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The article mentions co-operation between Finnish and Japanese cryptanalysts. Could someone please expand this? I've read the article on Finland's WW2 history but find no reference to their relations with Japan, so that graf makes little sense to me. Perhaps also an explanation of Finland's unusual WW2 status would clarify it for others. And finally, there is a mention earlier in that section of Finnish recovery of partially-burned Soviet pads - was this during WW2 or afterwards? I'm not Finnish btw, just this section stuck out as being confusing.
"Cooperation" may be the wrong word. The Finns in the Winter War (the Soviet invasion of Finland started during the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact) solved several Soviet code books. These were 2-digit, 3-digit, and even 4-digit code books without superencryption with a one-time pad. The Finns became German allies when Germany invaded Russia. As allies, the Finns communicated their intelligence to Berlin, which in turn shard it with Japan. I have not heard if Japan returned the favor in cryptanalysis.
Upon the Soviet defeat of Finland, Finnish intelligence managed to spirit their work (and themselves) out of Finland to relative safety in Sweden, in an operation called Stella Polaris, q.v..
For more details on the Finnish code breaking see [1].
68.187.33.102 14:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)John K. Taber
I remeber reading a fascintating account of venona about 6-7 years ago. I thought I'd seen this on the NSA site, and so I went there just now ... well gollee wilikers ... what's up with the NSA website? That has got to be one of the cheesier page banners I've seen, worthy of some slimy used-car dealership that aint no good at selling cars. And what's with the narrative directed at someone with an IQ of 80? And Joules the cartoon squirrel? Have the Bushites gone stark raving stupid? Why would a branch of government with a bit of a spotlight on it want to look unprofessional and even incompetent? I vaguely remember being impressed by thier web site once upon a time, what happpened? Where's the good venona stuff? —This unsigned comment was added by 67.100.217.179 ( talk • contribs) 25 March 2006.
Merge is completed.-- KarlBunker 21:59, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
Am I missing something, or is there nowhere in this article that we mention that names of at least anyone working for the Soviets (and possibly others) were, themselves, encoded? Thus, for example, it is another level of (controversial) intepretation to say (for example) that "ALES" was Alger Hiss, or that "Liberal" was Julius Rosenberg. -- Jmabel | Talk 21:32, 3 July 2006 (UTC)
That was a major task, and it has created a much more coherent article. Many thanks to KarlBunker. I do think there are a few tweaks I would like to make. but I will do them one at a time and wait for comments. The first has to do with the Boardman memo.-- Cberlet 15:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
Some 349 code names are mentioned in the messages,[6] each signifying a person with some type of "covert relationship" with Soviet intelligence.
I'm not sure exactly what this means. Did Walter Lippmann have a covert relationship with Soviet Intelligence? Or is Eric Alterman wrong about him having a code name ("Imperialist") in the documents? ( [2]: not sure that link is accessible without a Nation subscription; it's from the September 18, 2006 issue; if it's not accessible, let me know and I'll quote the relevant passage.) Or what? - Jmabel | Talk 04:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Walter Lippman is mentioned several times in Venona decrypts, with more than one cover name: IMPERIALIST, BUMBLEBEE, and KATZ at various times. See my index of covernames to real names at [3]. A second index at this site relates real names and covernames to the messages they occur in.
He is a source of information on Western intentions, but the decrypts do not show any evidence of a covert relationship. Similarly, Thomas Dewey is KULAK (FIST) and a source of information. One must remember that the US and the Soviet Union were allies during the war, and there was considerable sharing of information in the interest of defeating Germany.
68.187.33.102 14:15, 15 February 2007 (UTC) John K. Taber
I had an extremely long debate with Berlet on this, so I will recap the more relevant points:
Schrecker’s comments in this context are no longer usefull because she has drasitcly altered her views since "Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America" Schrecker does not deny that their, Haynes’ and Khler’s, analysis is wrong, and she in the primary conclusion of their, Haynes’ and Khler’s, work
Schrecker sees the more damning conclusions of the VENONA material as a way of rehabilitating McCarthyism. I have argued that she is more of an anti-anti-Communist and primarily a critic of McCarthyism, not of VENONA or its conclusions. I also beleive the material from 1998 was made without a serious evaluation, and that based on more current work, she no longer holds those beleifs. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 14:09, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Good point! --regalseagull 11/02/06
-:Be all that as it may, the Schrecker material in question here is: "Because they offer insights into the world of the secret police on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it is tempting to treat the FBI and Venona materials less critically than documents from more accessible sources. But there are too many gaps in the record to use these materials with complete confidence." Later she argues in general terms about Haynes's and others' "black and white" view of history.
