Revision as of 23:41, 4 October 2005

Welcome to the Significance of Venona Talk page. Mr. Griffin Fariello Anon 67.120.98.144 contributions have been retrieved and placed here for discsussion. nobs 20:16, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Significance

"The VENONA documents, and the extent of their significance, were not made public until 1995. They show, rather unsurprisingly, that the US was being spied upon by the Soviet Union as early as 1942, just as we were spying on the Soviet Union. Exaggerated claims by conservative authors willfully misinterpret VENONA to the wild extent that the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA, housed at one point or another between fifteen and twenty Soviet spies, and that 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 a dozen Soviet sources each among their employees. The truth lies in the fact that many American names appeared in the Soviet cables, and most of them were no more guilty of espionage than was Hopalong Cassidy.

The decision to keep Venona secret and restrict knowledge of it within the government was made by senior Army officers in consultation with the FBI and CIA. The CIA was not made an active partner until 1952. Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley, concerned about 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. Truman had been distrustful of J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, and suspected the reports were exaggerated for political purposes, which they were.

The decision to not inform the President about the Project is unremarkable, given the fact that this was made by career bureaucrats, not elected legislators or political appointees. Debates over the extent of Soviet espionage in the United States were polarized by the hysteria of the post-war Red Scare. Anti-Communists suspected that just about everyone they disagreed with was a spy of some sort. Those who criticized the government's loyalty campaign as an overreaction, on the other hand, saw clearly the widespread abuse of power, and lamented the many thousands that ended up on the blacklist, their professional lives destroyed.

Given the vicious campaigns of Joe McCarthy and many others of his ilk, the continued secrecy was not illogical. With the Korean war raging and the prospect of war with the Soviet Union being promoted as a means to a National Security State and more government control over the personal lives of ordinary Americans, military and intelligence leaders almost certainly believed that any cryptologic edge that America gained over the Soviets was too valuable to concede—even if it was already known to Moscow.

The decrypts include 349 code names for persons, most of whom had no covert relationship with Soviet intelligence at all. It is highly unlikely that there were anywhere near 349 participants in Soviet espionage, as that number is is merely the gross number, taken without any discernment at all, from a small sample of the total intercepted message traffic. Among those misidentified are 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 the Office of Strategic Services. Almost every military and diplomatic agency of any importance remained uncompromised, although the Manhattan Project was indeed compromised by a number of agents, the least of which, as well as the most inept, was David Greenglass, brother-in-law to Julius Rosenberg.

Even today, only the identities of fewer than half of the 349 persons mentioned in the documents are known with any certainty. Cover names never identified include "Quantum", a scientist on the Manhattan Project.

Some known spies, including Theodore Hall, were neither prosecuted nor publicly implicated, because the VENONA evidence against them was not made public. VENONA evidence has also clarified the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, making it clear that Julius was guilty of industrial espionage, in addition to the bungling attempt at Atomic espionage that cost him and his wife their lives. The VENONA intercepts show that Ethel was not involved at all,in fact she was not even given a code name. Their contributions to Soviet nuclear espionage were almost nil, despite the wild claims made at the times and for many years afterward. As was argued by many, neither David Greenglass, with his tenth grade education, nor Julius Rosenberg, with a college BA, had the knowledge or the wherewithal to make effective spies in the area of nuclear physics.The real information on Manhattan came from a handful of scientists, some, such as "Quantum" and "Pers," still remain unidentified.

This is not a very different picture from the one which had developed over the past 50 years. While critics debate the identity of individual agents, the overall picture of infiltration remains largely the same. The release of the VENONA information has only heightened the hysteria amongst the undiscerning and those on the anit-Communist Right who still wish to see one under every bed.

Hiss

"The charges against Alger Hiss still remain unproven, as are the charges against Harry Dexter White, despite the assertions of numerous conservative authors. Danial Moynihan, the chair of the Moynihan Commission on Government Secrecy, stated that government officials knew Hiss was guilty but did not speak up for fear of compromising the Venona project. Yet, this bald statement ignores the fact that the VENONA project in no way demonstrates the guilt of Alger Hiss, but in fact points to his innocence. ("Venona and Alger Hiss" Lowenthal; Intelligence and National Security, Vol.15, Aut. 2000, #3). There are only two references to Hiss in the VENONA papers: #1822, naming Alger Hiss in a footnote, and #1579, in which the name HISS appears in a Soviet message itself.

