The Venona Story
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COVER PHOTO S

Clockwise from top left: Carter Clarke, Robert

Lamphere, Gene Grabeel, Meredith Gardner, Cecil

Phillips, Kim Philby, Klaus Fuchs, Elizabeth Bentley,

Alger Hiss, Julius Rosenberg

Published by the Center for Cryptologic History,
1

Introduction

On 1 February 1943 the U.S. Armys Signal Intelligence Service,

a forerunner of the National Security Agency, began a small, very

secret program, later codenamed VENONA. The original object of

the VENONA program was to examine, and possibly exploit,

encrypted Soviet diplomatic communications. These messages had

been accumulated by the Signal Intelligence Service (later renamed

the U.S. Army Signal Security Agency and commonly called

Arlington Hall after the Virginia location of its headquarters)

since 1939 but had not been studied previously. American analysts

discovered that these Soviet communications dealt with not only

diplomatic subjects but also espionage matters.

Six public releases of VENONA translations and related

documents have been made. These releases covered the following

topics and are all discussed in this monograph.

1. Soviet atomic bomb espionage

2. New York KGB messages of 1942 and 1943

3. New York and Washington KGB messages of 1944 and 1945

4. San Francisco and Mexico City KGB messages; GRU New

York and Washington messages; Washington Naval GRU

messages

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 VENONA STORY

Robert L. Benson
2

5. KGB and GRU messages from Europe, South America, and

Australia

6. Messages inadvertently left out of the previous five updates

of previously issued translations. Updates some translations by

restoring names that had been protected for privacy reasons in the

original releases.

The Signal Intelligence Service recruited dozens of language

teachers and professors from across the United States after the

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Miss Gene Grabeel, a young

Signal Intelligence Service employee who had been a schoolteacher

only weeks earlier, started the project on 1 February 1943.

Meredith Gardner, a language instructor at the University of

Akron, who spoke numerous languages, worked on the Japanese

and German problems during World War II and met with great

acclaim. As the war ended, Gardner joined the VENONA effort and

spent the next twenty-seven years on the project. As the principal

translator and analyst on the VENONA program, he wrote a series

of eleven special reports during 1947 and 1948.

The accumulated VENONA message traffic comprised an

unsorted collection of thousands of Soviet diplomatic telegrams

Arlington Hall before the war 

(This postcard was used by army recruiters.)
3

that had been sent from Moscow to certain of its diplomatic

missions and from those missions to Moscow. During the first

months of the project, Arlington Hall analysts sorted the traffic by

diplomatic mission and by cryptographic system or subscriber.

Initial analysis indicated that five cryptographic systems, later

determined to be employed by different subscribers, were in use

between Moscow and a number of Soviet overseas missions. It also

became apparent that one system involved trade matters,

especially Lend-Lease. The other four systems appeared to involve

the Soviet Foreign Ministry in Moscow in communication with its

missions abroad.

Further analysis showed that each one of the five systems was

used exclusively by one of the following subscribers (listed in

descending order according to the volume of message traffic which

had been collected):

1. trade representatives  Lend-Lease, AMTORG, and the

Soviet Government Purchasing Commission

2. diplomats  i.e., members of the diplomatic corps in the

conduct of legitimate Soviet embassy and consular business

3. KGB  the Soviet espionage agency, headquarters in Moscow

and residencies (stations) abroad

4. GRU  the Soviet Army General Staff Intelligence

Directorate and attachés abroad

5. GRU-Naval  Soviet Naval Intelligence Staff

Public Release of Translated VENONA Materials

The first public release of translated VENONA materials,

signals intelligence which had provided an insight into the

alarming and hitherto unappreciated breadth and depth of Soviet

espionage activities within the United States, was in July 1995.
4

That release was a compilation of forty-nine VENONA translations

which related to Soviet espionage efforts against U.S. atomic bomb

research, including messages about the Rosenbergs and the

Manhattan Project.

The second release was of KGB messages between the New

York KGB residency and Moscow Center during 1942-1943.

The third release comprised many more documents than either

the first or second release  more than 500 translations  and

included all the decrypted and translated messages between the

New York and Washington KGB residencies and Moscow Center

(minus the atomic bomb-related messages previously released in

July 1995).

The fourth release was larger  some 850 message translations

 and involved the KGB in San Francisco and Mexico City and the

GRU in New York and Washington. This completed the release of

U.S. (and Mexico) Soviet espionage message translations.

The fifth release contained translations of KGB, GRU, and

Naval GRU messages to and from locations in Europe, Latin

America, and Australia, as well as some messages of

nonintelligence organizations: the Soviet Foreign Ministry and the

Trade Ministry. The great majority of releases in this release

involved the Soviet intelligence services. This was the final, and

largest, release of VENONA translations  well over 1,000

messages.

The sixth release of VENONA translations and related

documents included the translations of KGB messages

inadvertently left out of the previous five. It also updated some

translations by restoring names that had been protected for privacy

reasons in the original releases.

This material can be reviewed at the National Cryptologic

Museum library and is also available publicly on the World Wide
5

Web (http://www.nsa.gov:8080/), and at the Library of Congress,

at state archives, and at university libraries around the country.

Scholars, the media, and the public now have all the approximately

3,000 VENONA translations.

The British Government Communications Headquarters

(GCHQ), NSAs counterpart, has released to the Public Record

Office the MASK message traffic  thousands of secret

COMINTERN messages between various capital cities and

Moscow from 1934 to 1937, which give a wealth of detail about

Moscows control of the various national Communist parties

(including the American Communist Party). GCHQ has also

released ISCOT messages. ISCOT was the codename for the British

program to intercept and decrypt clandestine radio messages

between Moscow and COMINTERN (Communist International)

outstations in German-occupied Europe and in China from 1943 to

1945. The National Cryptologic Museum library holds a complete

set of both the MASK and ISCOT messages.

The Shutdown of the Venona Program

NSA is often asked why the VENONA program ran so long

(1943 to 1980), given the fixed set of material that was being

worked. The answer is that NSAs customers  FBI, CIA, and the

appropriate United Kingdom and Allied services  asked that the

program be continued as investigative leads were still being run,

and there was hope that unidentified covernames could be

identified. In 1977 William P. Crowell, then the acting chief of

the NSA division that housed the remaining VENONA group,1

decided that the program should end in about two years. The

group working on VENONA surveyed customers and evaluated the

likelihood of finding further matches in the traffic. In 1978 NSA

decided to end the program by 1 October 1980.

In September 1978 David Blee, head of the CIA

Counterintelligence Staff, invited NSA, FBI, and Allied

representatives to form a committee to evaluate the potential for 
6

the VENONA effort during the next two years. Howard W. (Bill)

Kulp and Mildred Hayes, heads of the VENONA unit in the later

years, represented NSA.

During the last phase of VENONA (1978 to 1980), NSA issued

thirty-nine first-time translations of KGB and GRU messages and

reissued eight others. Some of these first-time translations were

quite significant, though mainly for counterintelligence research

purposes. In January 1980 Bill Kulp prepared a final technical and

counterintelligence evaluation of the VENONA program and its

prospects. The report concluded that the program should end as

scheduled because of the age of the material being worked, the

difficulty in conducting investigations and locating collateral

material, and the fact that the most important material had been

exhaustively analyzed. Nonetheless, NSA analysts Mildred Hayes,

Angela Nanni, and Janice Cram continued their cryptanalytic work

right up to the end of the project.

W illiam P. Crowell 

(circa 1977)

Howard W. (Bill) Kulp
7

Venona Chronology

1 February 1943 Gene Grabeel begins VENONA at 

Arlington Hall.

November 1943 Lieutenant Richard Hallock makes 

first break into Soviet diplomatic 

cipher; break expanded by Frank 

Lewis.

During 1943 VENONA program expands; 

Captain F. Coudert and Major 

William B.S. Smith in charge.

November 1944 Break made in KGB cipher by Cecil 

Phillips, Genevieve Feinstein, 

Lucille Campbell.

1945 Gouzenko defects; Elizabeth 

Bentley and Whittaker Chambers 

tell FBI about Soviet espionage in 

United States.

May 1945 Military intelligence teams find 

Soviet codebooks in Saxony and 

Schleswig, Germany.

July to Dec 1946 Meredith Gardner begins to 

analytically reconstruct KGB 

codebook; translates a few 

messages, including one about the 

atomic bomb.

30 Aug 1947 Meredith Gardners study of KGB 

covernames in the messages
8

Sept 1947 Carter W. Clarke of G-2 advises S. 

Wesley Reynolds, FBI, of successes 

at Arlington Hall on KGB espionage

messages.

19 to 20 Oct 1948 Robert J. Lamphere, FBI HQ, 

begins liaison with Meredith 

Gardner and great number of 

espionage cases opened.

1948 to 1951 Exploitation of VENONA exposes 

major KGB espionage agents such 

as Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, David 

Greenglass, Theodore Hall, 

William Perl, the Rosenbergs, Guy 

Burgess, Donald Maclean, 

Kim Philby, and Harry D. White.

1952 to 1953 An earlier KGB cryptosystem 

exploited; GRU messages attacked.

More espionage agents identified 

over the next two decades.

1953 CIA officially briefed on VENONA 

and begins to assist in counterintelligence work.

1960 The United Kingdom begins to 

exploit Naval GRU messages.

1960 to 1980 Hundreds of first-time translations 

of messages; many earlier 

translations reissued.

1 October 1980 VENONA ends.
9

From the very beginning in February 1943, the analysis of the

traffic proved slow and difficult. Then in October 1943, Lieutenant

Richard Hallock, a Signal Corps reserve officer who had been a

peacetime archaeologist at the University of Chicago, discovered

weaknesses in the cryptographic system of the Soviet trade traffic.

This discovery provided a tool for further analytic progress on the

other four cryptographic systems.

During 1944 the skills of other expert cryptanalysts were

brought to bear on this Soviet message traffic to see if any of

the encryption systems of the messages could be broken. One of

these cryptanalysts, Cecil Phillips, made observations which led

to a fundamental break into the cipher system used by the

KGB, although he did not know at the time who used the system.

The messages were double-encrypted and of enormous difficulty.

In spite of Arlington Halls extraordinary cryptanalytic

breakthroughs, it was to take almost two more years before parts

of any of these KGB messages could be read or even be recognized

as KGB rather than standard diplomatic communications.

