Venona files
The Venona project intercepted codes passed among agents of the communist Soviet Union, and attempted to decrypt them. This was a project by the United States and United Kingdom during the Cold War. It helped identify people who were spying for the Soviet Union, and passing military secrets (such as information about the atomic bomb to it). Historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr have stated,
- Unfortunately, the success of government secrecy in this case has seriously distorted our understanding of post-World War II 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 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. 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.[1]
Between 1942 and 1945 thousands of encrypted cables were sent between KGB stations in the U.S. and Moscow but only a fraction were ever decrypted. The decryption rate was as follows:
- 1942 1.8%
- 1943 15.0%
- 1944 49.0%
- 1945 1.5%
Approximately 2,200 of the messages were decrypted and hundreds of cover names were found to be involved in clandestine activity with the KGB. Many have been identified.
References
- ↑ Haynes, John Earl & Klehr, Harvey Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press, (2000), p. 18. ISBN 0300084625.
External link
. Explanation and History of Venona Project Informantion, FBI Memo Belmont to Boardman, Feb. 1, 1956.
