Editing Venona project (section)

==Background==
During World War II and the early years of the [[Cold War]], the Venona project was a source of information on Soviet intelligence-gathering directed at the Western military powers. Although unknown to the public, and even to [[President of the United States|Presidents]] [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] and [[Harry S. Truman]], these programs were of importance concerning crucial events of the early Cold War. These included the [[Julius and Ethel Rosenberg]] spying case (which was based on events during World War II) and the defections of [[Donald Duart Maclean|Donald Maclean]] and [[Guy Burgess]] to the [[Soviet Union]].

Most decipherable messages were transmitted and intercepted between 1942 and 1945, during World War II, when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US. Sometime in 1945, the existence of the Venona program was revealed to the Soviet Union by [[cryptology|cryptologist]]-analyst [[Bill Weisband]], an [[NKVD]] agent in the US Army's [[SIGINT]].<ref>
{{cite book
| last = Andrew
| first = Christopher
| year = 1996
| url =https://archive.org/details/forpresidentseye00andr
| url-access = registration
| title = For the President's Eyes Only: Secret Intelligence and the American Presidency from Washington to Bush
| publisher = Harper Perennial
| isbn = 978-0-06-017037-0
}}</ref> These messages were slowly and gradually [[encryption|decrypted]] beginning in 1946. This effort continued (many times at a low level of effort in the latter years) through 1980, when the Venona program was terminated. The analyst effort assigned to it was moved to more important projects.

To what extent the various individuals referred to in the messages were involved with [[Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies|Soviet intelligence]] is a topic of minor historical [[#Critical views|dispute]]. Most academics and historians have established that most of the individuals mentioned in the Venona decrypts were probably either clandestine assets and/or contacts of Soviet intelligence agents,<ref>''How VENONA was Declassified'', Robert Louis Benson, ''Symposium of Cryptologic History;'' October 27, 2005.</ref><ref>"Tangled Treason", [[Sam Tanenhaus]], ''[[The New Republic]]'', 1999.</ref> and very few argue that many of those people probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.<ref name="ghosts"/><ref name=decrypts>"Tales from decrypts," ''The Nation'', 28 October 1996, pp. 5–6.</ref><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~hpcws/comment15.htm|title= Comments on John Earl Haynes', "The Cold War Debate Continues: A Traditionalist View of Historical Writing on Domestic Communism and Anti-Communism"|access-date= 2006-06-27|last= Schrecker|first= Ellen}}</ref>

===Commencement===
[[File:GeneGrabeel.jpg|thumb|[[Gene Grabeel]], the first [[cryptanalyst]] of the Venona project<ref>{{cite web|title=Remembrances of Venona |first=William P.|last=Crowell |url=http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/remembrances.shtml|publisher=nsa.gov|date=11 July 1995 |access-date=7 February 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160305204040/https://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/remembrances.shtml|archive-date=5 March 2016}}</ref>]]

The VENONA<ref name="cia.gov/csi/books/venona/preface">{{cite web |title=Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response, 1939-1957 |website=[[CIA]] |url=http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/preface.htm |access-date=8 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000816212523/http://www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/preface.htm |archive-date=16 August 2000 |quote=Meredith Gardner kept his British counterpart abreast of developments, and from 1948 on there was complete and profitable US-UK cooperation on the problem. The control term "Venona" did not appear on the translated messages until 1961. In the beginning the information was usually called the "Gardner material," and a formal control term "Bride" was finally affixed in 1950. From the late 1950s to 1961 the control term was "Drug".}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Benson|2001|p=59}}: "VENONA was the final NSA codeword for this very secret program. Earlier codewords had been JADE, BRIDE, and DRUG."</ref> Project was initiated on February 1, 1943, by [[Gene Grabeel]],{{sfn|Benson|2001|p=1}} an American mathematician and [[Cryptanalysis|cryptanalyst]], under orders from Colonel [[Carter W. Clarke]], Chief of Special Branch of the [[Military Intelligence Service (United States)|Military Intelligence Service]] at that time.<ref name=Gilbert1993>{{cite book|title=U.S. Army Signals Intelligence in World War II: a documentary history |chapter=Accepting the challenge|page=48 |publisher=[[United States Army Center of Military History]]|location=Washington, DC |year=1993|isbn=978-0-16-037816-4|editor-last=Gilbert |editor-first=James Leslie|editor2-last=Finnegan|editor2-first=John Patrick}}</ref> Clarke distrusted [[Joseph Stalin]], and feared that the Soviet Union would sign a [[separate peace]] with [[Nazi Germany]], allowing Germany to focus its military forces against the United Kingdom and the United States.<ref>{{cite book |url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/haynes-venona.html |author=John Earl Haynes |author2=Harvey Klehr |year=1999 |publisher=Yale University Press |chapter=Venona |title=Venona – Decoding Soviet Espionage in America |via=[[The New York Times]] Books |access-date=2014-02-15}}</ref> Cryptanalysts of the US Army's Signal Intelligence Service at [[Arlington Hall]] analyzed encrypted high-level Soviet diplomatic intelligence messages intercepted in large volumes during and immediately after World War II by American, British, and Australian listening posts.{{sfn|Modin|1994|p=194}} [[Frank Rowlett]] was one of the project leaders.{{sfn|Vogel |2019|p=19}}