Venona project
Encyclopedia
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States
and United Kingdom
intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis
of messages sent by intelligence agencies
of the Soviet Union
, the majority during World War II
. There were at least 13 codewords for this project that were used by the US and British intelligence agencies (including the NSA
); "VENONA" was the last that was used. That code word has no known meaning. (In the decrypted documents issued from the National Security Agency
, "VENONA" is written in capitals, but lowercasing is common in modern journalism.) It was not until 1995 that project materials were released by the government. Analysis supported some criminal spy cases, such as that against Julius Rosenberg for some of the charges, but cast doubt on the case against his wife Ethel Rosenberg.
, the VENONA project was a source of information on Soviet intelligence-gathering activity that was directed at the Western military powers. Although unknown to the public, and even to Presidents
Franklin D. Roosevelt
and Harry S. Truman
, these programs were of importance concerning crucial events of the early Cold War. These included the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
spying case and the defections of Donald Maclean
and Guy Burgess
to the Soviet Union
.
Most decipherable messages were transmitted and intercepted between 1942 and 1945. Sometime in 1945, the existence of the VENONA program was revealed to the Soviet Union by the NKVD
agent and United States Army
SIGINT
analyst and cryptologist Bill Weisband
. These messages were slowly and gradually decrypted
beginning in 1946 and continuing (many times at a low-level of effort in the latter years) through 1980, when the VENONA program was terminated, and the remaining amount of effort that was being spent on it was moved to more important projects.
To what extent the various individuals were involved with Soviet intelligence
is a topic of dispute. While a number of academic people and historians assert that most of the individuals mentioned in the VENONA decrypts were most likely either clandestine assets and/or contacts of Soviet intelligence agents, others argue that many of those people probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.
Clarke distrusted 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 US Army's Signal Intelligence Service (commonly called Arlington Hall
) analyzed encrypted high-level Soviet diplomatic intelligence messages intercepted in large volumes during and immediately after World War II
by American, British, and Australian listening posts.
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, some of this traffic was vulnerable to cryptanalysis. Somebody who was working for the manufacturers of Soviet secret-communication materials had reused pages of some of the one-time pads in other pads, which were then used for other secret messages. This defeated the purpose of the one-time pad, which provides ideal security when each page is used exactly once and then disposed of. It is unclear as to why this fatal mistake was made, or by whom.
to convert words and letters into numbers, to which additive key
s (from one-time pad
s) were added, encrypting the content. When used correctly, one-time pad encryption is provably 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.
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 is probable that the Soviet code generators started duplicating cipher pages in order to keep up with demand.
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.
A young Meredith Gardner
then used this material to break into 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
.
VENONA messages also indicated that 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.
Claims have been made that information from the physical recovery of code books (a partially burned one was obtained 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 Japan
ese 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 Finnish radio intelligence sold much of its material concerning Soviet codes to OSS
in 1944 during Operation Stella Polaris
, including the partially burned code book.
Belmont compared the VENONA messages to teleprinter
s sent from FBI field offices to headquarters. The first messages to be partially decoded were full of gaps and were unintelligible. The Army then turned to the FBI, believing "the Bureau by studying the messages and conducting investigations would be able to develop information which would assist the Army cryptographers in reading additional unrecovered portions of the messages." Belmont concluded the decrypted material might not meet standards for evidence set by US law, and, even if it did, it suffered from deficiencies that could limit its usefulness as proof.
Belmont made it clear the successful use of the messages in a court of law to prove guilt would be difficult as well as violating hearsay evidence rules of evidence and the right of a defendant to face his accuser. The evidence had inherent weaknesses:
Belmont discussed the risks of making assumptions:
Belmont discussed the problem of linking a code name with an actual name:
Belmont dourly concluded:
A message dated 5 May 1944 carried information indicating an individual code-named 'Antenna' was 25 years of age, a member of CP USA, lived in New York, matriculated at Cooper Union about 1940, worked in the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, and his wife's name was Ethel.
and enable successful prosecution of such suspects 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 prosecutors, defendants, and the United States to use Venona project information for prosecution.
As stated earlier, the Belmont's memo offered 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 a question of law. A defense attorney might immediately move to dismiss the evidence as hearsay, since neither the Soviet official who sent the message, nor the one 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 Belmont, "the fragmentary nature of the messages and the extensive use of cover names therein make positive identification of the subjects difficult." 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.
Defense attorneys also would probably request to examine messages that cryptographers were unsuccessful in breaking and not in evidence, on the belief that such messages, if decoded, could exonerate their clients. Before any messages could be used in court they would have to be declassified. Approval would have to come from several layers of bureaucracy as well as notification to British counterparts working on the same problem. The FBI determined 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.
