The Venona project was a long-running and highly secret collaboration between intelligence agencies of the United States and United Kingdom that involved the cryptanalysis of messages sent by several intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. There were known to be at least 13 code words for this effort used by the U.S. and UK. "Venona" was the last code word for the project, and has no known meaning. (In the decrypted documents issued from the National Security Agency, 'VENONA" is written in full capitals; authors writing on the subject generally capitalize only the first letter.) An intelligence agency is a governmental organization devoted to gathering of information by means of espionage (spying), communication interception, cryptoanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public sources. ... Cryptanalysis (from the Greek kryptós, hidden, and analýein, to loosen or to untie) is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information which is normally required to do so. ... The Soviet Union had a succession of secret police agencies over the course of its existence. ... The National Security Agency/Central Security Service (NSA/CSS) is the U.S. governments cryptologic organization. ...

In the early years of the Cold War, Venona would be an important source of information on Soviet intelligence activity for the Western powers. Although unknown to the public, and even to presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, it was a critical and guarded program behind many famous events of the early Cold War, such as the Rosenberg spying case. For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ... The presidential seal was first used by President Hayes in 1880 and last modified in 1959 by adding the 50th star for Hawaii. ... FDR redirects here. ... For the victim of Mt. ... For other uses, see Cold War (disambiguation). ... Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after their conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage. ...

Most of the messages which would later prove to be decipherable were intercepted between 1942 and 1945, and they were decrypted beginning in 1946 and continuing until 1980, when Venona was cancelled.

Background

The Venona Project was initiated in 1943, under orders from the deputy Chief of Military Intelligence (G-2), Carter W. Clarke.^[1] Clarke mistrusted Joseph Stalin, and feared that the Soviet Union would sign a separate peace with the Third Reich, allowing Germany to focus its military forces against Great Britain and the United States. Code-breakers of the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service (commonly called Arlington Hall) intercepted large volumes of encrypted high-level Soviet diplomatic intelligence traffic during and immediately after World War II. The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... The United States Army is the largest branch of the United States armed forces and has primary responsibility for land-based military operations. ... The Signals Intelligence Service (SIS) was the Armys codebreaking division. ... Arlington Hall Arlington Hall was the headquarters of the US Armys Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) cryptography effort during World War II. It was named for its location in Arlington Hall Station, Arlington, Virginia—a private girls school which was commandeered during the War. ... This article is about algorithms for encryption and decryption. ... Combatants Allied Powers Axis Powers Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000,000 Total dead: 50,000,000 Military dead: 8,000,000 Civilian dead: 4,000,000 Total dead 12,000,000 World War II (abbreviated WWII), or the Second World War, was a worldwide conflict...

This traffic, some of which was encrypted with a one-time pad system, was stored and analyzed in relative secrecy by hundreds of cryptanalysts over a 40-year period starting in the early 1940s. Due to a serious blunder on the part of the Soviets—reusing pages of some of the one-time pads in other pads, which were then used for other messages, some of this traffic was vulnerable to cryptanalysis. Excerpt from a one-time pad. ...

The break-in

The Soviet systems in general used a code to convert words and letters into numbers, to which additive keys (from one-time pads) were added, encrypting the content. When used correctly, one-time pad encryption is theoretically unbreakable. Cryptanalysis by American and British code-breakers revealed that some of the one-time pad material had incorrectly been reused by the Soviets (specifically, entire pages, although not complete books), which allowed decryption (sometimes only partial) of a small part of the traffic. In communications, a code is a rule for converting a piece of information (for example, a letter, word, or phrase) into another form or representation, not necessarily of the same type. ... A key is a piece of information that controls the operation of a cryptography algorithm. ...

It was Arlington Hall's Lt. Richard Hallock, working on Soviet "Trade" traffic (so called because these messages dealt with Soviet trade issues), who first discovered that the Soviets were reusing pages. Hallock and his colleagues (including Genevieve Feinstein, Cecil Phillips, Frank Lewis, Frank Wanat, and Lucille Campbell) went on to break into a significant amount of Trade traffic, recovering many one-time pad additive key tables in the process. Richar Hallock may refer to: Richard Hallock (epigrapher), an Assyriologist and Elamitologist. ...

Meredith Gardner (left); most of the code breakers were young women.

