Talk:Significance of Venona

message: Welcome to the Significance of Venona Talk page.  Mr. Griffin Fariello Anon 67.120.98.144 contributions have been retrieved and placed here for discsussion. nobs 20:16, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

message: From Moynihan Secrecy, pg. 52:
:"It had been governmental secrecy that had allowed critics of the Rosenberg and Hiss cases to construct their elaborate theories about frame-ups and cover-ups. For years the Rosenbergs' defenders had demanded that the government reveal its secrets about the case, probably never dreaming that someday the files would land with a thump on their doorsteps. When the government gave in and released the documents, the secrets made the government's case even stronger. "Over the years," Radosh scoffs, "the Rosenbergs' defenders have loudly demanded the release of government documents on the case, only to deny the documents' significance once they are made public." nobs 03:53, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Moynihan

message: Gen. Omar Bradley's decision not to inform Truman was not because Truman himself couldn't be trusted, the evidence showed that people in the White House could not be trusted, because the Soviet Union had infiltrated the White House itself.  Truman called allegations against Hiss, et al, by Bentley, a "red herring", and a partisan divide between Hiss (rising star in the DNC) and Richard Nixon (backbencher from backwoods California) erupted which lasted decades (other persaonalities involved, too).  The point to be debated is, Was Gen. Bradley's decision the right decision or not?, because it seems, as Sen. Moynihan says, the partisan divide of the Hiss Case, the vendetta against Nixon etc., was all unnecessary.  We're not gonna resolve this issue right now, but I postulate that the political situaiton in the United States (free democracy that we are) was not unlike situations all over the planet at that time, were military commanders stepped into the void, in chaotic political situations, with the absence of effective civilian leadership (MacArthur in Japan, Rokossovsky in Poland, DeGaulle in France, etc). nobs 04:38, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Bradley

message: Cberlet: I appreciate your gift for arguement and obvious passion for the art (I myself am guilty of the same vices).  Can we spend some time discussing (1) structural arrangements of the various Venona related articles (2) procedural arrangements which may be time saving for everyone involved (3) balancing primary sources and secondary sources etc. nobs 16:14, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[primary sources]]

message: These guys are not interested in "good faith", despite their protests, they are interested solely in advancing their own narrow idealogical agenda, a rather ahistorical and sloppy one at that. They delete and rewrite anything that attempts to limit  their wild assertions in any way. Note the narrow range of sources they allow, anyone not agreeing with such gets edited out. Note also that their sources are all of one type, the far right, the shrillest of them all, and the least respected. The claim that Khelr and Haynes are the "leading" anything is a joke. Yale published them (and has lived to regret it) because they, at the time, happened to have been working nearly alone in the Soviet archives. Their work is of interest only because of the raw material they collected, not for what they made of those materials. Throughout these pages on the Red Scare era our friends here on Wikipedia can be seen time and again to rely on mere assertion, are incapable of quoting material to back up those assertions, and sneer at any alternative source that begs to be considered. Take the Hiss case, there is an encyclopedia of information tearing the case against him into small pieces, and there is new book soon to be relased, by the recently deceased Bill Reubens, that does the job all over again. Yet these guys here continually rely on the most dubious assertions by Klehr and Haynes, and Weinstein, and one bare assertion by Moynihan (backed by nothing at all), all of which (sans Moynihan who actually asserts with no argument) recycles Chambers's claims, and the dubious identity of "Ales" in Venona. The reason they don't at least quote the other side of the argument is because they have NO INTEREST in historical discussion, they do not wish to present the case and then allow the reader to judge for themselves, or even to know there is another argument. --Grifross 11:29, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cberlet, you just don't get it. 

message: Picking one thread of discussion from Talk:VENONA_project#Cberlet.27s_references regarding "careerism", please keep in mind, the FBI had exactly five Soviet espionage cases for the entire War (1942-1945) when Elizabeth Bentley walked into the New Haven FBI office and spilled her guts about 82 cases they hadn't known about.  This did not win Elizabeth Bentley any friends among the FBI, having embarassed them and exposed the poor job they did defending the United States from infiltration and subversion in wartime (see Talk:Elizabeth_Bentley#Reference for more discussion on this point).  nobs 04:54, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Careerism

