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110-494: The Commission issued its unanimous final report on March 3, 1997. A major effect of the commission was the declassification of the VENONA project . The Commission's key findings were: Senator Moynihan reported that approximately 400,000 new secrets are created annually at the highest level, Top Secret. That level is defined by law as applying to any secret that, were it to become public, would cause "exceptionally grave damage to

220-501: A 40-year period starting in the early 1940s. When used correctly, the one-time pad encryption system, which has been used for all the most-secret military and diplomatic communication since the 1930s, is unbreakable. However, due to a serious blunder on the part of the Soviets, some of this traffic was vulnerable to cryptanalysis. The Soviet company that manufactured the one-time pads produced around 35,000 pages of duplicate key numbers, as

330-677: A BBC Radio correspondent, an MI6 intelligence officer, and as a member of the British Foreign Office. When the Korean War began, Burgess and Philby passed on information regarding movements in Korea to Moscow. Philby had been working closely with British and American intelligence, and was able to be in proximity to any intelligence findings. When the VENONA Project uncovered Julius Rosenberg (LIBERAL) and his wife Ethel,

440-641: A Labor government founding one seemed a surprising about-face. But the presentation of Venona material to Chifley, revealing evidence of Soviet agents operating in Australia, brought this about. As well as Australian diplomat suspects abroad, Venona had revealed Walter Seddon Clayton (cryptonym "KLOD"), a leading official within the Communist Party of Australia (CPA), as the chief organizer of Soviet intelligence gathering in Australia. Investigation revealed that Clayton formed an underground network within

550-526: A Soviet spy, writing "Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important." Kim Philby had access to CIA and FBI files, and more damaging, access to Venona Project briefings. When Philby learned of Venona in 1949, he obtained advance warning that his fellow Soviet spy Donald Maclean was in danger of being exposed. The FBI told Philby about an agent cryptonymed "Homer", whose 1945 message to Moscow had been decoded. As it had been sent from New York and had its origins in

660-626: A badly skewed impression." Executive Order 9835 President Harry S. Truman signed United States Executive Order 9835 , sometimes known as the "Loyalty Order", on March 21, 1947. The order established the first general loyalty program in the United States , designed to root out communist influence in the U.S. federal government. Truman aimed to rally public opinion behind his Cold War policies with investigations conducted under its authority. He also hoped to quiet right-wing critics who accused Democrats of being soft on communism. At

770-516: A dozen Soviet sources each among their employees. Venona has added information – some unequivocal, some ambiguous – to several espionage cases. Some known spies, including Theodore Hall , were neither prosecuted nor publicly implicated, because the Venona evidence against them was withheld. The identity of the Soviet source cryptonymed "19" remains unclear. According to British writer Nigel West, "19"

880-511: A high administration official a memorandum reporting "an enormous Soviet espionage ring in Washington." Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson was (falsely) at the top of the list. Truman distrusted Hoover and suspected Hoover of playing political games. Acheson's inclusion at the top of the list automatically discredited other accusations which were on target, Alger Hiss and Nathan Gregory Silvermaster . In late August or early September 1947,

990-447: A manner in which to go about with the loyalty investigations. As such, Part II of the EO provided the power to the head of each department or agency to appoint one or more loyalty boards. The boards' express purpose was to hear loyalty cases. In addition, Part V of the EO outlined criteria and standards for the refusal of (or removal from) employment for disloyalty. Disloyalty for these purposes

1100-559: A maximum prison sentence of fourteen years. The Venona decryptions also identified Soviet spy Harry Gold as an agent of the KGB who stole blueprints, industrial formulas, and methods on their behalf from 1935 until ultimately confessing to these actions in 1950. During his years of work under the KGB, Gold operated under the code names GOOSE and ARNOLD. Gold was eager to provide his services after being initially recruited by Thomas Black on behalf of

1210-853: A powerless parliament—at least insofar as ignorance somehow agrees with the bureaucracy's interests. In March 1947 President Truman issued Executive Order 9835 , establishing the Federal Employee Loyalty Program, providing uniform investigation standards and procedures, and authorizing the creation of Loyalty Review Boards across the Government. The Truman Order—based on the findings of an interdepartmental committee established in 1946—was superseded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower 's issuance of Executive Order 10450 in April 1953, which provided that "[t]he appointment of each civilian officer or employee in any department or agency of

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1320-476: A principal, still acted as an accessory who took part in Julius's espionage activity and played a role in the recruitment of her brother for atomic espionage. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg also had another connection to a recruit for the Soviets named David Greenglass, who was Ethel's brother and Julius's brother-in-law. Venona and other recent information has shown that, while the content of Julius' atomic espionage

