Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America

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Yale University Press, Apr 10, 1999 - History - 512 pages

This groundbreaking historical study reveals the shocking infiltration of Soviet spies in America—and the top-secret cryptography program that caught them.

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. 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 in a former girls’ school in the late 1940s, Venona Project cryptanalysts, linguists, and mathematicians attempted to decode thousands of intercepted Soviet intelligence telegrams. When they cracked the Soviet code, analysts uncovered information of powerful significance: the first indication of Julius Rosenberg’s espionage efforts; references to the espionage activities of Alger Hiss; proof of Soviet infiltration of the Manhattan Project; 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 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 the most rigorously documented analysis ever written on Soviet espionage 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 U S Government
191
Fellowcountrymen
208
Hunting Stalins Enemies on American Soil
250
Industrial and Atomic Espionage
287
Soviet Espionage and American History
331
Americans and U S Residents Who Had Covert
371
Americans and U S Residents Targeted
387
Index
477
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Page 17 - This must be the product of a great conspiracy, a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man. A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.

About the author (1999)

John Earl Haynes is 20th Century Political Historian, Manuscript Division, the Library of Congress. Harvey Klehr is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Politics and History at Emory University.

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