Venona #1822 describes the functioning of an espionage agent codenamed "Ales," who according to a footnote by FBI Special Agent Robert Lamphere is "Probably Alger Hiss." Lamphere makes his guess based on the fact that Hiss was in the State Department and that Whittaker Chambers had said Hiss's wife was involved in espionage and Hiss also had a brother, Donald, in the department. Also that Hiss attended the Yalta Conference, as Lamphere assumed Ales had as well. The problems are clear and immediate: Ales was said in the message to have been active for 11 years, 1935 through the date of the message, 1945; Alger Hiss was accused of spying in the mid-30's and not later than 1938. Ales was said to be the leader of a small group of espionage agents; Hiss was accused of having acted alone, aside from his wife as a typist and Chambers as courier. Ales was a GRU (military intelligence) agent who obtained only military intelligence, and only rarely provided State Department material; Alger Hiss was accused of obtaining only non-military information and the papers used against him were non-military State Department materials that he allegedly produced on a regular basis. .

Even if Hiss was the spy he was accused of being, he could not have continued being so after 1938, as Ales did, because in that year Hiss would have become too great a risk for any Soviet agency to use. For it was in 1938 that Whittaker Chambers, according to the last and final version of his story, obtained the incriminating papers from Hiss and broke with the Communist Party, meaning to wreck it, then went into hiding, told his Communist Party colleagues he would denounce them if they did not follow suit, and begged Hiss in vain to leave the Party with him. Whatever fancy exists in Chambers tale, it is a fact that he denounced Hiss to the US government in 1939, and continued to do so over the next dozen years. Would the GRU, and Hiss himself, have been so reckless as to continue for the next seven years after 1938 the alleged espionage that Chambers had already threatened to expose? Nor is it likely that Soviet officials would have agreed in 1945, as they did agree, to the appointment of Alger Hiss as Secretary-General of the UN Organizing Committee in San Francisco if he was then one of their spies, given the diplomatic costs to the Soviet Union if Chambers had unmasked him.

The other problem with #1822 lies with Lamphere's reading that Ales was at the Yalta Conference, as Hiss had been, and had traveled on to Moscow. A more coherent reading, however, puts not Ales at the conference but "a Soviet personage in a very responsible position," Comrade Vyshinski, the deputy foreign minister. Vyshinski was in fact at Yalta, and did go on to Moscow, as did Alger Hiss (for a day with Sec. of State Stettinus). There is no independent evidence that Ales even attended the conference. Moreover, the entire point of paragraph 6 (#1822), that the GRU asked Vyshinski to get in touch with Ales to convey the GRU's thanks for a job well done, would have been moot if Ales had actually been in Moscow, for the GRU could have contacted Ales in Moscow on their own with no need of Vyshinski. But with Ales back in the U.S., rather than Moscow, the GRU would have had good reason to enlist the aid of Vyshinski to deliver its thanks.

Venona #1579 contains fragments of a 1943 cable from the GRU chief in New York to GRU in Moscow. The one fragment referring to Hiss does so in a manner that suggests they'd never heard of him before. Scores of Americans have been mentioned in these cables, presidents, secretaries of state and their aides, scientists, journalists, etc.. One of those Americans was "HISS." The reference, according to the NSA reads: ". . . from the State Department by name of HISS . . ." The name "Hiss" was not translated by the Venona cryptanalysts, because it appeared just that way in the orginal: "Spelled out in the Latin alphabet" according to footnote iv. The obvious reason for the GRU to switch from the Russin Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet, just for a name, is for the sake of accuracy in rendering an unfamiliar name in a non-Russian, Latin-alphabet language. The name "Hiss" also goes without a first name, so it could refer to either Alger or Donald, as both were at State in 1943. The fact that footnote iv mentions only Alger may reflect nothing more than the FBI's greater interst in him.

But for the GRU to name Hiss openly and directly, not by a covername, strongly suggests that, no matter which Hiss it was, he was not a spy. Both the NSA and the FBI have insisted that once a covername was assigned it was used to the exclusion of the real name. Thus, if Alger Hiss had been an espionage agent from 1935 to 1945, he would have had a covername in 1943, and the GRU message would have referred to him by his covername, not his real name.