1430-660: A remote base in the Australian Outback . The Soviets remained unaware of this base as late as 1950. The founding of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) by Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley in 1949 was considered highly controversial within Chifley's own party. Until then, the left -leaning Australian Labor Party had been hostile to domestic intelligence agencies on civil-liberties grounds and

1540-407: A result of investigations, around 5,000 federal employees offered voluntary resignations in light of the investigations. Most of the resignations took places at hearings conducted by Congressional committees. According to one historian, "By mid-1952, when more than 4 million people, actual or prospective employees, had gone through the check, boards had … dismissed or denied employment to 378…. None of

1650-593: A result of pressures brought about by the German advance on Moscow during World War II. The duplication—which undermines the security of a one-time system—was discovered, and attempts to lessen its impact were made by sending the duplicates to widely separated users. Despite this, the reuse was detected by cryptanalysts in the US. The Soviet systems in general used a code to convert words and letters into numbers, to which additive keys (from one-time pads) were added, encrypting

1760-689: A role in aiding the Soviet atomic espionage campaign. According to the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy , the complicity of both Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White is conclusively proven by Venona, stating "The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department." In his 1998 book, United States Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan expressed certainty about Hiss's identification by Venona as

1870-553: A small part of the traffic. Generating the one-time pads was a slow and labor-intensive process, and the outbreak of war with Germany in June 1941 caused a sudden increase in the need for coded messages. It is probable that the Soviet code generators started duplicating cipher pages in order to keep up with demand. It was Arlington Hall's Lieutenant Richard Hallock , working on Soviet "Trade" traffic (so called because these messages dealt with Soviet trade issues), who first discovered that

1980-565: A speech that Truman had nominated a Soviet spy—senior Treasury Department official Harry Dexter White —to serve as the U.S. Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund , despite what Brownell said was the President's awareness of White's involvement in Soviet espionage. And on December 3, 1953, President Eisenhower directed that a "blank wall be placed between Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and secret data"—marking

2090-698: Is affecting the retrospective debate among historians and others now. As the Moynihan Commission wrote in its final report: A balanced history of this period is now beginning to appear; the Venona messages will surely supply a great cache of facts to bring the matter to some closure. But at the time, the American Government, much less the American public, was confronted with possibilities and charges, at once baffling and terrifying. The National Cryptologic Museum features an exhibit on

2200-457: Is much information within a bureaucracy which could be used to injure the Government, or the national interest if revealed by disloyal persons to hostile nations or, for that matter, to hostile internal elements. It appears that the three-tiered gradation of today, Confidential/ Secret/Top Secret was adopted by the U.S. military from British forces in France in 1917, and was institutionalized with

2310-589: The Amtorg . In 1935, Gold, with the assistance of Black, gained employment at the Pennsylvania Sugar Company, one of the largest producers of sugar in the world at the time. During his tenure, Gold worked under Semyon Semyonov and Klaus Fuchs . Over time, Gold began to work with Abraham Brothman, a fellow spy who was identified in Gold's confessions for stealing industrial processes on behalf of

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2420-521: The Army Security Agency informed the FBI it had begun to break into Soviet espionage messages. Truman had never been told of the existence of the Venona project, and always insisted Republicans had trumped up the loyalty issue for political gain. The prosecutors in the internal-security cases of the 1940s did not know they had not been given all, or even the best government evidence, against

2530-559: The Army-McCarthy hearings or rival politicians in the Democratic party, were not mentioned in the Venona content and that his accusations remain largely unsupported by evidence. The majority of historians are convinced of the historical value of the Venona material. Intelligence historian Nigel West believes that "Venona remain[s] an irrefutable resource, far more reliable than the mercurial recollections of KGB defectors and

2640-535: The Espionage Act of 1917 . The U.S. Civil Service Commission, established by the Pendleton Act in 1883, was debarring persons relating to "loyalty" as late as 1921. The Commission Report quotes Max Weber , Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the professionally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret ... Bureaucracy naturally welcomes a poorly informed and hence

2750-516: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were helpful in the cryptanalysis. The Finnish radio intelligence sold much of its material concerning Soviet codes to the OSS in 1944 during Operation Stella Polaris , including the partially burned code book. The NSA reported that (according to the serial numbers of the Venona cables) thousands of cables were sent, but only a fraction were available to

2860-770: The National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union (e.g. the NKVD , the KGB , and the GRU ). Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War , when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy. During the 37-year duration of

2970-589: The Rosenbergs , and others. The Venona project materials would have been conclusive in establishing the cast of characters in the Soviet spy networks. Government secrecy allowed critics of the Rosenberg and Hiss cases to construct elaborate theories about frame-ups and cover-ups. For years the Rosenbergs' defenders demanded that the government reveal its secrets about the case. When Secrecy Commission forced