Out of some hundreds of thousands of intercepted encrypted texts, it is claimed that under 3,000 have been partially or wholly decrypted. All of the duplicate one-time pad pages were produced in 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.
The existence of VENONA decryption 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 US, Kim Philby
, was told about the project in 1949, as part of his job as liaison between British and US intelligence. Since all of the duplicate one-time pad pages had been used by this time, the Soviets apparently did not make any changes to their cryptographic procedures after they learned of VENONA. However, this information did allow them to alert those of their agents who might be at risk of exposure due to the decryption.
at Los Alamos National Laboratories.
Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs
, Alan Nunn May
, and Donald Maclean
, a member of the Cambridge Five
spy ring. Others worked in Washington in the State Department, the Treasury, Office of Strategic Services,
and even the White House.
The decrypts show that the US 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
,
the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie
,
a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin
,
a section head in the Office of Strategic Services.
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.
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 whom they claim had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence, though fewer than half of these have been matched to real-name identities.
The Office of Strategic Services
, the predecessor to the CIA, housed at one time or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies.
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.
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 an intentional "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.
, were neither prosecuted nor publicly implicated, because the VENONA evidence against them was not made public.
Identity of Soviet source codename "19" is unclear. According to British writer Nigel West it was president of Czechoslovak government-in-exile
Edvard Beneš
. Military historian Eduard Mark and American authors Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel concluded that it was Roosevelt's aide Harry Hopkins
. According to American authors John Earl Haynes
and Harvey Klehr
source codename "19" could be someone from British delegation at the Washington Conference
in May 1943.
, design and production information on the Lockheed P-80
jet fighter, and thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio
. The VENONA evidence indicates that it was unidentified sources codenamed "Quantum" and "Pers" who facilitated transfer of nuclear weapons technology to the Soviet Union from positions within the Manhattan Project.
According to the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, the complicity of both Alger Hiss
and Harry Dexter White
is conclusively proven by Venona, stating "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department." In The Venona Secrets, authors Romerstein and Breindel state the case against White (code name Jurist) was overwhelming, with Jurist being reported to leave the Malta conference to meet with Soviet agents in Moscow, which only matched Harry Dexter White.
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."
However, several current authors, researchers, and archivists consider the VENONA evidence on Hiss to be inconclusive or incorrect.
learned of VENONA in 1949, he obtained advance warning that his fellow Soviet spies Donald Maclean
and Guy Burgess
were in danger of being exposed. The FBI told Philby about an agent code-named Homer, whose 1945 message to Moscow had been decoded. As it had been sent from New York and had its origins in the British Embassy in Washington, Philby deduced that the sender was Donald Maclean, now resident in London (Philby had not known Maclean's code name). By early 1951, Philby knew that US Intelligence would soon also conclude that Maclean was the sender, and he advised that Maclean be recalled. This led to Maclean and Guy Burgess' flight to Russia in May 1951.
. However, the Russians were not aware of this base even as late as 1950. 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. It was the revelation of VENONA material to Chifley revealing evidence of Soviet agents operating in Australia that brought this about. As well as Australian diplomat suspects abroad, VENONA had revealed that Wally Clayton (codenamed KLOD), a leading official within the Communist Party of Australia
, was the chief organiser of Soviet intelligence gathering in Australia. Investigation revealed he was forming an underground network within the CPA so that the party could continue to operate if it was banned.
, 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.
Some of the earliest detailed public knowledge that Soviet code messages from World War II 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. MI5
assistant director Peter Wright
's 1987 memoir, Spycatcher
, however, was the first detailed account of the Venona project, identifying it by name and making clear its long-term implications in post-war espionage.
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 the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, with Senator Moynihan
as chairman, released the VENONA project materials. Moynihan wrote:
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.
However, in at least one case, independent researchers identified one of the subjects whose name had been obscured by the NSA.
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:
The National Cryptologic Museum
features an exhibit on the Venona project in its "Cold War/Information Age" gallery.
, going so far as to claim NSA had forged VENONA material in its entirety in order to discredit the Communist Party of the United States of America and its members. Research in Soviet Archives has added to the corroboration of some VENONA material, including the identities of many codenamed individuals.
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 several editorials highly critical of John Earl Haynes
' and Harvey Klehr
's interpretation of recent work on the subject of Soviet espionage. Navasky claims the VENONA material is being used to “distort … our understanding of the cold war” and that the files are potential “time bombs of misinformation”.