Three closely spaced counterintelligence events involving or

affecting VENONA occurred in 1945. First, the FBI carefully

questioned Whittaker Chambers, whose earlier efforts to disclose

details of his involvement in Soviet espionage in the United States

in the 1930s had gone unheeded. While not directly bearing on

VENONA, Chamberss testimony helped bring Soviet espionage

into focus at the FBI. Second, Elizabeth Bentley, a veteran

KGB courier and auxiliary agent handler, went to the FBI and

named names of government employees passing documents to the

Soviets. VENONA messages verified much of what Bentley

disclosed. Third, Igor Gouzenko, a GRU code clerk, defected in

Ottawa. Gouzenkos revelations were important to Allied

counterintelligence efforts, although they did not directly assist

breakthroughs into the VENONA system.

The Venona Breakthrough
10

In the summer of 1946, Meredith Gardner began to read

portions of KGB messages that had been sent between the KGB

residency (station) in New York and Moscow Center. On 31 July

1946 he extracted a phrase from a KGB New York message that had

been sent to Moscow on 10 August 1944. This message, on later

analysis, proved to be a discussion of clandestine KGB activity in

Latin America. On 13 December Gardner was able to read a KGB

message that discussed the U.S. presidential election campaign of

1944. A week later, on 20 December 1946, he broke into another

KGB message that had been sent to Moscow Center two years

earlier which contained a list of names of the leading scientists

working on the Manhattan Project  the atomic bomb.

In late April or early May 1947, Gardner was able to read two

KGB messages sent in December 1944 that showed that someone

inside the War Department General Staff was providing highly

classified information to the Soviets.

U.S. Army intelligence, G-2, became alarmed at the

information that was coming out of Arlington Hall. An Arlington

Hall report on 22 July 1947 showed that the Soviet message traffic

Meredith Gardner (left)
11

contained dozens, probably hundreds, of covernames, many of

KGB agents, including ANTENNA and LIBERAL (later identified

as Julius Rosenberg). One message mentioned that LIBERALs

wife was named Ethel.

In late August or early September 1947, General Carter W.

Clarke, deputy G-2, cautiously informed S. Wesley Reynolds, the

FBI liaison to G-2 and Arlington Hall, that the army had begun

to break into Soviet espionage messages. Over the next year, Wes

Reynolds received an unrecorded number of translations. Some of

these translations were probably handwritten.

By 1948 the British joined the VENONA effort; in particular,

their signal intelligence service assigned full-time analysts to

Arlington Hall. There was excellent cooperation between the two

U.S. agencies and the United Kingdom over the many years of

VENONA, in large measure a result of the early efforts of Robert

Lamphere and Meredith Gardner.

In October 1948 Wes Reynolds officially introduced Robert J.

Lamphere, from FBI headquarters, to Meredith Gardner and the

Arlington Hall leadership. From then until he left the FBI in 1955,

Lamphere was in constant touch with Gardner and his associates,

General Carter W. Clarke S. Wesley Reynolds
12

receiving VENONA translations as soon as

they were made. He had at least some

version of every 1944 to 1945 New York

(and probably Washington) KGB

message that was ever decrypted

before the end of 1952. Army G-2s

counterintelligence element, which

had been studying the earliest

Gardner translations, had long before

dropped out of the picture. 

A Word about the Covernames

The VENONA messages are

filled with hundreds of covernames

(designations used in place of the real names to hide identities of

Soviet intelligence officers and agents  i.e., spies or cooperating

sources  as well as organizations, people, or places discussed in

the encrypted messages). A number of public figures who had

nothing to do with espionage were also designated by covernames,

while others in that category appear in the text of the messages by

their true names. The following are examples of covernames

recovered from the VENONA corpus:

Covername True Name

KAPITAN President Roosevelt

ANTENNA, later changed

to LIBERAL Julius Rosenberg

BABYLON San Francisco

ARSENAL U.S. War Department

THE BANK U.S. Department of State

Robert J. Lamphere
13

ENORMOZ The Manhattan Project/A-bomb

ANTON Leonid Kvasnikov, KGB chief of A-bomb 

espionage in KGB's New York City office

Arlington Hall and the FBI studied the covernames for leads to

identities, grouping them into families of covernames. Some

covernames came from mythology, some were Russian given

names, and others were names of fish, etc. KAPITAN was easily

identified from the context as a good covername for President

Roosevelt, but his covername was, nonetheless, outranked by those

of persons of lower station, including KGB operatives covernamed

PRINCE, DUKE, and GOD. Other KGB assets were just plain BOB,

TOM, and JOHN, while Elizabeth Bentley had the covername

GOOD GIRL. Sometimes the KGB was careless in choosing a

covername. For example, the covername FROST was used for KGB

agent Boris Moros. The Russian word for frost is Moroz.

Some VENONA translations will indicate in the analytic

footnotes that a covername is unidentified. Another message may

footnote that very same covername with identification. Analysts

rarely hand-corrected a footnote identification to reflect later

identification (unless a completely new translation was issued).

For example, in some early message translations that were never

reissued, covernames MER/ALBERT are footnoted as

unidentified, when it was afterward determined, as footnoted in

later translations of other messages, that this person was Iskak

Akhmerov, the KGBs chief Illegal in the United States.

Unfortunately for the reader, the KGB did occasionally reuse

covernames: the same covername for different persons. This can

usually be understood by context or geographic location.

Meredith Gardner was able to solve several KGB messages in

1946. From summer 1947 to mid-1948, Gardner published

translations or summaries of several dozen KGB messages. At first

he noted that the covernames LIBERAL or ANTENNA both

referred to the same person (the covername had been changed
14

from ANTENNA to LIBERAL in September 1944. (KGB NY to

Moscow message #1251, 2 Sep 44). Later he gave full translations

of some of these LIBERAL/ANTENNA messages but did not know

at the time that those covernames were for Julius Rosenberg.

Gardner, in 1947, personally identified the true names of a few

covernamed persons, e.g., that the covername KOMAR was Viktor

Kravchenko, who defected in the United States in 1944 and was

being hunted by the KGB, as shown in VENONA.

Most U.S. covername identifications were made by the FBI

through file review/analysis and by intensive investigation. The

United Kingdom made some identifications, and, starting in 1953,

CIA made others. Sometimes the true name of the agent is given in

the message; that name could, by analysis or investigation, be

placed against a covername seen in later messages (e.g., the case of

Theodore A. Hall, subsequently named MLAD).

As shown in NSA VENONA papers, covernames ROBERT,

DORA, and PILOT were found in VENONA messages as early as

1947. In November 1948 the FBI told Arlington Hall that those

covernames were for Greg Silvermaster, his wife, Helen Witte

Silvermaster, and Lud Ullman, who resided with them. In early

1949 the FBI advised that they had identified covernames SIMA

(first found in a message in 1947) as Judith Coplon. Covernames

CHARLES and REST were identified as Klaus Fuchs during the

summer of 1949, based on VENONA messages that were decrypted

from 1947 to 1949. Covernames LIBERAL and ANTENNA were

first found in 1947, and the FBI made final identification of the

Rosenbergs in 1950.

The Venona Translations

There were about 3,000 VENONA messages translated. Partial

information was available from many messages as early as 1947

and later that year was provided to the FBI. The VENONA

translations now released to the public often show an unexpectedly

recent date of translation because the breaking of strong

cryptographic systems is an iterative process requiring trial and
15

error and reapplication of new discoveries, leading to additional

ones. A message may have been reworked many times over the

years as new discoveries enabled progress in the decryption and

understanding of more and more of the text. Only the last and best

translations have been released.

Almost all of the KGB messages between Moscow and New

York and Moscow and Washington of 1944 and 1945 that could

be broken at all were broken, to a greater or lesser degree, between

1947 and 1952.

There are still gaps of two different types in the translated

messages, as indicated by the words unrecovered or

unrecoverable. The phrase unrecovered meant that the

underlying Russian text in theory could be obtained, but the

cryptanalysts did not have sufficient text to do so. Unrecoverable,

on the other hand, indicates passages unaffected by the Soviet

misuse of their own system which therefore could never be solved

by cryptanalysts (see pages 26-27).

The serial numbers of the VENONA messages indicate that the

KGB and GRU sent thousands of messages between Moscow and

the overseas recipients. Only a fraction of the total messages sent

and received were available to the cryptanalysts. The messages

which have been exploited were never exploited in real time. In

1946 Meredith Gardner was working on KGB messages from 1944.

Arlington Halls ability to read the VENONA messages was

spotty, being a function of the underlying code, key changes, and

the lack of volume. Of the message traffic from the KGB New York

office to Moscow, 49 percent of the 1944 messages and 15 percent

of the 1943 messages were readable, but this was true of only 1.8

percent of the 1942 messages. For the 1945 KGB Washington office

to Moscow messages, only 1.5 percent were readable. About 50

percent of the 1943 GRU-Naval Washington to Moscow/Moscow

to Washington messages were read but none from any other year.
16

VENONA Myths and Misunderstandings

In spite of what has been written in a number of books and

articles, Arlington Hall made the VENONA breakthroughs purely

through sweat-of-the-brow analysis. There was no cryptanalytic

assistance for Lieutenant Richard Hallock, Cecil Phillips, or

Meredith Gardner, and their colleagues from lost, discovered, or

battlefield-recovered Soviet codebooks during the years in which

the main analytic breakthroughs were made (through 1952). It was

not until 1953 that a photocopy of a partially burned codebook

(recovered by U.S. military intelligence in 1945) was discovered to

be related to the VENONA cryptographic systems after another

cryptanalytic breakthrough. The successful decryption of the

VENONA messages was a triumph of analysis by a small group of

intelligent and dedicated women and men working long hours in

their cramped offices at Arlington Hall.

KGB Operations

Information in the VENONA materials reveals KGB tradecraft

(i.e., the practical means and methods of espionage and

counterespionage) of the time in great detail. The sheer volume of

data collected by KGB stations abroad was too great to be reported

by telegram; instead the VENONA messages indicate that

photocopies of classified documents went to Moscow by courier.

In one translation, KGB in New York informed Moscow that it had

fifty-six rolls of film from their agent, covernamed ROBERT, and

that this trove of classified material was to be sent off by courier to

Moscow Center.

Information in VENONA translations describes the KGBs

modus operandi in arranging meetings with their agents, with

much attention given to the security of these secret meetings.

Other messages describe KGB countermeasures against the FBI

surveillance, detection of bugging devices, and ensuring the loyalty

of Soviet personnel in the United States. A particularly fascinating

set of VENONA messages describes the KGBs efforts to locate

Soviet sailors who had deserted from merchant ships in San

Francisco and other U.S. ports. Some of the most interesting
17

messages detail KGB assessment and recruitment of American

Communists for espionage work.

