Talk:Significance of Venona

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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)

Contents

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 [only to the extent of some alleged typing, however] 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 [who claimed Donald Hiss was not a spy] 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. [And, it should be said, that the papers have since been shown to be mundane items that no self-respecting spy would bother with].

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 [1], 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 [the State Deparment] 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 '[Hiss]' 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 '[Hiss]', 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)

[edit] VfD results

This article was nominated for deletion. The result was keep. For details, please see Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Significance of Venona. -- BD2412 talk 11:57, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 [although I disagree with her to some degree], 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)

Shcrecker states,

  • "it is tempting to treat the FBI and Venona materials less critically than documents from more accessible sources."
Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America, pgs. xvii-xviii;
and then,
  • "Haynes overlooks other sources that may have been just as significant in shaping our understanding of American communism and anticommunism: FBI files, in particular", [2]

Haynes & Klehr state,

  • "In the late 1970s the FBI began releasing material from its hitherto secret files as a consequence of the passage of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Although this act opened some files to public scrutiny, it has not as yet provided access to the full range of FBI investigative records....Even given these hindrances, however, each year more files are opened and the growing body of FBI documentation has significantly enhanced the opportunity for a reconstruction of what actually happened."
Haynes & Klehr, Venona, p. 19.

What are we to conclude? nobs 21:07, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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 Wikipedia 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

Wikipedia 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] img

Where can we put this?

Image:Fletcher-Ladd.jpg
The October 18, 1949, memorandum reporting Omar Bradley's
decision not to inform President Truman of the Venona decryptions.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C.

nobs 05:04, 20 September 2005 (UTC) How do we shrink this img down to manageable size?

Here's some of the text

"General Clarke stated that when Admiral Stone took over in charge of all cryptanalytical work he was very much disturbed to learn of the progress made by the Army Security Agency in reading [Venona] material. Admiral Stone took the attitude that the President and Admiral Hillenkoetter should be advised as to the contents of all of these messages. General Clarke stated that he vehemently disagreed with Admiral Stone and advised the Admiral that he believed the only people entitled to know anything about this source were [deleted] and the FBI. He stated that the disagreement between Admiral Stone and himself culminated in a conference with General Bradley. General Bradley, according to General Clarke, agreed with the stand taken by General Clarke and stated that he would personally assume the responsibility of advising the President or anyone else in authority if the contents of any of this material so demanded. General Bradley adopted the attitude and agreed with General Clarke that all of the material should be made available to [deleted] and the FBI.
General Clarke stated the reason that he recently called upon you was for the purpose of informing you as to the difference of opinion between himself and Admiral Stone and to acquaint you with the opinion of General Bradley. He stated that he wanted to be certain that the Bureau was aware of this and to make sure that the Bureau does not handle the material in such a way that Admiral Hillenkoetter or anyone else outside the Army Security Agency, [deleted,] and the Bureau are aware of the contents of these messages and the activity being conducted at Arlington Hall.

Source: H. B. Fletcher, memorandum to D. M. Ladd, October 18, 1949, archives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. nobs 20:19, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Mediation filed

I have filed a request for mediation on this and related pages, see here:[3] --Cberlet 18:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New Edits

Comment 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, mediator

[edit] Background

I do not believe this text is accurate or NPOV:

  • 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 Wikipedia's best interests. --Bk0 20:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
No comment. nobs 20:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
Restore my response to WP:NPA deleted by User:Cberlet [4]. nobs 18:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 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 Wikipedia: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)

[edit] Illustrations of dispute

Direct examples of improper and invalid methodology to affect POV.


22 August 2005

22 August 2005

22 August 2005

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. " [8]

30 September

  • 12:46
    • Cberlet files Summary of Dispute; says "Magdoff was listed by the FBI as in the Perlo Group." [9]


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

[edit] Mediation is ongoing

Mediation is ongoing on this page. It is not proper for Nobs to continue to engage in major edits on this page while refusing to edit text on the mediation page.--Cberlet 22:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

It is not proper for Cberlet's tag team to continue to engage in major edits on this page while refusing to edit text on the mediation page. nobs 23:18, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
There is no tag team. Don't be paranoid, just return to mediation.--Cberlet 23:38, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
Actually in my haste I erred; Soviet archives have corroborated the real names attached to eighty-eight cryptonyms in Venona plus an additional twenty-nine cryptonyms that were unidentified in Venona. Total: 117. nobs 03:22, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
Please return to mediation. Please stop editing this page until mediation is finished.--Cberlet 03:27, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Balancing this page