3080-503: The Soviet Union , with considerable assistance from an enemy within. Soviet authorities knew the U.S. government knew. Only the American people were denied this information. One revelation of the Venona project intercepts is that many Americans who spied for the Soviet Union were never prosecuted. To do so the government would have to reveal what it knew. On 29 May 1946, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director J. Edgar Hoover sent

3190-558: The State Department ( passport and deportation determinations). The list was massively publicized in the federal government's effort against Communist infiltration. Despite the widespread publicity, the Justice Department and other agencies refused to release more than small amounts of information on other aspects of the list besides its contents. Included among the secret information were particulars such as how

3300-521: The State Department , Treasury , Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and even the White House . Very slowly, using assorted techniques ranging from traffic analysis to defector information, more of the messages were decrypted. Claims have been made that information from the physical recovery of code books (a partially burned one was obtained by the Finns) to bugging embassy rooms in which text

3410-750: The State Department , the Treasury, OSS, and even the White House. The messages show that the US and other nations were targeted in major espionage campaigns by the Soviet Union as early as 1942. Among those identified are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg , Alger Hiss , Harry Dexter White (the second-highest official in the Treasury Department), Lauchlin Currie (a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt), and Maurice Halperin (a section head in

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3520-478: The 1947 executive order as purely politically motivated. The timing of his actions so soon after the Democratic electoral defeat, and his request that TCEL submit its report by February 1, 1947, have been interpreted as a move to preempt further action on the loyalty issue from the new Republican-controlled Congress. On February 28, 1947, about a month before he signed EO 9835, Truman wrote to Pennsylvania Governor George Earle , "People are very much wrought up about

3630-530: The British Embassy in Washington, Philby, who would not have known Maclean's cryptonym, deduced the sender's identity. By early 1951, Philby knew US intelligence would soon also conclude Maclean was the sender and advised Moscow to extract Maclean. This led to Maclean and Guy Burgess' flight in May 1951 to Moscow, where they lived the remainder of their lives. Guy Burgess served as a British diplomat during

3740-579: The CPA so that the party could continue to operate if it were banned. In 1950, George Ronald Richards was appointed ASIO's deputy-director of operations for Venona, based in Sydney, charged with investigating intelligence that uncovered the eleven Australians identified in the cables that had been decoded. He continued Venona-related work in London with MI5 from November 1952 and went on to lead Operation Cabin 12,

3850-531: The Communist 'bugaboo' but I am of the opinion that the country is perfectly safe so far as Communism is concerned–we have too many sane people." White House Counsel Clark Clifford wrote in his 1991 memoir that his "greatest regret" from his decades in government was his failure to "make more of an effort to kill the loyalty program at its inception, in 1946-47." He added that the 1946 elections had "weakened" Truman but "emboldened Hoover and his allies" and that

3960-516: The FBI and private entrepreneurs, worked to inflame public fear and suspicion. As fear of Communist infiltration in the government grew, it became a central campaign issue in the 1946 elections. Fresh investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) ensured that the issue would stay on the minds of constituents, and Republicans found a niche they could use for an election advantage. HUAC, amid

4070-625: The Government shall be made subject to an investigation," and made each agency head responsible for ensuring that "the employment and retention in employment of any civilian officer or employee within the department or agency is clearly consistent with the interests of the national security ." While abolishing the Truman Order program, including the Loyalty Review Boards within the Civil Service Commission,

4180-519: The KGB officer who controlled the clandestine Soviet agents in the US during the war, had said Hopkins was "the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States". Alexander Vassiliev 's notes identified the source code-named "19" as Laurence Duggan . Venona has added significant information to the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, making it clear Julius was guilty of espionage, and also showing that Ethel, while not acting as

4290-493: The Office of Strategic Services). The identification of individuals mentioned in Venona transcripts is sometimes problematic, since people with a "covert relationship" with Soviet intelligence are referenced by cryptonyms . Further complicating matters is the fact the same person sometimes had different cryptonyms at different times, and the same cryptonym was sometimes reused for different individuals. In some cases, notably Hiss,

4400-454: The Soviet Union and would later be convicted for lying under oath to a grand jury. Gold's confessions turned out to be a major success for the FBI, as he would unveil a network of spies entrenched in the success of KGB espionage efforts. Along with Brothman, (sentenced to 15 years), David Greenglass , and Julius Rosenburg were all arrested following the interrogations of Gold. With regard to Los Alamos , Fuchs, Greenglass, and Gold all played

4510-575: The Soviet Union from positions within the Manhattan Project. According to Alexander Vassiliev's notes from KGB archive, "Quantum" was Boris Podolsky and "Pers" was Russell W. McNutt, an engineer from the uranium processing plant in Oak Ridge . David Greenglass , codename KALIBER, was the brother of Ethel Rosenberg, and would be crucial in the conviction of the Rosenbergs. Greenglass was a former Army machinist who worked at Los Alamos. He