A young Meredith Gardner (of what would become the National Security Agency) then used this material to break in to what turned out to be NKVD (and later GRU) traffic, by reconstructing the code used to convert text to numbers. Samuel Chew and Cecil Phillips also made valuable contributions. On 20 December 1946, Gardner made the first break into the code, revealing the existence of Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project.^[2] Other alleged Soviet spies worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services, and even the White House. Very slowly, using assorted techniques ranging from traffic analysis to defector information, more of the messages were decrypted. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Meredith Gardner (1912 - 2002) was a linguist and codebreaker, who was born in Mississippi and grew up in Austin, Texas. ... The NKVD (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del )(Russian: НКВД, Народный комиссариат внутренних дел) or Peoples Commisariat for Internal Affairs was a government department which handled a number of the Soviet Unions affairs of state. ... For other uses, see GRU (disambiguation). ... December 20 is the 354th day of the year (355th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ... The Manhattan Project resulted in the development of the first nuclear weapons, and the first-ever nuclear detonation, at the Trinity test of July 16, 1945. ... The United States Department of State, often referred to as the State Department, is the Cabinet-level foreign affairs agency of the United States Government, equivalent to foreign ministries in other countries. ... The United States Department of the Treasury is a Cabinet department and the treasury of the United States government. ... The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was a lineage precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as for the Special Forces and Navy Seals, who have traced their lineage back to... North façade of the White House, seen from Pennsylvania Avenue. ... A defector is a person who gives up allegiance to one political entity in exchange for allegiance to another. ...

Claims have been made that information from physical theft of code books (a partially burned one was recovered by the Finns) to bugging embassy rooms in which text was entered into encrypting devices (analyzing the keystrokes by listening to them being punched in), contributed to recovering much of the plaintext. These latter claims are less than fully supported in the open literature.

One significant aid (mentioned by the NSA) in the early stages may have been work done in cooperation between the Japanese and Finnish cryptanalysis organizations; when the Americans broke into Japanese codes during World War II, they gained access to this information. There are also reports that copies of signals purloined from Soviet offices by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were helpful in the cryptanalysis. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a federal criminal investigative, intelligence agency, and the primary investigative arm of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). ...

Generating the one-time pads was a slow and labor-intensive process, and the outbreak of war with Germany in June 1941 caused a sudden increase in the need for coded messages. It's probable that the Soviet code generators started duplicating cipher pages in order to keep up with demand.

Results

The NSA reported that, according to the serial numbers of the Venona cables, thousands were sent, but only a fraction were available to the cryptanalysts. Approximately 2,200 of the messages were decrypted and translated; some 50 percent of the 1943 GRU-Naval Washington to Moscow messages were broken, but none for any other year, although several thousand were sent between 1941 and 1945. The decryption rate of the NKVD cables was:

• 1942 1.8%
• 1943 15.0%
• 1944 49.0%
• 1945 1.5%

Out of some hundreds of thousands of intercepted encrypted texts, it is claimed that under 3000 have been partially or wholly decrypted. All of the duplicate one-time pad pages had been produced in the year 1942, and almost all of them had been used by the end of 1945, with a few being used as late as 1948. After this Soviet message traffic reverted to completely unreadable.^[3]

The existence of Venona decryptions became known to the Soviets within a few years of the first breaks. It is not clear whether the Soviets knew how much of the message traffic, or which messages, had been successfully decrypted. At least one Soviet penetration agent, British Secret Intelligence Service Representative to the U.S., Kim Philby, was told about the project in 1949, as part of his job as liaison between British and U.S. intelligence. Since all of the duplicate one-time pad pages had been used by this time, the Soviets apparently didn't make any changes to their cryptographic procedures in response to the learning of Venona. However, this information did allow them to alert those of their agents who might be at risk of exposure due to the decryptions. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6, is the United Kingdoms external intelligence agency. ... Harold Adrian Russell Kim Philby or H.A.R. Philby (1 January 1912 – 11 May 1988) was a high ranking member of British intelligence who led a lifelong career as a spy for the Soviet Union. ...