Commenting on the list of 349 Americans identified by VENONA, published in an appendix to Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Navasky wrote, "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." Navasky goes further in his defense of the listed people and has claimed that a great deal of the so-called espionage that went on was nothing more than “exchanges of information among people of good will” and that “most of these exchanges were innocent and were within the law”.
According to Ellen Schrecker
, "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."
Schrecker agrees the documents have genuinely established the guilt of many prominent figures, but is still critical of the hardline interpretation by scholars such as Murno Gladst, arguing, "...complexity, nuance, and a willingness to see the world in other than black and white seem alien to Haynes' view of history."
Writing about Alger Hiss, Hiss's lawyer John Lowenthal criticized the accuracy and methodology of the VENONA analysts, charging they employed false premises and flawed comparative logic to reach the desired conclusion Alger Hiss was the spy "Ales". Lowenthal states this conclusion was psychologically and politically motivated but factually wrong.
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."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis
Cryptanalysis is the study of methods for obtaining the meaning of encrypted information, without access to the secret information that is normally required to do so. Typically, this involves knowing how the system works and finding a secret key...
of messages sent by intelligence agencies
Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
There was a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The first secret police after the Russian Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka"...
of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, the majority during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. There were at least 13 codewords for this project that were used by the US and British intelligence agencies (including the NSA
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
); "VENONA" was the last that was used. That code word has no known meaning. (In the decrypted documents issued from the National Security Agency
National Security Agency
The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is a cryptologic intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the collection and analysis of foreign communications and foreign signals intelligence, as well as protecting U.S...
, "VENONA" is written in capitals, but lowercasing is common in modern journalism.) It was not until 1995 that project materials were released by the government. Analysis supported some criminal spy cases, such as that against Julius Rosenberg for some of the charges, but cast doubt on the case against his wife Ethel Rosenberg.
Background
During the initial years of the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, the VENONA project was a source of information on Soviet intelligence-gathering activity that was directed at the Western military powers. Although unknown to the public, and even to Presidents
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
, these programs were of importance concerning crucial events of the early Cold War. These included the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
spying case and the defections of Donald Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat and member of the Cambridge Five who were members of MI5, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies for the Soviet Union in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" while an undergraduate at Cambridge by...
and Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Most decipherable messages were transmitted and intercepted between 1942 and 1945. Sometime in 1945, the existence of the VENONA program was revealed to the Soviet Union by the NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
agent and United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
SIGINT
SIGINT
Signals intelligence is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether between people , whether involving electronic signals not directly used in communication , or combinations of the two...
analyst and cryptologist Bill Weisband
Bill Weisband
William Weisband, Sr. was an American cryptanalyst and NKVD agent , best known for his role in revealing U.S. decryptions of Soviet diplomatic and intelligence codes to Soviet intelligence....
. These messages were slowly and gradually decrypted
Encryption
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information...
beginning in 1946 and continuing (many times at a low-level of effort in the latter years) through 1980, when the VENONA program was terminated, and the remaining amount of effort that was being spent on it was moved to more important projects.
To what extent the various individuals were involved with Soviet intelligence
Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies
There was a succession of Soviet secret police agencies over time. The first secret police after the Russian Revolution, created by Vladimir Lenin's decree on December 20, 1917, was called "Cheka"...
is a topic of dispute. While a number of academic people and historians assert that most of the individuals mentioned in the VENONA decrypts were most likely either clandestine assets and/or contacts of Soviet intelligence agents, others argue that many of those people probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.
Commencement
The VENONA Project was initiated in 1943, under orders from the deputy Chief of Military Intelligence (G-2), Carter W. Clarke.Clarke distrusted Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, 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 US Army's Signal Intelligence Service (commonly called Arlington Hall
Arlington Hall
Arlington Hall was a former girl's school and the headquarters of the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service cryptography effort during World War II. The site presently houses the George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center, and the United States National Guard Readiness Center. It...
) analyzed encrypted high-level Soviet diplomatic intelligence messages intercepted in large volumes during and immediately after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
by American, British, and Australian listening posts.
Decryption
This message traffic, some of which was encrypted with a one-time padOne-time pad
In cryptography, the one-time pad is a type of encryption, which has been proven to be impossible to crack if used correctly. Each bit or character from the plaintext is encrypted by a modular addition with a bit or character from a secret random key of the same length as the plaintext, resulting...