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4620-436: The Soviets were reusing pages. Hallock and his colleagues, amongst whom were Genevieve Feinstein , Cecil Phillips , Frank Lewis , Frank Wanat , and Lucille Campbell , went on to break into a significant amount of Trade traffic, recovering many one-time pad additive key tables in the process. A young Meredith Gardner then used this material to break into what turned out to be NKVD (and later GRU ) traffic by reconstructing

4730-617: The Truman administration's economic policies, were manifested in campaign slogans such as "Had Enough?" and "Communism vs. Republicanism." Meanwhile, under the leadership of Republican National Chairman Carroll Reece , the Republican Party made repeated anti-Communist attacks on Truman and Congressional Democrats. Reece often referred to the " pink puppets in control of the federal bureaucracy." House Republican leader Joe Martin pledged to clean out Communists from high positions in

4840-531: The U.S. government in early 1950. The stated purpose of the list was to lend guidance for federal civil service loyalty determinations. However, AGLOSO essentially became the litmus test for loyalty and disloyalty in a variety of public and private departments and organizations. The Attorney General's list was adopted by state and local governments, the military, defense contractors, hotels, the Treasury Department ( tax-exemption determinations) and

4950-463: The U.S. government. The election of 1946 produced a huge Republican victory in which they gained control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1932. Two weeks after the sweeping Republican victory, the president announced the creation of the President's Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty (TCEL) on November 25, 1946. News of the TCEL made the front page of The New York Times under

5060-483: The US Kim Philby , was told about the project in 1949, as part of his job as liaison between British and US intelligence. Since all of the duplicate one-time pad pages had been used by this time, the Soviets apparently did not make any changes to their cryptographic procedures after they learned of Venona. However, this information allowed them to alert those of their agents who might be at risk of exposure due to

5170-651: The US government. However, both Executive Order 9835 and Executive Order 10450 were later repealed when US President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12968 in 1995 and Executive Order 13087 in 1998. The enforcement of employment suspension for issues such as sexual perversion was also weakened by the US Supreme Court's Cole v Young ruling in 1956 and the US Civil Service Commission formally reversed its discriminatory hiring policy against gays and lesbians in 1975. In 1977, under

5280-525: The Union address Eisenhower promised a new system "for keeping out the disloyal and the dangerous." Executive Order 10450 soon followed. Senator Joseph McCarthy praised the new Executive Order. The New York Times reported, "The new program will require a new investigation of many thousands of employees previously investigated, as well as many more thousands who have had no security check." In November 1953, Attorney General Herbert Brownell would allege in

5390-462: The United States. Anti-Communists suspected many spies remained at large, perhaps including some known to the government. Those who criticized the governmental and non-governmental efforts to root out and expose Communists in the United States felt these efforts were an overreaction (in addition to other reservations about McCarthyism ). Public access—or broader governmental access—to the Venona evidence would certainly have affected this debate, as it

5500-501: The United States. Cryptanalysts of the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service at Arlington Hall analyzed encrypted high-level Soviet diplomatic intelligence messages intercepted in large volumes during and immediately after World War II by American, British, and Australian listening posts. This message traffic, which was encrypted with a one-time pad system, was stored and analyzed in relative secrecy by hundreds of cryptanalysts over

5610-579: The Venona project in its "Cold War/Information Age" gallery. Controversy arose in 2009 over the Texas State Board of Education's revision of their high school history class curricula to suggest Venona shows Senator Joseph McCarthy to have been justified in his zeal in exposing those whom he believed to be Soviet spies or communist sympathizers. Critics such as Emory University history professor Harvey Klehr assert most people and organizations identified by McCarthy, such as those brought forward in

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5720-805: The Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service decrypted and translated approximately 3,000 messages. The signals intelligence yield included discovery of the Cambridge Five espionage ring in the United Kingdom and Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project in the US (known as Project Enormous). Some of the espionage was undertaken to support the Soviet atomic bomb project . The Venona project remained secret for more than 15 years after it concluded. Some of

5830-403: The White House's history of leaking sensitive information, decided to deny President Truman direct knowledge of the project. The president received the substance of the material only through FBI, Justice Department, and CIA reports on counterintelligence and intelligence matters. He was not told the material came from decoded Soviet ciphers. To some degree this secrecy was counter-productive; Truman

5940-467: The anxieties of the elections and international tensions, had investigated several alleged Communist "front" organizations. These investigations led to fresh questions about employee loyalty from the House committee. Republicans, looking for sizable Congressional gains, took full advantage of this atmosphere and made the issue a central theme of the 1946 campaign . Communist infiltration, along with attacks on

