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Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
Only in 1995 did the United States government officially reveal the existence of the super-secret Venona Project. For nearly fifty years American intelligence agents had been decoding thousands of Soviet messages, uncovering an enormous range of espionage activities carried out against the United States during World War II by its own allies. So sensitive was the project in its early years that even President Truman was not informed of its existence. This extraordinary book is the first to examine the Venona messages—documents of unparalleled importance for our understanding of the history and politics of the Stalin era and the early Cold War years.
Hidden away in a former girls’ school in the late 1940s, Venona Project cryptanalysts, linguists, and mathematicians attempted to decode more than twenty-five thousand intercepted Soviet intelligence telegrams. When they cracked the unbreakable Soviet code, a breakthrough leading eventually to the decryption of nearly three thousand of the messages, analysts uncovered information of powerful significance: the first indication of Julius Rosenberg’s espionage efforts; references to the espionage activities of Alger Hiss; startling proof of Soviet infiltration of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb; evidence that spies had reached the highest levels of the U.S. State and Treasury Departments; indications that more than three hundred Americans had assisted in the Soviet theft of American industrial, scientific, military, and diplomatic secrets; and confirmation that the Communist party of the United States was consciously and willingly involved in Soviet espionage against America. Drawing not only on the Venona papers but also on newly opened Russian and U. S. archives, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr provide in this book the clearest, most rigorously documented analysis ever written on Soviet espionage and the Americans who abetted it in the early Cold War years.
Hidden away in a former girls’ school in the late 1940s, Venona Project cryptanalysts, linguists, and mathematicians attempted to decode more than twenty-five thousand intercepted Soviet intelligence telegrams. When they cracked the unbreakable Soviet code, a breakthrough leading eventually to the decryption of nearly three thousand of the messages, analysts uncovered information of powerful significance: the first indication of Julius Rosenberg’s espionage efforts; references to the espionage activities of Alger Hiss; startling proof of Soviet infiltration of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb; evidence that spies had reached the highest levels of the U.S. State and Treasury Departments; indications that more than three hundred Americans had assisted in the Soviet theft of American industrial, scientific, military, and diplomatic secrets; and confirmation that the Communist party of the United States was consciously and willingly involved in Soviet espionage against America. Drawing not only on the Venona papers but also on newly opened Russian and U. S. archives, John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr provide in this book the clearest, most rigorously documented analysis ever written on Soviet espionage and the Americans who abetted it in the early Cold War years.
504 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
John Earl Haynes
21 books15 followersJohn Earl Haynes was Modern Political Historian, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, for twenty-five years.
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April 15, 2023
Yale University Press: (2000)
It took years to decipher the many thousands of messages that make up the VENONA files.
It goes without saying that even hinting at the capture of these messages would have alerted the Soviets and allowed forewarning of their agents and their sources (the traitors feeding the ‘red menace’). This would have caused irreversible damage in the continued hunt for perpetrators.
Letting the cat-out-of-the-bag during the trial of a few spies (for example a married couple) who the Soviets saw as past their prime [the deciphered intercepts show this thinking] would have, we can safely assume, quelled much of the public resentment to the sentences handed out. Doing so was unthinkable and the government of the day, I would suggest, decided to suffer the backlash in order to protect national interest.
The government [the FBI] KNEW of the guilt of those they led to court but were unable to publicly announced why they KNEW.
Many question the intensity of the ‘red-under-the-bed’ [a term used to denote an exaggerated or obsessive fear of the presence and harmful influence of communist sympathisers within post-war USA]. Many have suggested government incitement was to blame. The government KNEW how real the threat was but, as has been said, could not hint as to why they KNEW.
Reading this is a slog. I kid you not: 500 plus pages. I first read these files in the late 90’s. This book provides a true and unadulterated representation of the raw material.
Complete, unedited, copies of the VENONA files in .pdf format are freely available and can be found when visiting the Wilson Centre website: /article/venona-project-and-vassiliev-notebooks-index-and-concordance
This supreme effort, (an effort that will only EVER be found by those who enjoy the benefits of living in a free-speaking, liberal democracy) gives chance for all to make up their own mind on what VENONA traffic proved.
