[CTRL] The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage

[William Shannon]

http://www.vny.com/cf/News/upidetail.cfm?QID=154384

The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage


Tuesday, 23 January 2001 13:21 (ET)

The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet EspionageBy GENE POTEAT and ELISA POTEAT


WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 (UPI) -- Soviet Cold War espionage has piqued theinterest
of many for decades.Yet, the unearthing of the Soviets' spy efforts had a
simple beginning. In1945, a Soviet code clerk in Canada, Igor Gouzenko,
defected and toldCanadian and U.S. authorities of Soviet espionage in
stealing the atomicbomb during World War II. Before Gouzenko was able to meet
U.S. authorities,two Americans, Whittaker Chambers, a former editor of Time
magazine, andElizabeth Bentley, later dubbed the "blond spy queen," defected
from theCommunist Party USA and told the authorities they had acted as spies
for theSoviet Union.Following their defection, both Chambers and Bentley
testified beforeCongress, giving evidence of widespread Soviet espionage in
the UnitedStates during World War II. They named their contacts, including
Alger Hiss,a senior State Department official who had helped to draft the
U.N. Charter;Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury; and
RobertOppenheimer, the head scientist on the team that built the atomic
bomb.A computer-created name, Venona, was given to the encrypted cable
trafficfrom the Soviet Union to its spymasters in the United States from 1939
to1957. Interpreters of the cables have asserted that Hiss, White,
andOppenheimer are referred to in code throughout, whereas David
Greenglass,Julius Rosenberg's brother-in-law, is referred to by name.The
cables were decrypted many years ago, beginning during World War II.Though
the text of the documents was not made public immediately, there wasmuch
debate and discourse on the subject of the guilt or innocence of Hissand the
others. Many felt that he and the Rosenbergs were wrongfullyconvicted.With no
confirmation from the Soviets that the U.S. interpretation of thenames in the
cables was correct, many wondered whether we ever really knewthe truth about
Hiss and the others.Then in 1995, at the urging of many U.S. officials,
including Sen. DanielPatrick Moynihan, D-NY, the Venona Papers, the decrypted
text of the Venonacables, were finally made public. In its wake came a series
of books onHiss, Hopkins, the Rosenbergs, Oppenheimer and others, and their
roles asSoviet agents in the United States during and immediately after the
war.With so much published on Venona, it is difficult to anticipate
thatanything new could be delivered on the subject.However, Herbert
Romerstein and Eric Breindel have managed to write afresh and detailed
account of Venona's history and the people whoseactivities were revealed by
Bentley and Chambers more than 50 years ago.They have surpassed earlier
authors by gaining access to new facts andincorporating them into a
well-documented book titled "The Venona Secrets:Exposing Soviet Espionage and
America's Traitors," (Regnery, 608 pp,$29.95).Romerstein provides
corroboration in two ways. First, he has conductedunprecedented interviews
with former Soviets. Second, he obtained memorandathat few others have ever
seen. Romerstein, with the help of his wife, Pat,went to Moscow and reviewed
a large quantity of documents prepared bymembers of the Communist
International Party (Comintern) that had been madepublic.The documents
provide Soviet corroboration for the U.S. criminal cases andinvestigations
that resulted in the convictions of the Rosenbergs and Hiss,and they strongly
support the case against Hiss and others who were spyingfrom the most
important power centers in U.S. government.Although he was not given access
to the internal archives of the NKVD, theagency that later became the KGB,
Romerstein was permitted to takemicrofiche copies of the documents he located
in the Comintern archives. Hecarefully and thoughtfully includes these new
documents in "Venona" therebymaking it a more persuasive authority than
earlier books.Romerstein also interviewed KGB defector Oleg Gordievski, who
was astudent of a former KGB spy-handler who bragged of his U.S. spy
connectionsin some detail to his class. The book contains a full appendix,
includingcopies of many of the documents that Romerstein used to support
hisconclusions about the U.S. spy network that was then funded and directed
bythe Soviet Union, and carefully sets forth the information he received
fromhis interviewees.In the years since Romerstein was given access to these
archives, theSoviets have closed them to the public once again. As he is one
of the fewauthors to have been afforded such access, Romerstein's book will
likelyremain a text of significant historical value to students of the Soviet
spynetworks for a long time to come.It will not, however, change the mind of
die-hard defenders of Hiss whobelieve to this day that he was wrongfully
convicted.To those who are open to Rommerstein's premise, he convincingly
assertsthat the network of Soviet spies had infiltrated major government
entities,such as the Department of Justice, the State Department, the
Treasury, theWhite House, and even the inside of the Army Signal Security
Agency, whichwas decrypting the Venona papers while a member of its staff was
spying forthe Soviet Union.With more solid corroborative evidence than has
been advanced in previousbooks, Romerstein demonstrates better than many of
the other authors on thesubject that what CPOUS defectors Chambers and
Bentley told the FBI andHouse Un-American Activities Committee was actually
true.Refreshingly, Romerstein acknowledges the problems Sen. Joseph
McCarthycreated by making a public spectacle of the HUAC hearings, and how
itundermined the goal of U.S. law enforcement in locating and
prosecutingSoviet spies.As Romerstein notes, during the hearings, many spies
and spymasters fledthe country allowing the statute of limitations on
espionage charges to run.The hearings also scared into seclusion some major
spies who might otherwisehave been caught and successfully prosecuted. Since
in the past many writershave been stubbornly unapologetic for the problems
created by McCarthy andhis assistants, Romerstein's book has about it an
intellectual integritythat is often missing in books on Venona and related
subjects.The book itself is written with delightful clarity thanks to
theassistance Romerstein received from writer and moderator Eric Breindel,
who,sadly, passed away before the book came to publication.Because of its
full presentation of the known facts, and Romersein'sunprecedented and
short-lived access to Soviet archives, "Venona" is a trulyimportant work on
the history of Soviet espionage.