6050-466: The atom bomb to Gold and Rosenberg, who in turn passed it on to the Russians." In the end, Greenglass was sentenced to 15 years but was release in 1960 after serving only nine and a half. The Venona decryptions were also important in the exposure of the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs. Some of the earliest messages decrypted concerned information from a scientist at the Manhattan Project, who was referred to by

6160-625: The beginning of the process that led to the Atomic Energy Commission 's suspension of Oppenheimer's security clearance later in December and its 4-to-1 decision on June 28, 1954, against restoring the clearance. Venona project The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by

6270-423: The book's overconfidence in the translations' accuracy, noting that the undecrypted gaps in the texts can make interpretation difficult, and emphasizing the problem of identifying the individuals mentioned under cryptonyms. To support their critique, they cite a declassified memorandum, written in 1956 by A. H. Belmont, who was assistant to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover at the time. In the memo, Belmont discusses

6380-629: The code names of CHARLES and REST. Fuchs had joined the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in 1944 where he provided information for the development of a plutonium implosion design. He is also credited with being of great assistance to the creation of a Soviet atomic bomb. Fuchs even gave the Soviets the blueprint for the Trinity device that would be detonated at Los Alamos in July 1945. One such message from Moscow to New York, dated April 10, 1945, called information provided by CHARLES "of great value." Noting that

6490-469: The code used to convert text to numbers. Gardner credits Marie Meyer , a linguist with the Signal Intelligence Service with making some of the initial recoveries of the Venona codebook. Samuel Chew and Cecil Phillips also made valuable contributions. On December 20, 1946, Gardner made the first break into the code, revealing the existence of Soviet espionage in the Manhattan Project . Venona messages also indicated that Soviet spies worked in Washington in

6600-410: The code-breaking activity and had considerable knowledge of Venona and the counter-intelligence work that resulted from it. However, the first detailed account of the Venona project, identifying it by name and making clear its long-term implications in post-war espionage, was contained in MI5 assistant director Peter Wright 's 1987 memoir, Spycatcher . Many inside the NSA had argued internally that

6710-408: The content. When used correctly so that the plaintext is of a length equal to or less than that of a random key, one-time pad encryption is unbreakable. However, cryptanalysis by American code-breakers revealed that some of the one-time pad material had incorrectly been reused by the Soviets (specifically, entire pages, although not complete books), which allowed decryption (sometimes only partial) of

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6820-477: The creation of the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations (AGLOSO). As U.S. relations with the Soviet Union rapidly deteriorated following World War II , there were accompanying concerns about government infiltration by communists. As the U.S. fell from being wartime allies to staunch adversaries with the USSR, American obsession with perceived dangers associated with the Soviet Union, and communists in general, began to grow. Much of this obsession

6930-414: The creation of the TCEL was the result of pressure from FBI Director Hoover and Attorney General Tom Clark , who "constantly urged the President to expand the investigative authority of the FBI." The Federal Employee Loyalty Program allowed the FBI to research whether the name of any of 2 million federal employees raised questions about their associations and beliefs and, if "derogatory information"

7040-436: The cryptanalysts. Approximately 2,200 messages were decrypted and translated; about half of the 1943 GRU-Naval Washington to Moscow messages were broken, but none for any other year, although several thousand were sent between 1941 and 1945. The decryption rate of the NKVD cables was as follows: Out of some hundreds of thousands of intercepted encrypted texts, it is claimed under 3,000 have been partially or wholly decrypted. All

7150-524: The cryptographers have indicated that "almost anything included in a translation of one of these deciphered messages may in the future be radically revised." He also notes the complexities of identifying people with cryptonyms, describing how the personal details mentioned for cryptonym "Antenna" fit more than one person, and the investigative process required to finally connect "Antenna" to Julius Rosenberg. The Schneirs conclude that "A reader faced with Venona's incomplete, disjointed messages can easily arrive at

7260-449: The decoded Soviet messages were not declassified and published by the United States until 1995. During World War II and the early years of the Cold War , the Venona project was a source of information on Soviet intelligence-gathering directed at the Western military powers. Although unknown to the public, and even to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman , these programs were of importance concerning crucial events of

7370-492: The decryption. The decrypted messages gave important insights into Soviet behavior in the period during which duplicate one-time pads were used. With the first break into the code, Venona revealed the existence of Soviet espionage at the Manhattan Project's Site Y (Los Alamos) . Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs , Alan Nunn May , and Donald Maclean. Others worked in Washington in

7480-425: The departmental loyalty board procedures. One complaint concerned the lack of opportunity to confront those anonymous informants that EO 9835 protected from being named to the accused. Initially, both the D.C. Circuit Court affirmed the procedures of EO 9835 in Bailey v. Richardson in 1950, and a tie in the U.S. Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand. In 1955, the Supreme Court held in Peters v. Hobby that