*****
The following can be found at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information’s website: opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945-present/venona.htm
The VENONA intercepts, as they were codenamed, remained a closely-guarded secret, KNOWN only to a handful of government officials, until the program was declassified in 1995.
The US government acquired copies of all cables openly sent to and from various Soviet embassies and consulates. These messages were encrypted by a means KNOWN as a "one-time pad." This meant that, at least in theory, decrypting them should have been impossible. The Army's Signal Intelligence Service began working on the problem in 1943, and they gradually discovered a Soviet procedural error that allowed many of the messages to be painstakingly decrypted. Portions of messages began to become clear in 1946, and by 1948 numerous messages were being decrypted.
Although only messages up to 1945 were vulnerable to decryption, and these messages were several years old by that point, they still contained references to spies who had never been detected, many who presumably continued to work for Soviet intelligence. From 1948 to 1951, numerous Soviet spies were uncovered and prosecuted, including the atomic spies Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass, Greenglass's handler Julius Rosenberg, and his wife Ethel Rosenberg.
A batch of VENONA messages detailed Soviet atomic espionage and unmistakably showed that Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet agent; an assertion that some historians and much of the American public had rejected as unsupported by documentary evidence.
Here at last was the evidence.
*****
The following is copied from the book, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America - Yale University Press; (2000)
The VENONA messages do not throw Ethel Rosenberg’s guilt into doubt, indeed they confirm that she was a participant in her husband’s espionage and in the recruitment of her brother for atomic espionage. They do suggest that she was essentially an accessory to her husbands activity and assisting him but not acting as a principal. Had this information been introduced at the Rosenberg’s trial, the VENONA messages would have confirmed Ethel's guilt but also reduced importance of her role.
While some of the identities of the cover names in the VENONA traffic were obvious others were not. Messages discussed a Soviet agent who at first had the cover name ANTENNA and later was called LIBERAL. Over two years hundreds of cover names were identified. One of the decrypted messages from the New York KGB office to Moscow reported that LIBERAL’s wife of five years was named Ethel. By 1950, the government KNEW Julius Rosenberg was in fact ANTENNA/LIBERAL, who in the right year had married Ethel Greenglass, who was of the right age.
In a deciphered VENONA message: the New York KGB station reports to Moscow headquarters that LIBERAL (Julius Rosenberg) and his wife (Ethel) recommend recruiting Ruth Greenglass, Ethel's sister-in-law, as a Soviet agent. The local KGB stations in the United States had to request formal permission from Moscow for recruitments.
The KGB cable that first noted the contact with Ruth Greenglass stated that Ethel had recommended recruitment of her sister-in-law. Both Greenglasses later testified that Ethel was fully aware of Julius's espionage work and assisted him by typing some material.
A VENONA cable dated November 1944 from the New York KGB station responding to a Moscow headquarters inquiry about LIBERAL’s wife, stated: “Information on LIBERAL’s wife. Surname that of her husband, first name Ethel.”
A deciphered message from December 1944: KGB New York station’s message notes the acquisition of a State Department report and promises that a full translation will be forwarded to Moscow by courier. Julius Rosenberg is named in clear text, apparently as the source of the report.
KGB messages show that Ethel was fully informed about her husband’s espionage activities and assisted in recruiting her brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass.
VENONA message: Moscow ordered its New York office to award LIBERAL a $1,000 bonus in March 1945 in recognition of his achievements and authorised smaller sums for his agents.
*****
Complete, unedited, copies of the VENONA files in .pdf format can be found when visiting the Wilson Centre website: /article/venona-project-and-vassiliev-notebooks-index-and-concordance
Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks show clearly that Ethel Rosenberg was an active participant in her husband's espionage activities.
The original Vassiliev notebooks, handwritten in Russian, are held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Scanned versions of the notebooks along with transcriptions into word-processed Cyrillic Russian and translations into English are available on the CWIHP Digital Archive. The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) found on the Wilson Centre website, supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. The Russian transcriptions and the English translations are electronically searchable.