- Hanes & Klehr: Venoa "expose[d] beyond cavil the American Communist Party as an auxiliary of the intelligence agencies of the Solviet Union....(The Communist Party in America was) "A fifth column working inside and against the U.S." Sounds like someone was convinced of Venona's legitimacy!
--P.S. Bunker says: "it's a valid comment from a scholarly source. Lots of scholars change their opinions or the general slant of their views over time. That doesn't mean that all quotes from their older writings can no longer be used as citations. Yes it does, unless you want to play by your own rules, and put in parenthisis behind every quote: "She later saw the light, and changed her mind about this-- so it's pretty much worthless as a 'scholarly' source."!!! --regalseagull
"Navasky wished to parse the concept of espionage itself." Huh? "Parse the concept"? Sounds like vacuous jargon to me. Can't we just say, "Navasky questioned whether many of these contacts with the Soviets constituted espionage." One normally parses sentences, or even works of art, but what does it mean to parse a concept, other than to say it is incoherent? Clearly, he doesn't reject that espionage exists, only that most of these contacts constituted espionage. - Jmabel | Talk 07:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
There are those that believe VENONA cable# 1822 is definitive proof that Hiss was ALES. There are others that do not agree. Is this not therefore disputed? DEddy 22:54, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
I can't follow the many back-and-forth edits over the last month or so, or (to be more precise) I'm not willing to go through them one by one. After the first mention of Alger Hiss, the following citation was removed. ibid pg. 146-47; "Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important." Was the removal deliberate and agreed upon? - Jmabel | Talk 04:43, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Cleaning up email, I notice that I received the following from Nobs on 30 November 2006:
[Begin email]
Regarding your question here,
"the following citation was removed. ibid pg. 146-47; "Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important." Was the removal deliberate and agreed upon? "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Venona_project#Hiss
The correct sourcing is to be found here,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience, (New Haven: Yale University Press 1998), pg. 146-47; "Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Cberlet_and_Nobs01#.3DAlger_Hiss.3D
This may not be the only instance of a mistake or error. There is one particularly glaring error which I would like to carry to WP:ATT Talk page because of the flawed methodology; I have already discussed it with Fred Bauder and my concerns have been forwarded to the Arbcom-l mailing list as the basis of my pending Appeal.
nobs01
[End email]
I object to any editor posting material from Nobs anywhere on Wikipedia. Nobs was banned for persistent vicious personal attacks on me. I am horrified at this breach. I expect an apology.-- Cberlet 03:54, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
The systematic removal of NPOV language and the relentless addition of right-wing POV phrasing has taken a relatively decent article and returned it to the status biased drivel. I have added a totally disputed flag.-- Cberlet 19:29, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
I call attention of those interested in this topic to the ongoing discussion about the deletion of a very closely related page: List of Americans in the Venona papers at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers. DGG 21:14, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
The Full quote: Tales From Decrypts, Navasky, the Nation
While at it, here is a quote from Glenn Garvin, Fools for Communism - Still apologists after all these years, Reason Magazine, April 2004 (a review of "In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage", by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr), putting in perspective the criticism by Schrecker and Navasky:
How seriously can one take such criticism? Turgidson 14:13, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
TDC, I don't have a problem with the content you've removed with this edit. I don't care for the reformatting of references, however. The use of the "cite" templates helps to keep the format of references consistent. Furthermore, you're removed the ISBN numbers from book references. Including ISBNs makes it easy to look up books on WP's Book sources page. At some point I may feel motivated to restore the formatting of the references you've de-formatted. Would you have an objection to that? RedSpruce 16:07, 11 July 2007 (UTC)
Navasky has written more recently (probably more recently than this, but at least as recently as this). Difficult to excerpt; regards the Venona transcripts as useful but exceeding prone to misuse (and misused.) Navasky, Victor (July 16, 2001). "Cold War Ghosts". The Nation. 273 (3). New York: The Nation Company: 36–43. ISSN 0027-8378. Retrieved 2007-10-15. Schissel | Sound the Note! 03:53, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
(edit: the essay is on the www.thenation.com site: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010716/navasky Schissel | Sound the Note! 03:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
(ah, now see that the more recent article is indeed excerpted from above.)