Almost all of the VENONA KGB messages during World War II

are between Lieutenant General Fitin, the head of the KGBs First

Chief Directorate (FCD) and his rezidents (station chiefs) abroad.

FCD was the foreign intelligence arm of the KGB responsible for

espionage and counterintelligence outside the Soviet Union.

However, in terms of personnel, it was a very small part of the KGB

then and later. Far larger were the KGBs Second Chief Directorate,

which handled internal counterintelligence and security (this and

related departments were the true secret police of the Soviet

Union), and SMERSH (Death to Spies), which was responsible

for military counterintelligence. The KGB had large formations of

police troops, prison camp guards, and a small army protecting

Stalin and the Soviet leadership. During 1943 to 1945, Arlington

Hall and the U.S. Navys signal intelligence organization also

collected a small amount of police and SMERSH radio traffic.

KGB Agents and Officers

A KGB officer, whether under official diplomatic cover or

operating as an Illegal, was a Soviet citizen and a sworn officer of

the KGB (usually holding police rank). In VENONA messages,

KGB officers are often referred to as workers or cadre. Illegals

were Soviet citizens, KGB, or GRU officers, operating under cover

in foreign countries with no visible connections to legal Soviet

establishments. Illegals had no diplomatic immunity, usually

entering the country illegally  hence the term. An agent was a

private citizen recruited by the KGB to carry out espionage or other

clandestine activities on behalf of the KGB. During the VENONA

period the KGB used the coverterm PROBATIONERS to refer to

their agents. In VENONA we also see some persons who appear to

fall somewhere in between agent and officer. American

Communists Jacob Golos, Elizabeth Bentley, and Greg

Silvermaster, veteran controllers of agent networks, could be

placed in this category. In fact, Silvermaster was at one time the

only American citizen in the KGB Hall of Fame in Moscow.
18

KGB and GRU Spies and Assets in the United States

Several hundred named or covernamed persons found in the

VENONA translations, persons then present in the United States,

are claimed by the KGB and GRU in their messages as their

clandestine assets or contacts. Many of these people have been

identified, many have not been. These several hundred persons are

separate from the many KGB and GRU officers who also appear in

VENONA. One such asset, Robert Silvermaster, is found in

VENONA translations several dozen times. Other covernamed

persons were found only a few times. The majority of unidentified

covernames in the New York KGB traffic appear three or fewer

times.

The American Communist Party in Venona

Information derived from the VENONA translations shows the

KGBs extensive contacts with the American Communist Party.

Many of the espionage activities by members of the American

Communist Party are reflected in the VENONA translations.

The Rosenberg/Atomic Bomb Espionage Messages

VENONA translations that had been identified as associated

with atomic bomb espionage messages were released first. All but

two of this group of forty-nine messages were KGB traffic  one is

a GRU and one a Soviet diplomatic message.

These messages disclose some of the clandestine activities of

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Harry Gold, Klaus Fuchs, David and

Ruth Greenglass, and others such as the spy known by the

covername MLAD (Theodore Hall) or the important, but still

unidentified, PERS. The role played by the person covernamed

VEKSEL remains uncertain but troubling. A number of other

covernames of persons associated with atomic bomb espionage

remain unidentified to this day.
VENONA messages show that KGB

officer Leonid Kvasnikov, covername

ANTON, headed atomic bomb espionage

in the United States but that he, like the

Rosenbergs, who came under his control,

had many other high-tech espionage

targets such as the U.S. jet aircraft

program, developments in radar and

rockets, etc. 

As with most VENONA messages, the

Rosenberg messages contain much

information relating to KGB net control

and tradecraft matters.

Klaus Fuchs, the atomic bomb spy, is

mentioned in many other KGB

messages: no. 1606, 16 November 1944,

and Moscow Centers messages to New

York, nos. 183, 27 February 1945, and

349, 10 April 1945. The

last message, only

partially recovered, will

be of great interest with

19

A N TO N

Leonid Kvasnikov

ChARL Z

Klaus

Ethel Rosenberg Julius Rosenberg David Greenglass
respect to the controversy about the pace of Soviet atomic bomb

development. In it, Moscow tells New York that ChARLZs (Fuchs

covername) information on the atomic bomb is of great value, and

his recent report contains information received for the first time

from you about the electromagnetic method of separation of

ENORMOZ.

One translation, NY no. 1507, October 1944, footnoted

covername BUMBLE-BEE (Russian ShMEL) as equating to David

Greenglass; however, the translation shows a handwritten

emendation of David Greenglass to Walter Lippman, which is the

correct equation. 

The VENONA program concerned KGB and GRU messages that

were available to Arlington Hall codebreakers. Most of the messages

which were collected were not successfully decrypted, and short of a

release of the KGB and GRU archives from the period, we may never

know more about the KGB and GRU activities represented in the

VENONA corpus of messages.

KGB Espionage against the VENONA Program

A number of sources outside of signals intelligence reveal that

the KGB learned early on that the

United States had begun to study

Soviet communications. In late

1945 KGB agent Elizabeth Bentley

told the FBI that the KGB had

acquired some limited information

about the U.S. effort during 1944.

Kim Philby, while assigned

to Washington, D.C., from 1949

to 1951, occasionally visited

Arlington Hall for discussions

about VENONA; furthermore,

he regularly received copies

of summaries of VENONA

translations as part of his official

20

Kim Philby
duties. But if the Soviets knew

something about what Arlington

Hall was accomplishing, they

could not, at any rate, get the

messages back. There was even a

KGB agent inside Arlington Hall.

This was Bill Weisband, a native

speaker of Russian, who returned

to Arlington Hall from an

overseas assignment in the

summer of 1944. Weisband, who

reportedly had been a KGB agent

since 1934, was reactivated by the

KGB at a meeting in New York

21

Map of Arlington Hall complex, circa 1940s

ZVENO

Bill Weisband
City in early 1945. Found in Venona as covername ZVENO, he

worked in the Russian section at Arlington Hall from 1945 until his

arrest in 1950. He caused very grave damage to the U.S. SIGINT

program against the Soviet Union. For more details see The Korean

War: The SIGINT Background (Center for Cryptologic History,

2000).

Messages from the KGB New York Residence to Moscow

Center

Although KGB and GRU communications between New York

and Moscow during 1939 to 1941 were in a cryptographic system

that could not be broken, a comparison of the New York to Moscow

KGB and GRU message counts between 1939 and 1941 indicates

that, at least in the United States, the GRU may have been the more

active Soviet intelligence agency up until that time. For example, in

1940 the New York GRU sent an estimated 992 messages to Moscow

while the KGB sent only an estimated 335 messages. Furthermore,

releases of the VENONA translations from 1944 and 1945 messages

show that a number of KGB espionage personalities had previously

been GRU agents (or possibly COMINTERN agents under GRU

control). In 1942 there were nearly 1,300 KGB New York to Moscow

messages, but only twenty-three were successfully decrypted and

translated. In 1943, however, there were a little over 1,300 messages

with over 200 decrypted and translated.

The Comintern and the Soviet Intelligence Services

The COMINTERN (Communist International) was a Sovietcontrolled organization that conducted liaison with the national

Communist parties of various countries, including the United States,

in order to further the cause of revolution. Moscow issued guidance,

support, and orders to the parties through the apparatus of

22

The 1942 to 1943 New York to Moscow KGB

Messages
the COMINTERN. Nevertheless, Stalin publicly disbanded the

COMINTERN in 1943. A Moscow KGB message to all stations on 12

September 1943, message number 142, relating to this event is one

of the most interesting and historically important messages in the

entire corpus of VENONA translations. This message clearly

disclosed the KGBs connection to the COMINTERN and to the

national Communist parties. The message details instructions for

handling intelligence sources within the Communist Party after the

disestablishment of the COMINTERN. The released translation is

the Moscow to Canberra message, which was the only message of

those sent to all residencies that was successfully decrypted.

KGB Organization in the United States

During the VENONA period, the KGB had U.S. residencies

(offices) in New York, Washington, and San Francisco  the latter

residency was not established (or possibly reestablished) until

December 1941. There also was a geographic subresidency in Los

Angeles.

The VENONA translations showed that the KGB New York

residency operated under three official institutional cover

arrangements  the Soviet consulate, the trade mission

(AMTORG/Soviet Government Purchasing Commission), and

TASS, the Soviet news agency. Other KGB officers worked at various

locations around the United States under Purchasing Commission

cover, often as factory inspectors working on Lend-Lease matters.

During 1942 to 1943, General Vassili M. Zubilin (true name:

Zarubin) was the KGB resident (chief) in New York. In 1943 he was

transferred to Washington to become resident there. Zubilin, known

in VENONA by the covername MAKSIM, signed many KGB

telegrams. His wife, Elizabeth, was a KGB colonel who had the

covername VARDO. There are indications that Zubilin/MAKSIM

was the senior KGB officer in the United States. For example, the

KGB residency in Washington did not send messages until late 1943

after Zubilin arrived there. Before that, the Washington espionage

messages were sent by New York.

23
All KGB residencies abroad came under the First Chief

Directorate (Foreign Intelligence) of the Moscow Center. Lieutenant

General Pavel Fitin, covername VIKTOR, ran the First Chief

Directorate, and most VENONA messages from the residencies are

addressed to him.

KGB officer Pavel Klarin, covername LUKA, succeeded

Zubilin/MAKSIM in New York. In 1944 Stepan Apresyan,

covername MAJ, became the New York resident. MAJ signed

hundreds of VENONA messages. All these New York residents

worked under the cover of vice-consul.

Although most or all KGB officers in New York worked for the

First Chief Directorate, their day-to-day operations were defined by

what the KGB called a Line. A Line worked against a specific target

set or carried out some specialized function. A number of Lines are

mentioned in the VENONA translations, and their specialization can

be either identified or easily inferred. Some, not all, of these may be

seen in the 1942 to 1943 messages:

Line Target or Function

KhU Line High-tech targets including the 

Manhattan Project, jet engines, 

rocket engines, radar (Julius 

24

General Vassili M. Elizabeth Zarubin Stepan Apresyan
Rosenbergs group worked under 

this Line)

White Line Probably worked against the White 

Russians

Fifth Line Security of the Soviet Merchant 

Fleet (probably connected to the 

Second Chief Directorate  intemal 

counterintelligence at Moscow 

Center)

Second Line Watching nationalist or minority 

groups of interest to the Soviet state 

(e.g., the Ukranians)

Technical Line A Special work such as document 

forgery. This was probably the 

Illegals support line.