Significance

The decrypted messages gave important insights into Soviet behavior in the period during which duplicate one-time pads were used. With the first break into the code, Venona revealed the existence of Soviet espionage^[4] at Los Alamos National Laboratories.^[5] Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean. Others worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services,^[6] and even the White House. Los Alamos National Laboratory, aerial view from 1995. ... Klaus Fuchs ID badge at Los Alamos. ... Alan Nunn May (May 2, 1911 — January 12, 2003) was a British atomic scientist and a spy who supplied secrets of British and American atomic bomb research to the Soviets during the Manhattan project. ... The Cambridge Five (also sometimes known as the Cambridge Four) was a ring of British spies who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and into the early 1950s. ... Donald Duart Maclean Donald Duart Maclean (25 May 1913 – 6 March 1983) was a career British diplomat turned Soviet intelligence agent. ...

The decrypts show that the U.S. and other nations were targeted in major espionage campaigns by the Soviet Union as early as 1942. Among those identified are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg; Alger Hiss; Harry Dexter White,^[7] the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie,^[8] a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin,^[9] a section head in the Office of Strategic Services. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after their conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage. ... Alger Hiss in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary (Photos courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons) Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. ... Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes (right) at the Bretton Woods Conference Harry Dexter White (October 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American economist and senior U.S. Treasury department official. ... Lauchlin Currie in 1939 Lauchlin Bernard Currie (October 8, 1902 – December 23, 1993) was a Canadian-born economist from New Dublin, Nova Scotia, Canada, a U.S. economist, and an alleged Soviet Agent. ... Maurice Halperin secretly became a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) sometime in the 1930s. ...

The identification of individuals mentioned in Venona transcripts is sometimes problematic, since people with a "covert relationship" with Soviet intelligence are referenced by code names.^[10] Further complicating matters is the fact that the same person sometimes had different code names at different times, and the same code name was sometimes reused for different individuals. In some cases, notably that of Alger Hiss, the matching of a Venona code name to an individual is disputed. In many other cases, a Venona code name has not yet been linked to any person. According to authors John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, the Venona transcripts identify approximately 349 Americans who they claim had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence, though less than half of these have been matched to real-name identities.^[11] John Earl Haynes is a historian who is a specialist in 20th Century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti-Communist movements, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly... Harvey E. Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly with John Earl Haynes). ...

The Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA, housed at one point or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies.^[12] Duncan Lee, Donald Wheeler, Jane Foster Zlatowski, and Maurice Halperin passed information to Moscow. The War Production Board, the Board of Economic Warfare, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and the Office of War Information, included at least half a dozen Soviet sources each among their employees. In the opinion of some, almost every American military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent by Soviet espionage.^[13] The CIA Seal The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an American intelligence agency, responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and individuals, and reporting such information to the various branches of the U.S. Government. ... Duncan Chaplin Lee, descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and protégé and trusted aide to Office of Strategic Services chief William J. Donovan, who became the NKVD’s most senior source in American intelligence. ... Donald Nivan Wheeler was employed by the Office of Strategic Services from 1941 to 1946. ... Jane Foster Zlatovski, also Jane Foster Zlatkowski, was married to George Zlatovski,and was a member of the Communist Party who worked for the Board of Economic Warfare in 1942. ... Maurice Halperin secretly became a member of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) sometime in the 1930s. ... The War Production Board (WPB) was established in 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt. ... The Office of Administrator of Export Control was established by Presidential Proclamation 2413, July 2, 1940, to administer export licensing provisions of the act of July 2, 1940 (54 Stat. ... This article contains information that has not been verified. ... The United States Office of War Information (OWI) was a government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. ...

Some scholars and journalists dispute the claims by Haynes, Klehr, and others concerning the precision of the matching of code names to actual persons. Also contested is the implication that all 349 persons identified had a witting covert relationship with Soviet intelligence; it is argued that in some cases the individual may have been an unwitting information source or a prospect for future recruitment by Soviet intelligence. See "Critical views", below.

