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Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America

John Earl Haynes,

Harvey Klehr

3.92 · Rating details · 160 ratings · 16 reviews

For nearly 50 years American intelligence agents had been decoding thousands of Soviet messages, uncovering an enormous range of espionage activities carried out against the USA during World War II by its own allies. This is an analysis of the Venona Project and some of the messages.

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Hardcover, 487 pages

Published April 10th 1999 by Yale University Press (first published January 1st 1999)

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Nov 24, 2020 Jerome rated it really liked it

A comprehensive and well-written work. Despite the long history of the VENONA project (1946-1981), most of the book deals with Soviet espionage in America during World War Two, and VENONA’s later unmasking of the agents from that period.

The authors cover how the Americans intercepted messages between the Soviet Union’s spies in America and their Russian handlers. They ably demonstrate how aggressively the Soviets collected intelligence on American secrets at a time when America genuinely wanted A comprehensive and well-written work. Despite the long history of the VENONA project (1946-1981), most of the book deals with Soviet espionage in America during World War Two, and VENONA’s later unmasking of the agents from that period.

The authors cover how the Americans intercepted messages between the Soviet Union’s spies in America and their Russian handlers. They ably demonstrate how aggressively the Soviets collected intelligence on American secrets at a time when America genuinely wanted closer relations (1942-1945): “The Soviet assault was of the type a nation directs at an enemy state that is temporarily an ally and with which it anticipates future hostility, rather than the much more restrained intelligence-gathering it would direct toward an ally that is expected to remain a friendly power.”

The authors cover how difficult the codes were to crack until the war with Germany broke out, and how this led to the Russians taking more expedient measures that made them less secure. This operation continued until the 1970s, though not without occasional, partial security breaches (Kim Philby, for example) Even when the Russians learned of VENONA, however, there wasn’t much they could do about it. They also describe how it was decided that the intercepts could not be used in espionage prosecutions: a security precaution that reinforced the perception that some of these prosecutions were nothing more than paranoid witch hunts. The authors show how ignorant many of the spies were about tradecraft, and how they managed to be successful in spite of it.

The narrative, however, often feels like a dry list of names. Also, the authors often describe many Soviet activities as “espionage,” even though many of their contacts with Americans didn’t go anywhere, and much of the reporting consisted of basic observations about the American political scene, about foreign officials who worked for other governments, and about Russian émigrés. The authors also try to paint the wartime FBI as ignorant of Russian espionage, even though they were, in fact, monitoring Soviet officials, spies, and communist party members during the war. At one point the authors write of the FBI forwarding a memo to NSA in 1949, even though the latter agency did not exist at the time.

Still, a balanced and interesting work. ...more

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Oct 04, 2014 Todd rated it really liked it

Shelves: history, intelligence, russia

Overall a good book and well worth reading. It's not so much about Venona, the NSA (or its predecessor), or codes as it is about the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA). Indeed, the book draws more from the FBI and as much from sworn testimony as it does from Venona decrypts. It also draws heavily on released Communist Party archives in the immediate post-Soviet era. The authors clearly spent their lives researching the CPUSA through multiple sources, and the public release of the Venona decrypts Overall a good book and well worth reading. It's not so much about Venona, the NSA (or its predecessor), or codes as it is about the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA). Indeed, the book draws more from the FBI and as much from sworn testimony as it does from Venona decrypts. It also draws heavily on released Communist Party archives in the immediate post-Soviet era. The authors clearly spent their lives researching the CPUSA through multiple sources, and the public release of the Venona decrypts served as a sort of capstone in their lives' work. It's too bad The Sword and the Shield and The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB & the Battle for the Third World were not published yet, I'm sure the authors would have made good use of them. The authors underscore the importance of their work and the release of Venona: "Communists were depicted as innocent victims of an irrational and oppressive American government...Hundreds of books and thousands of essays on McCarthyism, the federal loyalty security program, Soviet espionage, American communism, and the early Cold War have perpetuated many myths that have given Americans a warped view of the nation's history in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s." (pp 17-18) Which is not to say the authors gave McCarthy a break, "because the deciphered Venona messages were classified and unknown to the public, demagogues such as McCarthy had the opportunity to mix together accurate information...with falsehoods...that served partisan political goals." (p 17)

