Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War
The astonishing story of VENONA remains one of the last untold chapters in the history of the Cold War. Based on the only complete set of decrypts held in Britain outside Whitehall, and supplemented by interviews with most of the key players in the drama,VENONAreveals how the U.S. National Security Agency and its British counterpart, GCHQ, spent 37 years analyzing cipher traffic to and from Moscow. VENONA provided the FBI and CIA with compelling evidence against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Alger Hiss, and many others, but ‹to protect the source ‹VENONA could never be mentioned in any trial. Nigel West identifies, for the first time, the real names of several important Soviet British spies, disclosing that there are nearly 300 as yet unidentified agents in America and Britain. Once again, West proves himself a masterly guide to the intricate world of espionage and a supremely well-informed authority on the spies themselves.