Schissel |
Sound the Note! 00:05, 18 October 2007 (UTC)
TMLutas, you would find that you waste less time making useless edits on Wikipedia if you attempted to educate yourself on some of its policies. Of course, I'm assuming here that you want to make meaningful and lasting edits, and given that you make edits like "The ideological distribution of critics is skewed far to the left.", that's a risky assumption. It strikes me as entirely possible that edits such as that are only intended as an annoyance and a joke. But, assuming for the moment that you have good-faith intentions, I will point out to you that this sort of thing is both POV and unreferenced. You are referring to a collection of individuals who are connected by nothing more than the fact that they have had critical things to say about some of the uses to which Venona has been put. To say that they're all "far left" is absurd -- except as an expression of someone's personal opinion (and a silly and uninformed opinion at that). And obviously, other people would have other opinions. In this case the opinion you're expressing is your own, and in that respect I'm sure that it's entirely honest. I have no doubt that everyone to the left of Genghis Kahn is "far left" by your standards.
Wikipedia, as you may be vaguely aware, is not intended to be a forum for you to express your personal opinions. That's what Blogs are for. It is occasionally appropriate to note the opinions of notable reliable sources in Wikipedia, but when this is done one has to either establish that the opinion is a widely-held consensus, or alternatively one needs to represent the range of opinions held by reliable sources on the issue. This, in fact, is what this article does in the "critical views" section: It presents some opinions that have been expressed on both sides of some of the issues involved. It's no doubt the case that some of the parties mentioned are considered "left wing" or "right wing" by some, but that's not germane to the article. RedSpruce 15:57, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
I don't see William Weisband here, the linguist who worked for the Army Signals Security Agency and tipped off the Soviets to Venona's existence. See the Wiki entry on Wesiband: "The Soviets apparently had monitored Arlington Hall's "Russian Section" since at least 1945, when Weisband joined the unit. Weisband's earliest reports on the work being done by U.S. crypto-analysts on Soviet diplomatic code systems were probably sketchy, but after Weisband began passing information on their work at the Russian section, Soviet authorities changed their code system and the Venona project decryptions dried up. His role as a Soviet agent was not discovered by counterintelligence officers until 1950, by which time the damage had been done. Where Weisband had sketched the outlines of the cryptanalytic success, British liaison officer Kim Philby received actual translations and analyses on a regular basis after he arrived for duty in Washington, D.C. in autumn 1949. Until a thorough review of Soviet KGB archives is made, the full scope of Weisband's role as a Soviet agent will probably not be known."lionhearted 21:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
Weisband isn't mentioned by name or covername in any of the VENONA decrypts. Perhaps that is why he isn't discussed.
Jktaber ( talk) 21:29, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
On the whole, I'm pleased with the improvement in tone of Wikipedia's discussion of VENONA. In my view it is more balanced today than when I first read it.
But the tone is still too much American oriented.
There are a number of Mexico City messages ranging from mention of Dukhobors in the Valle de Guadalupe (outside of Ensenada) to the imprisoned Jaime Ramón Mercader, Trotsky's assassin. I'm puzzled why the Mexico City Rezident, Lev Tarasov (YURIJ) would mention the Dukhobors. Did he think they could be useful to the Soviets? I would appreciate discussion of Communist Party Mexico members such as Adelina Zendejas Gomez whose portfolio in the Mexican government seems to have been women's and children's rights. Apparently she was a personal friend of Frida Kahlo, which ought to elicit some interest. One decrypt identifies covername ADA as Zendejas, while others identify ADA as Kitty Harris.
There are a number of Stockholm messages dealing with Norwegian intelligence agents working for the Soviets due to the German occupation; and Finnish resistance working for the Germans due to Soviet occupation. Stockholm messages should have more attention. Alexandra Kollontai was the Soviet Ambassador to Stockholm, and is mentioned several times in the decrypts (covername MISTRESS). She at least should be of general interest.
There are also a lot of GRU messages from LONDON that ought to have more coverage in this article. At least summarize some of Nigel West's history.
Jktaber ( talk) 22:01, 30 March 2008 (UTC)
with this edit, the article gives two stories about how Venona was revealed to the Soviet Union: Bill Weisband in 1945, and Kim Philby in 1949. The article doesn't quite contradict itself, but these two stories aren't integrated either. Some research and a little rewriting is needed to clarify this aspect of the article. RedSpruce ( talk) 11:13, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
In the main article, footnote 17 quotes "the complicity of both Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White is settled by Venona." but the referred to document (an appendix from something) offers zero supporting references.