The authors show that CPUSA members were routinely used to serve the national interests of the Soviet Union in the name of international communism (often through the aegis of the Comintern before it was disbanded), to include spotting spies for recruitment, serving as spies, supporting the espionage or assassination activities of others, etc. The book does briefly explain the encryption used by the Soviets and how it was broken, but it doesn't focus on the technical. Some of the story behind how the code got broken, and more importantly, how more codes did not, is interesting. When a Soviet cipher book was provided to the OSS by a Finn, "the State Department learned of the matter and, in a remarkably naïve act, successfully urged President Roosevelt to order the OSS to hand the material over to the KGB as a gesture of goodwill." (p 34)

The authors capture how the U.S. government was nearly oblivious to the Communist threat to its security until after the U.S. entry into World War II, and this with a public declaration from the founding of the CPUSA to the effect that "Communism does not propose to 'capture' the bourgeoisie parliamentary state, but to conquer and destroy it...It is necessary that the proletariat organize its own state for the coercion and suppression of the bourgeoisie." (p 57) The authors conclude their work with the note that "Taken as a whole, the new evidence...shows that from 1942 to 1945 the Soviet Union launched an unrestricted espionage offensive against the United States...The Soviet assault was of the type a nation directs at an enemy state that is temporarily an ally and with which it anticipates future hostility, rather than the much more restrained intelligence-gathering it would direct toward an ally that is expected to remain a friendly power." For the Soviets, the Cold War began with the Revolution. It seems to me to mirror our experience with the militant form of Islam today, declaring open war on the West while Westerns whistle blithely past the graveyard. In fact, militant Islam's totalitarianism and goal of global domination closely reflect those of Communists, making a read like this more relevant today than some might think.

The authors have a deep grasp of their topic and the period of the 1930s-1950s in the United States. However, they are not fixated on security per se, in fact, they highlight the FBI's opposition to Roosevelt's decision to place Japanese-Americans in internment camps on the basis that the FBI had already neutralized any major threats within that community. (p 89) It is also interesting to see what one's opponents hope for from one's domestic politics and policies. In the case of the Soviet Union in the early Cold War, they communicated among themselves that the election of Thomas Dewey (whom they dubbed "Kulak") would dry up the CPUSA as a source of intelligence. (pp 225-226) One doubts one's enemies wish for what is good for an enemy nation...

The authors also show that the espionage CPUSA members engaged in was not merely an academic or harmless affair. Apart from the nuclear espionage, massive in its own right and well-documented herein, they examine other impacts: "they [Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr] created the first Soviet radar-guided anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles, weapons that proved highly effective against American aircraft in the Vietnam War." (p 300) The authors note there were more than 50,000 CPUSA members during World War II, and although "most American Communists were not spies, when the KGB and GRU looked for sources and agents in the United States, they found the most eager and qualified candidates in the ranks of the American Communist party" who mostly did so "out of ideological affinity with the Soviets." Further, "though some American Communists who were asked to spy for the Soviet Union declined out of fear of being caught, there are no examples of Communists who indignantly rejected such overtures as unethical and reported the approaches to the U.S. authorities." (p 333) The closest one fellow traveler comes to reporting on his fellows was J. Robert Oppenheimer, on whom the authors find no evidence of espionage, but who may have turned a knowing blind eye to others until 1943. (p 328)

Both the actual success of Soviet espionage, and what remained hidden from public view, impacted the politics of the United States throughout much of the Cold War. "Republicans sought to discredit Democrats by painting the response of Democratic executive-branch officials as inadequate or even as constituting complicity in espionage. Democrats responded sometimes by covering up the problem, as in the Amerasia case, but more often, as with President Truman's personnel security order, by preempting the issue by taking a hard line against Communist subversion and spying." (p 336) Indeed, one interesting facet of the book is the unearthing of the CPUSA's own initiative to ally with progressive Democrats during World War II without sanction from Moscow, which naturally resulted in an eventual change in policy, though not before some Democrats showed themselves open to alliance with Communists.

