19 Facts About Venona Project

The Venona project remained secret for more than 15 years after it concluded.

Sometime in 1945, the existence of the Venona Project program was revealed to the Soviet Union by cryptologist-analyst Bill Weisband, an NKVD agent in the US Army's SIGINT.

VENONA Project was initiated on February 1,1943, by Gene Grabeel, an American mathematician and cryptanalyst, under orders from Colonel Carter W Clarke, Chief of Special Branch of the Military Intelligence Service at that time.

Venona Project messages indicated that Soviet spies worked in Washington in the State Department, Treasury, Office of Strategic Services, and even the White House.

Existence of Venona Project decryption became known to the Soviets within a few years of the first breaks.

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Identification of individuals mentioned in Venona Project transcripts is sometimes problematic, since people with a "covert relationship" with Soviet intelligence are referenced by cryptonyms.

Venona Project has added information—some unequivocal, some ambiguous—to several espionage cases.

Venona Project claimed Harry Hopkins was a secret Russian agent.

Venona Project has added significant information to the case of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, making it clear Julius was guilty of espionage, and showing that Ethel, while not acting as a principal, still acted as an accessory, who took part in Julius's espionage activity and played a role in the recruitment of her brother for atomic espionage.

Venona Project decryptions were important in the exposure of the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs.

Some earliest messages decrypted concerned information from a scientist at the Manhattan Venona Project, who was referred to by the code names of CHARLES and REST.

In 1950, George Ronald Richards was appointed ASIO's deputy-director of operations for Venona Project, based in Sydney, charged with investigating intelligence uncovered the eleven Australians identified in the cables that were decoded.

Much of its history, knowledge of Venona Project was restricted even from the highest levels of government.

Venona Project was not told the material came from decoded Soviet ciphers.

However, the first detailed account of the Venona project, identifying it by name and making clear its long-term implications in post-war espionage, was contained in MI5 assistant director Peter Wright's 1987 memoir, Spycatcher.

One of the considerations in releasing Venona Project translations was the privacy interests of the individuals mentioned, referenced, or identified in the translations.

Venona Project's reasons include legal uncertainties about the admissibility of the translations as evidence, and the difficulties that prosecution would face in supporting the validity of the translations.

The Schneirs' critique of the Venona Project documents was based on their decades of work on the case of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.

Currently, Venona Project 1822 is the only message for which the complete decrypted Russian text has been published.