Fellow Countryman Line Liaison with the American 

Communist Party

Line of Cover The institutional or personal cover of 

the KGB officer

Other organizations referenced in the VENONA materials

include the Eighth Department at Moscow Center, which received

political intelligence; the special cipher office, which encrypted and

decrypted the telegrams; the Center-KGB headquarters; and the

House or Big House, which probably meant the COMINTERN

headquarters in Moscow (although it sometimes appears to be used

interchangeably for Moscow Center).

Telegrams sent by the KGB residency in New York were usually

signed by the resident (MAKSIM, LUKA, or MAJ) and were

addressed to VIKTOR, head of the First Chief Directorate.

Sometimes telegrams were signed with the covername ANTON,

25
head of the KhU Line, since Moscow Center gave him special

authority to do so in 1944. In special circumstances, telegrams were

addressed to or received from PETROV, believed to have been L.P.

Beria, head of the Soviet security apparatus; however, PETROV

might also have been V.N. Merkulov, a principal deputy of Beria,

who probably headed KGB operations from the latter part of 1943.

At least in the case of the New York residency, we see

what probably was the KGB in transition  trying to organize its

espionage activities better while sorting out the impact of the

dissolution of the COMINTERN. We also see considerable KGB

interest in European and Latin American Communists, which

presented opportunities for subversion, a classic COMINTERN

methodology, rather than espionage. Nonetheless, the New York

residency had many espionage assets during this period and was

aggressive, even reckless, and imaginative in trying to recruit or

place people in sensitive positions.

The activities of Soviet Illegal MER/ALBERT (covernames for

KGB officer Iskak Akhmerov, who operated as a clothier) first came

to light in the 1942-43 New York to Moscow messages. VENONA

provides some insight into Illegals used by Soviet intelligence,

although with the exception of the noteworthy activities of

Akhmerov and a GRU-Naval operation involving an Illegal, there are

only a small number of other cases of Illegals mentioned in the

VENONA translations. 

The Translations and KGB Cryptographic Systems

The VENONA translations from 1942 to 1943 messages

occasionally are fragmentary and difficult to understand. The code

itself was complex and difficult to exploit using pure analytic

techniques. Moreover, the broad contextual sweep of the content of

these messages vastly complicated the difficulty of reading these

KGB systems.

The cryptographic systems used by the KGBs First Chief

Directorate involved a codebook in which words and phrases were

represented by numbers. These numbers were then further

26
enciphered by the addition of random number groups, additives

taken from a so-called one-time pad. A one-time pad comprised

pages of random numbers, copies of which were used by the sender

and receiver of a message to add and remove an extra layer

of encipherment. One-time pads used properly only once are

unbreakable; however, the KGBs cryptographic material

manufacturing center in the Soviet Union apparently reused some of

the pages from one-time pads. This provided Arlington Hall with an

opening. Very few of the 1942 KGB messages could be solved

because there was very little duplication of one-time pad pages in

those messages. The situation was more favorable in 1943, even

more so in 1944, and the success rate improved accordingly.

In order to break into the system successfully, Arlington Hall

analysts had to first identify and strip off the layer of additive in

order to attack the underlying code. These two levels of encryption

caused immense difficulty in exploiting the codebook, and many

code groups were, therefore, never recovered. The KGB messages

from 1942 through 1943 and into 1944, as well as from earlier years,

were based on one codebook version. The 1944 to 1945 messages

were based on a new codebook.

Recovered Codebooks

As previously noted, the Arlington Hall breakthrough on the

KGB cryptographic systems was accomplished entirely through

sweat-of-the-brow analysis without the aid of any captured

codebooks. Fundamental cryptanalytic breaks against the extra

encipherment which overlay the various codebooks were made in

1943 and 1944 by Richard Hallock and Cecil Phillips, and a small

team of experts, by their own cryptanalytic brilliance. The knowledge

gained earlier about the extra encipherment layer allowed Meredith

Gardner to break into the second KGB codebook in late 1946. The

majority of KGB messages between the United States and Moscow

that were solved employed this second KGB codebook and were

broken between 1947 and 1952. These were based on a KGB

codebook which Arlington Hall had never seen.

27
The KGB messages from 1942 and 1943 employed the earlier and

more difficult codebook. These 1942 and 1943 messages were not

attacked successfully until 1953 to 1954, when a second major

cryptanalytic breakthrough was made through pure analysis by

Dr. Samuel P. Chew at NSA, the successor of Arlington Hall. It was

only after this second major breakthrough that a partially burned

KGB codebook, which had been found in 1945, was able to be

identified as the codebook employed in this system and to be put to

use in attacking these messages.

A military intelligence team headed by Lieutenant Colonel Paul

Neff, acting under Arlington Hall direction, had obtained a

photocopy of this partially burned codebook at a Nazi Foreign Office

signal intelligence archive located in a castle in Saxony during the

last days of World War II in Europe. Neffs team got the material

back to U.S. lines shortly before Soviet occupation forces moved into

the area. The Nazis had acquired this codebook from the Soviet

consulate in Petsamo, Finland, on 22 June 1941. KGB officers in the

consulate had succeeded only in partially burning the codebook

before the facility was overrun. At about the same time, Lieutenant

Oliver Kirby, also connected to Arlington Hall, recovered related

cryptographic material while on a special mission in Schleswig,

Germany. (Both Neff and Kirby later became senior civilian officials

at Arlington Hall and later with NSA.)

28

Paul Oliver Kirby
KGB System Message Translations Help from 

by Arlington Hall Captured 

Codebook?

Pre-1939 into 

1944 1953 to 1954 

& later Some after 

initial analytic

breakthrough

1944 to 1945 late 1946 to 1952 & later None

KGB Tradecraft and Operations, 1942 to 1943

Several KGB tradecraft terms that appear frequently in the

VENONA translations are defined below:

Probationers KGB agents

Fellow Countrymen member of the 

American Communist 

Party

Workers or Cadre KGB officers

Put on Ice or in Cold Storage deactivate an agent 

Legend cover story

Neighbors how the KGB referred 

to GRU and vice versa

The following references identify VENONA translations that give

examples of KGB tradecraft and operations:

 KGB agents in the OSS: No. 880, 8 June 1943; No. 782, 26

May 1943

 NY KGB recruiting proposals: No. 854, 16 June 1942; No. 424,

1 July 1942; Nos. 1132-33, 13 July 1943

 An unidentified KGB agent in the company of President

Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill (note that the Illegal MER,

later known as ALBERT, signed the message): No. 812, 29 May 1943

29
The Washington KGB Residency

Except for its agents working against

high-tech targets such as the atomic bomb

project, the most important KGB

sources were in Washington, D.C.

Nonetheless, VENONA shows that

these Washington-based espionage

nets were apparently run by the New

York residency; that is, the New York

residency wrote and sent VENONA

messages to Moscow even when these

messages clearly concerned activities in

Washington. KGB Washington sent no

messages until very late in 1943. In

1944 Washingtons message volume

was still only half that of New York.

Finally, in 1945 Washington KGB

took charge, it seems, sending twice as many messages as New York.

Vassili Zarubin, a KGB general officer who had been the resident

(chief) in New York in 1942 to 1943, moved to Washington during

1943 as resident there. The Washington KGB thereafter began

sending messages in ever-increasing volume. When Zarubin was

recalled to Moscow in 1944, Anatolij Gromov, covername VADIM,

replaced him in Washington. Gromov (actual last name Gorsky) was

also a senior officer, in his late thirties, who had served for the

preceding four years as the KGB resident in London. American

spymaster and courier for the KGB Elizabeth Bentley knew him only

as Al.

New York Espionage Operations  the New KGB

In 1944 covername MAJ, Stepan Apresyan, became the KGB

resident in New York. According to a complaint to Moscow Center by

his co-resident or subordinate, covername SERGEJ, MAJ was a

young, inexperienced officer who had not previously been posted

30

VADIM 

Anatolij Gromov /Gorsky

The 1944 to 1945 New York and Washington to

Moscow KGB Messages
abroad. (In the U.S. covername SERGEI used the pseudonym

Vladimir Pravdin. During the 1930s, Pravdin had been involved in

killings and kidnappings in Europe for the KGB.) Apresyan was

about twenty-eight years old; he operated in New York under the

cover of vice-consul (see New York messages of 9 to 11 October

1944). While we do not know why MAJ was elevated early to senior

KGB ranks, there were other major changes in KGB espionage

operations, as we can see in the VENONA messages. Moscow Center

and the New York residency intended to take more direct control of

some existing espionage nets that had been run for the KGB by

American Communists such as Jacob Golos (covername ZVUK) and

Greg Silvermaster (covernames PEL and ROBERT). And, as MAJ

reported to Moscow, the time might come when the KGB would need

to have espionage agents not recruited from within the Communist

Party. The transition was resisted by American spies Greg

Silvermaster and Elizabeth Bentley, as well as by some of their

agents. They complained that Moscow did not trust them and that,

as a practical matter, the KGB would be less successful in running

espionage operations if they put their officers in direct contact with

the agents, bypassing the old guard Communist Party controllers.

Perhaps mindful of this, the KGB introduced the Illegal ALBERT

into their espionage operations. Silvermaster, Elizabeth Bentley,

some of their individual agents, and members of the new network

were now to fall under ALBERTs control.

These translations frequently show KGB tradecraft  the

techniques of secret espionage and counterespionage  in great

detail. The KGB term Konspiratoria sometimes seen in VENONA

refers to tradecraft and operational security. A few examples for

quick reference (all New York to Moscow):

 Agent Recruiting: No. 27, 8 January 1945 and No. 1506, 

23 October 1944

 Meeting and Password Scenarios: No. 1220, 26 August 1944

 Secret Document Photography: No. 1469, 17 October 1944

31
 Countersurveillance: No. 1755, 14 December 1944

 Technical Surveillance Countermeasures: No. 1824, 

27 December 1944

 Document Forgery Operations (the KGB A-line technique): 

No. 1203, 23 August 1944

 Cover Business: No. 618, 4 May 44

 Payments/Rewards to Agents: Nos. 1052 and 1053, 5 July 1945

Also, VENONA has excellent examples of the work of a KGB

agent and Communist Party functionary, covernames ECHO and

DICK (Bernard Schuster), in carrying out investigations on behalf of

the KGB as part of the vetting process of agent candidates (New York

to Moscow, Nos. 1221, 1457, and 1512, all from 1944).