I would urge anyone who wishes to understand the TRUTH behind stories told, of late, by some who claim to have extensively researched the subject can decide for themselves without too much effort whether or whether not Ethel Rosenberg was GUILTY of espionage. The dilemma for those charged with protecting the NATION’S security was, ‘Do we tell the public what we KNOW and thus allow others who wish to destroy a NATION that provides for all, FREE-SPEACH (the First Amendment) and upholds the RULE-OF-LAW, the chance to escape prosecution?’
It’s easy, I would suggest, for those wanting to pull on the heart-strings of the general public to blame the ‘red-under-the-bed’ sentiment for what happened.
David Martin, in his 1981 history of espionage discussed a highly secret American code breaking project that provided clear evidence against the Rosenbergs and other Soviet spies, a finding affirmed by the historians Ronald Roche and Joyce Milton in their 1983 history of the Rosenberg case.
One has to concern oneself more, when it is quite obvious that some who claim Ethel’s innocence, KNEW all along, full-well, of her guilt.
Julius and Ethel were put under pressure to incriminate others involved in the spy ring. Neither offered any further information. They were not tortured as they would have been if residing in a SOVIET STATE.
Ethel Rosenberg testified before a grand jury. For all questions, she asserted her right to not answer as provided by the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination: lucky to be residing in a NATION that adheres to the RULE-OF-LAW.
FBI agents took Ethel into custody as she left the courthouse. Her attorney asked the U.S. commissioner to parole her in his custody over the weekend, so that she could make arrangements for her two young children. The request was denied.
Did the FBI conclude: you scratch my back - I’ll scratch yours? More seriously, when you KNOW that the couple are unrepentant and withholding information that threatens the NATION’s security, is it wise to allow any measure of freedom?
I’ve no doubt, it was wrong to execute the woman. It can be seen that the RULE-OF-LAW allowed such punishment. It can be argued that the threat of execution to Ethel was made in hope of her husband exposing his network. Maybe a few years in Sing Sing would have done the trick and why I would suggest execution was not the best option. How difficult was it for the establishment to row back once it became obvious their threat was not helping in their efforts?
What motivates the traitor?
It is commonly accepted that it is MICE:
M - Money
I - Ideology
C - Compromat (compromising information, used to blackmail)
E - Ego
I ask, what motivated the Rosenbergs? Julius Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Ethel was born to Barney and Tessie Greenglass: her father was an immigrant from Russia.
MONEY? - Venona message: Moscow ordered its New York office to award LIBERAL a $1,000 bonus in March 1945 in recognition of his achievements and authorised smaller sums for his agents.
IDEOLOGY? - Having been spared the hardship of life in a Soviet yoke and given a chance to live in a ‘FREE-SPEAKING’ liberal democracy, they chose to betray their country.
COMPROMAT? - Nothing we read in the files would suggest the Rosenbergs were blackmailed.
EGO? - They remained unrepentant all they way to 'The Chair'.
The VENONA files are available for public scrutiny. These texts have not been edited to suit political leaning. The extent by which the Soviet State infiltrated ‘free-speaking, democratic nations’ is laid bare. The VENONA files show that the ‘red-under-the-bed’ sentiment, incited by the government of the day or not, was not hyperbole.
We, thankfully, still live in a FREE-SPEAKING society. Once we’ve lost that luxury, we’ll have lost the enjoyment and benefit of websites such as Goodreads and be left with nothing but that which conforms with the accepted narrative. Take a look at what is happening in China.
I welcome polite, respectful, constructive debate and gladly welcome opposing opinions. I do hope that fellow GR members will use the comments option made available TO ALL.
It took years to decipher the many thousands of messages that make up the VENONA files.
It goes without saying that even hinting at the capture of these messages would have alerted the Soviets and allowed forewarning of their agents and their sources (the traitors feeding the ‘red menace’). This would have caused irreversible damage in the continued hunt for perpetrators.
Letting the cat-out-of-the-bag during the trial of a few spies (for example a married couple) who the Soviets saw as past their prime [the deciphered intercepts show this thinking] would have, we can safely assume, quelled much of the public resentment to the sentences handed out. Doing so was unthinkable and the government of the day, I would suggest, decided to suffer the backlash in order to protect national interest.