If you're looking for an in-depth look at Venona itself, you're likely to be disappointed. Instead, this book places Venona in a wide range of context, to include FBI files, Russian archives, defectors, testimony, and trials, to give an excellent understanding of the relationship between the Soviet Union and the CPUSA. I recommend it to history buffs, those interested in national security issues, or those considering how a free society ought to deal with a potentially subversive element within its own population. ...more

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Jul 31, 2016 Ushan rated it liked it

Shelves: cold-war

Haynes and Klehr are historians of the American Communist movement. In 1992 they published a one-volume history of the movement, where they said, "Ideologically, American Communists owed their first loyalty to the motherland of communism rather than to the United States but in practice few American Communists were spies. The Soviet Union recruited spies from the Communist movement, but espionage was not a regular activity of the American party." As they were writing this book, the Soviet Union Haynes and Klehr are historians of the American Communist movement. In 1992 they published a one-volume history of the movement, where they said, "Ideologically, American Communists owed their first loyalty to the motherland of communism rather than to the United States but in practice few American Communists were spies. The Soviet Union recruited spies from the Communist movement, but espionage was not a regular activity of the American party." As they were writing this book, the Soviet Union fell, and the Yeltsin government of Russia opened the archives of the Stalin-era CPSU and of the Comintern to Western researchers. Haynes and Klehr started studying the documents stored at the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History, and its workers asked them whether they might be interested in the CPUSA archive. They were astonished that such an archive existed in Russia, since there was nothing like it in the USA. A study of this archive led to two more books in 1995 and 1998, where they showed that they were wrong in their first book: not few, but hundreds of American Communists were spies, and the party's national and regional leadership was actively involved in espionage. Books about the people mentioned in the CPUSA archive talked about Venona, an American codebreaking project that identified Soviet spies; the existence of the project was publicly known, but the decrypted messages themselves were still classified. In 1995, Haynes and Klehr argued before the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy that classifying 50-year-old decrypted messages made no sense, considering that related Soviet documents were freely available in Russia, and they were declassified. This book is an analysis of these messages.

In 1943, a U.S. Army colonel in charge of military intelligence heard rumors that the Soviets were negotiating a separate peace with the Germans, which would enable the Germans to turn the might of their military machine against the British and the Americans. He ordered some of the cryptographers under his command to try codebreaking Soviet diplomatic cables, judging that the peace negotiations, if they existed, would be reflected in the Soviet diplomatic correspondence. They succeeded in 1946; the war was over, and there was no separate peace. The decrypted messages showed something else, though: that the United States teemed with Soviet spies. The decryption effort continued until 1980, but only a fraction of all messages yielded to cryptanalysis; most remain unbroken even today. The decrypted messages showed that 349 American citizens, immigrants and permanent residents were involved in espionage for the Soviet Union; no one knows, how many individuals are mentioned in the undecrypted messages.

What did these people do? First, atomic and industrial espionage. Scientists Harry Gold, Julius Rosenberg, Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, and technician David Greenglass all spied on the American atomic bomb program; there were two more atomic spies, with the code names Quantum and Fogel/Pers, who have not been identified. Ethel Rosenberg knew of her husband's work and helped him in a minor way; the electric chair was a punishment grossly disproportionate to her offense, but she was not innocent, as the Rosenbergs' children have maintained for decades (until the 2008 confession by 91-year-old convicted spy Morton Sobell, they also maintained their father's innocence). In addition to the atomic bomb, Soviet agents reported on the development of airborne radar bombsight, synthetic rubber, industrial aerosols and the such. Second, fighting enemies of the Soviet Union, such as the Trotskyists and Soviet defectors, in the United States. Third, passing American military and diplomatic secrets to the Soviet Union, as Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss did.

The substance of the secrets was passed to the Soviet Union through diplomatic mail, not through encrypted cables, so decryption of the cables cannot answer the question, how much damage the spies did to the United States. What is clear, say Haynes and Klehr, is that the espionage assault by the Soviet Union on the United States in 1942-1945 was something a nation would normally direct at a wartime enemy, not at a wartime ally giving it billions of dollars' worth of aid. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five, a pro-Nazi American visits American POWs in Dresden in February 1945, and attempts to recruit them into a unit fighting the Red Army, saying, "You are going to have to fight the Communists sooner or later. Why not get it over with?" As this fictional character was saying this, real American Communists and the non-Communist Americans they have recruited have been fighting the United States for years on behalf of the Soviet Communists. When they were discovered, as they would sooner or later have to be, this discovery was one of the reasons for the real Cold War. ...more

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May 29, 2020 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Anyone who is interested in historical truth

Recommended to David by: Had read about Venona recently

5/29/20: Eventually will read straight through, but right now am using as a source to evaluate another (older) book I'm reading on the period 1945-50.