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, some of this traffic was vulnerable to cryptanalysis. Somebody who was working for the manufacturers of Soviet secret-communication materials had reused pages of some of the one-time pads in other pads, which were then used for other secret messages. This defeated the purpose of the one-time pad, which provides ideal security when each page is used exactly once and then disposed of. It is unclear as to why this fatal mistake was made, or by whom.
Breakthrough
The Soviet systems in general used a codeCode
A code is a rule for converting a piece of information into another form or representation , not necessarily of the same type....
to convert words and letters into numbers, to which additive key
Key (cryptography)
In cryptography, a key is a piece of information that determines the functional output of a cryptographic algorithm or cipher. Without a key, the algorithm would produce no useful result. In encryption, a key specifies the particular transformation of plaintext into ciphertext, or vice versa...
s (from one-time pad
One-time pad
In cryptography, the one-time pad is a type of encryption, which has been proven to be impossible to crack if used correctly. Each bit or character from the plaintext is encrypted by a modular addition with a bit or character from a secret random key of the same length as the plaintext, resulting...
s) were added, encrypting the content. When used correctly, one-time pad encryption is provably 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.
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 is probable that the Soviet code generators started duplicating cipher pages in order to keep up with demand.
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.
A young Meredith Gardner
Meredith Gardner
Meredith Knox Gardner was an American linguist and codebreaker. Gardner worked in counter-intelligence, decoding Soviet intelligence traffic regarding espionage in the United States, in what came to be known as the Venona project.-Early life and career:Gardner was born in Okolona, Mississippi and...
then used this material to break into what turned out to be NKVD
NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....
(and later GRU
GRU
GRU or Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye is the foreign military intelligence directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation...
) 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
Manhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
.
VENONA messages also indicated that Soviet spies worked in Washington in the State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, Treasury
United States Department of the Treasury
The Department of the Treasury is an executive department and the treasury of the United States federal government. It was established by an Act of Congress in 1789 to manage government revenue...
, Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, and even the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
. Very slowly, using assorted techniques ranging from traffic analysis to defector information, more of the messages were decrypted.
Claims have been made that information from the physical recovery of code books (a partially burned one was obtained 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 Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese and Finnish
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
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
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
(FBI) were helpful in the cryptanalysis. The Finnish radio intelligence sold much of its material concerning Soviet codes to OSS
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
in 1944 during Operation Stella Polaris
Operation Stella Polaris
Operation Stella Polaris was the cover name for activity in which Finnish signals intelligence records, equipment and personnel were transported into Sweden after the ending of the Continuation war in 1944...
, including the partially burned code book.
Inherent problems
On 1 February 1956, the FBI's number-three man, Alan Belmont, Assistant to the Director, distributed to top Bureau officials the only known government analysis ever prepared on the reliability of the VENONA decrypts with an eye to the possibility of using the decoded Venona material as prosecutorial evidence in court.Belmont compared the VENONA messages to teleprinter
Teleprinter
A teleprinter is a electromechanical typewriter that can be used to communicate typed messages from point to point and point to multipoint over a variety of communication channels that range from a simple electrical connection, such as a pair of wires, to the use of radio and microwave as the...
s sent from FBI field offices to headquarters. The first messages to be partially decoded were full of gaps and were unintelligible. The Army then turned to the FBI, believing "the Bureau by studying the messages and conducting investigations would be able to develop information which would assist the Army cryptographers in reading additional unrecovered portions of the messages." Belmont concluded the decrypted material might not meet standards for evidence set by US law, and, even if it did, it suffered from deficiencies that could limit its usefulness as proof.
- In the first place, we do not know if the deciphered messages would be admitted into evidence.... The defense attorney would immediately move that the messages be excluded, based on the hearsay evidence rule. He would probably claim that...the contents of the messages were purely hearsay as it related to the defendants.
Belmont made it clear the successful use of the messages in a court of law to prove guilt would be difficult as well as violating hearsay evidence rules of evidence and the right of a defendant to face his accuser. The evidence had inherent weaknesses:
- The messages … are, for the most part, very fragmentary and full of gaps. Some parts of the messages can never be recovered again because during the actual intercept the complete message was not obtained. Other portions can be recovered only through the skill of the cryptographers and with the Bureau's assistance.
Belmont discussed the risks of making assumptions:
- It must be realized that the [deleted] cryptographers make certain assumptions as to meanings when deciphering these messages and thereafter the proper translations of Russian idioms can become a problem. It is for such reasons that [deleted] has indicated that almost anything included in a translation of one of these deciphered messages may in the future be radically revised.
