Venona: What My Father Didn't Know
CNSNews.com ^ | 8/05/03 | Alan Caruba

My father was a subscriber to I.F. Stone's famed newsletter in the 1950s and 60s. Stone was a highly regarded "independent" journalist and his newsletter exposed things about Sen. Joseph McCarthy and others who warned against Communist spies and agents of influence. The problem was that I.F. Stone was a Soviet agent of influence, financed by the Kremlin. My Father didn't know that and probably wouldn't have believed it. He wouldn't have believed that Alger Hiss, a highly placed State Department officer and the first interim Secretary General of the United Nations, was also a Soviet agent or that Harry Hopkins, one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's top advisors, was also an agent. He probably believed the Rosenbergs who helped the Soviets get our A-bomb secrets weren't guilty, but they were. J. Robert Oppenheimer who directed the Manhattan Project that developed the A-bomb gave aid and assistance to the Soviet Union, but he was so revered after the end of the war the government merely took away his security clearance.

In fact, Joe McCarthy was right, but by now his name has been turned into a dirty word by the same liberal, leftist propaganda machine that today is trying to convince Americans the president "lied" to them about Iraq. They had to wait until after the FBI's first director, J. Edgar Hoover, was dead before they dared to slander his reputation. How do we know this? The answer is "Venona," the name given to a top-secret program to break Soviet codes and read intercepted communications between Moscow and its intelligence stations in the West. The program began in February 1943 by the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service, the forerunner of the National Security Agency. The cables that a small cadre of very young deciphers worked on were initially dispatched between 1940 and 1948, but the effort continued apace from 1947 through 1952, and continued to crack the cable codes right up to 1980. By the end of Venona, 2,900 Soviet messages had been translated and the yield in intelligence regarding the way the Communist Party USA, directed entirely by the Kremlin, sought to uncover our secrets and to influence government policies is breathtakingly astonishing.

In 1995, Venona was declassified We can be grateful to Herbert Romerstein and the late Eric Breindel for making the huge effort to tell the story of this extraordinary cipher-breaking program in their book, The Venona
Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors. This book, in part, documents the revelations in Ann Coulter's current bestseller, Treason. It is based both on the declassified Venona information and on the archives of the Communist International that were kept in Moscow, as well as the files of other Communist parties in Eastern and Central Europe. They became available to researchers after the fall of the Soviet Union.

So why don't more Americans know about the Venona project? Ask that question of the liberal mainstream press that, to this day, still slanders the reputation of those brave men who dared to suggest that the Communist Party USA was a threat to this nation and that "McCarthyism" is still the real threat. The truth is, ignoring your real enemies -- as we learned on 9-11 -- is the real threat. Venona revealed that US policies were influenced or thwarted because of Americans who were Soviet agents and served high up in our government or were in positions to secure essential wartime information and information that affected our nation's policies during the course of the Cold War. They were quite different from spies who sold out the US for money; they were the true believers in Communism. Frankly, I doubt my father fully comprehended the threat of the Soviet Union and the Cold War. I was sure, however, that he bought into every Leftist lie of his day because his day began with The New York Times and included reading The New Republic and even Foreign Affairs , the quarterly of the Council on Foreign Relations.His was a steady diet of propaganda designed to make the dictatorship of the proletariat look like a noble aspiration, a great goal, instead of the enslavement it represented for millions behind the Iron Curtain or subject to it in Red China, North Korea and Cuba.You shall know the truth and it shall set you free. The truth is, in the 1940s and the decades that followed, the State Department, the US Treasury, the CIO until it expelled some of its unions, and even the US Army, was thoroughly infiltrated by Americans whose loyalty was to the Soviet Union, a nation bent on the destruction of capitalism and the democracy upon which it is based.

Ironically, you can thank the Soviet Union for Social Security and for the failure of our present educational system. Both were implemented by Leftists, the latter being based on the former Soviet model. Hollywood won't tell you that. Instead, you can rent "The Majestic" starring Jim Carrey that includes scenes of a film writer being ruined by the "Red scare" of the 50s. The members of the "Progressive Caucus" in Congress won't tell you that, but they are as Red as they come. The New York Times won't tell you that, but the newspaper's long history of lies is now becoming more widely known. The Venona Secrets, however, spells it out and documents it. My father died in 1993. Venona was declassified two years later. He was a good man, an intelligent, well-read man, but he was wrong about a lot of things. He didn't grasp what vast numbers of ordinary, working Americans instinctively understood. The threat was and still is Communism. And now there's a new enemy - Islam. Not surprisingly, both use terrorism as their primary tool of conquest and control.

