David Aden Salmon (1879–??) was a career government functionary in the U.S. Department of War and the U.S. Department of State. In 1931, Salmon rose to head the State Department's Bureau of Indexes and Archives, a department with over 150 employees at the time. In 2008 Cold War historian John Earl Haynes identified Salmon as "Willy", a codename for a Soviet agent, followed by a 2009 book which argued that Salmon was, from 1934 until early 1937, a paid source of classified diplomatic and military information which ended in the hands of Soviet intelligence. This identification has been challenged by at least one historian specializing in espionage history. Life and career Early years David A. Salmon was born in 1879 in Connecticut. Government career Salmon joined the U.S. Department of War in 1896 as a junior clerk. His efficient work attracted the attention of Elihu Root, under whom Salmon worked at the War Department from 1899. In 1905 Root brought Salmon with him to the State Department he assumed the role of Secretary of State. Salmon became known as an expert in cryptography and had supervisory control over the State Department's code room. He was in charge of coded communications from the various major international conferences of the era, often traveling with the American delegations. In 1916, Salmon was named head of the State Department's Bureau of Indexes and Archives. This bureau was restructured in 1931, becoming the State Department's Division of Communications and Records, of which Salmon was again named as chief. Salmon supervised over 150 employees in his department's expanded incarnation, making it the largest State Department sub-agency of the day. As an expert in State Department communications, Salmon was called before a grand jury on December 8, 1948, to authenticate documents produced by Whittaker Chambers to support his espionage accusations against State Department employee Alger Hiss. Salmon retired from government service sometime after World War II. Espionage allegations In May 2009, American historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr and Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev published a book entitled Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. In this thick tome, the three identified David A. Salmon as a key State Department source of classified documents code-named "Willy" by his Soviet handlers. The identification of Salmon as "Willy" was challenged by Russian historian Svetlana Chervonnaya, who asserted that the American historians had been "tricked by the