The government [the FBI] KNEW of the guilt of those they led to court but were unable to publicly announced why they KNEW.
Many question the intensity of the ‘red-under-the-bed’ [a term used to denote an exaggerated or obsessive fear of the presence and harmful influence of communist sympathisers within post-war USA]. Many have suggested government incitement was to blame. The government KNEW how real the threat was but, as has been said, could not hint as to why they KNEW.
Reading this is a slog. I kid you not: 500 plus pages. I first read these files in the late 90’s. This book provides a true and unadulterated representation of the raw material.
Complete, unedited, copies of the VENONA files in .pdf format are freely available and can be found when visiting the Wilson Centre website: /article/venona-project-and-vassiliev-notebooks-index-and-concordance
This supreme effort, (an effort that will only EVER be found by those who enjoy the benefits of living in a free-speaking, liberal democracy) gives chance for all to make up their own mind on what VENONA traffic proved.
*****
The following can be found at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information’s website: opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945-present/venona.htm
The VENONA intercepts, as they were codenamed, remained a closely-guarded secret, KNOWN only to a handful of government officials, until the program was declassified in 1995.
The US government acquired copies of all cables openly sent to and from various Soviet embassies and consulates. These messages were encrypted by a means KNOWN as a "one-time pad." This meant that, at least in theory, decrypting them should have been impossible. The Army's Signal Intelligence Service began working on the problem in 1943, and they gradually discovered a Soviet procedural error that allowed many of the messages to be painstakingly decrypted. Portions of messages began to become clear in 1946, and by 1948 numerous messages were being decrypted.
Although only messages up to 1945 were vulnerable to decryption, and these messages were several years old by that point, they still contained references to spies who had never been detected, many who presumably continued to work for Soviet intelligence. From 1948 to 1951, numerous Soviet spies were uncovered and prosecuted, including the atomic spies Klaus Fuchs, David Greenglass, Greenglass's handler Julius Rosenberg, and his wife Ethel Rosenberg.
A batch of VENONA messages detailed Soviet atomic espionage and unmistakably showed that Julius Rosenberg was a Soviet agent; an assertion that some historians and much of the American public had rejected as unsupported by documentary evidence.
Here at last was the evidence.
*****
The following is copied from the book, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America - Yale University Press; (2000)
The VENONA messages do not throw Ethel Rosenberg’s guilt into doubt, indeed they confirm that she was a participant in her husband’s espionage and in the recruitment of her brother for atomic espionage. They do suggest that she was essentially an accessory to her husbands activity and assisting him but not acting as a principal. Had this information been introduced at the Rosenberg’s trial, the VENONA messages would have confirmed Ethel's guilt but also reduced importance of her role.
While some of the identities of the cover names in the VENONA traffic were obvious others were not. Messages discussed a Soviet agent who at first had the cover name ANTENNA and later was called LIBERAL. Over two years hundreds of cover names were identified. One of the decrypted messages from the New York KGB office to Moscow reported that LIBERAL’s wife of five years was named Ethel. By 1950, the government KNEW Julius Rosenberg was in fact ANTENNA/LIBERAL, who in the right year had married Ethel Greenglass, who was of the right age.
In a deciphered VENONA message: the New York KGB station reports to Moscow headquarters that LIBERAL (Julius Rosenberg) and his wife (Ethel) recommend recruiting Ruth Greenglass, Ethel's sister-in-law, as a Soviet agent. The local KGB stations in the United States had to request formal permission from Moscow for recruitments.
The KGB cable that first noted the contact with Ruth Greenglass stated that Ethel had recommended recruitment of her sister-in-law. Both Greenglasses later testified that Ethel was fully aware of Julius's espionage work and assisted him by typing some material.
A VENONA cable dated November 1944 from the New York KGB station responding to a Moscow headquarters inquiry about LIBERAL’s wife, stated: “Information on LIBERAL’s wife. Surname that of her husband, first name Ethel.”
A deciphered message from December 1944: KGB New York station’s message notes the acquisition of a State Department report and promises that a full translation will be forwarded to Moscow by courier. Julius Rosenberg is named in clear text, apparently as the source of the report.
