| Revision as of 15:35, 19 August 2005 editJnc (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators17,591 edits →References: Organize into sections, add standard printed works, fix busted link← Previous edit | Revision as of 15:42, 19 August 2005 edit undoJnc (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Administrators17,591 edits →External links: Remove incorrect statement - the books source notes reveal that CPUSA archives were use a lot less than VENONA materialNext edit → | ||
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| ==External links== | ==External links== | ||
| * Yale University Press Web site (Despite the title, this is less about VENONA itself than about Communist Party USA espionage and support of espionage |
* Yale University Press Web site (Despite the title, this is less about VENONA itself than about Communist Party USA espionage and support of espionage.) | ||
| * per Denis Naranjo | * per Denis Naranjo | ||
Revision as of 15:42, 19 August 2005
The VENONA project was a long-running and highly secret collaboration between the United States intelligence agencies and the United Kingdom's MI5 that involved the cryptanalysis of Soviet messages.
Background
U.S. Army Signal Security Agency (commonly called Arlington Hall) codebreakers had intercepted large volumes of encrypted high-level Soviet diplomatic and intelligence traffic during and immediately after World War II. The British had stopped intercepting Soviet traffic, at Winston Churchill's orders, shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 and had no traffic to contribute to the project after that time. This traffic, some of which was thought to be encrypted with a one-time pad system, was stored and analyzed in relative secrecy by hundreds of cryptanalysts over a 40-year period starting in the early 1940s. The National Security Agency reported that, according to the serial numbers of the Venona cables, thousands were sent but only a fraction were available to the cryptanalysts. Approximately 2,200 of the messages were decrypted and translated; some 50 percent 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 KGB cables was:
- 1942 1.8%
- 1943 15.0%
- 1944 49.0%
- 1945 1.5%
The Venona Project was initiated under orders from the Chief of Military Intelligence, Carter Clarke, who mistrusted Joseph Stalin. He feared that Stalin and Hitler would sign a peace treaty in order to focus Germany's military forces on the destruction of Great Britain and the U.S.
The British codename for VENONA was Bride. Some brilliant cryptanalysis by American and British codebreakers (the first steps were by a very young Meredith Gardner of what would become NSA) revealed that some of the one-time pad key material had incorrectly been reused by the Soviets, which allowed decryption (sometimes only partial) of a small part of the traffic. Very slowly, using assorted techniques ranging from traffic analysis to defector information, more of the messages were decrypted. Out of some hundreds of thousands of intercepted cyphertexts, it is claimed that under 3000 have been partially or wholly decrypted. Claims have been made that information from physical theft of encryption pads (a partially burned one is reported to have been recovered by the Finns) to bugging embassy rooms in which text was entered into encrypting devices (and analyzing the keystrokes by listening to them being punched in), contributed to achieving as much plaintext as was recovered. These latter claims are less than fully supported in the open literature.
The Soviets eventually stopped reusing key pad material, possibly after learning from their agent(s) of the US / British work, after which their one-time pad traffic reverted to completely unreadable. There has been speculation that the reason for the key material duplication was the increase in work (including key pad generation) in the period after the German attack in June of 1941. Other suggestions have it that it was Guderian's tanks just outside Moscow in early December that year which forced Moscow Centre to make such a fundamental error.
Significance
Main articles: Significance of Venona
The Venona project was a thirty-eight year investigation conducted by the National Security Agency and FBI counterintelligence, and held classified for an additional fifteen years after the program ended. Researchers, historians, and the public, struggle to understand its significance and meaning.
List of Americans in the Venona Papers
- See also: List of Americans in the Venona Papers
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Chairman of the bipartisan Commission on Government Secrecy, responsible for securing the release of Venona project materials, later authored a book entitled Secrecy: The American Experience (New Haven: Yale University Press 1998). The Introduction states, "The Venona intercepts contained overwhelming proof of the activities of Soviet spy networks in America, complete with names, dates, places, and deeds." (*).
349 U.S. citizens, noncitizen immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had covert relationships with Soviet intelligence were confirmed in the Venona traffic. Of these 171 are identified by true names and 178 are known only by a cover name. The persons identified represent only a partial list and many are listed below. Twenty-four persons targeted for recruitment remain uncorroborated as to it being accomplished. These individuals are marked with an asterisk (*). The NSA followed Soviet intelligence traffic for only a few years in World War II and decrypted only a small portion of that traffic.
Document Release Issues
The release of VENONA translations involved careful consideration of the privacy interests of individuals mentioned, referenced, or identified in the translations. Some names have not been released when to do so would constitute an invasion of privacy.
The NSA has failed to release the VENONA documents as a Unicode based PDF text file. Text processing technology could be used to extract information from the decrypts for historical research if the VENONA documents were released in PDF form.
The NSA website states: "These historical documents are GIF images of formerly classified carbon paper and reports that have been declassified. Due to the age and poor quality of some of the GIF images, a screen reader may not be able to process the images into word documents."
"individuals may request that the government provide auxiliary aids or services to ensure effective communication of the substance of the documents. For such requests, please contact the Public Affairs Office at 301-688-6524."
See also
Notes
- Note (1): Moynihan Commssion on Government Secrecy, Appendix A, The Experience of The Bomb (1997)
- Note (2): Secrecy: The American Experience; by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New Haven: Yale University Press 1998, pg. 15.
- Note (3): John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Appendix A, Source Venona: Americans and U.S. Residents Who Had Covert Relationships with Soviet Intelligence Agencies, pgs. 339-370. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999)
- Note (4): Haynes and Klehr, Appendix D, Americans and U.S. Residents Targeted as Potential Sources by Soviet Intelligence Agencies, pgs. 387-389.
- Note (5): VENONA Historical Monograph #4 National Security Agency Archives, Cryptological Museum
References
- NSA official VENONA site
- Moynihan Commssion Report on Government Secrecy (1997)
- Selected Venona Messages
- MI5 Releases to the National Archives
Further reading
- Robert Louis Benson, Michael Warner, Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response 1939-1957 (National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency, Washington D.C., 1996)
- Robert Louis Benson, The Venona Story (National Security Agency, Center for Cryptologic History, 2001)
- John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (Yale University, New Haven, 1999)
- Nigel West, Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War (HarperCollins, London, 1999)
Additional background material
- The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence; by Richard J. Aldrich. New York: Overlook Press, 2002. ISBN 1585672742.
- Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency; by James Bamford. Anchor Books. ISBN 0385499086. See also the same author's earlier, The Puzzle Palace, also about the NSA.
- Secrecy: The American Experience; by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, New Haven: Yale University Press 1998. ISBN 0300080794.
- Bombshell; by Albright and Kunstel. About Soviet WWII espionage in the US, including Venona.
- Battle of Wits; by Steven Budiansky. An overview in one volume of cryptography in WWII.
External links
- YUP VENONA; Decoding Soviet Espionage in America Yale University Press Web site (Despite the title, this is less about VENONA itself than about Communist Party USA espionage and support of espionage.)
- Venona Chronology 1939-1996 per Denis Naranjo