Belmont discussed the problem of linking a code name with an actual name:
- Another very important factor to be considered when discussing the accuracy of these deciphered messages is the extensive use of cover names noted in this traffic. Once an individual was considered for recruitment as an agent by the Soviets, sufficient background data on him was sent to headquarters in Moscow. Thereafter, he was given a cover name and his true name was not mentioned again. This makes positive identifications most difficult since we seldom receive the initial message which states that agent "so and so" (true name) will henceforth be known as "____" (cover name). Also, cover names were changed rather frequently and the cover name "Henry" might apply to two different individuals, depending upon the date it was used…
Belmont dourly concluded:
- All of the above factors make difficult a correct reading of the messages and point up the tentative nature of many identifications.
The Antenna example
FBI Assistant Director Alan H. Belmont offered a example of "the tentative nature of many identifications" "concerning an individual with the cover name 'Antenna.'A message dated 5 May 1944 carried information indicating an individual code-named 'Antenna' was 25 years of age, a member of CP USA, lived in New York, matriculated at Cooper Union about 1940, worked in the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Ft. Monmouth, NJ, and his wife's name was Ethel.
- We made a tentative identification of 'Antenna' as Joseph Weichbrod since the background of Weichbrod corresponded with the information known about 'Antenna.' Weichbrod was about the right age, had a Communist background, lived in NYC, attended Cooper Union in 1939, worked at the Signal Corps, Ft. Monmouth, and his wife's name was Ethel. He was a good suspect for 'Antenna' until sometime later when we definitely established through investigation that 'Antenna' was Julius Rosenberg."
Usability in prosecutions
FBI's Alan Belmont considered that, although decryption might corroborate the testimony of Elizabeth BentleyElizabeth Bentley
Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American spy for the Soviet Union from 1938 until 1945. In 1945 she defected from the Communist Party and Soviet intelligence and became an informer for the U.S. She exposed two networks of spies, ultimately naming over 80 Americans who had engaged in espionage for...
and enable successful prosecution of such suspects as Judith Coplon
Judith Coplon
Judith Coplon Socolov was one of the first major figures tried in the United States for spying for the former Soviet Union; problems in her trials in 1949–50 had a profound influence on espionage prosecutions during the McCarthy era.-Work and arrest:Coplon obtained a job in the Department of...
and the Perlo
Perlo group
Headed by Victor Perlo, the Perlo group is the name given to a group of Americans who provided information which was given to Soviet intelligence agencies; it was active during the World War II period, until the entire group was exposed to the FBI by the defection of Elizabeth Bentley...
and Silvermaster
FBI Silvermaster File
The FBI’s Silvermaster file is a 162-volume compendium of some 26,000 pages of documents relating to the Bureau’s investigation of Communist penetration of the Federal government during the Cold War....
groups, a careful study of all factors compelled the conclusion it would not be in the best interests of prosecutors, defendants, and the United States to use Venona project information for prosecution.
As stated earlier, the Belmont's memo offered 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 a question of law. A defense attorney might immediately move to dismiss the evidence as hearsay, since neither the Soviet official who sent the message, nor the one 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 Belmont, "the fragmentary nature of the messages and the extensive use of cover names therein make positive identification of the subjects difficult." 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.
Defense attorneys also would probably request to examine messages that cryptographers were unsuccessful in breaking and not in evidence, on the belief that such messages, if decoded, could exonerate their clients. Before any messages could be used in court they would have to be declassified. Approval would have to come from several layers of bureaucracy as well as notification to British counterparts working on the same problem. The FBI determined 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.
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 3,000 have been partially or wholly decrypted. All of the duplicate one-time pad pages were produced in 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.
The existence of VENONA decryption 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
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
representative to the US, Kim Philby
Kim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
, was told about the project in 1949, as part of his job as liaison between British and US intelligence. Since all of the duplicate one-time pad pages had been used by this time, the Soviets apparently did not make any changes to their cryptographic procedures after they learned of VENONA. However, this information did allow them to alert those of their agents who might be at risk of exposure due to the decryption.
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 espionageat Los Alamos National Laboratories.
Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Fuchs
Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs was a German theoretical physicist and atomic spy who in 1950 was convicted of supplying information from the American, British and Canadian atomic bomb research to the USSR during and shortly after World War II...
, Alan Nunn May
Alan Nunn May
Alan Nunn May was an English physicist, and a confessed and convicted Soviet spy, who supplied secrets of British and United States atomic research to the Soviet Union during World War II.-Early years, education:...
, and Donald Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat and member of the Cambridge Five who were members of MI5, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies for the Soviet Union in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" while an undergraduate at Cambridge by...