The text next says ""Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent and appears to have been regarded by Moscow as its most important."[19]" quoting from Senator Moynihan's "Secrecy" book. This strikes me as tremendously naive of the relative important of Hiss & White. Hiss was a minor functionary in the State Department. White was ultimately Assistant Secretary of Treasury (promoted to give him negotiating prestige against John Maynard Keynes for the approaching Bretton Woods conference). Important State "desks," having experienced the ugliness of the Red-White conflict in Russia post WWI, wanted a tit-for-tat (e.g. I give you something when you give me something, not before) relationship with the Soviets. Roosevelt wanted to get the Russians all the Lend-Lease support they asked for, essentially no questions asked. Since State objected to such open-ended largess, FDR simply went around State, raising all sorts of fiefdom hackles. There are additional intersections, but my point is WHO is claiming Hiss was the Soviet's "most important" agent? Hiss was hardly in a position to influence or know much of anything.
As a (catty, but telling in the ways of Washington Court) comment... when FDR went to Teheran to meet Stalin in November 1943, Cordell Hull did not go.
I've just re-read Senator Moynihan's "Secrecy" & solidly agree with its premise that the cult of secrecy that permeates Washington is highly dysfunctional. But as a solid reference for things Cold War & VENONA it is weak. DEddy ( talk) 15:25, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
Do notice there is ZERO supporting references/footnotes/etc. for the statement. So I conclude that Moynihan did NOT write either this paper or the book. I assume they were both ghost written/written by Congressional staffers. It's very odd to flatly say White was "obviously" a Soviet agent and he was the driving force at Bretton Woods & founding of the IMF/World Bank (IRBD)... two of the principal institutions that helped crush the Soviet Union. Plus the Soviets ultimately did not join the IMF. Whoever wrote that statement clearly didn't know that White did not SHAPE the IMF/World Bank... he CREATED them. DEddy ( talk) 01:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)"The complicity of Alger Hiss of the State Department seems settled. As does that of Harry Dexter White of the Treasury Department. White, the closest advisor to Secretary Henry J. Morgenthau and later Assistant Secretary, headed the American delegation to the Bretton Woods Conference of 1944, which shaped postwar financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund."
What link is there between VENONA and the Taman Shud case? Other than the possibility that espionage was a factor in the latter, there's no connection and no evidence in the article for the latter that VENONA is related to that mystery. (If it espionage at all.) Autarch ( talk) 02:29, 24 May 2009 (UTC)
Why is it there's no list of Brits in Venona? TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 21:45, 22 December 2009 (UTC)
Since such a relatively small number of the intercepted messages were decrypted, either through manual or early computer methods, I think it'd be an excellent use of distributed computing to finish the job. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody ( talk • contribs) 06:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
In the VENONA cables there are numerous references to "xx Groups undecipherable". I understand that in general it means "we couldn't decipher this chunk..." Is there a definition for what a "group" is? A character? A word? A phrase? Could a group be both a word or 100 words? DEddy ( talk) 01:19, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Groups, as used in "missing groups" are five characters in length. This is a little complicated so bear with me.
The digits 0 through 9, resulting from encryption by random digits from a one-time sheet or sheets, were not cabled as digits, but as the latin alphabet letters O I U Z T R E W A P, which corresponding to 0 through 9. My guess is (and it is just a guess) that these particular letters were easier and/or less error prone for transmission. There was a German field cipher in WW I, the ADFGVX, by way of illustration, which letters were chosen for reliability in transmission by Morse Code (see Kahn, The Codebreakers, pg 339 and following.)
To repeat, "groups" are five-letters long, consisting of the above 10 letters.
The letters represented the digits 0-9, which were obtained after super-encryption with random digits supplied by a one-time pad. Now, the first encryption was either 4-digit code book entries, and two-digit single substitutions. One part of the two-digit simple substitution was for the Cyrillic alphabet, and another part was for the latin alphabet. Scattered NSA notes in the decrypts state that some proper names were transmitted in both alphabets just to be clear. But note that Naval GRU messages used monome/dinome simple substitutions. That is, a single character is used for high frequency letters while two digit substitutions are used for the remaining. See Kahn on straddling checkboard, pp 635 and following. Russia had a problem using Western facilities for message transmission, because CCITT does not provide for Cyrillic characters, so Russia devised ways to use numerals instead. One of their cleverest, in my estimation, is monome/dinome substitution from the straddling checkerboard, where the most frequent letters take only one character. In the end, there is little ciphertext expansion with a proper checkerboard. Do see Kahn.