Prosecution

On February 1, 1956, Alan H. Belmont prepared an FBI memorandum on the significance of the Venona project and the prospects of using decryptions in prosecution.^[14] It considered that, although decryptions may corroborate Elizabeth Bentley and enable successful prosecution of subjects such as Judith Coplon and the Perlo and Silvermaster groups, a careful study of all factors compelled the conclusion it would not be in the best interests of the United States to use Venona project information for prosecution. February 1 is the 32nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ... Year 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (1905-1963) was an American former spy for the Soviet Union who eventually defected to the United States and provided the Truman administration and the House Committee on Un-American Activities with the names of several people she claimed were spies for the USSR. A gradudate of... Judith Coplon, worked in Foreign Agents Registration section of the United States Department of Justice where she had access to counterintelligence information during World War II. She was a Soviet spy and is known in both Soviet intelligence and the Venona files as SIMA. Source John Earl Haynes and Harvey... The Perlo group fits into the Venona project information when transcript # 687 of 13 May 1944 is examined. ... Nathan Gregory Silvermaster or Greg Silvermaster was identified by Elizabeth Bentley, a long-time “courier for the Russian Secret Police in America,” as the head of the Washington DC-based Silvermaster Soviet spy ring. ...

The Memo gives a number of reasons why it was uncertain whether or not the Venona project information should be revealed and admitted into evidence.

A major hurdle was that a question of law was involved. A defense attorney probably would immediately move to dismiss the evidence as hearsay, being that neither the Soviet official who sent the message, nor the Soviet official who received it was available to testify. The FBI reasoned that decrypts probably could have been introduced, on an exception to the hearsay rule, based on the expert testimony of cryptographers.

In addition, according to Boarman, "the fragmentary nature of the messages and the extensive use of cover names therein make positive identification of the subjects difficult." Once an individual had been considered for recruitment as an agent by the Soviets, sufficient background data on him was sent to Moscow. Cover names were used not only for Soviet agents but other people as well. President Roosevelt, for example, was called "Kapitan" (Captain), and Los Alamos the "Reservation". Cover names also were frequently changed, and a cover name might actually apply to two different people, depending on the date it was used. Several subjects, notably Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Maurice Halperin, and Lauchlin Currie, denied the accusations in open Congressional Hearings based on information from sources other than Venona. Assumptions made by cryptographers, questionable interpretations and translations placed reliance upon the expert testimony of cryptographers, and the entire case would be circumstantial. A Congressional subcommittee in the United States Congress is a subdivision of a standing committee that considers specified matters and reports back to the full committee. ...

Defense attorneys also would probably request to examine messages which cryptographers were unsuccessful in breaking and not in evidence, on the belief that such messages, if decoded, could exonerate their clients. The FBI determined that this would lead to the exposure of Government techniques and practices in the cryptography field to unauthorized persons, compromise the Government's efforts in communications intelligence, and hinder other pending investigations.

Before any messages could be used in court they would have to be declassified. Approval would have to come from several layers of bureaucracy, and probably the President, as well as notification to British counterparts working on the same problem. In an election year, the Bureau feared it would be caught between the two sides of a venomous political dispute.

Public disclosure

For much of its history, knowledge of Venona was restricted, even from the highest levels of government. Senior Army officers, in consultation with the FBI and CIA made the decision to restrict knowledge of Venona within the government (even the CIA was not made an active partner until 1952). Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley, concerned about the White House's history of leaking sensitive information, decided to deny President Truman direct knowledge of the project. The president received the substance of the material only through FBI, Justice Department and CIA reports on counterintelligence and intelligence matters. He was not told the material came from decoded Soviet ciphers. To some degree this secrecy was counter-productive; Truman was distrustful of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, and suspected the reports were exaggerated for political purposes. Omar Nelson Bradley (February 12, 1893 – April 8, 1981) was one of the main U.S. Army field commanders in North Africa and Europe during World War II and a General of the Army of the United States Army. ... Hoover in 1961 John Edgar Hoover KBE (January 23, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an influential but controversial director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). ...

Some of the earliest detailed public knowledge that Soviet code messages from WWII period had been broken came with the release of Robert Lamphere's book, The FBI-KGB War, in 1986. Lamphere had been the FBI liaison to the code-breaking activity, had considerable knowledge of Venona and the counter-intelligence work that resulted from it. Counter Intelligence A uk label started and owned by John Machielsen. ...

Many inside the NSA had argued internally that the time had come to publicly release the details of the Venona project, but it was not until 1995 that a bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, with Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as chairman, released the Venona project materials. Moynihan wrote: In a two-party system (such as in the United States), bipartisan refers to any bill, act, resolution, or any other action of a political body in which both of the major political parties are in agreement. ... Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy, also called the Moynihan Secrecy Commission, was a bipartisan commission in the United States created under Title IX of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 1994 and 1995 (P.L. 103-236) to conduct an investigation into all matters in any... Daniel Patrick Pat Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was a United States Senator, Ambassador, and eminent sociologist. ...