7590-400: The developing bomb project in the United States. He became a Soviet informant after beginning his studies at the University of Cambridge, where he and his classmates (Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and Donald Maclean) began developing ideals against a capitalist society. Burgess began developing connections throughout college as well as his future careers. He would continue to pass on information as

7700-443: The discharged cases led to discovery of espionage." The executive order said: "maximum protection must be afforded the United States against infiltration of disloyal persons into the ranks of its employees, and equal protection from unfounded accusations of disloyalty must be afforded the loyal employees." But those protections were deemed inadequate, as objections surfaced regarding the lack of due process protections resulting from

7810-462: The disclosure of documents, the secrets revealed the government's case was even stronger. "Over the years," said Ronald Radosh , "the Rosenbergs' defenders have loudly demanded the release of government documents on the case, only to deny the documents' significance once they are made public." As archives of the Cold War are opened, the original case made against Soviet espionage in the United States has received ever more conclusive corroboration. There

7920-487: The dubious conclusions drawn by paranoid analysts mesmerized by Machiavellian plots." However, a number of writers and scholars have taken a critical view of the translations. They question the accuracy of the translations and the identifications of cryptonyms that the NSA translations give. Writers Walter and Miriam Schneir, in a lengthy 1999 review of one of the first book-length studies of the messages, object to what they see as

8030-553: The duplicate one-time pad pages were produced in 1942, and almost all of them had been used by the end of 1945, with a few being used as late as 1948. After this, Soviet message traffic reverted to being completely unreadable. The existence of Venona decryption became known to the Soviets within a few years of the first breaks. It is not clear whether the Soviets knew how much of the message traffic or which messages had been successfully decrypted. At least one Soviet penetration agent, British Secret Intelligence Service representative to

8140-464: The early Cold War. These included the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg spying case (which was based on events during World War II) and the defections of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess to the Soviet Union . Most decipherable messages were transmitted and intercepted between 1942 and 1945, during World War II, when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US. Sometime in 1945, the existence of the Venona program

8250-429: The federal government or defense industries as well as the right to a U.S. passport. During the 1952 presidential campaign , Dwight D. Eisenhower promised to root out Communists and other security risks from government and defense industry employment— suggesting that their presence had been tolerated too easily by the Truman administration despite the existence of rules to address "loyalty" concerns. In his first State of

8360-516: The former Soviet Union in Moscow to resolve questions of what was going on in Washington at mid-century. ... the Venona intercepts contained overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds. One of the considerations in releasing Venona translations was the privacy interests of the individuals mentioned, referenced, or identified in

8470-436: The government took discrete steps to continue the classification of a particular document or group of documents. The Commission findings regarding government secrecy in the early Cold War period have led to a reevaluation of many public perceptions regarding the period. By 1950, the United States government was in possession of information which the American public did not know: proof of a serious attack on American security by

8580-641: The headline "President orders purge of disloyal from U.S. posts." Truman's commission consisted of representatives from six government departments under the chairmanship of Special Assistant to the Attorney General A. Devitt Vanech, who was close to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at the time. The commission sought to determine federal loyalty standards and establish procedures for removal or disqualification of disloyal or subversive persons from federal posts. Contemporary observers as well as historians have characterized Truman's action surrounding TCEL and

8690-482: The high-profile 1953–1954 defection to Australia of Soviet spy Vladimir Petrov . For much of its history, knowledge of Venona was restricted even from the highest levels of government. Senior army officers, in consultation with the FBI and CIA, made the decision to restrict knowledge of Venona within the government (even the CIA was not made an active partner until 1952). Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley , concerned about

8800-429: The information included "data on the atomic mass of the nuclear explosive" and "details on the explosive method of actuating" the atomic bomb, the message requested further technical details from CHARLES. Investigations based on the Venona decryptions eventually identified CHARLES and REST as Fuchs in 1949. Fuchs was eventually arrested and tried on March 1, 1950, where he confessed to four counts of espionage and received

8910-416: The list was compiled, criteria for listing, why the list was published, and why no notification was given to any of the listed organizations about their designation prior to the list's publication. Little was made at the time of the revelation that AGLOSO was nothing new; in fact, the government had been keeping a secret list to aid in screening for federal employee loyalty since 1940. The first official list

9020-598: The matching of a Venona cryptonym to an individual is disputed. In many other cases, a Venona cryptonym has not yet been linked to any person. According to authors John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr , the Venona transcripts identify approximately 349 Americans who they claim had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence, though fewer than half of these have been matched to real-name identities. However, not every agent may have been communicating directly with Soviet intelligence. Each of those 349 persons may have had many others working for, and reporting only to, them. The OSS,