This page exists to discuss the controversy. Deleting cited text from published material is not appropriate.--Cberlet 17:08, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for comments filed

[edit] Misrepresentation of Schrecker

You continue to use Schrecker’s comments, even though they are no longer valid. She has come to the following conclusions:

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

We now know, based on information obtained from the archives of the former Soviet

Union and the VENONA documents, that most of the people Bentley identified, had in fact been giving information to the KGB. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents

As Venona and the Moscow sources reveal, the [US] party recruited dozens, perhaps hundreds, of its members to spy for the Soviet Union. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents
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. - Nation magazine, The Right's Cold War Revision, July 24/31, 2000

Schrecker sees their conclusions as a way of rehabilitating McCarthyism

whatever harm may have come to the country from Soviet sponsored spies is dwarfed by Mc-Carthy's wave of terror

And McCarthyism is not what this article is about. Stop quoting Schrecker as a critic of the VENONA, because she is not, she is an anti-anti-Communist and primarily a critic of McCarthyism. Stop using dated material from 1998, which is no longer representative of Schrecker’s current position. DTC 19:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Please stop rubber stamping your justifications for your deleions on several pages and actually engage in constructive editing on each page. Your recent blind deletions have been messing up the citations section. We are awaiting comments through an RFC. Please stop the revert war.--Cberlet 19:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
and how long do you propose we wait on this RfC? I mean, you still have not explained how Schrecker' comments from 1998 are more relevant that her comments from 2000 and 2005 which negate her 98 comments. DTC 20:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
I filed the RFC so that people could comment on whether or not the text I support should remain. Please leave it alone for a few days. I have now asked for page protection.--Cberlet 02:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mediation

A request for mediation has been filed concerning this and related pages.[10]--Cberlet 15:52, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wholesale deletions not acceptable

This is a highly contested and controversial page. Wholesale deletions not acceptable. Attempts to delete critics of how some scholars and journalists interpet the Venona documents is how this page was created in the first place. This is the page for the debate on significance. There is another page on the VENONA project.--Cberlet 21:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The scholarly material you are trying to reinsert is from an old version, and was removed with just cause, namely that Schrecker has largely been won over by the conclusions of Haynes and Klehr, which must be why you continualy reference her work from 1998 instead of newer material. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 00:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Try a balanced edit of the new material rather than junking a huge portion of the page.--Cberlet 02:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for Comment filed

A Request for Comment has been filed for this page and Harry Magdoff and espionage at Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Politics--Cberlet 22:05, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

The debate centers on whether or not this material is appropriate: See this deletion--Cberlet 01:51, 5 June 2006 (UTC)


Before I clicked on the above link to see what it was in reference to, I deleted the Schrecker quote. I did this because it contained nothing at all that was specific to Venona. I expect Schrecker has written something that fits into the basically-accepting-of-Venona-but-still-somewhat-critical-of-the-uses-its's-put-to description that was applied to this quote, but this quote wasn't it.
Also, with regard to this quote:
Instead, some historians who find the information revealed by Venona to be unpalatable have tried to suggest that, while the documents are genuine, they are not necessarily accurate. KGB agents, it is alleged, were busy telling their Moscow superiors what they wanted to hear and boasting about non-existent sources within the American government. Thus, Anna Kasten Nelson of American University is confident that “Agents tend to tell their superiors what they want to hear” and Scott Lucas of Birmingham University in England discerns “the tendency of any intelligence officer to exaggerate, for political superiors, the number and importance of agents they are controlling.”[citation needed]
Is this even supposed to be a quote from Haynes and Klehr? It's not clear from the article whether it is, or if it's just the words of some WP editor. If it is from H&K, doesn't anyone have an idea of where it came from? If not, it should be removed. It's a strident and contentious passage, so it should have more than a "[citation needed]" KarlBunker 00:06, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Restored Schrecker - directly addressing claims of Haynes regarding significance of Venona - see underlying cite. Please do not delete material that is directly connected to the debate on this page. The underlying article places Haynes in a specific group of scholars:
"The dissolution of the

Soviet bloc and the opening of the Kremlin archives brings us to the present wave of historiography, one dominated largely by the traditionalists who are using the new materials to, as Haynes puts it, 'celebrate the West's moral victory over the Soviet Union.'[ii]"

