The Venona Papers
In February 1943, the U.S. Army's Signal
Intelligence Service, a forerunner of the National Security Agency(NSA),
initiated a very secret program, later code named VENONA. The object of
the VENONA program was to decrypt, examine and exploit Soviet diplomatic
communications. The Venona Papers are the documents from this project.
These papers, the government claims, are deciphered, intercepted secret
Soviet communiqués between the United States and Moscow.
The two Venona documents listed below, ( September
21, 1944 and
November
27, 1944 ) are the only two supposed links between the Rosenbergs
and the Russian spy ring. But why would any coded message be sent from
New York to Moscow use the "actual" names of agents in America? If the
cover name for Julius Rosenberg is ANTENNA
and/or LIBERAL, then why break the code in these two documents? (it seems
very unlikely that KGB spies in America would do such a thing once, let
alone a second time.) If this was the case, then in any subsequent transmission
there would be no need to deploy any cover names. And these cover names
were used later on.
Unlike many other decrypts using ANTENNA
or LIBERAL, FBI files show that these two documents were "discovered" only
after
David Greenglass named Julius and Ethel as conspirators. Did the September
21 and the November 27 messages originate from the KGB in New York or from
the FBI in Washington?
September
21, 1944
November
27, 1944
Morton Sobell on Venona
click
here
Robert Meeropol on Venona
click
here
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