, a member of the Cambridge Five
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...
spy ring. Others worked in Washington in the State Department, the Treasury, Office of Strategic Services,
and even the White House.
The decrypts show that the US 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
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg were American communists who were convicted and executed in 1953 for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. The charges related to their passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union...
; Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
; Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...
,
the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie
Lauchlin Currie
Lauchlin Bernard Currie was a Canadian-born U.S.economist from New Dublin, Nova Scotia, Canada, and allegedly an agent of espionage for the Soviet Union....
,
a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin
Maurice Halperin
Maurice Hyman Halperin was an American writer, professor, diplomat, and Soviet spy .-Biography:...
,
a section head in the Office of Strategic Services.
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.
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
John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
and Harvey Klehr
Harvey Klehr
Harvey E. Klehr 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 ....
, the VENONA transcripts identify approximately 349 Americans whom they claim had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence, though fewer than half of these have been matched to real-name identities.
The Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
, the predecessor to the CIA, housed at one time or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies.
Duncan Lee
Duncan Lee
Lt. Col. Duncan Chaplin Lee was confidential assistant to Maj. Gen. William Donovan, founder and director of the Office of Strategic Services , World War II-era predecessor of the CIA, during 1942-46...
, Donald Wheeler
Donald Wheeler
Donald Niven Wheeler was a lifelong social activist, teacher and member of the Communist Party, as well as an accused Soviet spy. Allegations of espionage made against him were never proved, and he was never convicted despite repeated investigations.-Education:He was a graduate of Reed College and...
, Jane Foster Zlatowski, and Maurice Halperin
Maurice Halperin
Maurice Hyman Halperin was an American writer, professor, diplomat, and Soviet spy .-Biography:...
passed information to Moscow. The War Production Board
War Production Board
The War Production Board was established as a government agency on January 16, 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt.The purpose of the board was to regulate the production and allocation of materials and fuel during World War II in the United States...
, the Board of Economic Warfare
Board of Economic Warfare
The Office of Administrator of Export Control was established in the United States by Presidential Proclamation 2413, July 2, 1940, to administer export licensing provisions of the act of July 2, 1940 . Brigadier General Russell Lamont Maxwell, United States Army, headed up this military entity...
, the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs was a United States agency promoting inter-American cooperation during the 1940s, especially in commercial and economic areas...
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.
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 an intentional "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.
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 HallTheodore Hall
Theodore Alvin Hall was an American physicist and an atomic spy for the Soviet Union, who, during his work on US efforts to develop the first atomic bomb during World War II , gave a detailed description of the "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, and of processes for purifying plutonium, to Soviet...
, were neither prosecuted nor publicly implicated, because the VENONA evidence against them was not made public.
Identity of Soviet source codename "19" is unclear. According to British writer Nigel West it was president of Czechoslovak government-in-exile
Czechoslovak government-in-exile
The Czechoslovak government-in-exile was an informal title conferred upon the Czechoslovak National Liberation Committee, initially by British diplomatic recognition. The name came to be used by other World War II Allies as they subsequently recognized it...
Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš
Edvard Beneš was a leader of the Czechoslovak independence movement, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the second President of Czechoslovakia. He was known to be a skilled diplomat.- Youth :...
. Military historian Eduard Mark and American authors Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel concluded that it was Roosevelt's aide Harry Hopkins
Harry Hopkins
Harry Lloyd Hopkins was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's closest advisers. He was one of the architects of the New Deal, especially the relief programs of the Works Progress Administration , which he directed and built into the largest employer in the country...
. According to American authors John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
and Harvey Klehr
Harvey Klehr
Harvey E. Klehr 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 ....
source codename "19" could be someone from British delegation at the Washington Conference
Washington Conference (1943)
The Third Washington Conference was held in Washington, D.C. was a World War II strategic meeting from May 12 to May 27, 1943, between the heads of government of the United Kingdom and the United States. The delegations were headed by Winston Churchill and Franklin D...
in May 1943.
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 while the content of Julius' atomic espionage was not as vital as was alleged at the time of his espionage activities, in other fields it was extensive. The information Rosenberg passed to the Soviets concerned the proximity fuzeProximity fuze
A proximity fuze is a fuze that is designed to detonate an explosive device automatically when the distance to target becomes smaller than a predetermined value or when the target passes through a given plane...