In a VENONA message, simple substitutions are interspersed with code book entries. There is at least one "shift" character in the two-digit substitution cipher to indicate a shift to code book. Similarly there is a shift code book entry that means "begin simple substitution." Nigel West in Venona states that the spelling alphabet uses 99 to mean begin code book, and 7454 to mean begin simple substitution.
A code book entry could encipher
words phrases grammatical affixes "control" for example, shifts
Thus, the answer to what a "group" means is not simple beyond saying that it is a five character string limited to the ten digits above. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jktaber ( talk • contribs) 01:34, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
Venona would be the Dakota Indian word "We-no-nah", which translates to "first-born daughter".
Lieutenant Zebulon Pike left Fort Bellefontaine on August 9, 1805 with orders to find the source of the Mississippi. On September 14, 1805, he reached the Mississippi Valley,near "Pike's island" which would one day be Winona, Minnesota, and recorded his impressions in his log. Less than fifty years later, Pike's island was selected by Captain Orrin Smith as a townsite on the west bank of the Mississippi River. For over twenty-five years, Smith had sailed the river between Galena, Illinois and Fort Snelling, Minnesota as owner and pilot of the river packet Nominee. In 1851 Smith learned that the treaties of Traverse des Sioux and Mendota would establish a reservation in the interior of the state, and realized that there would be a rush to develop townsites on the Minnesota side of the river. On October 15, 1851 Orrin Smith became the founder of Winona, by landing his ship's carpenter, Mr. Erwin Johnson, and two other men (Smith and Stevens) with the purpose of claiming title to the riverfront and surrounding prairie land. When the town site was surveyed and plotted by John Ball, United States deputy surveyor, it was given the name of "Montezuma", as requested by Johnson and Smith. Henry D. Huff bought an interest in the town site in 1853. With the consent of Capt. Smith, Huff erased the name of Montezuma and inserted the name of Winona on the plot, a name derived from the Dakota Indian word "We-no-nah", which translates to "first-born daughter".
This name is very important in the american massonic mythology... and sioux very important for cryptology...
This reminds me that the "first born" are the elfs of the world of the middle land of Tolkien... — Preceding 153Ichtus comment added by 192.54.145.146 ( talk) 09:10, 10 June 2011 (UTC)
REMINDER: From the opening paragraph, readers see when 'VENONA' came in. It is not identified as an acronym. "There were at least 13 codewords for this project that were used by the US and British intelligence agencies (including the NSA); Venona was the last that was used." — It is just a code word for the secret project; and the meaning is neither revealed nor documented. Charles Edwin Shipp ( talk) 13:05, 18 August 2012 (UTC)
Re: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers "Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you." - T3h 1337 b0y
OK so drop the joke about the wiki author being the cite author as it was only used to pose how absurd the page cited is. Lets just focus on that content then. Can you, aside from that one page, find anything that indicates the decoded names were spies? Serious charges require serious evidence, and one webpage plus one wikipage shouldn't mean guilt. So stop supporting this since reverting without taking a hard look at the article itself means nothing but support in the end. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.176.9.105 ( talk) 07:42, 26 December 2011 (UTC)
I have removed: In The Venona Secrets, authors Romerstein and Breindel state the case against White (code name Jurist) was overwhelming, with Jurist being reported to leave the Malta conference to meet with Soviet agents in Moscow, which only matched Harry Dexter White.
Harry Dexter White was never in Malta. And most certainly did not attend the 1945 Yalta POLITICAL conference. One is left confused... was the person for code name "Jurist" in Malta (a way stop for the American delegation heading to Yalta), which therefore proves that White was not Jurist, or what? Was Jurist both White & Hiss at the same time?
The Moynihan book is highly ambiguous. While it STATES that Hiss & White were clearly guilty as proved by VENONA decrypts, the book offers absolutely no evidence to sustain the accusation against White. At least cable 1222 supposedly regarding Hiss & his post Yalta visit to Moscow—but with questions—is printed, but not analyzed in the text. There is no such supporting evidence against White.