Alger Hiss, a veteran GRU agent,

is presumably found in one KGB

message: Washington to Moscow,

no. 1822, 30 March 1945. In this

message, A, meaning the chief

Illegal ALBERT (Iskak Akhmerov)

reports about his interview of ALES,

who describes his recent GRU career

and says he has been a GRU agent

continuously since 1935. Analysts

later identified ALES as probably

Hiss. Presumably, ALBERT was

examining the possibility of

transferring Hiss from GRU to the

KGB. 

KGB Special Operations

In addition to espionage, the KGB carried out other secret

activities in the United States. In VENONA we can follow the KGB

using its agents in the hunt for Viktor Kravchenko, covername

32

ALES 

Alger Hiss
KOMAR, who in 1944 defected in Washington from the Soviet

Government Purchasing Commission. (See especially New York to

Moscow messages of May to August 1944, nos. 594, 600, 613-14,

654, 694, 724, 726, 740, 799, and 907.) In the latter message, sent

from MAJ to PETROV (who was either L.P. Beria, head of Soviet

State Security, or V. N. Merkulov, his principal deputy who

functioned as the day to-day head of the KGB), New York announces

that KOMAR/Kravchenko had been located by their veteran agent

Mark Zborowski, covername TULIP. Additional related messages of

1944 are nos. 1145, 1202, also no. 97 of 19 January 1945, the last

VENONA reference to the case, which reports that KOMAR is in a

great panic about his safety and that KGB agents KANT (the new

covername for MARK Zborowski) and ZHANNA are carrying out the

work on KOMAR. The KOMAR messages contain references to

anticommunist emigre community involvement in the defection,

including references to David Dallin, Isaac Don Levine, and even

Aleksander Kerenskij, head of the post-revolutionary Menshevik

government before it was overthrown in the Bolshevik coup. KGB

New York also makes the mysterious remark (message no. 740, 26

May 1944) that KOMAR is well informed about the KRIVITSKIJ

case. KRIVITSKIJ was a famous KGB defector who supposedly

committed suicide in Washington in 1941.

In 1945 Elizabeth Bentley, a

KGB agent who also ran a network

of spies and served as a courier,

went to the FBI to describe Soviet

espionage in the United States and

her part in it. She gave a 100-page

statement, in which she provided

many names  persons in positions

of trust who, she told the FBI, were

secretly supplying information to

the KGB. However, she brought no

documentary proof. No espionage

prosecutions resulted directly from

her accusations. Over the years she

Elizabeth Bentley testified before Congress and in

33
court and also published a book about her espionage career.

Elizabeth Bentley was a controversial figure, and there were many

who discounted her information. Ms. Bentley appears in these

VENONA translations (as covernames UMNITsa  [GOOD GIRL]

and MYRNA) as do dozens of KGB agents and officers whom she

named to the FBI. VENONA confirms most of the information about

Soviet espionage that Ms. Bentley provided the FBI.

Boris Moros

Boris Moros was, like Ms. Bentley, another controversial figure of

the Cold War. In 1959 he wrote an often criticized book, My Ten

Years as a Counterspy, in which he described his long association

with the KGB and his decision to go to the FBI with the story of KGB

operations in the United States. In the book he wrote about various

personalities who are referred to in VENONA, including Vassili

Zarubin and Jack Soble. Moros appears in VENONA as covername

FROST. In his book Moros described how KGB agent Alfred Stern

provided his own money to fund a musical record company,

managed by Moros, as a KGB front and a cover for international

intelligence operations. This operation is confirmed in VENONA 

Stern (covername LUI) is quoted as saying his 130,000 dollar

investment is exhausted but also that I want to reaffirm my desire

to be helpful. My resources are sufficient

for any solid constructive purpose....

(See New York to Moscow, nos. 4-5, 11,

and 18-19 of 3 and 4 January 1945.)

Donald Maclean

Long-time KGB agent Donald

Maclean, covername HOMER, a senior

British diplomat posted to Washington

during the 1940s, is found in several

VENONA messages from New York and

Washington (nos. 915, 1105-1110, 1146,

1263, 1271-74, possibly 1352, all sent

during 1944). He was neutralized

because of information from VENONA.

34

HOMER

Donald Maclean
Since only 1.5 percent (thirty-six) of all Washington to Moscow KGB

messages of 1945 could be decrypted, it is notable that six of these

were HOMER messages (nos. 1788, 1791, 1793, 1808-1809, 1815,

and 1826  no. 1809 is a continuation of 1808). Note that the small

body of Washington messages that could be broken was from small

windows of cryptanalytic opportunity found by the Arlington Hall

analysts in messages of March and June 1945 only. Therefore, we

have but a glimpse of Macleans involvement but ample opportunity

to see the type of important information he was providing to the

Soviets.

HOMER is the English rendition of the Russian covername

spelling, GOMER. (The Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian has no

letter representing the sound h of the Roman alphabet, and foreign

words beginning with the h sound are regularly spelled with the

Cyrillic equivalent of g.) Meredith Gardner, Arlington Halls

principal VENONA analyst in the early days, began to break

HOMER messages as early as 1947/1948, but the story did not come

together immediately as the covername was variously represented in

the messages as GOMMER (a KGB misspelling), GOMER, G., and

Material G. Initially, it was not apparent that these were all

references to the same person, particularly as both New York and

Washington traffic was involved, and Gardner worked the NYC

traffic first.

Covername Albert: Principal KGB Illegal in the United States

Covername ALBERT (earlier covername MER) is found in

VENONA more than fifty times, sometimes as signatory to messages

sent by the New York residency. ALBERT was Iskhak Abdulovich

Akhmerov, a veteran KGB officer who had two tours of duty in the

United States as an Illegal, that is, an officer using a false identity and

background (a Legenda in KGB parlance) and without diplomatic

cover or immunity. ALBERTs career, ascertained from VENONA

and other sources, gives an excellent example of the bewildering

plethora of names by which a KGB personality might be known:

Communications Covername (the covername in VENONA):

MER in 1943 to 1944; ALBERT, 1944 to 1945.

35
Aliases (1937 to 1945): William Greinke, Michael Green, Michael

Adamec, and more.

Street Names: Michael, Bill. For example, Elizabeth Bentley

knew him only as Billno last name, not even the alias, much less his

true name. She knew his wife, also an Illegal, as Catherine.

Catherine actually was VENONA covername ELZA, true name

Helen Lowry, a niece of KGB agent and U. S. Communist Party

leader Earl Browder (VENONA covername RULEVOJ).

True name: Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov. (In some cases socalled true names of KGB officers, the names that appeared on their

passports and the diplomatic lists, were false. For example, Vassili

Zubilin, the sometime KGB resident in New York and Washington,

was actually named Zarubin. To add to the difficulty in

understanding the names, other KGB officers used true names that

were not names at allRussian words, but not traditional Russian

names. Some of these pseudonyms included senior KGB officers

Vladimir Pravdin and Jacob Golos, whose last names mean,

respectively, truth and voice.)

In one message ALBERT refers to his earlier work in the United

States as an Illegal, and he mentions his old agents, covernames

LEONA, JULIA, TONYA, and

REDHEAD (REDHEAD was the

covername for Hedde Massing).

None of the others have been

identified, nor do we know if

ALBERT reactivated them in 1944 to

1945 (No. 975, 11 July 1944). See

also the important message,

Washington to Moscow, No. 1822,

30 March 1945, which reports of the

well-placed veteran GRU agent

ALES being interviewed by

covername A. It appears that A

was ALBERT.

36

ALBERT/MER

Iskhak Abdulovich
The Translations

The majority of these translations represent telegrams from the

New York KGB residency to Moscow Center in 1944. Most of these

messages were between KGB officers  covername MAJ (Stephen

Apresyan) and covername VIKTOR (General Pavel Fitin).

Approximately 50 percent of all the 1944 New York KGB to Moscow

Center messages were sufficiently decrypted to be translated. In

contrast, only 1.5 percent of the Washington to Moscow KGB

messages from 1945 were ever successfully deciphered. While

relatively few messages from the center to the residencies were

broken, those that were broken are very important to our

understanding of KGB operations and doctrine.

The translations are relatively

easy to read and understand. The

codebook and cipher procedures

used by the KGB during 1944 and

1945 made it possible, after great

effort, for the analysts to produce

fairly complete translations.

Nevertheless, translations often

contain significant gaps  code

groups that could not be broken.

The New York translations in this

set were the earliest of all the

VENONA materials decrypted. All of

the New York to Moscow messages

(but not Moscow to New York) that

were successfully solved were at

least partially solved during 1947 to 1952 and disseminated to the

FBI (on a regular basis starting in 1948). Many of the Washington

KGB messages were also first decrypted during this period but not

quite so early as the New York material.

The 1944 and 1945 messages disclose mainly U.S. individuals

involved in a massive Soviet espionage effort  over one hundred

Americans, most of them Communists, are mentioned in the

37

VIKTO R

Lieutenant General Pavel
translations of this release. Some of the organizations infiltrated by

these individuals included the following:

U.S. Agency Some of the Relevant VENONA 

Messages

Department of the NY No. II 19-1121, 4 to 5 August 1944;

Treasury 1634, 20 November 1944

Office of Strategic NY No. 954, 20 September 1944

Services (OSS)

War Department NY No. 1721-28, 8 December 1944

Department of State Wash. No. 1822, 30 March 1945

Department of Justice NY No. 27, 8 January 1945

The translations disclose agents with access to the White House,

Congress, and political parties, as well as agents in the media and in

high-tech defense industries. New York message nos. 1635, 21 Nov

44 and 12-16, 4 Jan 45 reveal assets and infighting relating to

ROBERTs (Greg Silvermaster) large KGB net in government

departments and agencies in Washington.

The KGB successor organization has recently provided historians

some information about Lona and Morris

Cohen, their agents in the United States in

the 1940s, and later infamous Illegals

operating in the United Kingdom as Helen

and Peter Kroger. Reportedly, Lona Cohen

had the covername LESLIE while she was

involved in atomic bomb espionage courier

duties for the KGB (see NYs no. 50, 11

January 1945, the only VENONA reference

to this covername. This message suggests

that LESLIE/LESLEY had not been active

for the previous six months).

38

LESLIE

Lona Cohen
Covername GNOME  Trotskys Murderer

The KGB communications between Mexico City and Moscow

during 1943 to 1946 are a particularly rich historical trove, showing

the elaborate plans to free from prison a man assigned the

covername GNOME, who had murdered Trotsky in Mexico City in

1940. The murderer, who had been arrested at the scene of his crime,

was known as Frank Jacson; he held Canadian documentation.