I am just now reading Ann Coulter's book, and am amazed at how long the left has tried to destroy America. Joe McCarthy was an American hero. History has proven him right.

Wow, you're reading Ann Coulter? That's some quality journalism right there . . .

I.F. Stone, Alger Hiss, Harry Hopkins, the Rosenbergs, and J. Robert Oppenheimer were all communists that had infiltrated our government.

Of course the liberals would like for everyone to forget this because they are the ones that brought these communist spies into our government.

Yet again you miss the point by a spectacular margin. There were undoubtedly Soviet agents in the US, and in every other country. That doesn't mean you can screw up the lives of those people with leftie views who aren't spies, simply because of the views they hold. The problem with Mccarthyism isn't that it dug up spies, but that the way the whole movement worked was against principles that Americans consider so important, specifically freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial.

What was working against American principles were the Lefties who were hiding their communist subversion while pretending to be loyal Americans.

What McCarthy did was to put the public spotlight on their activities. The commies were like vampires that can't stand the exposure to the light of day.

What do you mean 'supported these communist spies?' They weren't paying them or anything, were they? They held certain views, and were villified and destroyed because of it. I think that ganging up on minorities, whatever you think of them, is pretty low, and Salem-style justice is a tragedy.

'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it' - Voltaire.

It was the liberals that were defending the communist spies then, just as they are now defending the Islamic terrorists today.

Go see that other thread. The Libs who control the Portland Government would not allow the Portland Police Dept to assist the Feds in the investigation of the Islamic terrorists.

Don't tell me that these Libs have the right to help the Commie Spies and Islamic Terrorists like this. Its treason.

Jingoism and undermining of the constitution and bill of rights are both doing far more harm to American values and institutions then any supposed liberal/communist conspiracy.

sorry folks. this country set up to fuck itself when it went against washington's warning and created a 2 party system. point the finger at yourselves.

Supposed? No, not "supposed".

Its you "liberals" that have aided the Red spies then, just as you are now trying to protect Islamic terrorists today.

Jingoism? Its you people that support the United Nations while condemning love of country.

Undermining the Consititution? What else to call the way democrats have been blocking of our presidents nominations for the courts.

Clinton packed the courts with leftist-wing "judicial activists" that have really undermined the Constitution.

Empty a machine gun into a full crowd at a metro station, and you'll undoubtedly hit some people who deserve it. That doesn't make your action justified, or the innocent people you kill any less dead.

Well put. Explaining it with weaponry might make the concept more understandable.

Because McCarthyism screwed up the lives of people who were either completely unconnected to communism or were communist sympathisers who had committed no crime, as well as exposing some spies.

Two points. Firstly, 'McCarthyism' is a concept wider than the personal activities of Joe McCarthy. It was named after him as the greatest exponent of it. Similarly, when Blair is accused of 'Thatcherism' people are not saying that he is Margaret Thatcher in a wig.

Secondly, being a communist does not make you guilty of anything at all.

Hahaha...Tell me , how democratic is a country when it removes people's rights, the foremost principle of democracy? I tell you, the U.S. sure is a piece of work....

Well, I'm not to familiar with the U.S. constitution (I'm a canuck) but I've never heard a president say they were going to war to 'preserve the rights of...REPUBLICACY?!' The U.S. has certainly killed more than it's fair share of people in the name of Democracy...

Ah yes, another Leftist upset that we fought and won the Cold War against his communist cause.

I'm pretty sure the excuse for attacking the Taliban was to 'free the people and bring them democracy'. I think it was just to satiate the people's bloodlust after 9/11, but at least they buttered it up a little.

The sum of your comments is that people who have poor judgement forfeit their legal rights. That makes you some sort of meritocratic fascist. Nothing too wrong with a degree of meritocracy, but I find the fascism a little repugnant.