The Hiss case is still very much alive, and more and more the gathering evidence points to his innocence. This article has been taken largely from the late John Lowenthal's excellant piece in Intelligence and National Security referenced above. But the best on-line source is to be found at , otherwise known as The Alger Hiss Story. There is to be found the latest findings, from FOIA and other sources, a full bibliography (arguing for and against), and much, much more.

Alas, the claim that Hiss was not named appears to be incorrect. A Hiss is referred to by name in the NKVD archives, in a June 28, 1938 memo from Itzhak Akhmerov (NKVD File 58380, pp. 73-74), where "Hiss" is described as "belongs to our family", but "American Communist Party or GRU resident (I am not quite sure who Hiss is connected to)". (It is now known that it was GRU.) It's true that the memo doesn't say explicitly that it was Alger, as opposed to Donald, but the context (the file of Michael Straight) indicates that it was Alger who is being discussed. A slightly later memo from Akhmerov (July 31, same file, pp. 83) says "Hiss used to be a member of the USCP organization who had been routed into and sent to the GRU later." Hiss doesn't appear much in the NKVD archives, since he was active with the GRU, but there is now little doubt that he was a source for the Soviets, although the exact details of how extensive his contacts were remain obscure. Noel (talk) 16:21, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Really? How odd, is not your statement from the Haunted Wood? That marvellous book where no one (Perhaps not even Vassiliev, the Russian reseacher, not co-author, for Weinstein) was allowed to see the documents themselves? And, apparently, no one else can, either. In fact, Vassiliev has been quoted as saying that he never found Hiss's name in any of what he was allowed to see, just the name Ales, and that Weinstein inserted the name Hiss.--Grifross 11:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I am aware of the dispute between Vassiliev and Weinstein over Weinstein's insertion of Hiss's name into some cables, in place of the code-name ALES. (Do note that Weinstein carefully used '' to indicate his interpolation, see e.g. page 286 in HW for an example - and note that other authors, e.g. West, have done the same.) However, the memos I quoted (on pages 79 and 80 of HW, if you want to look at them), the string "Hiss" appears in the original text. (The fact that this is not a typo/error on Weinstein's part, in place of '', is explicitly called out - "referred directly to 'Hiss' in this dispatch, an unusual practise in Soviet tradecraft at this time.") And that is precisely why I quoted only those two memos, to avoid any dispute over the interpolation of the name. Noel (talk) 18:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I've now read the Lowenthal article, and I'm entirely unimpressed. It contains many obvious errors, cases of circular logic, etc. Alas, I have no time to write a dissection of it right now. Noel (talk) 02:15, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm sure you don't, but all of Klehr and Haynes and Chambers, and Moynihan's bald assertions, you swallow wholesale.--Grifross 11:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I've never read Moynihan's book. As to K+H, actually, I don't take them at face value: as good scholars, they very carefully copiously footnote all their sources, and many I have gone and checked out, to see if I agree with their take on what the originals say/imply. I have a positive view of them as a result. I was particularly impressed with the way their earlier book (Storming Heaven Itself) made very cautious claims that they themselves later admitted were incorrect ("new evidence required us to modify earlier judgements") - but which were incorrect only because "limitations of the evidence then available made us cautious". In other words, they only say what they think the evidence supports.

If I have time, as some point I'll post an analysis of Lowenthal's article. Noel (talk) 18:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

VfD results

This article was nominated for deletion. The result was keep. For details, please see Misplaced Pages:Votes for deletion/Significance of Venona. -- BDAbramson 11:57, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

Moynihan

From Moynihan Secrecy, pg. 52:

"It had been governmental secrecy that had allowed critics of the Rosenberg and Hiss cases to construct their elaborate theories about frame-ups and cover-ups. For years the Rosenbergs' defenders had demanded that the government reveal its secrets about the case, probably never dreaming that someday the files would land with a thump on their doorsteps. When the government gave in and released the documents, the secrets made the government's case even stronger. "Over the years," Radosh scoffs, "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." nobs 03:53, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Bradley