Mexican authorities readily saw this documentation as a sham, but it

would be many years before GNOMEs true identity was known, for

he had many aliases. GNOME (GNOM in the Russian spelling) was

in reality Ramon Mercader, a Spanish Communist recruited into

KGB service by his mother, the Spanish Communist and KGB agentofficer Caridad Mercader. She appears in these VENONA messages

as covername KLAVA.

39

Ramon Mercader 

(Covername GNOME), 

after capture by Mexican police

The KGB in San Francisco and Mexico City
The Soviet Union opened an embassy in Mexico City in 1943,

which provided a cover for a KGB residency (before then the KGB

had operated in Mexico City without diplomatic protection). During

1943 to 1945 that KGB residency sent about 570 messages to

Moscow Center, while the Center sent 400 messages to Mexico. This

was a substantial number, though fewer than half could be

sufficiently decrypted to be issued as the translations seen in this

release. Many of these messages concern the GNOME affair and

indicate that the KGB had two plans to facilitate his release: a

combat operation, to spring him by force, or an effort to use

influence. In any case, the KGB drew upon American, Mexican, and

Spanish Communists to accomplish this mission, but the operation

failed. The following KGB messages related to the GNOME case (all

except the last two were from Mexico City to Moscow) are

particularly interesting. Some of these messages were addressed to

covername PETROV (L. Beria), head of Soviet state security:

 Plans for the Combat Operation: No. 158, 23 December 1943;

Nos. 174-76, 29 December 1943

 The work of KGB agent Jacob Epstein: Nos. 193-94, 14 March

1944

The KGB has suspicions about one of their agents: Nos. 553-54,

29 June 1944

 Influence operations and an agent with access to GNOME in

prison: No. 474, 6 June 1944

 GNOMEs mothers presence in Mexico is complicating the

case: Moscow Center to Mexico City, Nos. 172-174, 9 to 10 March

1945

 A scathing criticism of the work of the KGB resident (chief) in

Mexico: San Francisco KGB to Moscow, Nos. 321-322, 19 August

1944

40
Other Mexico City messages discuss or mention a remarkably

varied group of KGB personalities, including General Leonid

Eitington (covername TOM), who had organized the murder of

Trotsky; Dolores lbarruri, the Spanish Communist leader known as

La Pasionara; the later Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda; and

Communist Party member and KGB agent Kitty Harris (covername

ADA), sometime lover of KGB agent and American Communist Party

leader Earl Browder. In several messages, the KGB discusses Otto

Katz (also known as Andre Simon), a prominent Communist

executed with other members of the Czech Communist Party

leadership after World War II in an infamous purge ordered by

Stalin. The story, simultaneously seen in the New York City KGB

messages, of Nicholas and Maria Fisher, whom the KGB was trying

to get into Mexico via a U.S. transit visa, also continues. The Fishers

were clearly important KGB officers, operating under instructions

from Beria. Their goal was to take over the GNOME affair, to support

operations in the United States, maybe even for atomic bomb

espionage.2

The KGB in San Francisco

The KGB established a residency (office) in San Francisco in

December 1941. The resident from 1941 to July 1944 was Grigori

Kheifits (covername KHARON). He was replaced by Grigori

Kasparov (covername DAR). In 1945 Moscow Center sent the New

York Resident Stepan Apresyan (covername MAJ) to take over the

San Francisco operation in anticipation of the UN conference

(attended by KGB agent Harry Dexter White). Arlington Hall and

NSA were unable to

decrypt the approximately

125 messages sent by that

residency in 1941 to 1942

(only two or three

messages were sent in

1941).

41

Grigori Kheifits (right);

Grigori Kasparov (left)
As often happened, (see the released New York, Washington, and

A-bomb translations), the San Francisco KGB got most of its agents

 spies  from the local Communist Party. Isaac Folkoff (covername

DyaDYa  uncle), a grand old man of the California Communist

Party, is seen in VENONA as an agent, espionage talent spotter, and

recruiter for the KGB. But there is one surprise: a major KGB agent

in the West Coast defense aviation industry was not a Party member.

This was Jones Orin York, covername IGLA, who later admitted he

was in it for the money, although he received very little.

One other oddity of the San Francisco translations is that, with

one exception,3 there is no obvious reference to atomic bomb

espionage (though non-VENONA sources confirm that such

espionage was in progress at least in 1942 to 1943). Perhaps that

work had ended locally by the time of the readable VENONA

messages (and it should be noted that the Los Angeles KGB message

traffic, though of small volume, is entirely unreadable). The San

Francisco messages do contain evidence of espionage against other

high-tech targets.

One important KGB officer, Olga Valentinovna Khlopkova

(covername JULIA), is seen in both San Francisco and New York

KGB messages. She was on some missions of interest to Beria,

possibly involving internal KGB security issues.4

The Hunt for Sailor Deserters

Several dozen San Francisco KGB messages concern the hunt for

deserters from the Soviet merchant fleet and investigations into the

suicides or accidental deaths of other sailors. There is, for example,

the tragic story of ships officer Elizabeth Kuznetsova, who jumped

ship in Portland, Oregon, on 9 February 1944. According to a later

VENONA KGB message, she subsequently married a taxicab driver

in San Francisco. The VENONA part of the story ends, On 4

November this year the traitor to the fatherland KUZNETSOVA was

shipped to Vladivostok on the tanker BELGOROD. Details to follow

in a supplement....5

42
Shedding Light on GRU Espionage in the U.S.

As noted earlier, up until 1941 the GRU, the intelligence

directorate of the Red Army General Staff, had been the principal

foreign intelligence agency of the Soviet Union. By the time of

VENONA readability (the 1939 to 1941 messages of KGB and GRU in

the United States could not be decrypted), Stalin had made the KGB

his top espionage organization. Still the GRU continued to run

espionage operations (though many of its best assets had been

transferred to the KGB), and these are seen in the fifty or so

translations of 1943 messages from the GRU residency in New York.

Hundreds of GRU New York messages remain unsolved. The loss

to history in the record of the GRU in Washington is particularly

noticed. Of the several thousand Washington messages from 1941 to

1945, only about fifty were decrypted, in spite of the best efforts of

the United States and the United Kingdom. Unlike the New York

GRU messages, where translations concern espionage, these few

Washington translations deal with routine military attaché matters

(such as overt visits to U.S. defense factories). However, a separate

Washington GRU cryptographic system, which was never read,

presumably carried GRU espionage traffic.

The New York GRU messages show that the organization had

good espionage sources in some government agencies, including the

OSS, the predecessor to CIA. GRU New York also had a radioequipped Illegal, covernamed MOK.6 We see some of the work of the

spy (and Communist Party member) Joseph Bernstein, covername

MARQUIS, and his recruitment of fellow Communist T.A. Bisson,

covername ARTHUR.7 The GRU chief in New York, covername

MOLIERE, was Pavel P. Mikhailov (the alias he used in his cover

assignment as vice consul; true name was probably Menshikov or

Meleshnikov). A number of GRU sources remain unidentified.

43

The GRU in New York and Washington
Some Notes on Analysis of GRU Systems

Exploitation of GRU (both Red Army and Naval) messages

lagged behind the cryptanalytic successes and exploitation of KGB

messages by many years. While the 1945 defection in Ottawa of GRU

code clerk Igor Gouzenko provided message texts that revealed a

great deal of espionage, Gouzenko did not produce any

cryptographic materials of direct use to Arlington Halls

cryptanalytic effort. In the long run, success against GRU messages

came from the accumulated knowledge and experience gained

exploiting the Soviet trade, true diplomatic, and KGB systems and

the application of early computers. In particular, the 1949 to 1950

theoretical work of the distinguished mathematician and former

navy cryptanalyst Dr. Richard Leibler opened new methods of attack

against the VENONA-related diplomatic systems  including those

of the GRU.

In 1952 cryptanalyst-linguist Charles

Condray proposed an attack against

unknown message beginnings which was

based on Dr. Leiblers work. The

computer implementation of this

attack by mathematician Dr. Hugh

Gingerich led to detection of reused

key in GRU messages and, ultimately,

to the solution and translation of GRU

messages.

The Naval GRU systems resisted the

best efforts of Arlington Hall, NSA, and

the U.K. SIGINT service until 1957,

when a U.K. analytic attack provided the

first results in detecting reused key.

Translations of Naval GRU Messages

NSA and the United Kingdom service decrypted some 300 GRU

Naval messages that had been sent in 1943 between Washington and

Moscow  including about half (200 of 400) of the messages sent by

44

Dr. Richard Leibler
Washington. However, only a few naval GRU messages from any

other year could be decrypted and none from any other U.S. location.

Commodore I. A. Egorichev was Soviet naval attaché in

Washington at that time, and he was probably also the resident

(chief) of the secret intelligence apparatus as well. His superior in

Moscow was the Soviet director of naval intelligence, probably

Commodore Mikhail A. Vorontsov.8

The Naval GRU was clearly the junior Soviet intelligence service,

at least in the United States. The translated messages show the

Washington Naval GRU wrestling with various unrelated missions

while trying to establish secret espionage networks. In fact, the Naval

GRUs cryptographic system was used for various nonintelligence

entities, such as the Soviet naval Lend-Lease representatives, their

naval weather service personnel, and Soviet naval convoy officers.

Some of the topics of Washington Naval GRU messages were these:

 Counterintelligence in Tampa, Florida: Washington to Moscow

Nos. 834, 846-848, 18 April 1943

 Recruitments and handling of American Communists as

espionage agents: Moscow to Washington, No. II 5,20 January 1943;

No. 704, 1 April 1943; No. 1194, 10 July 1943; Washington to

Moscow, No. 1969, 13 August 1943 (mentions exceptional

possibilities in the high-tech field)

 Moscow lays out the rules for the primary and basic aims of

naval intelligence: No. 1109, 26 June 1943

 Regular attaché business  exchange of information with U.S.

Navy: Washington to Moscow, No. 1657, 17 July 1943

 Human interest  a grief-stricken Soviet admiral: Washington

to Moscow, No. II 50, 27 May 1943

45
The Case of Sally

Naval GRU assigned covernames AUSTRALIAN WOMAN and

then SALLY to an Illegal to be sent by ship from the Soviet Far East

to the U.S. West Coast. Fourteen messages relating to this operation

were translated. The first of these, Washington to Moscow, Nos.

