Linn Farrish

Linn Markley Farrish (October 3, 1901 – September 11, 1944) was an American rugby union player and alleged spy.

Rugby

Farrish competed in the 1924 Summer Olympics. He was a member of the American rugby union team, which won the gold medal.

Espionage 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. 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.

Biographer Mark Ryan states "Patriotic Farrish would never do anything to harm his beloved USA." 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).