Gen. Omar Bradley's decision not to inform Truman was not because Truman himself couldn't be trusted, the evidence showed that people in the White House could not be trusted, because the Soviet Union had infiltrated the White House itself. Truman called allegations against Hiss, et al, by Bentley, a "red herring", and a partisan divide between Hiss (rising star in the DNC) and Richard Nixon (backbencher from backwoods California) erupted which lasted decades (other persaonalities involved, too). The point to be debated is, Was Gen. Bradley's decision the right decision or not?, because it seems, as Sen. Moynihan says, the partisan divide of the Hiss Case, the vendetta against Nixon etc., was all unnecessary. We're not gonna resolve this issue right now, but I postulate that the political situaiton in the United States (free democracy that we are) was not unlike situations all over the planet at that time, were military commanders stepped into the void, in chaotic political situations, with the absence of effective civilian leadership (MacArthur in Japan, Rokossovsky in Poland, DeGaulle in France, etc). nobs 04:38, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

primary sources

Cberlet: I appreciate your gift for arguement and obvious passion for the art (I myself am guilty of the same vices). Can we spend some time discussing (1) structural arrangements of the various Venona related articles (2) procedural arrangements which may be time saving for everyone involved (3) balancing primary sources and secondary sources etc. nobs 16:14, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Schrecker

We have this quote from Prof. Schrecker, The Nation magazine, The Right's Cold War Revision, July 24/31, 2000, pp. 21, 23-24, (with Maurice Isserman):

"it is now abundantly clear that most of those who were identified as Soviet agents in the forties and fifties really were—and that most of them belonged to the Communist Party" and "as Venona and the Moscow sources reveal, the party recruited dozens, perhaps hundreds, of its members to spy for the Soviet Union."

nobs 01:35, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Don't doubt this is true, but it has nothing to do with her criticsm of Venona. Please stop trying to obfiscate the issues and just act in good faith.--Cberlet 01:53, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

Huh? I would have thought that "as Venona and the Moscow sources reveal" is absolutely on point. Sounds like she is putting more weight on them? Perhaps she has revised her opinion of the reliability of Venona since her McCarthyism book; I'll have to see if I can find the original article online, and read it, to get the context of her remarks.

(Speaking of whom, I bought a copy of her McCarthy book, and have looked at it, and although she's reasonably sound on the politics/etc end of it , when it comes to the intelligence stuff, she's out of her depth. As an example, she describes Gubitchev as "a Russian engineer working for the UN". She then goes on to describe Gubitchev indulging in classic tradecraft, such as brush meetings! Hello! The Soviets just didn't use regular people as temp help to meet sources; if he was doing this, he was a stone hood. No time to write a longer analysis now, alas.) Noel (talk) 18:50, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

It is a straw man argument to say that it is 'now' clear there were Soviet agents. That was clear at the time of Fuchs' confession and the defection of the Cambridge Spies, if not before, i.e decades ago. To use this to buttress 'told you so' conservative triumphalism is absurd. It is, however, unlikely that 'card-carrying Communists' would be used as spies as they would risk easy discovery. Yuri Modin in his book My Five Cambridge Friends and Kim Philby in his book My Secret War describe how the Cambridge Spies took steps to distance themselves from their leftist youth - with Philby even being decorated by Franco. According to Modin, the KGB even wanted them to break off ties with each other for security reasons. The neo-McCarthyist view of Venona amounts to asserting that the KGB abandoned common sense security principles and allowed a cumbersome network of known Communists to jeopardise important operations such as the infiltration of the Manhattan project. Moreover, this 'nest of traitors' was largely able to avoid detection for decades despite having fairly obvious Communist/leftwing backgrounds. It may be objected that there are mountains of textual evidence to support these allegations - however we have the perfect right to demand internal logic of such theories, and this interpretation of Venona doesn't have it!--Jack Upland 04:25, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, let's take "KGB abandoned common sense security principles", this certainly happened due to their over reliance on their FELLOWCOUNTRYMEN (CPUSA). To many American Communists, it was a social club, and they didn't pay attention to basic rules of tradecraft & security principles. And numerous Venona decrypts discuss this. After the death of Golos, when Bentley was put in charge, everything went to hell, and that's how they got compromised. The decrypts and what is known from other sources is, it was a never ending battle of the KGB trying to impose discipline on sloppy actors. But it was wartime, the Comintern was disbanded, and host of other problems all contributed to a breakdown in fundemental security protocols. They can only thank the FBI for being so damn incompetent that they lasted as long as they did, and to the fact much still remains a mystery. nobs 04:59, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

Cberlet, you just don't get it.

