Hayhanen, Reino

(1919–1961)

   Hayhanen was born Eugene Maki, a Soviet of Finnish nationality, and was initially recruited by the NKVD as an informer. In the late 1940s he assumed the Hayhanen identity to serve as an illegal in the United States as William Fisher’s courier. He arrived in New York in 1952 and worked with Fisher for almost five years. Hayhanen was an impossible spy: incompetent and often drunk, he repeatedly failed to carry out Fisher’s orders. In May 1957 Fisher decided to send him back to Moscow for reassignment, which Hayhanen knew meant punishment. In Paris, where he was to change planes, he defected to the U.S. embassy and betrayed Fisher, who was arrested six weeks later. Four years later, Hayhanen died in a car accident in Pennsylvania.