William Henry Taylor
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William Henry Taylor was an accused Cold War era spy.
Taylor was born in British Columbia on 30 March 1906 and studied at the University of British Columbia before attending school with Nathan Gregory Silvermaster at the University of California, where he received a Ph.D. in 1933. Taylor then taught economics at the University of Hawaii for 8 years and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1940. In 1934, while living in Hawaii, Taylor visited the Soviet Union and spent several months there.
Taylor was able to secure employment within the United States Department of the Treasury through Secretary Harry Dexter White in 1941. The Treasury Department sent him to China and later Lisbon, Portugal for the Foreign Economic Administration. Taylor also was a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), in violation of federal employment statutes barring membership in an organization seeking the violent overthrow of the United States Government. As a member of CPUSA, and of the secret apparatus known as the Silvermaster group, Taylor is alleged to have supplied information orally and in document form to Soviet intelligence.
In June 1945 Taylor worked out of the U.S. Embassy in London and later that year Paris.
Associates claim Taylor spoke about Communism constantly. He is one of two Soviet agents who used the code name "Acorn" as deciphered by the Venona project. Code names sometimes were changed by a user and another assigned.