KGB messages show that Ethel was fully informed about her husband’s espionage activities and assisted in recruiting her brother and sister-in-law, David and Ruth Greenglass.
VENONA message: Moscow ordered its New York office to award LIBERAL a $1,000 bonus in March 1945 in recognition of his achievements and authorised smaller sums for his agents.
*****
Complete, unedited, copies of the VENONA files in .pdf format can be found when visiting the Wilson Centre website: /article/venona-project-and-vassiliev-notebooks-index-and-concordance
Alexander Vassiliev’s notebooks show clearly that Ethel Rosenberg was an active participant in her husband's espionage activities.
The original Vassiliev notebooks, handwritten in Russian, are held in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Scanned versions of the notebooks along with transcriptions into word-processed Cyrillic Russian and translations into English are available on the CWIHP Digital Archive. The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) found on the Wilson Centre website, supports the full and prompt release of historical materials by governments on all sides of the Cold War. The Russian transcriptions and the English translations are electronically searchable.
I would urge anyone who wishes to understand the TRUTH behind stories told, of late, by some who claim to have extensively researched the subject can decide for themselves without too much effort whether or whether not Ethel Rosenberg was GUILTY of espionage. The dilemma for those charged with protecting the NATION’S security was, ‘Do we tell the public what we KNOW and thus allow others who wish to destroy a NATION that provides for all, FREE-SPEACH (the First Amendment) and upholds the RULE-OF-LAW, the chance to escape prosecution?’
It’s easy, I would suggest, for those wanting to pull on the heart-strings of the general public to blame the ‘red-under-the-bed’ sentiment for what happened.
David Martin, in his 1981 history of espionage discussed a highly secret American code breaking project that provided clear evidence against the Rosenbergs and other Soviet spies, a finding affirmed by the historians Ronald Roche and Joyce Milton in their 1983 history of the Rosenberg case.
One has to concern oneself more, when it is quite obvious that some who claim Ethel’s innocence, KNEW all along, full-well, of her guilt.
Julius and Ethel were put under pressure to incriminate others involved in the spy ring. Neither offered any further information. They were not tortured as they would have been if residing in a SOVIET STATE.
Ethel Rosenberg testified before a grand jury. For all questions, she asserted her right to not answer as provided by the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination: lucky to be residing in a NATION that adheres to the RULE-OF-LAW.
FBI agents took Ethel into custody as she left the courthouse. Her attorney asked the U.S. commissioner to parole her in his custody over the weekend, so that she could make arrangements for her two young children. The request was denied.
Did the FBI conclude: you scratch my back - I’ll scratch yours? More seriously, when you KNOW that the couple are unrepentant and withholding information that threatens the NATION’s security, is it wise to allow any measure of freedom?
I’ve no doubt, it was wrong to execute the woman. It can be seen that the RULE-OF-LAW allowed such punishment. It can be argued that the threat of execution to Ethel was made in hope of her husband exposing his network. Maybe a few years in Sing Sing would have done the trick and why I would suggest execution was not the best option. How difficult was it for the establishment to row back once it became obvious their threat was not helping in their efforts?
What motivates the traitor?
It is commonly accepted that it is MICE:
M - Money
I - Ideology
C - Compromat (compromising information, used to blackmail)
E - Ego
I ask, what motivated the Rosenbergs? Julius Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. Ethel was born to Barney and Tessie Greenglass: her father was an immigrant from Russia.
MONEY? - Venona message: Moscow ordered its New York office to award LIBERAL a $1,000 bonus in March 1945 in recognition of his achievements and authorised smaller sums for his agents.
IDEOLOGY? - Having been spared the hardship of life in a Soviet yoke and given a chance to live in a ‘FREE-SPEAKING’ liberal democracy, they chose to betray their country.
COMPROMAT? - Nothing we read in the files would suggest the Rosenbergs were blackmailed.
EGO? - They remained unrepentant all they way to 'The Chair'.