message: Not to detract from the effort made in these discussions, but there seems a tendency to cite secondary sources in a circular fashion.  There is very little primary source material unfortunately - and Venona isn't it!  It is the creation of US intelligence (the people who brought us the WMD disinformation).  Yes, it could be true.  So could Chinese assertion of US biological warfare in Korea.  The point is we are cautious of government propaganda, aren't we?  The Cold War is still a burning issue (as these debates show) and so it can't be described as merely 'historical interest'. There should be more 'warning lights' attached to this entry.
The question that should be highlighted is: why did Venona take so long to be released?  The conventional explanation ('not letting the Russians know what we know') is false as known Soviet agent Philby (as stated in article) was aware!--Jack Upland 23:41, 10 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia policy is to assume good faith. After spending an inordinate amount of time reading Mr. Upland's postings in Talk:Significance of Venona, Talk:Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Talk:Klaus Fuchs and Klaus Fuchs, and trying to understand his reasoning, here is my good faith posting: either the intent is to convince someone with an IQ of 87 of something, or the author has an IQ of (redacted). nobs 18:36, 11 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Your comment that the Rosenbergs never denied espionage speaks for itself. Your pseudo-logical nonsense would be a credit to Lewis Carroll if you weren't dancing on people's graves.--Jack Upland 04:39, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnote Warfare 

message: A suggestion: develope an arguement first, with an example or examples, sources, etc. Then we can discuss it and not have a useless edit war. As of 2005, this is a fact: there have not been one (as in 1) successful proven NSA misidentification in the 10 years Venona materials heve been in the public domain.  nobs 02:07, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My edits are reasonable and are made in good faith. I have no particular opinion about VENONA, except to see this article as accurate and NPOV as possible. A casual glance at your user page makes me think you may have a different agenda. As for misidentification, given that the VENONA materials are unverifiable it is difficult or impossible to "prove" anything regarding them. --Bk0 02:48, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  define "unverifiable" in sense of your use. nobs 03:04, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Declassification

message: I have filed a request for mediation on this and related pages, see here: --Cberlet 18:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for Mediation filed

message: ==Background==
I do not believe this text is accurate or NPOV:
*Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.
*The decrypts include 349 code names for persons known to have had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence.  It is likely that there were more than 349 participants in Soviet espionage, as that number is from a small sample of the total intercepted message traffic. Among those  identified are Alger Hiss; Harry Dexter White, the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie, a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin, a section head in the Office of Strategic Services. Almost every military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent, including the Manhattan Project.
The core question for this text goes to the heart of the dispute. The books cited to justify this type of language were primarily written by persons with an axe to grind. Klehr and Haynes, for example, put a specific spin on the Venona documents they analyze that suggests that Red Scare era accusations that specific persons were Soviet spies have been overwhelmingly corroborated by the release of the Venona documents, FBI files, and Soviet archival material. Other scholars and journalists disagree. Yet even Klehr and Haynes do not state that the persons linked to the "349 code names" were "Soviet spies."  That conclusion is original research. Klehr and Haynes provide the list as representing persons known to have had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence. But what does this mean? It is quite possible that some of the real persons named as linked to the code names from the Venona documents were simply being recruited or used as information sources without their witting participation as Soviet informants or spies. This happens all the time in unredacted intelligence agency files. They never should be taken at face value.
This text would be more accurate and NPOV:
*Identities soon emerged of persons in America, Canada, Australia, and Britiain who were being used as information sources by the Soviet government. Some later were jailed as outright spies, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.
*According to Klehr and Haynes, the decrypts include 349 code names for Americans used as information sources by Soviet intelligence, and the authors speculate that even more persons were involved. At the time, the government feared that many military and diplomatic agencies were compromised to some extent, including the Manhattan Project.
*Government analysts assigned identities to the coded names from the Venona documents. Among these were Alger Hiss; Harry Dexter White, the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie, a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin, a section head in the Office of Strategic Services. What is disputed is the extent to which the available evidence indicates these people and others named in the Venona documents were aware of or complicit in espionage activities. Investigations in a number of cases did not lead to indictments, and several persons, notably Hiss, White, Halperin, and Currie, denied they were spies, were never indicted, and the claim they were spies is still debated by scholars.
I believe this is a better wording.--Cberlet 16:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no evidence for Cberlet's claim "debated by scholars"; a few obsolete arguements by secondary scholars have been refuted, and representing them as valid is POV.  Cberlet's attack on the sourcing is original research POV.  nobs 20:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "obsolete" and "secondary" are POV descriptions on your part. You have been a vandal and a POV warrior here for a while now, don't pretend as if you are editing in good faith or in Wikipedia's best interests. --Bk0 20:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No comment. nobs 20:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Restore my response to WP:NPA deleted by User:Cberlet .  nobs 18:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Cberlet: I would propose to you that you add Summary item 2 to Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Cberlet_and_Nobs01/Workshop#Summary_by_Cberlet with a link to this subhead, and label it here as such, so we can properly proceed.  Thank you.  nobs 19:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: New Edits