"[The] secrecy system has systematically denied American historians access to the records of American history. Of late we find ourselves relying on archives of the former Soviet Union in Moscow to resolve questions of what was going on in Washington at mid-century. [...] the Venona intercepts contained overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds."^[15]

One of the considerations in releasing Venona translations was the privacy interests of the individuals mentioned, referenced, or identified in the translations. Some names were not released because to do so would constitute an invasion of privacy.^[16] However, in at least one case, independent researchers identified one of the subjects whose name had been obscured by the NSA. Location Position of Moscow in Europe Government Country District Subdivision Russia Central Federal District Federal City Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov Geographical characteristics Area  - City 1,081 km² Population  - City (2007)    - Density 10,469,000   8537. ...

The dearth of reliable information available to the public—or even to the President and Congress—may have helped to polarize debates of the 1950s over the extent and danger of Soviet espionage in the United States. Anti-Communists suspected that many spies remained at large, perhaps including some that were known to the government. Those who criticized the governmental and non-governmental efforts to root out and expose communists felt that these efforts were an overreaction (in addition to other reservations about McCarthyism). Public access—or broader governmental access—to the Venona evidence would certainly have affected this debate, as it is affecting the retrospective debate among historians and others now. As the Moynihan Commission wrote in its final report: This does not cite its references or sources. ... Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization, based upon common ownershipmovement]]. Early forms of human social organization have been described as primitive communism by Marxists. ... A 1947 comic book published by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society warning of the dangers of a Communist takeover. ...

"A balanced history of this period is now beginning to appear; the Venona messages will surely supply a great cache of facts to bring the matter to some closure. But at the time, the American Government, much less the American public, was confronted with possibilities and charges, at once baffling and terrifying."

Bearing of Venona on particular cases

Venona has added information—some of it unequivocal, some of it ambiguous—to several espionage cases. Some known spies, including Theodore Hall, were neither prosecuted nor publicly implicated, because the Venona evidence against them was not made public. Theodore Halls ID badge photo from Los Alamos. ...

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Main article: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

Venona has added significant information to the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, making it clear that Julius was guilty of espionage, but also showing that Ethel was probably no more than an accomplice, if that. Additionally, Venona and other recent information has shown that the content of Julius' espionage was not as vital as was alleged at the time. The information Julius passed to the Soviets related to the proximity fuze, or detonation device, not the actual process of nuclear fission. The Venona evidence determines that sources within the Manhattan Project itself, codenamed "Quantum" and "Pers," and both still unidentified, facilitated transfer of nuclear weapons technology to the Soviet Union. Researchers are still seeking to identify some unidentified agents. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after their conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage. ... Look up Proximity fuze in Wiktionary, the free dictionary A proximity fuze (also called a VT fuze) is a fuze that is designed to detonate an explosive automatically when close enough to the target to destroy it. ... For the generation of electrical power by fission, see Nuclear power plant An induced nuclear fission event. ...

Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White

Main articles: Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White

According to the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, the complicity of both Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White is settled by Venona.^[17][18] In his 1998 book, Senator Moynihan expresses certainty about Hiss's identification by Venona as a Soviet spy, writing "Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important."^[19] Alger Hiss in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary (Photos courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons) Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. ... Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes (right) at the Bretton Woods Conference Harry Dexter White (October 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American economist and senior U.S. Treasury department official. ... Alger Hiss in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary (Photos courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Prisons) Alger Hiss (November 11, 1904 – November 15, 1996) was a U.S. State Department official involved in the establishment of the United Nations. ... Harry Dexter White (left) and John Maynard Keynes (right) at the Bretton Woods Conference Harry Dexter White (October 1892 – August 16, 1948) was an American economist and senior U.S. Treasury department official. ...

