Pickleloaf.com : Books : Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (Yale Nota Bene)


Books : Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (Yale Nota Bene) In association with Amazon.com Rating: - professional, scholarly history This is a scholarly history without the flash, trash, hype, and jive of journalism. The authors had access to the decrypt of Soviet messages from the 1941-1945 period as well as the Soviet espionage archives and the FBI archives. They explain in detail how they obtained their information and then described the activities of Soviet agents. At the end is a list of about 450 people who were Soviet agents. For those of you who are not interested in the historic details, the bottom line is that everyone who was publicly accused of being a Soviet agent was one. Senator McCarthy was right and the professors and journalists were wrong. I also recommend The Venona Secrets : Exposing America's Cold War Traitors by Herb Romerstein if you want more detailed information from an experienced espionage agent of the time. This other book, available here on Amazon, will tell you many more interesting things. Rating: - "TO VOTE FOR BILL CLINTON." In 1943, the U.S. Navy intercepted word that Josef Stalin was going to sue for a separate peace with Adolf Hitler. They also discovered that Alger Hiss, a leading New Deal Democrat and top advisor to President Roosevelt, was a Soviet spy. In addition, numerous high-level Democrats in FDR's Administration were Soviet spies and "fellow travelers." They approached FDR, whose response was "f--k off." The Navy, during this time of greatest national security threat, reached the conclusion that the Democrats could not be trusted! In response to this, they began the Venona Project, designed to read all the Soviet cable dispatches. Venona continued to confirm that the American government and society was rife with Soviet espionage from within the ranks of the anti-American Democrat Left. When the war ended, the Republicans began to investigate these rumors. Richard Nixon asked FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to assist. Hoover told him he could not let him view Venona because it was too important to the on-going Cold War vs. Soviet Communism, but that Nixon's instincts, particularly about Hiss, were right. Hiss was convicted. Numerous Leftists were convicted or exposed, as were many in Hollywood. When McCarthy went after them, the Left attempted to discredit him. Venona would have justified him, but Hoover refused to disclose Venona's secret. McCarthy was sacrificed and allowed to twist in the end, and for decades the Left proffered the lie that there were no Communists in Hollywood, the government, the Army or in America. After Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, Soviet archives were opened. Venona was discovered and became the Venona Papers. It verified that Hiss and all the accused and convicted Communists in Hollywood, the government, the Army and in America were in fact Soviet spies or "fellow travelers." One of those fellow travelers had escaped to Russia, but returned when the Statute of Limitations ran out. He returned to the U.S. in 1996. He was asked why. "To vote for Bill Clinton," he replied. Is further commentary really necessary?(...) Rating: - Decoding Soviet Espionage Venona is an outstanding history lesson. It clearly illustrates the pervasiveness of Soviet Espionage in the United States during (and after) World War II. Unlike many such studies, this is well researched and utilizes not only US but also period Soviet sources. Highly recommended. Rating: - Liberal A great man once took up the cause of defending our nation against the most terrible enemy we had ever known. For this, we was hounded and slandered relentlessly by the Left, his associates gay-baited, his very name made a malediction for generations to come. But was he right? Definitive evidence shows that Joseph McCarthy was right to an extent even he could not have imagined. Venona describes the ultra-secret code-breaking project begun by Carter Clarke of the US Army Military Intelligence division and later run by the National Security Agency. Through incredible persistence and ingenuity, we managed to intercept and decode secret communications between Moscow and its embassies in America. The work that went into this effort is astounding, and even though we managed to decrypt only a tiny fraction of that traffic, the information that we obtained showed that the United States government was infiltrated to the highest levels. Roosevelt was not even made aware of the Venona project because his personal aide Lauchlin Currie was a Soviet spy. The director of the International Monetary Fund, Harry Dexter White, was a Soviet spy. Alger Hiss, assistant to the Secretary of State and advising Roosevelt at Yalta, was a Soviet spy. If American liberals didn't think that Communist Party members were potential recruits, the KGB certainly did. Beginning in 1942, the Soviets abused our war-time alliance to stage an all-out espionage assault on our territory. Hundreds, literally hundreds of CPUSA members were active spies. Haynes and Klehr conclude that