Lumping White & Hiss together is very strange. White was a major power in the ascendant US Treasury as Henry Morgenthau's trusted aide. Hiss was a minor functionary in the seriously out-of-favor State Department. DEddy ( talk) 22:43, 30 March 2012 (UTC)
This is a bad link. Jokem ( talk) 14:05, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
The lead paragraph currently says: "Analysis supported some criminal spy cases, such as that against Julius Rosenberg for some of the charges, but cast doubt on the case against his wife Ethel Rosenberg." The statement that Venona cast doubt on the case against Ethel is unsourced and contradicts most accounts of the Venona messages. Haynes and Klehr's Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (2000) is representative: On p. 16 they say, "The Venona messages do not throw her guilt into doubt; indeed, they confirm that she was a participant in her husband's espionage and in the recruitment of her brother for atomic espionage. But they suggest that she was essentially an accessory to her husband's activities, having knowledge of it and assisting him but not acting as a principal." In writing about Julius Rosenberg, the lead also introduces the qualification that analysis supported the case against Julius Rosenberg for "some of the charges". There was only one charge against the Rosenbergs and Morton Sobel, conspiracy to commit espionage. The lead paragraph statements need reliable sources to appear in the article. Rgr09 ( talk) 07:30, 9 March 2013 (UTC)
It's pushing 20 years since the curtain on VENONA lifted. Has there been any actual analysis of the cables as released? I've certainly read plenty of "pass through" reporting—e.g. thus & such was said in VENONA which is 100% intuitively obvious by what is says, essentially verbatim rote regurgitation—hardly analysis. Particularly galling is the polemic practice of stating that since Person X—with no explanation how we "know" X is actually Joe Smith's cover name—is mentioned in VENONA they are a Soviet agent. Somehow folks like Roosevelt & Churchill, oft mentioned in VENONA don't make it to the "Soviet agent" list.
I often wonder about those [19 groups unavailable] insertions. How much of the translated cables is actually XXX untranslated groups? I'd love to see an experiment to take a 2 - 3 page summary someone wrote, randomly redact passages & see if those empty holes alter the meaning of the document.
To my knowledge only a single cable on Ales has been released in the Russian. DEddy ( talk) 03:21, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
“groups unavailable” “unrecovered groups” or “unrecoverable groups”,
Since I've never had access to any sort of crib sheets, I would file these description as either direct synonyms or very close synonyms. Is there a key or glossary somewhere that explains the nuances between these three look-alike phrases?
How would any of these various phrases be in any way different from the black pen redaction process? To me the reader there's a chunk of unavailable text. While there certainly may be differences to the folks who're doing the decrypt/translate work, for me the reader is there any difference at all?
After reading a few hundred pages of the transcripts (there are over five thousand),
I thought only 1,300 (the numbers move around) or so were actually decrypted & partially translated?
If we're counting pages (I think in terms of a cable being a document regardless of the number of pages), I can claim I've read several hundred pages. But I've only read a few dozen or so actual cables with one to N pages.
But back to the original question... has there been any publicly published analysis of the VENONA take? The only published "analysis" has been of the "See McCarthy was right... there were Reds under every bed!" ilk. Pretty much useless. Smacks of 1950s McCarthyism hysteria.
I've not seen or heard of a single smoking gun VENONA cable that connects to Soviet blocking moves against us. Not interested in bomb issues since that never was our secret. DEddy ( talk) 13:59, 18 August 2013 (UTC)
The new lead attempts to give a better summary of the nature and achievements of Venona, and to provide more adequate references for these. It is especially important to point out at the beginning that Venona was a counter-intelligence program. It did not provide military, political, or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union, but was directed primarily at the espionage activities of Soviet foreign and military intelligence. The remainder of the article still has many flaws and needs careful revision to provide an adequate description of the subject. Better referencing is essential to improve the quality of the article. Rgr09 ( talk) 13:22, 23 September 2013 (UTC)
The three sections of the article titled "Inherent problems", "The Antenna example", and "Usability in prosecutions" were taken almost verbatim from the article " Cables coming in from the cold" by Walter and Miriam Schneir, published in The Nation on July 5, 1999. This was originally a review of Haynes and Klehr's book, "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America." Its use here clearly constitutes plagiary, taking up almost a quarter of the article, without adequate indication that it is someone else's work. There are three references at the end of the first sentence of the plagiarized section:
These references are cited repeatedly throughout the three sections as if there were three distinct sources, and are never used in conjunction with quote marks despite the repeated use of wording identical with the Schneirs' article. The first reference is puzzling, but the link shows that the original source the editor used was the "Alger Hiss Story" website at NYU, which reprints the Schneirs' article, but incorrectly dates it August 21, 1995. There is no link for the second citation, but it obviously comes from the NYU website again, and is simply a bibliographical ghost. The Schneirs did write an article titled "Cryptic Answers", published in The Nation on August 14, 1995, but this is irrelevant to these three sections. It has to be, since the Belmont memo was not released until 1999, as the Schneirs themselves note in their article. The third reference is linked to the cryptome website, which provides a transcription of the Belmont memo discussed in these three sections, without any indication of where it came from (it is from the Venona file, pages 61-72, located at the FBI reading room) and without any indication of who did the transcription. In fact, since every quote from the Belmont memo in the article comes from the Schneirs' article, there is no justification for referencing the transcription on cryptome, except to make it look like the material was put together by a third party.