These guys are not interested in "good faith", despite their protests, they are interested solely in advancing their own narrow idealogical agenda, a rather ahistorical and sloppy one at that. They delete and rewrite anything that attempts to limit their wild assertions in any way. Note the narrow range of sources they allow, anyone not agreeing with such gets edited out. Note also that their sources are all of one type, the far right, the shrillest of them all, and the least respected. The claim that Khelr and Haynes are the "leading" anything is a joke. Yale published them (and has lived to regret it) because they, at the time, happened to have been working nearly alone in the Soviet archives. Their work is of interest only because of the raw material they collected, not for what they made of those materials. Throughout these pages on the Red Scare era our friends here on Misplaced Pages can be seen time and again to rely on mere assertion, are incapable of quoting material to back up those assertions, and sneer at any alternative source that begs to be considered. Take the Hiss case, there is an encyclopedia of information tearing the case against him into small pieces, and there is new book soon to be relased, by the recently deceased Bill Reubens, that does the job all over again. Yet these guys here continually rely on the most dubious assertions by Klehr and Haynes, and Weinstein, and one bare assertion by Moynihan (backed by nothing at all), all of which (sans Moynihan who actually asserts with no argument) recycles Chambers's claims, and the dubious identity of "Ales" in Venona. The reason they don't at least quote the other side of the argument is because they have NO INTEREST in historical discussion, they do not wish to present the case and then allow the reader to judge for themselves, or even to know there is another argument. --Grifross 11:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Careerism

Picking one thread of discussion from Talk:VENONA_project#Cberlet.27s_references regarding "careerism", please keep in mind, the FBI had exactly five Soviet espionage cases for the entire War (1942-1945) when Elizabeth Bentley walked into the New Haven FBI office and spilled her guts about 82 cases they hadn't known about. This did not win Elizabeth Bentley any friends among the FBI, having embarassed them and exposed the poor job they did defending the United States from infiltration and subversion in wartime (see Talk:Elizabeth_Bentley#Reference for more discussion on this point). nobs 04:54, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Footnote Warfare

Not to detract from the effort made in these discussions, but there seems a tendency to cite secondary sources in a circular fashion. There is very little primary source material unfortunately - and Venona isn't it! It is the creation of US intelligence (the people who brought us the WMD disinformation). Yes, it could be true. So could Chinese assertion of US biological warfare in Korea. The point is we are cautious of government propaganda, aren't we? The Cold War is still a burning issue (as these debates show) and so it can't be described as merely 'historical interest'. There should be more 'warning lights' attached to this entry.

The question that should be highlighted is: why did Venona take so long to be released? The conventional explanation ('not letting the Russians know what we know') is false as known Soviet agent Philby (as stated in article) was aware!--Jack Upland 23:41, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages policy is to assume good faith. After spending an inordinate amount of time reading Mr. Upland's postings in Talk:Significance of Venona, Talk:Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Talk:Klaus Fuchs and Klaus Fuchs, and trying to understand his reasoning, here is my good faith posting: either the intent is to convince someone with an IQ of 87 of something, or the author has an IQ of (redacted). nobs 18:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

Your comment that the Rosenbergs never denied espionage speaks for itself. Your pseudo-logical nonsense would be a credit to Lewis Carroll if you weren't dancing on people's graves.--Jack Upland 04:39, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Declassification

A suggestion: develope an arguement first, with an example or examples, sources, etc. Then we can discuss it and not have a useless edit war. As of 2005, this is a fact: there have not been one (as in 1) successful proven NSA misidentification in the 10 years Venona materials heve been in the public domain. nobs 02:07, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

My edits are reasonable and are made in good faith. I have no particular opinion about VENONA, except to see this article as accurate and NPOV as possible. A casual glance at your user page makes me think you may have a different agenda. As for misidentification, given that the VENONA materials are unverifiable it is difficult or impossible to "prove" anything regarding them. --Bk0 02:48, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

define "unverifiable" in sense of your use. nobs 03:04, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

img

Where can we put this?

nobs 05:04, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

Request for Mediation filed

I have filed a request for mediation on this and related pages, see here: --Cberlet 18:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

New Edits

Mediation is currently ongoing regarding this article. Please see here. The text of this article is being discussed there; if you would like to give your opinion, please do so there. Unless you wish to become part of mediation, please be as brief and concise as possible, and do not use personal attacks. Thank you, Flcelloguy

Background

I do not believe this text is accurate or NPOV:

• Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.