2505-2512, 31 December 1942, is one of the longest messages in

VENONA  an extraordinary document showing the Naval GRUs

inexperience in this sort of activity and the need for assistance from

the GRU and/or KGB. The last decrypted message about the case

states that SALLY had been landed in San Francisco from a Soviet

freighter (Washington to Moscow No. 1983, 14 August 1943). The

FBI later learned that SALLY had been known in the United States

as Edna Patterson, that she had left the United States suddenly in

1956, and that she was a Soviet citizen who had been born in

Australia.

The reader will recall that several Illegals appear in KGB traffic,

most notably covername MER/ALBERT. Other Soviet Illegals

include the GRU Illegal MOK and various Illegals in the Mexico City

messages (these included probably Spanish nationals and a

Canadian, who probably were not Soviet citizensa variation on the

usual origin of Illegals).

46
Insight into Foreign Ministry and Trade Matters

Trade and Foreign Ministry messages were rarely translated. The

VENONA breakthrough was not generally achieved until years after

the messages had been sent. Trade and Foreign Ministry messages

were not of intelligence value once they had been broken. The

voluminous trade messages involved mostly Lend-Lease matters;

the Foreign Ministry messages most often dealt with routine

consular affairs. Nevertheless, these messages were important for

two reasons: they helped in the cryptanalysis of KGB and GRU

messages (this was absolutely critical in the case of the trade

material), and they provided occasional information concerning

Soviet security, counterintelligence, and cryptographic policy. For

example, a June 1945 message from the deputy foreign minister to

all posts abroad warned that a foreign intelligence service (not

further identified) was showing an interest in the movement of

Soviet diplomatic mail and would attempt to extract documents

from these courier shipments.9 Another security warning message of

May 1947 ordered ambassadors, consuls, and their subordinates to

immediately discharge from their personal service any foreigners

they might have hired as cooks, nursemaids, washerwomen, maids,

etc.10

Among the few trade messages translated are discussions of

two cases of safe cracking at the Lend-Lease office annex in

Washington in December 1942.11 A Moscow to Washington Trade

Ministry message of December 1942 mentions those confidential

and secret reports obtained by Comrade SHUMOVSKIJ during

1938 to 1942 and gives instructions for his continued work. This is

especially interesting because Shumovskij was a lieutenant colonel

in the KGB seen as covername BLERIOT in the KGB VENONA

messages.12

47

The KGB and GRU in Europe, South America, and

Australia
KGB Messages to the London Residency

Only a small set of London KGB messages was available for

exploitation  mostly incoming messages from Moscow Center sent

in September 1945. This small opening, taken together with the

exploitation of certain messages of KGB New York and Washington

(translations previously released), assisted in the identification of

important KGB agents Donald Maclean, Kim Philby, and Guy

Burgess.13 These agents are seen in VENONA under the following

covernames:

STANLEY Kim Philby

HICKS Guy Burgess

GOMER (HOMER) Donald Maclean (who is found in the 

New York and Washington traffic)

Three other KGB messages will be of particular interest to U.S.

readers:

 No. 6 from Moscow, 25 September 1945, discusses a U.S.-

connected agent covernamed DAN, who, when contacted by the KGB

in London, was to be greeted at the meeting place by the password

scenario, Didnt I meet you at VICKs restaurant on Connecticut

Avenue?

 No. 13, also from Moscow, 16 September 1945, concerns

espionage against the atomic bomb by the unidentified agent TINA,

whose information on that target had been for the KGB of great

interest and represents a valuable contribution to the development

of the work in the field. TINA has since been identified as Melita

Norwood.

 No. 36, from Moscow, 17 September 1945, says that the

unidentified covername EDUARD had served in Washington from

1939 until February 1945 and that the politicians mentioned in your

letter with whom EDUARD comes in contact are of great interest to

us.

48
GRU Messages between London and Moscow

The translations of messages between the GRUs London

residency and headquarters in Moscow are a particularly interesting

and perhaps unexpected addition to the publics knowledge of Soviet

espionage. The exploited messages, about 260 overall, date from

1940 to 1941 and then from 1945 to 1947, and they cover a wide range

of topics, techniques, and espionage personalities. Here is dramatic,

professional intelligence reporting about the Battle of Britain, the

Blitz, the expected German invasion, the preparations of the British

forces, and the emergency procedures of the GRU, including their

establishment of at least three clandestine radio stations. The

espionage reporting is substantial. Referred to are a GRU spy group

called the X Network, the unidentified agent BARON, who

apparently reported information obtained from U.K. decryption of

German Enigma messages, clandestine radio operators STANLEY,

MUSE, and the famous SONIA (Ursula Buerton).

In a London GRU message of 10 August 1941 is a reference to the

GRUs reestablishing contact in the United Kingdom with Klaus

Fuchs and from him learning about early efforts to develop the

atomic bomb. Fuchs later went under KGB control in the United

States as the covername REST and ChARLZ of KGB New York

VENONA messages. The GRU resident (chief) in London was

probably Simon Kremer, who had the cover assignment of private

secretary to the military attaché. Note that several messages deal

with cipher matters  in 1940 to 1941, the London GRU used a

so-called Emergency System, a variation of the basic VENONA

cryptosystems. London GRU messages merit very close attention.

Examples of GRU messages:

 Air Raids, Invasion Preparations in the United Kingdom:

London No. 800, 23 July 1940; 922, 22 Aug 1940; 1009, 13

September 1940 (all London to Moscow)

 GRU agents in DeGaulles government: London No. 776, 17

July 1940

 GRU clandestine radios: London No. 798, 22 July 1940

49
 Moscows Instructions for agent networks in the United

Kingdom: Moscow No. 450, 7 September 1940

 First mention of SONIA (Ursula Buerton): London No. 2043, 31

July 1941

 Agent BARON reports on U.K. Enigma decrypts: London

No. 649, 3 April 1941

 Klaus Fuchs and the GRU/the A-bomb: London 2227,

10 August 1941

 The X Group espionage net in U.K. forces: London to Moscow,

No. 1188, 18 October 1940

The Arthur Case: The KGB in Latin America

The VENONA translations show the establishment of regular

KGB residencies (offices) in Bogota and Montevideo during World

War II. Taken together with previously released Mexico City

messages, we see attention to subversion and the establishment of

agent networks  as always drawing upon the Communist Party for

clandestine assets. Covername ARTHUR, seen in New York,

Montevideo, and other KGB communications, has recently been

identified as the famous KGB Illegal officer Uozas (Joseph)

Grigulevich, who had a long undercover career in Latin America and

elsewhere, and an equally bloody career during the purges and the

Spanish Civil war. He, and his associate who used the covername

ALEKSANDR, was a very busy (if judging from VENONA),

somewhat unfocused, operative. According to one message, he had

begun his South American operations in 1940, after which he

operated in Chile and moved on. ALEKSANDR was probably a

Chilean national. There are about 150 Montevideo and Bogota KGB

translations in this release. Some examples of KGB messages:

 Moscows Nos. 61 and 154-55 to Montevideo, 23 June 1944 and

8 September 1944, contain information on ARTHURs background

and instructions for him.

50
 Moscow No. 164, 23 May 1945, to Montevideo discusses the use

of covername JAN and that the center would especially like him to

help us in getting our bearings in the situation in the Latin American

countries.

An interesting exchange between Bogota KGB and the center

involves the recruitment of the head of the Venezuelan Communist

Party. The center approves but notes, in a typical agent assessment

and recruiting formula, that before recruiting him you should

thoroughly check his sincere devotion to the Soviet Union.14

51

Joan Malone Callahan, the

first U.S. VENONA

analyst/linguist to serve at

GCHQ 1949 to 1954. She

became project

supervisor and principal

customer interface in 1954

when Meredith Gardner

replaced her in the United

Kingdom.

Arlington Hall

bowling team of

cryptanalysts ca.

1947. Standing

(left to right):

Cecil Phillips, Bill

Lutwiniak, Paul

Derthick. 

Below: (leftto

right) Frank

Lewis, Louise

Derthick. (All

except Louise

worked at some

time on VENONArelated
52

Charles Condray (left)

The principal linguist/code

builder on trade and

diplomatic codes for more

than twenty-five years. He

supervised the total

VENONA-related project in

the later years.

Gene Grabeel (right)

She began work on

Soviet diplomatic

messages on I

February 1943 and

continued working the

problem until the late

1970s.

Gloria Forbes (left)

She began processing

Soviet diplomatic

messages in mid-1943

and continued to

supervise this and

related activities for
The KGB in Australia

Unlike any other group of VENONA messages, some KGB

messages on the Canberra-Moscow communications link were

decrypted in near real-time, that is, close to the date of transmission.

Further, the Canberra material, though of modest volume, is

readable (if intermittently) for the longest period of time, 1943 to

1948. More than 200 messages were decrypted and translated, these

representing a fraction of the messages sent and received by the

Canberra KGB residency. In this body of translations, we see typical

KGB coverage: their agents inside government departments and

interesting places in the private sector; those agents were drawn

from the Communist Party. Some examples of what is contained in

the Canberra KGB material:

 Communist Party member/KGB agent in the Australian

government: Canberra No. 130, 25 April 1945

 Payment to a KGB agent inside the Australian government:

Canberra No. 141, 5 May 1945

 KGB agent reports about the Australian Security Service:

Canberra No. 324-25, 1 September 1945

 A Communist Party member who is a KGB agent well placed in

the Australian Department of External Affairs: Canberra No. 361-62,

29 September 1945 

53

Mildred Hayes

VENONA linguist/analyst for

more than twenty-five years.

She closed the VENONA effort

on I October 1980.
54

 Instructions for handling important agents: Moscow No. 7-8, 9

January 1947

 Instructions for developing agent networks: Moscow No. 34, 8

March 1948

The Stockholm Messages

The translations of messages of Soviet intelligence in Stockholm

are particularly rich for their variety and volume: more than 450

messages of the three Soviet services, KGB, GRU, and Naval GRU.

Sweden, neutral during World War II, gave the Soviets a valuable

listening post concerning German military activities in Norway,

Denmark, Finland, and the Baltic. Note the great attention to

transborder operations: debriefing refugees from Norway and

sending Norwegians back to Norway.

An interesting Naval GRU message, No. 682, 13 April 1942,

Stockholm to Moscow, describes a German peace initiative to the

banker Jakob Wallenberg, uncle of Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish

diplomat and humanitarian. No translation in the VENONA

material, however, is known to concern the case of Raoul

Wallenberg, who was arrested by SMERSH (military

counterintelligence) in Budapest in 1945 and was reportedly

murdered by the KGB in Moscow. Examples of other Stockholm

messages:

KGB

 A detailed report of German naval construction, disposition of

ships, movement of men and equipment in and out of occupied

Norway: Stockholm No. 3090, 21 November 1943

 Discussion of important KGB agent and Swedish Communist,

covername KLARA, who is completely devoted to us.