I will come back later today and delete this material, replacing it with a summary that is not plagiarized and a link to the proper sources. Rgr09 ( talk) 10:21, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
The article originally cited John Lowenthal's article from a secondary source, failed to identify Lowenthal, and failed to indicate that the description it gave of Lowenthal's views was actually a direct quote. It also failed to indicate the long debate that Lowenthal's article provoked. All fixed. Rgr09 ( talk) 18:05, 9 October 2013 (UTC)
I believe this statement is misleading although another editor evidently believes it to be accurate. "Several current authors, researchers, and archivists" greatly exaggerates the breadth and depth of scholarly opinion taking this view. As
Stanley Kutler has
noted, "the publication of the Venona intercepts of wartime Soviet espionage referring to "Ales" settled the matter -- to all but the truest of believers, "Ales" only could mean Alger Hiss." Now who are these "truest of believers"? These few actors are almost all connected in some way to either Hiss personally or to
The Nation,
Victor Navasky's magazine that calls itself "the flagship of the left." "The Alger Hiss Story" web site
was created for NYU Libraries with grants from The Nation Institute and "participation from members of the Hiss family". According to
the New York Times, the site is "largely the brainchild of Hiss's son Tony". The NYT quotes a historian who says the website is "the best defense mustered of Hiss by the dwindling band of those who believe in Hiss. I don't think anyone is going to treat this site as the repository of truth, except for those who have already made up their minds that Hiss was innocent." The NYT also notes
Sam Tanenhaus saying "My only concern would be that the academic/institutional aegis, and the educational angle, might mislead some into supposing this is a balanced, scholarly Web site." The site is maintained by Jeff Kisseloff, a "NY-based writer who served as Alger Hiss's legal researcher in the 1970s". Not a scholar, in other words, but a writer supported by The Nation.
Kisseloff uses John Lowenthal's analysis to conclude that linking ALES to Hiss is "incorrect." Who is Lowenthal? One of Hiss' lawyers who contends that the VENONA cables must be treated with "caution and skepticism" because of the "professional involvement of intelligence agencies in deception and disinformation". Historian Eduard Mark reviewed Lowenthal's allegations and thoroughly debunked them, noting how only Hiss met all the criteria to be ALES: he was a State Department employee, not detailed from the military or another agency; had been named by Chambers as involved in espionage in the mid-1930s along with his wife and brother, Donald; would have had several opportunities to speak with Vyshinskiy in Moscow; and had returned to Washington directly from Moscow with Secretary Stettinius. Mark also disposed of Lowenthal's argument that Hiss couldn't have been a spy because he was named in cable 1579, noting that there are many cases in VENONA where the Soviets mistakenly used true names. Readers should be advised just who these "researchers" are claiming VENONA is dubious. The NYT article I have linked here notes that "conservatives hail Chambers as a hero, liberal defenders counter that Hiss was framed" because the NYT considers this left-right dynamic newsworthy. Wikipedia should do likewise.--
Brian Dell (
talk) 21:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
User:Bdell555 ( talk) has twice inserted the adjective "left-leaning" in a phrase in this article:
Several currentSome left-leaning authors, researchers, and archivists consider the Venona evidence on Hiss to be inconclusive…
This change seems to rely on no reliable source, but is strictly the personal opinion of the editor. Whether or not the source is considered by many or even the source itself as "left-leaning" isn't the point. If we added such an adjective every time we mentioned a left-leaning or right-leaning group, we'd be adding that and many other adjectives to every single article in Wikipedia. Perhaps the editor felt that the information was unduly biased. If that is the case, the editor is free to identify and cite authoritative sources that express that opinion in the context of this article, identifying specific sources and the specific references that the source describes. — Danorton ( talk) 21:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
I have not commented on others' edits and I make no assertion whether or not Bdell555's complaints about them are valid. If Bdell555's references are relevant to the article topic and authoritative, then Bdell555 might ought consider adding them to the article. I have not questioned cited sources in this article, only unsourced opinion. — Danorton ( talk) 22:51, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
My impression is that the VENONA cables—as shown on NSA site—are predominantly/only "outbound." US to Moscow. Minimal/no "inbound" Moscow to US. Is this accurate? If there are inbound, please offer examples. DEddy ( talk) 12:28, 3 March 2014 (UTC)
Did Finnish intelligence and its "Stella Polaris" program assist in the deciphering of Venona? This issue has been discussed before; a recent edit sourced Athan Theoharis's Chasing Spies for this claim, but Theoharis does not mention Stella Polaris. I have replaced this with Nigel West's Venona (2000) which gives the most detailed description. This is a problematic claim, however; Benson's history of Venona specifically denies it. Rgr09 ( talk) 16:56, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
Although Stockholm decrypts are mentioned in the Venona project article I cannot see that the ca 3600 telegrams intercepted by FRA in Sweden are mentioned. These were given to GCHQ in 1960 and were very important in the continuation of the project. About 390 of these telegrams were subsequently decrypted, partly only in most instances.