The VENONA files are available for public scrutiny. These texts have not been edited to suit political leaning. The extent by which the Soviet State infiltrated ‘free-speaking, democratic nations’ is laid bare. The VENONA files show that the ‘red-under-the-bed’ sentiment, incited by the government of the day or not, was not hyperbole.
We, thankfully, still live in a FREE-SPEAKING society. Once we’ve lost that luxury, we’ll have lost the enjoyment and benefit of websites such as Goodreads and be left with nothing but that which conforms with the accepted narrative. Take a look at what is happening in China.
I welcome polite, respectful, constructive debate and gladly welcome opposing opinions. I do hope that fellow GR members will use the comments option made available TO ALL.
July 13, 2024
John, I finally got a 'roundtoit'. You said, 'I should.'
Incredible to think that they kept this 'under their hat' for all those years. I did take breathe when think of how the thousands that worked at Bletchley during the war years never, at any point, let slip what they were about. The same applies here. Hundreds of people and thousands and thousands of hours and not a soul outside of the circle knew.
Quite fantastic and, well done all those chaps and chapesses that strived to unravel the codes.
Incredible to think that they kept this 'under their hat' for all those years. I did take breathe when think of how the thousands that worked at Bletchley during the war years never, at any point, let slip what they were about. The same applies here. Hundreds of people and thousands and thousands of hours and not a soul outside of the circle knew.
Quite fantastic and, well done all those chaps and chapesses that strived to unravel the codes.
November 25, 2020
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.
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.
March 6, 2025
I bow to those who did decode the mass of information, I found it taxing enough to read about it.
June 9, 2025
I found this hard going and took to a few pages and then a break. It is an amazing story and those that dislocated the hours and hours to decoding these files must have had a special mind.
If you did wonder about the guilt of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg you might want to read this.
If you did wonder about the guilt of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg you might want to read this.
October 18, 2014
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.
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.
December 24, 2016
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.
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.
July 14, 2020
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 period would find this book dry or too detailed, but not so for me. Will rate as four stars, even though I still have many pages to go!
7/14/20: Finished and awarding 4.49 stars. Comprehensive, clear and easy to read, well-documented, well-organized. The emphasis is on the crimes and criminals uncovered by the Venona code breakers, not on the code-busting itself, which seems to have disappointed some Goodreads reviewers. However, the Venona Project code-breaking is thoroughly described early in the book— what more there is to say about that I can’t imagine.
One of the most important contributions of Venona and this book is the undoing of many myths and frauds perpetrated by defenders of people like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. Much of the writing of history of the post-war was just plain wrong and biased by ideology. Yes, some of the Red-hunters of the period were unattractive and some, like Joe McCarthy, were unethical liars, but others were CORRECT—and Venona proved it.
Thought—if the Soviets were this active (and successful) in espionage in the 1940s, how active are the Chinese now and what are we doing about it?
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 period would find this book dry or too detailed, but not so for me. Will rate as four stars, even though I still have many pages to go!
7/14/20: Finished and awarding 4.49 stars. Comprehensive, clear and easy to read, well-documented, well-organized. The emphasis is on the crimes and criminals uncovered by the Venona code breakers, not on the code-busting itself, which seems to have disappointed some Goodreads reviewers. However, the Venona Project code-breaking is thoroughly described early in the book— what more there is to say about that I can’t imagine.
One of the most important contributions of Venona and this book is the undoing of many myths and frauds perpetrated by defenders of people like Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White. Much of the writing of history of the post-war was just plain wrong and biased by ideology. Yes, some of the Red-hunters of the period were unattractive and some, like Joe McCarthy, were unethical liars, but others were CORRECT—and Venona proved it.
Thought—if the Soviets were this active (and successful) in espionage in the 1940s, how active are the Chinese now and what are we doing about it?
Read
April 4, 2017A 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 he chaired, Joe McCarthy was essentially right: The Soviets not only stole the atomic secrets (with help from know communists), they also had their agents (also US communists or fellow travelers) in important places in the US government.
This is not an easy read - recommended only to those who have a serious interest in well documented history rather than opinions and speculation.
This is not an easy read - recommended only to those who have a serious interest in well documented history rather than opinions and speculation.
March 1, 2014
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.