This is part of an ongoing debate over the significance of the Venona documents and the related research in the Soviet Archives used to buttress claims of the "traditionalists" regarding the extent of Soviet spying and the presumed identity of various spies.
as for the presumed H & K quote, I have no citation for it, but assume if I delete it that it will simply reappear.--Cberlet 01:46, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
You haven't clarified for me how this Schrecker quote relates to Venona. The excerpt you quote above is a little more relevant, and suggests that there might be something usable in the cited Schrecker article. It might also be best to paraphrase her opinion, rather than trying to find a quotable passage. I'll take a look at the cited article later. In the meantime, you filed a request for comment, and that (although I'm not responding directly to the RFC) is my comment: The quote doesn't bear on the article subject in any but the most indirect way. If you could respond to my comment, that might be helpful. KarlBunker 02:31, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
There is a longstanding dispute over the significance of Venona and the material from the Soviet archives used to butress the interpretations of the Venona documents in which Schrecker is the major player among the critics of H&K and others in what she calls the "traditionalists" camp. It is overly simplistic to demand that Schrecker and other critics have to use the term "Venona" in every volley in this dispute. There is a page on the Venona Project. This page is about the dispute over the significance of the Venona documents as interpreted by the "traditionalists". The section being edited is supposed to accurately and fairly present both sides of the dispute. Since most of the material on this page and many others is from the POV of the "traditionalists", it would be nice to balance it with material from the critics. However, over time, several editors who support the POV of the "traditionalists", repeatedly cruise by and delete the quotes and paraphrases from the critics such as Schrecker. I have tried several variation and different portions of the essay. It would help if you read the whole Schrecker article being cited, and some of the other material by Schrecker where H&K and other "traditionalists" are criticized, to see that what Schrecker is writing is directly related to the topic of this page, which is not about the Venona Project or documents themselves, but the significance of the Venona documents as interpreted by the "traditionalists."--Cberlet 03:54, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't want to sound argumentative, and I am CERTAINLY not trying to fill User:nobs' now-empty shoes, but after reading a great deal of your comments, Cberlet, it seems to me that you have some difficulty writing simple, declarative statements that directly address the issue at hand. You just spent 245 words relating to me some of the history of this article, relating some of the history of debate over the significance of Venona and directing me to material outside the article. An answer to my question is sadly missing. You did the same thing when I asked you why Venona was split into two WP articles.
I really think that this is part of the reason that you got stuck in endless and fruitless debates with nobs. Neither of you would make simple and clear statements in the form of "What I want is better for the article than what you want for the following reasons:____" In this case, what I'm asking for should be in the form: "This excerpt is useful to the article because Schrecker expresses her opinion that ____" --with the word "Venona" appearing somewhere in the rest of the sentence. If I were to try to answer the question for you, the closest thing I can think of is "This excerpt shows that Schrecker is left-of-center, and obviously anyone on the left is going to disagree with the right-of-center opinions of people like Klehr and Haynes on the significance of Venona."
I absolutely agree that the article should include the opinions of scholars who have more-doubtful, less-absolutist opinions toward Venona material. If Schrecker is (currently) one such scholar, then she must have written something that expresses that stance--something more specific than the general declaration of a liberal attitude that is currently quoted in the article. By using this particular quote, you invite the criticism that you're trying to shore up your own opinion by quoting Schrecker out of context. KarlBunker 10:32, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Don't get all snarky on me. The simple answer is that the text of the Navasky and Schrecker quotes that specifically mention Venona have been deleted repeatedly. I would point out that this is what I have been saying. To simplify and speak clearly: the quotes by Navasky and Schrecker are relevant to this page because when fully included, they speak to the issue of the significance of Venona and use the word "Venona." I do not happen to believe that a quote has to use the title word of an entry to be relevant. The context of a scholarly debate is important to establish a connection to a specific entry. I have restoed the full Navasky and Schrecker quotes that mention Venona, deleted the uncited quote, and reduced the size of the Schrecker quote to which you had an objection. If the actual cite from Haynes or Klehr or "X" is found and restoerd, then I would argue that the full second quote by Schrecker should be restored.--Cberlet 13:03, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
This version is much better; thank you. I apologize for being harsh with you, but I felt it was necessary to explain what was going wrong with our exchange. I welcome you to be harsh back at me (within reason) at your earliest opportunity. :-) KarlBunker 14:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
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