, design and production information on the Lockheed P-80
P-80 Shooting Star
The Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star was the first jet fighter used operationally by the United States Army Air Forces. Designed in 1943 as a response to the German Messerschmitt Me-262 jet fighter, and delivered in just 143 days from the start of the design process, production models were flying but...
jet fighter, and thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio
Emerson Radio
Emerson Radio Corporation was founded in 1948. It is one of the United States’ largest volume consumer electronics distributors and has a recognized trademark in continuous use since 1912...
. The VENONA evidence indicates that it was unidentified sources codenamed "Quantum" and "Pers" who facilitated transfer of nuclear weapons technology to the Soviet Union from positions within the Manhattan Project.
Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White
- Main articles: Alger HissAlger HissAlger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
, Harry Dexter WhiteHarry Dexter WhiteHarry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...
According to the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, the complicity of both Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss
Alger Hiss was an American lawyer, government official, author, and lecturer. He was involved in the establishment of the United Nations both as a U.S. State Department and U.N. official...
and Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White was an American economist, and senior U.S. Treasury department official, participating in the Bretton Woods conference...
is conclusively proven by Venona, stating "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department." In The Venona Secrets, authors Romerstein and Breindel state the case against White (code name Jurist) was overwhelming, with Jurist being reported to leave the Malta conference to meet with Soviet agents in Moscow, which only matched Harry Dexter White.
In his 1998 book, Senator Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...
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."
However, several current authors, researchers, and archivists consider the VENONA evidence on Hiss to be inconclusive or incorrect.
Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess
When Kim PhilbyKim Philby
Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby was a high-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a spy for and later defected to the Soviet Union...
learned of VENONA in 1949, he obtained advance warning that his fellow Soviet spies Donald Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean
Donald Duart Maclean was a British diplomat and member of the Cambridge Five who were members of MI5, MI6 or the diplomatic service who acted as spies for the Soviet Union in the Second World War and beyond. He was recruited as a "straight penetration agent" while an undergraduate at Cambridge by...
and Guy Burgess
Guy Burgess
Guy Francis De Moncy Burgess was a British-born intelligence officer and double agent, who worked for the Soviet Union. He was part of the Cambridge Five spy ring that betrayed Western secrets to the Soviets before and during the Cold War...
were in danger of being exposed. The FBI told Philby about an agent code-named Homer, whose 1945 message to Moscow had been decoded. As it had been sent from New York and had its origins in the British Embassy in Washington, Philby deduced that the sender was Donald Maclean, now resident in London (Philby had not known Maclean's code name). By early 1951, Philby knew that US Intelligence would soon also conclude that Maclean was the sender, and he advised that Maclean be recalled. This led to Maclean and Guy Burgess' flight to Russia in May 1951.
Soviet espionage in Australia
In addition to the British and Americans, VENONA intercepts were collected by the Australians at a remote base in the Australian OutbackOutback
The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...
. However, the Russians were not aware of this base even as late as 1950. The founding of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation is Australia's national security service, which is responsible for the protection of the country and its citizens from espionage, sabotage, acts of foreign interference, politically-motivated violence, attacks on the Australian defence system, and...
by Labor
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
Prime Minister
Prime minister
A prime minister is the most senior minister of cabinet in the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system. In many systems, the prime minister selects and may dismiss other members of the cabinet, and allocates posts to members within the government. In most systems, the prime...
Ben Chifley
Ben Chifley
Joseph Benedict Chifley , Australian politician, was the 16th Prime Minister of Australia. He took over the Australian Labor Party leadership and Prime Ministership after the death of John Curtin in 1945, and went on to retain government at the 1946 election, before being defeated at the 1949...
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
Civil liberties
Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...
grounds, and a Labor government actually founding one was a surprising about face. It was the revelation of VENONA material to Chifley revealing evidence of Soviet agents operating in Australia that brought this about. As well as Australian diplomat suspects abroad, VENONA had revealed that Wally Clayton (codenamed KLOD), a leading official within the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
, was the chief organiser of Soviet intelligence gathering in Australia. Investigation revealed he was forming an underground network within the CPA so that the party could continue to operate if it was banned.
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 BradleyOmar Bradley
Omar Nelson Bradley was a senior U.S. Army field commander in North Africa and Europe during World War II, and a General of the Army in the United States Army...
, 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
J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States. Appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924, he was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972...
, and suspected the reports were exaggerated for political purposes.
Some of the earliest detailed public knowledge that Soviet code messages from World War II 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
Counter-intelligence
Counterintelligence or counter-intelligence refers to efforts made by intelligence organizations to prevent hostile or enemy intelligence organizations from successfully gathering and collecting intelligence against them. National intelligence programs, and, by extension, the overall defenses of...
work that resulted from it. MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
assistant director Peter Wright
Peter Wright
Peter Maurice Wright was an English scientist and former MI5 counterintelligence officer, noted for writing the controversial book Spycatcher, which became an international bestseller with sales of over two million copies...