Soviet espionage in Australia

The founding of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation by Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley was considered highly controversial within Chifley's own party. Until then, the left-leaning Australian Labor Party had been hostile to domestic intelligence agencies on civil liberties grounds, and a Labor government actually founding one was a surprising about face. Venona material has now made it clear that Chifley was motivated by evidence that Soviet agents were operating in Australia. Investigation had revealed that Wally Clayton (codenamed KLOD), a Soviet agent within the Communist Party of Australia, was forming an underground network within the CPA so that the party could continue to operate if it was banned. The official crest of ASIO The ASIO logo The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is the domestic security agency of Australia which is responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage (especially sabotage of critical infrastructure), politically motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system... A prime minister is the most senior minister of a cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. ... Chicken nuggets are sold at McDonalds (September 22, 1885–June 13, 1951), Australian politician and 16th Prime Minister of Australia, was one of Australias most influential Prime Ministers. ... In politics, left-wing, political left, leftism, or simply the left, are terms which refer (with no particular precision) to the segment of the political spectrum typically associated with any of several strains of socialism, social democracy, or liberalism (especially in the American sense of the word), or with opposition... Civil liberties is the name given to freedoms that protect the individual from government. ... A code name or cryptonym is a word or name used clandestinely to refer to another name or word. ... The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991. ...

Critical views

Although widely accepted by most historians and academics, the relevance, accuracy, and even the authenticity of Venona decrypts have been questioned by some. Many of critics of the released Venona papers claim the material to be unverifiable with some, such as Brian Villa of the University of Ottawa and Rutgers University’s Norman Markowitz, going so far as to claim that the NSA had doctored or fabricated Venona material in its entirety in order to discredit the reputation of the CPUSA and its members.^[20] Research in Soviet Archives has added to the corroboration of some Venona material, including the identities of many codenamed individuals.^[21] The University of Ottawa or Université dOttawa in French (also known as uOttawa or nicknamed U of O or Ottawa U) is a bilingual [1], research-intensive, non-denominational, international university in Ottawa, Ontario. ... Rutgers redirects here. ... The Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) is one of several Marxist-Leninist groups in the United States. ...

Some remain skeptical of both the substance and the prevailing interpretations made since the release of the Venona material. Victor Navasky, editor and publisher of The Nation, has written an editorial highly critical of John Earl Haynes' and Harvey Klehr's interpretation of recent work on the subject of Soviet espionage: Victor S. Navasky (b. ... This article is about the U.S publication. ... John Earl Haynes is a historian who is a specialist in 20th Century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti-Communist movements, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly... Harvey E. Klehr (born December 25, 1945) is a professor of politics and history at Emory University; he is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist movement, and on Soviet espionage in America (many written jointly with John Earl Haynes). ...

In Appendix A to their book on Venona, Haynes and Klehr list 349 names (and code names) of people who they say "had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence that is confirmed in the Venona traffic." They do not qualify the list, which includes everyone from Alger Hiss to Harry Magdoff, the former New Deal economist and Marxist editor of Monthly Review, and Walter Bernstein, the lefty screenwriter who reported on Tito for Yank magazine. It occurs to Haynes and Klehr to reprint ambiguous Venona material related to Magdoff and Bernstein but not to call up either of them (or any other living person on their list) to get their version of what did or didn't happen.

The reader is left with the implication—unfair and unproven—that every name on the list was involved in espionage, and as a result, otherwise careful historians and mainstream journalists now routinely refer to Venona as proof that many hundreds of Americans were part of the red spy network.

My own view is that thus far Venona has been used as much to distort as to expand our understanding of the cold war—not just because some researchers have misinterpreted these files but also because, in the absence of hard supporting evidence, partially decrypted files in this world of espionage, where deception is the rule, are by definition potential time bombs of misinformation.^[22]

Navasky also writes: Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: New Deal For other uses of New Deal and The New Deal, see New Deal (disambiguation). ... Marxism refers to the philosophy and social theory based on Karl Marxs work on one hand, and to the political practice based on Marxist theory on the other hand (namely, parts of the First International during Marxs time, communist parties and later states). ... Walter Bernstein (August 20, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses in the 1950s. ... Josip Broz Tito (Cyrillic: Јосип Броз Тито, May 7, 1892 (May 25th according to official birth certificate) – May 4, 1980) was the leader of the Second Yugoslavia, which lasted from 1943 until 1991. ... Yank: the Army Weekly was a newspaper for American soldiers during World War II. External links The YANK page (www. ...

