. He died before the case could be retried in lower courts. While Wolston was also maligned in a book by Boris Morros, it should be noted that Morros' credibility was seriously in doubt and he never provided any proof for many of his assertions.

There have been other allegations against him that are factually untrue. While related to Russians who were, in fact, spies against the United States, there is no evidence that Wolston was ever complicit in any actions against the U.S., and he remained a loyal citizen until his death. Careful scrutiny of FBI records will show that there was never any malfeasance uncovered regarding Wolston and that the only charge that was ever brought against him was Contempt of Court for not appearing at the trial of later convicted Soviet spy, Jack Sobel. Wolston did not appear due to illness. ⏎
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==References==
*Boris Morros, ''My Ten Years as a Counter-Spy'', London: Werner Laurie (1959).
*[[John Earl Haynes]] and [[Harvey Klehr]], ''Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America'', New Haven: [[Yale University Press]] (1999), pgs. 275–276. ISBN 0300077718

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolston, Ilya}}
[[Category:Year of birth missing]]
[[Category:Year of death missing]]
[[Category:American military personnel of World War II]]
[[Category:United States Army officers]]
[[Category:American spies for the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Americans in the Venona papers]]