9130-416: The national security." In 1994, it was estimated that the United States government had over 1.5 billion pages of classified material that were at least 25 years old. In 1995 President Bill Clinton 's Executive Order 12958 updated the national security classification and declassification system. This Executive Order established a system to automatically declassify information more than 25 years old, unless

9240-425: The new Order also made clear that "the interests of national security require that all persons privileged to be employed in the departments and agencies of the Government, shall be reliable, trustworthy, of good conduct and character, and of complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States." In this manner, a broader "security" program was established across the Government. The political pressure had increased with

9350-405: The partial message relating to "19" does not indicate whether this source was a spy. However, Vasili Mitrokhin was a KGB archivist who defected to the United Kingdom in 1992 with copies of large numbers of KGB files. He claimed Harry Hopkins was a secret Russian agent. Moreover, Oleg Gordievsky , a high-level KGB officer who also defected from the Soviet Union, reported that Iskhak Akhmerov ,

9460-453: The passage of legislation in 1950 "[t]o protect the national security of the United States by permitting the summary suspension of employment of civilian officers and employees of various departments and agencies. ... " In addition, beginning in March 1948, the Attorney General's List was published on a regular basis—with members of organizations included on such a list to be denied employment in

9570-400: The possibility of using the Venona translations in court to prosecute Soviet agents and comes out strongly opposed to their use. His reasons include legal uncertainties about the admissibility of the translations as evidence, and the difficulties that prosecution would face in supporting the validity of the translations. Belmont highlights the uncertainties in the translation process, noting that

9680-662: The predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), housed at one time or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies. Duncan Lee , Donald Wheeler , Jane Foster Zlatowski , and Maurice Halperin passed information to Moscow. The War Production Board , the Board of Economic Warfare , the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs , and the Office of War Information , included at least half

9790-415: The president and Congress. The order established a wide area for the departmental loyalty boards to conduct loyalty screenings of federal employees and job applicants. It allowed the FBI to run initial name checks on federal employees and authorized further field investigations if the initial inquiry uncovered information that cast someone in a negative light. Executive Order 9835 also was the main impetus for

9900-484: The project posted that they knew of a British spy with the codename HOMER, which Philby knew to be Maclean. Philby (codename STANLEY) reached out to Burgess to remove Maclean to the Soviet Union. Burgess at this point, was overseas in Washington DC serving in the British Foreign Office, and couldn't do much. In 1950, he was sent back to Britain due to "bad behavior", where he was able to warn Maclean. Burgess knew he

10010-589: The purview of the recent Executive Order (9835)." A March 29 FBI document indicated that among the groups on the list were the Ku Klux Klan , the Communist Party , the Nazi Party and 38 alleged " front groups ." Between 1948 and 1958, the FBI ran initial reviews of 4.5 million government employees and, on an annual basis, another 500,000 applicants for government positions. It conducted 27,000 field investigations. Besides those officially terminated as

10120-576: The removal of a consultant to the Civil Service Commission by the commission's Loyalty Review Board was invalid. The case had little impact, since by then the Loyalty Review Board was only defending old cases and had been dismantled by a 1953 Executive Order. The order Executive Order 10450 , signed by President Eisenhower in April 1953, revoked Executive Order 9835 and extended the restrictions to all other jobs in

10230-465: The same time, he advised the Loyalty Review Board to limit the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to avoid a witch hunt. The program investigated over 3 million government employees, just over 300 of whom were dismissed as security risks. The Loyalty Order was part of the prelude to the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy , Republican of Wisconsin. It was mostly the result of increasing U.S.–Soviet tensions and political maneuvering by

10340-401: The time had come to publicly release the details of the Venona project, but it was not until 1995 that the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, with Senator Moynihan as chairman, released Venona project materials. Moynihan wrote: [The] secrecy system has systematically denied American historians access to the records of American history. Of late we find ourselves relying on archives of

10450-430: The translations. Some names were not released because to do so would constitute an invasion of privacy. However, in at least one case, independent researchers identified one of the subjects whose name had been obscured by the NSA. The dearth of reliable information available to the public—or even to the President and Congress—may have helped to polarize debates of the 1950s over the extent and danger of Soviet espionage in

10560-465: The various individuals referred to in the messages were involved with Soviet intelligence is a topic of minor historical dispute . Most academics and historians have established that most of the individuals mentioned in the Venona decrypts were probably either clandestine assets and/or contacts of Soviet intelligence agents, and very few argue that many of those people probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes. The VENONA Project

10670-656: Was Edvard Beneš , president of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile . Military historian Eduard Mark and American authors Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel concluded it was Roosevelt's aide Harry Hopkins . According to American authors John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, "19" could be someone from the British delegation to the Washington Conference in May 1943. Moreover, they argue no evidence of Hopkins as an agent has been found in other archives, and