message: I do not believe this text is accurate or NPOV:
*Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.
*The decrypts include 349 code names for persons known to have had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence.  It is likely that there were more than 349 participants in Soviet espionage, as that number is from a small sample of the total intercepted message traffic. Among those  identified are Alger Hiss; Harry Dexter White, the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie, a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin, a section head in the Office of Strategic Services. Almost every military and diplomatic agency of any importance was compromised to some extent, including the Manhattan Project.
The core question for this text goes to the heart of the dispute. The books cited to justify this type of language were primarily written by persons with an axe to grind. Klehr and Haynes, for example, put a specific spin on the Venona documents they analyze that suggests that Red Scare era accusations that specific persons were Soviet spies have been overwhelmingly corroborated by the release of the Venona documents, FBI files, and Soviet archival material. Other scholars and journalists disagree. Yet even Klehr and Haynes do not state that the persons linked to the "349 code names" were "Soviet spies."  That conclusion is original research. Klehr and Haynes provide the list as representing persons known to have had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence. But what does this mean? It is quite possible that some of the real persons named as linked to the code names from the Venona documents were simply being recruited or used as information sources without their witting participation as Soviet informants or spies. This happens all the time in unredacted intelligence agency files. They never should be taken at face value.
This text would be more accurate and NPOV:
*Identities soon emerged of persons in America, Canada, Australia, and Britiain who were being used as information sources by the Soviet government. Some later were jailed as outright spies, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.
*According to Klehr and Haynes, the decrypts include 349 code names for Americans used as information sources by Soviet intelligence, and the authors speculate that even more persons were involved. At the time, the government feared that many military and diplomatic agencies were compromised to some extent, including the Manhattan Project.
*Government analysts assigned identities to the coded names from the Venona documents. Among these were Alger Hiss; Harry Dexter White, the second-highest official in the Treasury Department; Lauchlin Currie, a personal aide to Franklin Roosevelt; and Maurice Halperin, a section head in the Office of Strategic Services. What is disputed is the extent to which the available evidence indicates these people and others named in the Venona documents were aware of or complicit in espionage activities. Investigations in a number of cases did not lead to indictments, and several persons, notably Hiss, White, Halperin, and Currie, denied they were spies, were never indicted, and the claim they were spies is still debated by scholars.
I believe this is a better wording.--Cberlet 16:08, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no evidence for Cberlet's claim "debated by scholars"; a few obsolete arguements by secondary scholars have been refuted, and representing them as valid is POV.  Cberlet's attack on the sourcing is original research POV.  nobs 20:07, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "obsolete" and "secondary" are POV descriptions on your part. You have been a vandal and a POV warrior here for a while now, don't pretend as if you are editing in good faith or in Wikipedia's best interests. --Bk0 20:18, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: No comment. nobs 20:24, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Restore my response to WP:NPA deleted by User:Cberlet .  nobs 18:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

text: Cberlet: I would propose to you that you add Summary item 2 to Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Cberlet_and_Nobs01/Workshop#Summary_by_Cberlet with a link to this subhead, and label it here as such, so we can properly proceed.  Thank you.  nobs 19:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Background

message: Nobs: how would you write this sentence?
*Identities soon emerged of persons in America, Canada, Australia, and Britiain who were being used as information sources by the Soviet government. Some later were jailed as outright spies, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May and another member of the Cambridge Five spy ring, Donald Maclean.
Please write your version below. Thank you. --Cberlet 22:57, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Cberlet: I would propose to you that you add Summary item 2 to Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation/Cberlet_and_Nobs01/Workshop#Summary_by_Cberlet with a link to this subhead, and label it here as such, so we can properly proceed.  Thank you.  nobs 19:23, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sentence by sentence

