Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in AmericaOnly 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 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. 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. |
Contents
The Road to Venona | 1 |
Venona and the Cold War | 8 |
Breaking the Code | 23 |
The American Communist Party Underground | 57 |
The GolosBentley Network | 93 |
Friends in High Places | 116 |
Military Espionage | 164 |
Spies in the US Government | 191 |
Industrial and Atomic Espionage | 287 |
Soviet Espionage and American History | 331 |
Source Venona Americans and US Residents Who Had Covert Relationships with Soviet Intelligence Agencies | 339 |
Americans and US Residents Who Had Covert Relationships with Soviet Intelligence Agencies but Were Not Identifi | 371 |
Foreigners Temporarily in the United States Who Had Covert Relationships with Soviet Intelligence Agencies | 383 |
Americans and US Residents Targeted as Potential Sources by Soviet Intelligence Agencies | 387 |
Biographical Sketches of Leading KGB Officers Involved in Soviet Espionage in the United States | 391 |
Notes | 395 |
Other editions - View all
Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America John Earl Haynes,Harvey Klehr No preview available - 2000 |
Common terms and phrases
activities Akhmerov American Communist April Archive August Bentley's British cipher cited in appendix City to Moscow Comintern Committee Communist party cover name December decrypted Department Dimitrov diplomatic documents Earl Browder Elizabeth Bentley espionage FBI file FBI Silvermaster file Fitin foreign intelligence Francisco to Moscow Glasser Greenglass GRU New York GRU officer identified intelligence officers Jack Soble Jacob Golos January journalist July June KGB agent KGB asset KGB cables KGB message KGB Mexico City KGB Moscow KGB New York KGB San Francisco KGB's liaison military Moscow to Mexico munist November October one-time pad passport Perlo group political recruited reported Roosevelt RTsKhIDNI Russian September 1944 serial Soviet agent Soviet espionage Soviet intelligence Soviet sources Soviet Union spies Stalin told Trotsky Trotskyist U.S. government underground unidentified asset United USSR Venona cables Venona messages regarding Venona Project Washington to Moscow Whittaker Chambers York to Moscow Zubilin