GRU and Naval GRU

 Much GRU discussion about clandestine radio and the

construction and use of agent cipher systems (for example, Moscow
No.797, 6 September 1941 and Nos. 938 and 939, both date

13 October 1941)

 A GRU source reports on Swedish signal intelligence work

against Soviet naval communications, No. 1564, 12 December 1941

 Finnish Army order of battle reported by GRU in No. 151,

22 January 1942

 GRU to dispatch agents to Norway, No. 656, 8 April 194

 In a message of 19 March 1943, No. 901, Stockholm Naval GRU

reported the results of their search for Leica cameras and accessories

 a worldwide tradecraft matter in the VENONA messages:

obtaining cameras and film for secret document photography

In late 1944 General Carter W. Clarke, the assistant G-2 and

Arlington Halls overlord, called to the Pentagon Lieutenant Paavo

Carlson, an Arlington Hall cryptanalyst. Knowing that Carlson spoke

Finnish, Clarke told him to prepare to leave within days for

Stockholm, where he would act as an interpreter for the U.S. military

attache, who would be meeting with representatives of the Finnish

SIGINT service, then evacuating into Sweden. The Stockholm

OSS chief would participate in the meeting. Carlson later recalled

that the Finns handed over a German Enigma machine with

the rotors and also described to the Americans their success in

working against Soviet military communications (and U.S.

diplomatic communications).

It was this same Lieutenant Carlson who in mid-December

1942, in Lynchburg, Virginia, recruited Miss Gene Grabeel for

employment at Arlington Hall, where six weeks later she opened the

attack on Soviet diplomatic communications that became known as

the VENONA program.

55
Translations

Twenty-four KGB message translations, discovered in

reconciling the historic collections,were included in the sixth release.

Of particular note are messages describing the activities of Jack and

Dr. Robert Soble, veteran KGB agents operating in the United States

and elsewhere.15 These include arrangements for a cover business

for Jack Soble; movement of money between Canada and the United

States; and the reactivation by the KGB of the correspondent and

Hollywood producer Stephen Laird.16 There are reports from and

about the well-placed KGB agents PLUMB, RAIDER, and FRENK

(previously identified as Charles Kramer, Victor Perlo, and Laurence

Duggan, respectively). Also of interest is a long and complicated

message about affairs in Hungary, which is based on a secret report

that had been lost in a taxicab in New York and obtained by the

KGB.17

Several dozen other previously released translations have been

made available in more complete form (see, for example, the

Stockholm GRU and Naval GRU translations). This material,

concerning Soviet espionage in the United States, is grouped in the

same order in the previous releases. More complete versions of the

first release may shed additional light on KGB espionage in Chicago

against the atomic bomb project (e.g., that covername FLOX was

Rose Olson) and on the other KGB operations in New York

Washington, and San Francisco.18

Meredith Gardners Special Reports 

Mr. Gardner wrote a series of eleven special reports from 1947 to

1948. The first of these was released at the VENONA Conference in

October 1996 and is included in this set. The remaining reports

should help date some of the earliest work on important VENONA

cases such as covername LIBERAL/ANTENNA (eventually

identified as Julius Rosenberg) and LIBERALs wife Ethel.

56

Special Reports
Mr. Gardner composed these special reports to record what he

was finding in the VENONA messages and to alert his chain of

command and G-2s counterintelligence group. When Robert

Lamphere of FBI headquarters became involved in VENONA full

time, Mr. Gardner began to issue individual message translations,

and the special report series was discontinued.

Following is a list of these special reports. Some are not dated,

but all were issued between 30 August 1947 and 12 August 1948.

1. Gardners initial overview of the covernames he was finding in

the VENONA messages

2. Mention of covernames GOMER/HOMER and YUN, later

identified as Donald Maclean and Stephen Laird

3. KGB Canberra

4. ENORMOZ (atomic bomb) espionage including the work of

covername LIBERAL

5. Confirmation that VENONA messages were KGB

6. LIBERALs network

7. The KOMAR affair (KOMAR was Kravchenko, who defected

from the Soviet trade mission in Washington and was being hunted

by the KGB)

8. Messages changing covernames

9. Covername KARAS (Ivan Subasic, KGB agent involved in

Serbo-Croatian matters in the United States and abroad)

10. Covername CHETA (later identified as KGB officers Micholas

and Maria Fisher)

11. ANTENNA/LIBERALs wife Ethel

57
An interesting example of the type of material found in the

reports would be in Special Report #6, 28 April 1948, which

summarizes or gives the text of a significant number of

LIBERAL/ANTENNA translations. See, for example, message

number 1053, 26 July 1944, New York KGB to Moscow Center

(paragraph 6) that concerns ANTENNAs proposal to recruit his

friend Max Elitcher, who was a Communist, as were all members of

the Rosenberg espionage ring. The translation of New York to

Moscow No. 628, 5 May 1944 (paragraph 4), is important to

the story of the development of the Rosenberg case. As of April 1948

the Arlington Hall VENONA unit had not been able to decrypt the

first twenty-four groups of that message. Lacking this critical

context, Mr. Gardner translated the message as giving a description

of ANTENNA. When those missing twenty-four groups were

decrypted  see the reissue of the translation on 27 June 1950  it

was shown that the message was in fact about Rosenbergs

description of his friend Al Sarant, whom he recruited for the KGB.

One of the special reports issued in July 1948 (1948 was a

presidential election year) gives the earliest translation found of the

KGB message concerning bribery of persons around David Niles, an

important advisor to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman (New York to

Moscow message 786, 1 June 1944).

Other Documents

Related to the Gardner special reports is the covername book

used by Arlington Hall and later by NSA analysts, to record the KGB

message covernames, every appearance of them by message number

and date, and the identities of the covernamed persons where

known. This covername book contains terms used in KGB New York,

Washington, and San Francisco communications and messages to

those stations from Moscow Center. The dates of entries made in the

covername book are unclear, but it was developed and used from

early 1949 until the VENONA program ended in 1980.

Two additional Meredith Gardner documents deserve attention.

One is his short account of the development of the GOMER/HOMER

case (Donald Maclean) from the Arlington Hall point of view. This

58
account must not be taken as a full representation of the

counterintelligence investigation chronology, however. In the

second document, short but undated, Mr. Gardner recorded some

dates concerning who had access to VENONA information in the

early days. This is also a valuable part of the historical record.

Envoi

A few closing remarks follow, some in response to questions from

the public.

VENONA was the final NSA codeword for this very secret

program. Earlier codewords had been JADE, BRIDE, and DRUG.

All these codewords were selected at random by the United States

and the United Kingdom and are not acronyms or abbreviations.

There was outstanding cooperation between Arlington Hall

(later NSA) and its partners and customers. From 1945 to 1946 Cecil

Phillips, an Arlington Hall cryptanalyst, briefed the U.K. SIGINT

service on the program. In 1947 Meredith Gardner, the principal

early analyst and translator of the VENONA messages, explained his

progress to his British counterpart. During September 1947 General

Carter W. Clarke of G-2 brought the FBI into the problem, and, by

the end of that year, the bureau had begun to open espionage cases

based on VENONA. CIA joined the effort in late 1952.

The courage and wisdom of General Carter W. Clarke of G-2 and

Robert J. Lamphere contributed mightily to the VENONA success

story as did the leadership of Frank B. Rowlett and Oliver Kirby at

Arlington Hall. But it all rested on the skills, patience, and

determination of the Arlington Hall analysts who made it all

possible.

59
Notes

1. William Crowell was deputy director of NSA from February 1994 to

September 1997.

2. See, for example, No. 334, Moscow Center to Mexico City, 30 May

1944. However, for context see especially the previously released message,

New York KGB to Moscow, No. 786, 1 June 1944, that mentions that friends

of David Niles (a White House staffer) will arrange for a bribe, i.e., get the

transfer visas for the Fishers.

3. See No. 619-620, 27 November 1945.

4. See, for example, San Francisco to Moscow, Nos. 510 and 519,

December 1943.

5. See San Francisco messages to the Center, from 1944: Number 65,

151, 159, 293; and messages numbers 166, 295, and 568 of 1945. See also the

very detailed message from Moscow Center that sets up new procedures for

the KGBs Fifth Line in handling the security of the Soviet merchant fleet on

the West Coast, No. 379, Moscow to San Francisco, 16 November 1944.

6. See messages New York to Moscow Nos. 895-985, 987, 1295.

7. This will be of interest to students of the so-called Amerasia affair. In

1945 the OSS Security Division and the FBI searched the offices of the

magazine Amerasia, which was suspected of holding classified government

documents. The staff of the publication included Communist spies and

agents, including Joseph Bernstein. In subsequent years, the case resulted

in several convictions, none major, and a number of congressional hearings

were held on the case. The book The Amerasia Case by Harvey Klehr and

Ronald Radosh presents more details on the matter.

8. The signatories and addresses of the Naval GRU messages are quite

confusing as this service dedicated a block of code groups at the back of

their codebook for covernames. As these do not fall in alphabetical order

and are not seen in any other context, the actual meaning of these code

groups could not be found. Thus, we see the arbitrary numbering and

lettering systems adopted by the United States-United Kingdom (not by the

Soviets) to identify these covernames, e.g., Name No. 5.

9. Moscow Foreign Ministry Circular to all posts, 8-13 June 1945

10. Foreign Ministry, Moscow, to all posts No. 019, 22 May 1947

60
11. Trade messages, Washington to Moscow, No. 8166, 29 December

1942 and 8167-68, same date

12. Stanislau Shumovskij recruited Jones Orin York in approximately

1935 in California, beginning Yorks long career in espionage for the KGB.

York is the covername IGLA (NEEDLE) of Venona.

13. See, for example, the Moscow to London messages of 17 September

1945 about Kim Philbys report on the Gouzenko defection in Ottawa and 21

September 1945 about the handling of key KGB assets in light of the

Gouzenko case.

14. Bogota No. 120, 6 July 1944 and Moscow No. 129, 13 August 1944

15. New York to Moscow, 24 June 1943, 6 July 1943, 5 May 1944,

October 1944

16. 12 and 23 August 1944

17. Message #1669ff, New York to Moscow, 29-30 November 1944

18. Rose Olson appears to have been Roz Childs, wife of Morris

Childs, a prominent Communist and later a double agent for the FBI.

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