The book 'Venona'(Wilhelm Agrell, 2003, ISBN 91-89442-84-9) is an excellent account of the Swedish angle to Venona. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.45.126.160 ( talk) 09:38, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
The article originally had a section on Ramon Mercader, the Soviet agent who murdered Trotsky, which said the Venona messages 'confirmed' Mercader's identity. During his trial and subsequent imprisonment, Mercader insisted his name was Jacques Mornard. According to Isaac Don Levine's book on Mercader The Mind of an Assassin, in 1950 Mexican authorities were able to get records, including fingerprints, from Spain which allowed them to identify. I know of no works that document Venona's role in identifying Mercader. The section I removed was from the article on Ramon Mercader, and cited a letter from Stephen Schwartz in The Nation, but Schwartz didn't give any specific documentation. As Klehr and Haynes 1999 noted, there are a number of messages relating to Soviet attempts to help Mercader escape from prison (cryptonyms for Mercader include GNOME and RITA), but Klehr and Haynes say nothing about a Venona role in identifying Mercader. Let me know if there are other references I'm missing. Rgr09 ( talk) 04:02, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
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The article section on the significance of Venona originally stated that "In the opinion of some, almost every American military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent by Soviet espionage," and cited as its source for this claim Hayden Peake's review of several Venona related books in the Naval War College Review for Summer 2000. [1] The closest that Peake comes to saying this is the statement, "VENONA makes absolutely clear that [Soviet intelligence] had active agents in the U.S. State Department, Treasury Department, Justice Department, Senate committee staffs, the military services, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the Manhattan Project, and the White House, as well as wartime agencies. No modern government was more thoroughly penetrated." This is simply not the same as "almost every American military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent by Soviet espionage." Peake is one of the foremost historians of intelligence, and his opinion is worth citing, but in a more accurate and better attributed form. The whole section in fact needs better sourcing and less redundancy. I've temporarily removed Peake's quote; will reinsert in more accurate form when I have time to revise the section. Rgr09 ( talk) 15:55, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
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The lead originally stated "During the 37-year duration of the Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service decrypted and translated approximately 3,000 messages." The source for this is Benson 2001, p. 14: "There were about 3,000 VENONA messages translated." Unfortunately I put the wrong page number when sourcing this cite. I have corrected this in the current article. This passage was revised in 2017 to say "During the 37-year duration of the Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service obtained approximately 3,000 Soviet messages (only a small fraction of which were ever decrypted)." The source for this was cited as David Horner, Official History of ASIO, vol. 1, p. 55. In fact, what Horner says is "Gradually the Americans, assisted by the British, decrypted and translated at least part of almost 3000 Soviet messages sent between 1940 and 1948." The footnote for this passage lists Benson, 'Introductory history of Venona'. This is in fact Benson 2001, which collects Benson's introductions to the four or five releases of Venona material. Thus the source for the number of messages translated is the same. It is better to use the Benson original, rather than Horner's cite to Benson. The parenthetical remark that "only a small fraction" of these 3000 messages were ever decrypted is false. Rgr09 ( talk) 20:10, 20 July 2019 (UTC)
The Outback is not really a place. The article should be more specific.-- Jack Upland ( talk) 23:39, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
In fact, it was disclosed by Kim Philby in his book, My Silent War, in 1967.-- Jack Upland ( talk) 00:17, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
In the introduction, should the sentence read:
Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered a rival.
or
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.
Third party opinions are appreciated.
Jborgzz (
talk) 16:02, 5 May 2023 (UTC)
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 3 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Briannabehnke ( article contribs).
— Assignment last updated by Briannabehnke ( talk) 03:33, 4 April 2024 (UTC)