6/5/20: Now reading straight through, although I did read the concluding chapter. See progress notes.

6/24/20 Very useful as a commentary on other reading on the period that did not have the advantage of Soviet archives and the Venona intercepts. I can see how someone (as in many Goodreads reviewers) who has not read quite a bit on the postwar perio ...more

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Apr 04, 2017 Jack Barsky added it

A very thorough dive into Soviet espionage in the United States up until the mid 50s. This is an extremely well sourced book with documentation gathered from decrypted KGB cables (Venona Project), selected document released to the public from KGB archives, and publicly available testimonies by known spies. There is overwhelming evidence that the Communist Party of the United States was instrumental in Soviet spying in the US. Regardless, of the excessive hysteria created by the Senate hearings h ...more

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Dec 20, 2013 John rated it liked it

Dry, but interesting nonetheless. The extent of Soviet espionage within the US Government in the 30s and 40s is at first quite shocking. It really hammers home the reality of the focus on Nazi Germany and the fact that, at the time, the brutality of the Soviet Union were less well known.

The US may not have entered into the Cold War until the late 1940s, but the Soviets started at their first opportunity.

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May 30, 2019 Michael rated it really liked it

This book was a interesting read. I liked learning about the history of Soviet espionage in the United States. This book starts out introducing the Soviet code system and why they did what they did. Then it goes on, in detail, about how the spies in the U.S operated and what the Soviets/Communist sympathizers were doing in the U.S. Also it shows what the U.S was doing about the whole Soviet spy situation. This book's timeline is from the early 20's to the middle 50's and some parts in between bu ...more

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Dec 26, 2010 Mike rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history

A readable history of Cold War espionage. I liked the overview it provided:

"The deciphered Venona messages provide a solid factual basis for this consensus [the seriousness of Communist espionage]. But the government did not release the Venona decryptions to the public... This decision denied the public the incontestable evidence afforded by the messages of the Soviet Union's own spies.... The public's belief in those reports rested on faith in the integrity of government security officials. The A readable history of Cold War espionage. I liked the overview it provided:

"The deciphered Venona messages provide a solid factual basis for this consensus [the seriousness of Communist espionage]. But the government did not release the Venona decryptions to the public... This decision denied the public the incontestable evidence afforded by the messages of the Soviet Union's own spies.... The public's belief in those reports rested on faith in the integrity of government security officials. These sources are inherently more ambiguous than the hard evidence of the Venona messages and this ambiguity had unfortunate consequences for American politics and Americans' understanding of their own history.

There were sensible reasons for the decision to keep Venona a highly compartmentalized secret within the government. In retrospect, however, the negative consequences of this policy are glaring. ... The overlapping issues of Communists in government, Soviet espionage, and the loyalty of American Communists quickly became a partisan battleground. Led by Republican senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, some conservatives and partisan Republicans launched a comprehensive attack on the loyalties of the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. Some painted the entire New Deal as a disguised Communist plot. ...

Unfortunately, the success of government secrecy in this case has seriously distorted our understanding of post-WWII history. Hundreds of books and thousands of essays on McCarthyism, the federal loyalty security program, Soviet espionage, American communism, and the early Cold War have perpetuated many myths that have given Americans a warped view of the nation's history in the 1930's, 1940's, and 1950's. The information that these messages reveal substantially revises the basis for understanding the early history of the Cold War and of America's concern with Soviet espionage and Communist subversion."

In particular reference to Oppenheimer, the authors had this to say:

"Oppenheimer's name appears in several messages in clear text where various Soviet sources reported on which scientist were supervising various aspects of the Manhattan Project. These are reports from Soviet spies, not reports from him. None suggests any compromising relationship with Soviet intelligence.