The US may not have entered into the Cold War until the late 1940s, but the Soviets started at their first opportunity.
September 16, 2024
The founders of the Russian microelectronics industry, who created the first Soviet radar guided anti-aircraft artillery and surfact-to-air missles, which were highly effective against American aircraft during the Vietnam war, were two Americans who grew up in America and went to school here (Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr). They did classified work on radar during WWII, and were part of the Julius Rosenberg spy network passing classified information Russia. When the FBI began to suspect them, they fled the country and were smuggled to Russia through Mexico leaving behind their spouses and American children (they later remarried under their Russian names). (See pages 296-300). Their work directly led to capabilities used to kill Americans. They are known as the founders of the Russian microelectronics inustry, in part, because they conceived of and won approval for the founding of Zelenograd, the Soviet Union's Silicon Valley.
Add this story to the list of stories from history that are worthy of telling in film or some type of television mini-series.
From page 333, "Most of the Americans who betrayed their country and handed over its industrial, military, and government secrets to a foreign power did so not because they were blackmailed or needed month or because they were psychological misfits but out of ideological affinity for the Soviets... (many) ... were not recruited but who, promted by ideological loyalty to communism, themselves sought out KGB or GRU contacts and volunteered to assist Soviet espionage. Other sources, of course, were approached and recruited. And 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."
May 31, 2019
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 but it mostly stays in the 1930's 40's and early 50's. Overall it was a interesting read, but quite slow at times. I would say if you like books about the Cold War, this would be a good read for you in terms of a Non-Fiction book.
December 31, 2025
Important history
To this day, many left-leaning Americans believe that Soviet espionage was a myth, or if it existed at all, it was at worst a necessary corrective to over-zealous nationalism among unsophisticated Americans. We now know, and this book shows, that Communist dedication to world-wide revolution was real, active, and never paused for the alliance of WWII. The zeal for domination continues today, as China alloys Marxist doctrine with its traditional belief in the inevitability of Chinese dominance. Important read, especially as a counterbalance to the movie “Oppenheimer”.
To this day, many left-leaning Americans believe that Soviet espionage was a myth, or if it existed at all, it was at worst a necessary corrective to over-zealous nationalism among unsophisticated Americans. We now know, and this book shows, that Communist dedication to world-wide revolution was real, active, and never paused for the alliance of WWII. The zeal for domination continues today, as China alloys Marxist doctrine with its traditional belief in the inevitability of Chinese dominance. Important read, especially as a counterbalance to the movie “Oppenheimer”.
Read
February 19, 2024An interesting dive into a chapter of treason by members of the Communist Party of the United States and the counter espionage effort that deciphed the communications between Soviet services and their agents in the US. While informative I felt the book lacked focus and at times rambled. It was hard to keep track of the names, code names and importance of various charactors.
December 26, 2010
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."
"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."
November 5, 2021
I had to read for school but the entire Venona case is very fascinating. This book has so much literature based off of it.
August 5, 2023
Enlightening but, not an easy read. I had to battle through it.
January 17, 2024
Very uninteresting
September 26, 2024
Very thoroughly detailed, a little too much so for a good read. Informative and useful as a resource. Excellent for Cold War buffs.
January 1, 2025
Read for grad school.
Fascinating proof that there were Soviet spies in high-level positions within the US government during the Cold War.
Fascinating proof that there were Soviet spies in high-level positions within the US government during the Cold War.
August 12, 2009
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 presentation by the authors seemed a bit much, especially since I started this looking for something else entirely. Of course, it isn't the authors' fault that they didn't write the book I wanted them to - but nonetheless, I don't think I can recommend this outside of use as a starting point for research purposes.
January 14, 2012
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 want an excellent treatment of the shameful and willful compromising of America's security in the days before and after its status as a "Super Power" this book can't be beat.
July 29, 2016
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, blackmailed, and otherwise tricked or bullied into working as spies for the Soviet Union.
January 30, 2009
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.
July 23, 2013
Really fascinating stuff... but it dragged on a bit.
July 30, 2015
Just re-read this book. It's a little dry in some sections however overall I found it fascinating enough to read it twice.
February 26, 2018
Great reference
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