Venona


The U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service, the precursor to the National Security Agency, began a secret program in February 1943 later codenamed VENONA

The mission of this small program was to examine and exploit Soviet diplomatic communications but after the program began, the message traffic included espionage efforts as well.

Although it took almost two years before American cryptologists were able to break the KGB encryption, the information gained through these transactions provided U.S. leadership insight into Soviet intentions and treasonous activities of government employees until the program was canceled in 1980.

The VENONA files are most famous for exposing Julius (code named LIBERAL) and Ethel Rosenberg and help give indisputable evidence of their involvement with the Soviet spy ring.

The first of six public releases of translated VENONA messages was made in July 1995 and included 49 messages about the Soviets' efforts to gain information on the U.S. atomic bomb research and the Manhattan Project. Over the course of five more releases, all of the approximately 3,000 VENONA translations were made public.

ImageTitle
 12FEB_ALLOTMENT_MONEY.PDFAllotment of money to Canberra for expenses during the first quarter of 1947 12 February (Release 5)
 3MAR_ALLOTMENT_TO_MOTHER.PDFAllotment to mother of KGB personality 3 March (Release 3)
 9JUL_ALEKSANDR.PDFAlmost totally unrecovered. References ALEKSANDR 9 July 1942 (Release 2)
 24JUN_ALTERATION_PASSPORT_KGB_AGENT.PDFAlteration of a passport for a KGB agent
 11JAN_LIAISON_ALBERT.PDFAmended translation re: liaison with ALBERT
 24FEB_AMENDMENT_MOUNTAINEER.PDFAmendmendt: Information from "MOUNTAINEER" received via "ORESTES"
 5JUL_PETERS_MSG.PDFAmendment of translation of PETER's message 5 July (Release 3)
 21MAY_AMENDMENT_ROK.PDFAmendment to "ROK"
 22JAN_AMEND_TELEGRAM.PDFAmendment to a telegram.
 1SEP_CONVERSATION_EVATT_LIFANOV_AMEND.PDFAmendment to Conversation between EVATT and LIFANOV about MALONEY 1 September (Release 5)
 5FEB_AMENDMENT_PER_BART.PDFAmendment to information from PER and BART 5 February 1942 (Release 5)
 6OCT_INSTRUCTIONS_CLAUDE_AMEND.PDFAmendment to Instructions for "CLAUDE": Recruitment of MILNER and HILL queried 6 October (Release 5)
 4MAY_UN_PERSONNEL_ENQUIRIES.PDFAmendment to Instructions Regarding Enquiries to be made about United Nations Organization Personnel
 10APR_CANBERRA_AMENDMENT.PDFAmendment to Instructions to Canberra regarding Russian born British subject 10 April (Release 5)
 10MAY_AMENDMENT_TO_1016.PDFAmendment to message no. 1016 10 May 1943 (Release 4)
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