one-seventh to one-third of OSS employees were Soviet agents. Venona clearly shows that CPUSA operations were not directed by its nominal leader but by Moscow. After the end of World War II, the CPUSA tried to expand its base by allying itself with the Democratic Party but reversed under direction from Moscow. But KGB operations on American soil were not limited to spying alone. Defectors from the USSR who jumped ship seeking refuge here were kidnapped from American soil and restored to the Soviet Union. The CPUSA also provided invaluable assistance to the assassins sent to kill Trotsky in Mexico. Disinformation campaigns were mounted to affect public opinion of the USSR. The KGB used journalists to influence editorial policy as well as obtain inside information. Stephen Laird would report in The New Republic the Polish elections as being free and fair, a view not shared by many of his colleagues. Journalist I.F. Stone, hailed by the elite when he spread the lie that the United States started the war in Korea, was on the KGB payroll. In France, the Communist party ran a campaign of defeatism toward the German invasion. The naivety and apologetics of some of the Soviets' supporters is beyond belief. Open Communist sympathisers and spies were fêted by the social elite. Academicians readily took up the cause of KGB spies, assassins, and traitors. Books written in the 70s about Senator McCarthy still exculpate people whom we know beyond the shadow of a doubt were Soviet spies. While Laurence Duggan is often described as an innocent victim driven to suicide after relentless FBI interrogation, he was in fact Soviet a spy who saw the jig was up. Ironically, Maurice Halperin, a spy who escaped arrest, became disillusioned first by Soviet and then Cuban Communism and eventually settled in Canada. But also politicians on the Left showed bad judgment. The State Department convinced Roosevelt to return as a goodwill measure to the USSR, uncopied, code books that were found in Finland and that would have had fantastic intelligence value. Truman ignored the Venona evidence and dismantled the OSS after World War II, reversing himself in 1947 fearing Republican charges of laxity. Further interesting is learning how the persistence of Richard Nixon helped expose more spies, and that the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover actually protested the internment of Japanese during World War II. Although the FBI at times was really on the ball in investigating espionage, they had great difficulty obtaining convictions because of the inability to use intelligence evidence in court, or even indictments because of the State Department's desire not to upset relations with the Soviet Union. Even after having actually witnessed Judith Coplon handing over state secrets to a KGB agent, that evidence was ruled inadmissible. Many spies were never punished at all for their crimes. The Rosenbergs were not only spies themselves but actively recruited their own network which did horrifying damage to our national security. They handed over designs for advanced jet engines, radar systems, and the highly advanced 'proximity fuse'. When they were arrested, two members of their ring (Alfred Sarant and Joel Barr) immediately escaped to the USSR where they received fantastic benefits not accorded to ordinary Soviet citizens. They founded the Soviet microelectronics industry and created the first Soviet radar-guided anti-aircraft missle system which became highly successful against the United States during the Vietnam War. Of course, the Rosenberg ring allowed the Soviets to develop the atomic bomb and terrorize the free world for the next half a century. In his memoirs, Khrushchev thanked the Rosenbergs for their sacrifice to the Communist cause. Haynes and Klehr proffer the suggestion that the penalties against convicted spies might have been less severe had the Venona evidence been made public at the time. Given the extent of damage that was done to our national security I find this difficult to believe, but in any case it is ludicrous to expect the United States to surrender its most valuable intelligence source to exonerate traitors. Oh, and the KGB code name for Julius Rosenberg? 'Liberal'. Rating: - Problems with the book I read this book with interest, and then read a review that made me realize that Haynes and Klehr may have played a little fast and loose with some facts themselves. For example (taken from the review by Walter and Meriem Schnier), "when parts of Bentley's story are shown to be consistent with Venona, they are prepared to declare without any qualification that 'Elizabeth Bentley had told the truth.' They overlook the fact that the decoders of Venona used names and incidents from the FBI files to help make identifications and fill gaps - the very names and incidents that were often supplied in the first place by Chambers and Bentley." Their review, which can be found online ...doscuments numerous instances of sloppy interpretations and selective omission of facts. I suggest that prospective readers of this book read the full review for other examples of problems with the book's handling of material from Venona.