• The decrypts include 349 code names for persons known to have had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence. It is likely that there were more than 349 participants in Soviet espionage, as that number is from a small sample of the total intercepted message traffic. Among those identified are 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 the Office of Strategic Services. Almost every military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent, including the Manhattan Project.

The core question for this text goes to the heart of the dispute. The books cited to justify this type of language were primarily written by persons with an axe to grind. Klehr and Haynes, for example, put a specific spin on the Venona documents they analyze that suggests that Red Scare era accusations that specific persons were Soviet spies have been overwhelmingly corroborated by the release of the Venona documents, FBI files, and Soviet archival material. Other scholars and journalists disagree. Yet even Klehr and Haynes do not state that the persons linked to the "349 code names" were "Soviet spies." That conclusion is original research. Klehr and Haynes provide the list as representing persons known to have had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence. But what does this mean? It is quite possible that some of the real persons named as linked to the code names from the Venona documents were simply being recruited or used as information sources without their witting participation as Soviet informants or spies. This happens all the time in unredacted intelligence agency files. They never should be taken at face value.

This text would be more accurate and NPOV:

• Identities soon emerged of persons in America, Canada, Australia, and Britiain who were being used as information sources by the Soviet government. Some later were jailed as outright spies, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.

• According to Klehr and Haynes, the decrypts include 349 code names for Americans used as information sources by Soviet intelligence, and the authors speculate that even more persons were involved. At the time, the government feared that many military and diplomatic agencies were compromised to some extent, including the Manhattan Project.

• Government analysts assigned identities to the coded names from the Venona documents. Among these were 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 the Office of Strategic Services. What is disputed is the extent to which the available evidence indicates these people and others named in the Venona documents were aware of or complicit in espionage activities. Investigations in a number of cases did not lead to indictments, and several persons, notably Hiss, White, Halperin, and Currie, denied they were spies, were never indicted, and the claim they were spies is still debated by scholars.

I believe this is a better wording.--Cberlet 16:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

There is no evidence for Cberlet's claim "debated by scholars"; a few obsolete arguements by secondary scholars have been refuted, and representing them as valid is POV. Cberlet's attack on the sourcing is original research POV. nobs 20:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

"obsolete" and "secondary" are POV descriptions on your part. You have been a vandal and a POV warrior here for a while now, don't pretend as if you are editing in good faith or in Misplaced Pages's best interests. --Bk0 20:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Sentence by sentence

Nobs: how would you write this sentence?

• Identities soon emerged of persons in America, Canada, Australia, and Britiain who were being used as information sources by the Soviet government. Some later were jailed as outright spies, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.

Please write your version below. Thank you. --Cberlet 22:57, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Cberlet: I would propose to you that you add Summary item 2 to Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_mediation/Cberlet_and_Nobs01/Workshop#Summary_by_Cberlet with a link to this subhead, and label it here as such, so we can properly proceed. Thank you. nobs 19:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Illustrations of dispute

Direct examples of improper and invalid methodology to affect POV.

22 August 2005

• 14:30
  • Unsourced "balance" for primary source citation

22 August 2005

• 15:43
  • Questionable secondary source inserted to refute two fully qualified primary source citations. Also, vagueness & relevency to Venona project questioned by multiple editors.

22 August 2005

• 17:10
  • Direct, unsouced, anonymous original research criticism of primary & secondary citation. . See WP:RS#Unattributed_material.

16 September 2005

• 01:42
  • In a subhead entitled ==Nobs has once again misrepresented sources in his espionage paragraphs== Cberlet charges nobs with "misrepresentation", "inaccurate", "biased", and "false"; Cberlet extracts,
    • " 'The following were members of the Victor Perlo Network'; That statement is not qualified as 'According to Elizabeth Bentley', or 'Elizabeth Bentley has alleged', etc."; says " this is a misrepresentation. "

30 September

• 12:46
  • Cberlet files Summary of Dispute; says "Magdoff was listed by the FBI as in the Perlo Group."

nobs 17:46, 3 October 2005 (UTC) nobs 05:33, 4 October 2005 (UTC)