Venona project

The Venona project was a joint project of the secret services of the U.S. and the British foreign intelligence service MI6 for decryption of secret messages of official Soviet offices in the U.S., which were recorded in the period 1938-1945. Within this long-term project, the findings were processed centrally from other intelligence projects such as the Project SHAMROCK.

Background

In the period from 1939 to 1945 and stored heard various U.S. intelligence agencies and the FBI thousands of diplomatic telegrams that came mainly from the radio traffic of the Soviet consulates and the embassy in Washington and Moscow. Other sources also indicate a collapse of the FBI as the origin of messages. These messages were encoded using a codebook and an additional one- time pad encryption (English " one-time pad" or here " session key " ) and encrypted. However, until 1945, the Western intelligence agencies were not in a position to evaluate it as the appropriate codes and encryption remained unknown. This changed by the success of the FBI in connection with the evaluation of the Venona papers. The United States Army was established in 1945 Security Agency ( ASA) took over these documents and made jointly with the FBI from the secret Venona project, jointly were evaluating the present and continue flowing information in the cryptologists, linguists and analysts.

Development 1942-1946

Already on February 1, 1942 began the staff member of the Signals Intelligence Service ( SIS) Gene Grabeel at the headquarters of the SIS Arlington Hall, a former girls' school in Arlington County, a secret project with the aim to analyze Soviet and decrypt messages. In the first months, the data were sorted first by the diplomatic missions, the encryption system as well as the receiver. It was found that five different encryption methods were applied. As it turned out later, one of the methods was used primarily for commercial information, the other four methods have been used by agencies of the Soviet Foreign Ministry. Further analysis allowed an assignment of the encryption on the trade representatives, the Soviet diplomats, the KGB and its predecessor organizations, the Army and the Navy Department of the GRU.

In October 1943, discovered the archaeologist and the SIS Lieutenant Richard Hallock, weaknesses in the cryptographic system of the news of the trade representatives. These weaknesses gave valuable information for the analysis of the remaining four encryptions. During the year 1944, the cryptanalyst Cecil Phillips made ​​a discovery that would accelerate the decoding of the KGB data clearly in the sequence. Since the messages but encrypted twice and were of high difficulty, it would take about two years before the first KGB messages could be decrypted.

Three important results of the U.S. counterintelligence led to important information that could be used with the radio messages for trimming. First, the FBI re careful questioning of Whittaker Chambers was carried out, the earlier information had remained largely unnoticed in the 1930s about Soviet espionage in the United States. Then the Soviet encoder Igor Gouzenko walked over in Ottawa. Finally, the end of 1945 Elizabeth Bentley ran over and gave the FBI in 1945 an extensive list of people who had worked for the Soviets. Did the information Gouzenkos indeed brought the counterintelligence some successes that could expose ten other Soviet spies in Canada and the United States, as he had on deciphering efforts of the Venona project, due to the complex encryption methods have little effect. The information provided by Chambers and Bentley but should allow a good comparison of the data found in the decryption.

In the summer of 1946, Meredith Gardner was the first time to read messages of the KGB. On 31 July 1946, he extracted a portion of a message from the KGB New York on August 10, 1944, which included a discussion on secret KGB operations in Latin America. On 13 December 1946 he was able to decipher a message to the American campaign for presidential election. A week later, he was able to decipher a message that had been two years earlier sent to Moscow, and contained a list of the leading scientists of the Manhattan Project.

Over the next approximately 40 years could be decrypted and translated about 2200 messages.

In these early years, the cryptanalysts of Arlington Hall was not a Soviet code book for help. Only later, after up to the year 1953/54, further breakthroughs were succeeded in deciphering the data, some codebooks previously found could be associated with these encryption methods. The first of these code books came from the KGB, had been found in 1945, and partly burnt. Another codebook had found the end of World War II in a German radio station in a castle in Saxony. The Germans had this codebook captured on 22 June 1941 in the Soviet Consulate in Petsamo in Finland. More like material found Lieutenant Oliver Kirby on a mission in Schleswig.

From about 1946, the collected radio messages were called Venona papers or project as Venona project.

1946-1951

1946-1948 managed to decipher numerous messages and also names from the various records and translate into English. However, the judiciary was not capable of the people identified with the aid of these documents to bring to justice, as both the FBI and the government the information obtained for the important were, than that they should be used in a public process. In the period 1948-1951 several messages were decrypted, the references to the activities of agents of Klaus Fuchs, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and David Greenglass in the context of espionage contained against the Manhattan Project. However, the evidence was very difficult, because the aliases were partially associated with the appropriate real names only with great effort, also because this changed within messages. Thus, it was only verified for example, from the recognized code name for Julius Rosenberg "Antenna ", but what " Liberal " had to be changed later. Also talked even then some information for an agent activity of Theodore Alvin Hall, but this was only in 1995 proved beyond doubt. Such problems made ​​it possible that fox long time as the most important atomic spy for the Soviet Union was considered, although the importance of Hall according to the latest estimate is much higher. Hall's code name was " MLAD ", which means " youngster " means in Russian. This code name pointed out that he was 19 years old when he began the activities of agents.

Alger Hiss was also unmasked eventually in 1995 based on the Venona papers than in the 1930s, operating under the code name " lawyer " agent of the Soviet Union.

1952 to 1980 Financial Statements

Already in the first years of the Cold War was the results of the Venona project to one of the most important sources for counterintelligence in the USA. A great number of moles in the United States and eventually many Soviet spies in the 1950s are revealed. The Venona project was a long time but treated as an absolute secret thing, so it was difficult in many cases, zusammenzubekommen enough incriminating evidence for a court sentencing of convicted spies. However, many Soviet agents were transferred and further the activities in the U.S. are made ​​impossible.

Important, unmasked by or arising from the Venona project, Soviet spies were, among others:

• Klaus Fuchs
• Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
• Morton Sobell
• Harry Gold
• Martha Dodd
• David Greenglass
• Alger Hiss
• Joseph Katz
• Harry Dexter White
• Theodore Alvin Hall

From 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency was founded in 1947 (CIA ) collaborated on the work-up.

Nevertheless, it was Meredith Gardner in 1964 able to read related news from the radio traffic, which gave a further indication of the amount of information to the Soviet Union on the Manhattan Project.

The Venona project was continued for almost 40 years until 1980, as it had to be the hope of still being able to detect more unidentified cover name. In 1977, William P. Crowell decided by the NSA to complete the project within the following about two years. 1978, the completion of the project was set to 1 October 1980. Even at this time, the project remained secret, and its existence has been denied by the early 1990s in public.

Publication

Only in 1995 the results of the Venona project, were made ​​public by the National Security Agency, the successor organization of the U.S. Army Security Agency signal. Comprehensive documentation of the project were then released in a total of six releases with over 3000 documents between July 1995 and September 1997 and opened to the public. Here, it was announced that the project also all intelligence activities against the United States in the period between 1939 and 1945, including the activities of the German defense of Wilhelm Canaris and the Soviet NKVD and GRU, summarized and aufarbeitete.