In addition to what was said about Oppenheimer in Venona, what was not said is significant. Because only a portion of KGB cable traffic had been decrypted, silence on a particular person or subject often means nothing. The KGB traffic was not silent, however, on atomic espionage, on Los Alamos, or on J. Robert Oppenheimer. The messages on those subjects were written in a manner that suggests the absence of so knowledgeable a source as the director of the Manhattan Project.

Another silence has to be taken into consideration. Although the archives of the Soviet intelligence agencies remain closed to research, the Russian government has released some documents dealing with the content of the intelligence delivered to the Soviet atomic bomb project. These documents do not provide much in the way of direct clues about who gave information to the USSR but do show that the KGB and GRU sources provided the Soviets with rich and highly valuable information. Oppenheimer, however, did not know just the secrets of the some parts of the atomic bomb project. As scientific director at Los Alamos he knew all the secrets, and knew them nearly as soon as they came into being. Had Oppenheimer been an active Soviet source, the quality and quantity of what the Soviet Union learned would most likely have been greater than they actually were. Further, even in regard to what secrets the USSR did learn, if Oppenheimer had been a source, the Soviets would have learned them significantly sooner than they actually appear to have done.

The evidence suggests that Oppenheimer's ties to the Communist party up through 1941 were very strong. He was not simply a casual Popular Front liberal who ignorantly bumped up against the party in some of the arenas in which it operated. Until he went to security officials in 1943, Oppenheimer's attitude toward possible Communist espionage against the Manhattan Project came very close to complete indifference. It was as if in mid-1943 his views changed and he realized that there were actually was a serious security issue involved. Even then, it appeared that he wanted only to give security officials enough information to bring about a neutralization of the problem but not enough to expose associates to retribution for what they might have already done. Throughout his life Oppenheimer declined to provide a detailed or accurate accounting of his relationship with the CPUSA in the late 1930's and early 1940's and of his knowledge of Communists who worked on the Manhattan Project. While the preponderance of the evidence argues against Oppenheimer's having been an active Soviet source, one matter cannot be ruled out. The possibility exists that up to the time he reported the Chevalier approach to security official in mid-1943, he may have overlooked the conduct of others whom he had reasonable grounds to question, a passivity motivated by his personal and political ties to those persons." ...more

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Jul 04, 2009 Joe rated it it was ok

While I think this was a decent book for what it is, I was disappointed in what it is not - namely, I was looking forward to learning about the actual process of capturing, breaking and then using the Venona intercepts, which was only covered in the first chapter of this book. The remainder dealt with how the Venona decrypts served to verify (or unmask for the first time) numerous American officials and private citizens as Soviet agents. While some of this was interesting, the very meticulous pr ...more

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Jan 14, 2012 Kirk Morrison rated it it was amazing

Phenomenal research by Haynes and Klehr. This book is an excellent corrective to the continued myth in Cold War history that little espionage was taking place in the US and therefore the Red-hunting exploits of McCarthy et. al. were all over-reaching. "Venona" clearly shows how wide-spread, damaging, and up to Venona- lax the government was in responding to these crimes. If you are looking for in-depth treatment of code-breaking and other technical aspects- this isn't the book. However, if you w ...more

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Jun 16, 2015 Calvin rated it really liked it

I enjoyed this book and found it very informative. The only unfortunate thing about the Venona project was that the secrecy of the project made it impossible to use in court during the McCarthy era. The only thing I did not like about this book was the slant in the end that seemed to suggest that most American's recruited by the Soviet Union were recruited for ideological reasons. However, other texts based on Vassiliev's Notebooks provide plenty of examples of American's being bribed, blackmail ...more

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Jan 30, 2009 Joseph rated it really liked it

This book is amazing in how NOT boring it is! While an academic work looking into spying between the Soviets and the West, its fascinating subject matter and writing style keep the reader's interest peaked. ...more

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Jul 22, 2017 Don Kesterson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Great reference

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Sep 15, 2014 Eric rated it really liked it

Just re-read this book. It's a little dry in some sections however overall I found it fascinating enough to read it twice. ...more

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Apr 25, 2013 Nathan rated it it was ok

There was no "story" and very little information about the actual code-breaking process. The majority of the book was a laundry list of those involved. ...more

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