's 1987 memoir, Spycatcher
Spycatcher
Spycatcher: The Candid Autobiography of a Senior Intelligence Officer , is a book written by Peter Wright, former MI5 officer and Assistant Director, and co-author Paul Greengrass. It was published first in Australia...
, however, was the first detailed account of the Venona project, identifying it by name and making clear its long-term implications in post-war espionage.
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 the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, with Senator Moynihan
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Daniel Patrick "Pat" Moynihan was an American politician and sociologist. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the United States Senate for New York in 1976, and was re-elected three times . He declined to run for re-election in 2000...
as chairman, released the VENONA project materials. Moynihan wrote:
"[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 MoscowMoscowMoscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
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."
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.
However, in at least one case, independent researchers identified one of the subjects whose name had been obscured by the NSA.
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
Anti-communism
Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
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
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
felt that these efforts were an overreaction (in addition to other reservations about McCarthyism
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...
). 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:
"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."
The National Cryptologic Museum
National Cryptologic Museum
The National Cryptologic Museum is an American museum of cryptologic history that is affiliated with the National Security Agency . The first public museum in the U.S. Intelligence Community, NCM is located in the former Colony Seven Motel, just two blocks from the NSA headquarters at Fort...
features an exhibit on the Venona project in its "Cold War/Information Age" gallery.
Critical views
The relevance, accuracy, and even the authenticity of VENONA decrypts have been questioned. Critics claim the material is unverifiable, with some, such as William KunstlerWilliam Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler was an American self-described "radical lawyer" and civil rights activist, known for his controversial clients...
, going so far as to claim NSA had forged VENONA material in its entirety in order to discredit the Communist Party of the United States of America and its members. Research in Soviet Archives has added to the corroboration of some VENONA material, including the identities of many codenamed individuals.
Some remain skeptical of both the substance and the prevailing interpretations made since the release of the VENONA material. Victor Navasky
Victor Navasky
Victor Saul Navasky is a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He was editor of The Nation from 1978 until 1995, and its publisher and editorial director 1995 to 2005. In November 2005 he became the publisher emeritus...
, editor and publisher of The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
, has written several editorials highly critical of John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes
John Earl Haynes is an American historian who is a specialist in 20th century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress...
' and Harvey Klehr
Harvey Klehr
Harvey E. Klehr 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 ....
's interpretation of recent work on the subject of Soviet espionage. Navasky claims the VENONA material is being used to “distort … our understanding of the cold war” and that the files are potential “time bombs of misinformation”.
Commenting on the list of 349 Americans identified by VENONA, published in an appendix to Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Navasky wrote, "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." Navasky goes further in his defense of the listed people and has claimed that a great deal of the so-called espionage that went on was nothing more than “exchanges of information among people of good will” and that “most of these exchanges were innocent and were within the law”.
According to Ellen Schrecker
Ellen Schrecker
Ellen Wolf Schrecker, Ph.D. is a professor of American history at Yeshiva University. She is currently teaching and has received the Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Tamiment Library at NYU....
, "Because they offer insights into the world of the secret police on both sides of the Iron Curtain
Iron Curtain
The concept of the Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological fighting and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1989...
, 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."
Schrecker agrees the documents have genuinely established the guilt of many prominent figures, but is still critical of the hardline interpretation by scholars such as Murno Gladst, arguing, "...complexity, nuance, and a willingness to see the world in other than black and white seem alien to Haynes' view of history."
Writing about Alger Hiss, Hiss's lawyer John Lowenthal criticized the accuracy and methodology of the VENONA analysts, charging they employed false premises and flawed comparative logic to reach the desired conclusion Alger Hiss was the spy "Ales". Lowenthal states this conclusion was psychologically and politically motivated but factually wrong.
Nigel West
Rupert Allason
Rupert William Simon Allason is a military historian and former Conservative Party politician in the United Kingdom. He was the Member of Parliament for Torbay in Devon, from 1987 to 1997...
, 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."
See also
- History of Soviet and Russian espionage in the United States
- List of Americans in the Venona papers
- List of Soviet agents in the United States
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- Espionage Act of 1917Espionage Act of 1917The Espionage Act of 1917 is a United States federal law passed on June 15, 1917, shortly after the U.S. entry into World War I. It has been amended numerous times over the years. It was originally found in Title 50 of the U.S. Code but is now found under Title 18, Crime...