message: Direct examples of improper and invalid methodology to affect POV.
22 August 2005
*14:30
**Unsourced "balance" for primary source citation 
22 August 2005
*15:43
**Questionable secondary source inserted to refute two fully qualified primary source citations.   Also, vagueness & relevency to Venona project questioned by multiple editors.
22 August 2005
*17:10
**Direct, unsouced, anonymous original research criticism of primary & secondary citation. .  See WP:RS#Unattributed_material.
16 September 2005
*01:42
**In a subhead entitled ==Nobs has once again misrepresented sources in his espionage paragraphs== Cberlet charges nobs with "misrepresentation", "inaccurate", "biased", and "false"; Cberlet extracts, 
***" 'The following were members of the Victor Perlo Network'; That statement is not qualified as 'According to Elizabeth Bentley', or 'Elizabeth Bentley has alleged', etc."; says " this is a misrepresentation. " 
30 September
*12:46
**Cberlet files Summary of Dispute; says "Magdoff was listed by the FBI as in the Perlo Group." 
nobs 17:46, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Illustrations of dispute

message: Mediation is ongoing on this page.  It is not proper for Nobs to continue to engage in major edits on this page while refusing to edit text on the mediation page.--Cberlet 22:58, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It is not proper for Cberlet's tag team to continue to engage in major edits on this page while refusing to edit text on the mediation page.  nobs 23:18, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no tag team. Don't be paranoid, just return to mediation.--Cberlet 23:38, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

text: Actually in my haste I erred; Soviet archives have corroborated the real names attached to eighty-eight cryptonyms in Venona plus an additional twenty-nine cryptonyms that were unidentified in Venona. Total: 117.  nobs 03:22, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Please return to mediation. Please stop editing this page until mediation is finished.--Cberlet 03:27, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mediation is ongoing 

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

message: *Talk:Significance of Venona, Talk: List of Americans in the Venona papers, Talk:Harry Magdoff and espionage. Revert war. How best to report claims of espionage and skeptical counterclaims -- all by various published scholars, journalists, and analysts.17:21, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Request for comments filed

message: You continue to use Schrecker’s comments, even though they are no longer valid. She has come to the following conclusions:  
Schrecker does not deny that their, Haynes’ and Khler’s, analysis is wrong, and she in the primary conclusion of their, Haynes’ and Khler’s, work
:We now know, based on information obtained from the archives of the former Soviet
Union and the VENONA documents, that most of the people Bentley identified, had in fact been giving information to the KGB. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents
:As Venona and the Moscow sources reveal, the [US] party recruited dozens, perhaps hundreds, of its members to spy for the Soviet Union. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents
:it is now abundantly clear that most of those who were identified as Soviet agents in the forties and fifties really were—and that most of them belonged to the Communist Party" and "as Venona and the Moscow sources reveal, the party recruited dozens, perhaps hundreds, of its members to spy for the Soviet Union. - Nation magazine, The Right's Cold War Revision, July 24/31, 2000 
Schrecker sees their conclusions as a way of rehabilitating McCarthyism
:whatever harm may have come to the country from Soviet sponsored spies is dwarfed by Mc-Carthy's wave of terror
And McCarthyism is not what this article is about. Stop quoting Schrecker as a critic of the VENONA, because she is not, she is an anti-anti-Communist and primarily a critic of McCarthyism. Stop using dated material from 1998, which is no longer representative of Schrecker’s current position. DTC 19:24, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Please stop rubber stamping your justifications for your deleions on several pages and actually engage in constructive editing on each page. Your recent blind deletions have been messing up the citations section. We are awaiting comments through an RFC. Please stop the revert war.--Cberlet 19:36, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  and how long do you propose we wait on this RfC? I mean, you still have not explained how Schrecker' comments from 1998 are more relevant that her comments from 2000 and 2005 which negate her 98 comments. DTC 20:10, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I filed the RFC so that people could comment on whether or not the text I support should remain. Please leave it alone for a few days. I have now asked for page protection.--Cberlet 02:48, 17 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Misrepresentation of Schrecker

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

message: This is a highly contested and controversial page.  Wholesale deletions not acceptable. Attempts to delete critics of how some scholars and journalists interpet the Venona documents is how this page was created in the first place. This is the page for the debate on significance. There is another page on the VENONA project.--Cberlet 21:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The scholarly material you are trying to reinsert is from an old version, and was removed with just cause, namely that Schrecker has largely been won over by the conclusions of Haynes and Klehr, which must be why you continualy reference her work from 1998 instead of newer material. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 00:19, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Try a balanced edit of the new material rather than junking a huge portion of the page.--Cberlet 02:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wholesale deletions not acceptable