10780-508: Was defined in five categories. These included: EO 9835 facilitated the establishment of the highly publicized " Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations " (AGLOSO). Eventually, AGLOSO would become one of the central influences in the second American Red Scare , known collectively as McCarthyism . The list came into being after Truman signed EO 9835, both the order and AGLOSO established more than two years before Senator Joseph McCarthy 's first allegations of Communist infiltration in

10890-408: Was distrustful of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover and suspected the reports were exaggerated for political purposes. Some of the earliest detailed public knowledge that Soviet code messages from World War II had been broken came with the release of Chapman Pincher 's book, Too Secret Too Long , in 1984. Robert Lamphere 's book, The FBI-KGB War , was released in 1986. Lamphere had been the FBI liaison to

11000-740: Was entered into encrypting devices (analyzing the keystrokes by listening to them being punched in) contributed to recovering much of the plaintext. These latter claims are less than fully supported in the open literature. One significant aid (mentioned by the NSA) in the early stages may have been work done in cooperation between the Japanese and Finnish cryptanalysis organizations; when the Americans broke into Japanese codes during World War II, they gained access to this information. There are also reports that copies of signals purloined from Soviet offices by

11110-446: Was found, to follow up with a field investigation. The results of field investigations were delivered to 150 loyalty boards in various government departments. Those boards conducted their own investigations and were authorized to use the testimony of confidential witnesses whom the subject of the investigation was unable to confront. An employee could be fired if "reasonable doubt" existed concerning their loyalty. A loyalty board's decision

11220-471: Was fueled by reports, in and out of the government, of Soviet spying in the United States . Economic tension helped foster a general state of anger and anxiety in the U.S. and its government. As congressional elections approached in late 1946, many American conservative groups attempted to ignite a new Red Scare . The Republican Party , assisted by a coalition that included the Catholic Church ,

11330-503: Was initiated on February 1, 1943, by Gene Grabeel , an American mathematician and cryptanalyst , under orders from Colonel Carter W. Clarke , Chief of Special Branch of the Military Intelligence Service at that time. Clarke distrusted Joseph Stalin , and feared that the Soviet Union would sign a separate peace with Nazi Germany , allowing Germany to focus its military forces against the United Kingdom and

11440-530: Was not as vital to the Soviets as alleged at the time of his espionage activities, in other fields it was extensive. The information Rosenberg passed to the Soviets concerned the proximity fuze , design and production information on the Lockheed P-80 jet fighter, and thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio . The Venona evidence indicates unidentified sources code-named "Quantum" and "Pers" who facilitated transfer of nuclear weapons technology to

11550-447: Was not subject to appeal. The text of the EO provided specific powers pertaining to employee loyalty. First and foremost among these was that "there shall be a loyalty investigation of every person entering civilian employment" in any facet of the executive branch of the U.S. government. Much of the rest of EO 9835's content simply reinforced policy surrounding the first statements on loyalty investigations, as well as seeking to establish

11660-407: Was originally meant to replace a soldier who had gone AWOL, and lied on his security clearance in order to gain access onto the project. Once Klaus Fuchs was caught, he gave up Harry Gold, who in turn, gave up Greenglass and his wife, as well as his sister and her husband. During their trial, Greenglass changed his story several times. At first, he didn't want to implicate his sister, but when his wife

11770-526: Was published shortly after the March 21 executive order. According to FBI documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act nearly 60 years later, AGLOSO was born on or about April 3, 1947 when the bureau responded to a March 27 request from the Attorney General for a list of "organizations thought to be subversive." The FBI's response included 41 groups "thought to be most dangerous within

11880-414: Was revealed to the Soviet Union by cryptologist -analyst Bill Weisband , an NKVD agent in the US Army's SIGINT . These messages were slowly and gradually decrypted beginning in 1946. This effort continued (many times at a low level of effort in the latter years) through 1980, when the Venona program was terminated. The analyst effort assigned to it was moved to more important projects. To what extent

11990-519: Was threatened, he gave up both of them. According to Gerald Markowitz and Michael Meeropol, "In the Rosenberg-Sobell case, the government relied heavily upon the testimony of Greenglass, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage in exchange for a reduced sentence for himself and no indictment or prosecution for his wife, Ruth, who he alleged had aided him in committing espionage. Greenglass testified that he had passed information about

12100-412: Was under suspicion by MI5, British counterintelligence, and Scotland Yard's Special Branch. Both Philby and Burgess knew that out of all of the possible people to crack under pressure, Maclean was the easy choice. When Burgess finally convinced Maclean to leave, they fled to Moscow, followed by Philby shortly after. In addition to British and American operatives, Australians collected Venona intercepts at

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