gaviidae's Full Review: John Earl Haynes et al - Venona: Decoding Soviet E...
RTsKhiDNI (pronounced "ritz-kidney") is an acronym for the Russian words "Rossiskii Tsentr Khraneniia I Izucheniia Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii," which is translated as the "Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History." It is an archive that holds records of the Communist International (Comintern) for the years 1919-1943; the Communist Party U. S. A. (CPUSA) to 1944; and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) to 1953.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 the authors of Venona, John Earl Haynes, and Harvey Klehr, traveled to Russia six times for research at the RTsKhiDNI, resulting in two books, "The Secret World Of American Communism" (1995) and "The Soviet World Of American Communism," (1998). In that research they found references to the Venona Project and mentioned it in their book, without much knowledge of what it was.
In 1995 they were contacted by Senator Patrick Moynihan, Democrat, New York, who had read the first book and was now working on an initiative to reduce secrecy in government after the tight security procedures of the forty-five years of the Cold War. Their discussions led to the release, on July 11,1995, of information about the super-secret Venona Project, in which some 3000 cable messages sent by KGB agents in the United States to the Soviet Union were decoded and translated from Russian between 1946 and 1981 by American counterintelligence authorities.
The first third of this book is the very fascinating story of the Venona Project. The encryption methods used by the Soviets are described in detail, and the careless errors by Soviet clerks are explained, that allowed the U.S. counterintelligence experts to break the codes. It is a very fascinating tale of real-life intrigue and successful counterespionage.
The rest of the book describes what was learned about Soviet espionage in the United States and the role played by many members of the CPUSA. It is clear that from 1942 to 1945 the Soviet Union conducted a hostile espionage offensive against the United States, while they were our allies in the war against fascism.
This book describes enormous detail about Soviet espionage in the United States starting in the 1930s and 1940s, continuing during World War II, the most aggressive and effective phase of Soviet activity.
Venona provided conclusive proof of most of the Soviet spies uncovered by American counterintelligence between 1948 and the mid-1950s. Klaus Fuchs, Julius Rosenberg, and Donald Maclean, among others, were Soviet spies identified through Venona decryptions. The book shows that the wartime espionage utilized the extensive network of agents established in the 1930s by the Comintern and the CPUSA.
In a chapter called "Venona and the Cold War," the authors speculate about what would have happened if Soviet agents had not succeeded in penetrating the Manhattan Project, and the Soviet Union had not developed its atomic bomb until after Stalin's death in 1953. Without the atomic bomb they exploded in 1949, using stolen secrets from the U.S., it is doubtful that Stalin would have prompted North Korea to invade South Korea in 1950. Major historical implications flow from this interesting speculation! This penetration occurred through the espionage network established by Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, now proven beyong any doubt.
A chapter called "Breaking The Code" provides some insight into the world of counterintelligence, and explains the Soviet code and how it was broken, a brilliant success. Venona provided the FBI and the CIA with crucial information about the professional practices and habits of Soviet intelligence agencies. Intelligence officers revealed by Venona continued to serve with the KGB into the 1980s.
Soviet cryptographers had great confidence in their code and did little in response to early reports that it had been broken. Venona was eventually exposed by Soviet agents, including H.R. "Kim" Philby, a senior British intelligence officer stationed in Washington, D.C., who had access to Venona information until the summer of 1951 and later defected to the Soviet Union.
The Venona story covered in the first 60 pages or so of this book is a riveting spy story! In an appendix Haynes and Klehr provide a list of 349 U.S. citizens, noncitizen immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence confirmed in the Venona messages. Many of them held high, sensitive positions in the administrations of Roosevelt and Truman. Alger Hiss is on the list, and it is now impossible to deny that Hiss was an active Soviet agent for decades.
In the subsequent chapters Haynes and Klehr describe the CPUSA underground, various espionage networks, and the Soviet Union's friends in very high places in the U.S. government. The accusations against Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg have been the subject of several books, both pro and con, but their guilt as Soviet spies is now beyond dispute.
In their final chapter, "Soviet Espionage and American History," Haynes and Klehr concede: "While the Venona cables document Soviet penetration of the American government, they are of less assistance in determining how much damage Soviet spies did to American security." But there can be no doubt that when Soviet spies penetrated the Manhattan Project, the damage was enormous, as was the effect on how the history of the Cold War unfolded.
The authors conclude that "Espionage saved the USSR great expense and industrial investment and thereby enabled the Soviets to build a successful atomic bomb years before they otherwise would have."
The information from Venona has great implications for the McCarthy era, and the liberal campaign to smear him and others involved in the anticommunist movement of that time. One wonders why so many supposedly loyal Americans would have been caught up in espionage for the Soviets. My guess is that the circumstances of the great depression of the 1930's led many idealists and intellectuals to conclude that capitalism was an irretrievable failure, and that socialism was the only viable answer. They saw the Soviet as the Great Experiment in socialism that might "save the world." But it's still shocking to think of so many traitors in high places in our government. Highly recommended!
Examined here first are the thousands of documents of the super-secret Venona Project--an American intelligence project, made public in 1995, that unc...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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