There were a lot of exchanges of information among people of good will, many of whom were Marxists, some of whom were Communists, some of whom were critical of US government policy and most of whom were patriots. Most of these exchanges were innocent and were within the law. Some were innocent but nevertheless were in technical violation of the law. And there were undoubtedly bona fide espionage agents—on both sides. ^[22]

Nigel West on the other hand, expressed confidence in the decrypts: "Venona remain[s] an irrefutable resource, far more reliable than the mercurial recollections of KGB defectors and the dubious conclusions drawn by paranoid analysts mesmerized by Machiavellian plots."^[23] Rupert William Simon Allason (born 8 November 1951) is a military historian and former politician in the United Kingdom. ...

Haynes and Klehr dismiss critics of the importance and truthfulness of Venona material as being naïve about Soviet espionage as well as ignorant of evidence that supports it.^[24]

Ellen Schrecker has rebutted this interpretation. "Because they offer insights into the world of the secret police on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it is tempting to treat the FBI and Venona materials less critically than documents from more accessible sources. But there are too many gaps in the record to use these materials with complete confidence."^[25] Schrecker agrees that the documents have genuinely established the guilt of many prominent figures, but is still critical of the hardline interpretation of the materials by scholars such as Haynes, arguing that "...complexity, nuance, and a willingness to see the world in other than black and white seem alien to Haynes' view of history."^[26] Ellen Wolf Schrecker, Ph. ... Warsaw Pact countries to the east of the Iron Curtain are shaded red; NATO members to the west of it — blue. ...

Writing about Alger Hiss, John Lowenthal criticized the accuracy and methodology of the Venona analysts, charging that they employed false premises and flawed comparative logic to reach the desired conclusion that Alger Hiss was the spy Ales. Lowenthal states this conclusion was psychologically and politically motivated but factually wrong.^[27]

See also

• History of Soviet espionage in the United States
• List of Americans in the Venona papers

// Browder, Golos and Peters By the mid to late 1920s, there were three elements of Soviet power operating in the United States, despite the absence of formal diplomatic relations, the Comintern, military intelligence or GRU, and the forerunner of the KGB, the GPU. The Comintern was the dominant arm, though... Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chairman of the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, responsible for securing the release of Venona project materials, in the Introduction to his book Secrecy states, The Venona intercepts contained overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and...

Notes

For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 18 is the 169th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (170th in leap years), with 196 days remaining. ... Daniel Patrick Pat Moynihan (March 16, 1927 – March 26, 2003) was a United States Senator, Ambassador, and eminent sociologist. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 18 is the 169th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (170th in leap years), with 196 days remaining. ... Alexander Mikhailovich Orlov (Leiba Lazarevich Felbing) (21 August 1895–25 March 1973) was a Soviet espionage administrator. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... Whittaker Chambers, 1948 Jay Vivian (David Whittaker) Chambers (April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer, editor, Communist party member and spy for the Soviet Union who turned defector. ... Elizabeth Terrill Bentley (1905-1963) was an American former spy for the Soviet Union who eventually defected to the United States and provided the Truman administration and the House Committee on Un-American Activities with the names of several people she claimed were spies for the USSR. A gradudate of... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. ... DOJ headquarters in Washington, D.C. Justice Department redirects here. ... Nathan Gregory Silvermaster or Greg Silvermaster was identified by Elizabeth Bentley, a long-time “courier for the Russian Secret Police in America,” as the head of the Washington DC-based Silvermaster Soviet spy ring. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 27 is the 178th day of the year (179th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 187 days remaining. ... Duncan Chaplin Lee, descendant of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and Rhodes Scholar. ... Donald Nivan Wheeler was employed by the Office of Strategic Services from 1941 to 1946. ... Jane Foster Zlatovski, also Jane Foster Zlatkowski, was married to George Zlatovski,and was a member of the Communist Party who worked for the Board of Economic Warfare in 1942. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 27 is the 178th day of the year (179th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 187 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 18 is the 169th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (170th in leap years), with 196 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 27 is the 178th day of the year (179th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 187 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... November 3 is the 307th day of the year (308th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 58 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 27 is the 178th day of the year (179th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 187 days remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... June 27 is the 178th day of the year (179th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar, with 187 days remaining. ...

References and further reading