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
 19MAY_AMENDMENT.PDFAmendment to Report of 19 May 1944
 17MAY_AMENDMENT.PDFAmendment to translations of 17 May 1944
 23JUN_PRISONERS_OF_WAR.PDFAmendment to: Departure of agents, prisoners of war and collaborators 23 June (Release 5)
 30MAY_AMENDMENT_EFIM.PDFAmendment to: Moscow criticizes "EFIM" for lax observation of security rules
 16JUL_VISIT_BY_KLARA_AMENDMENT.PDFAmendment to: Proposed visit by "KLARA" to Yugoslavia 16 July (Release 5)
 9MAY_CLOTH_AMENDMENT.PDFAmendment to: Reference to "CLOTH" 9 May (Release 5)
 31DEC_COVERNAME_PETROV_AMENDMENT.PDFAmendment to: Reference to re-use of cover-name "PETROV" in Stockholm 31 December (Release 5)
 4MAR_AMENDMENT_CYLINDER.PDFAmendment: "CYLINDER's" Report on a secret session of the Finnish Sejm
 1JUN_WEAK-WILLED_MAN.PDFAmendment: In the third line of the text, please delete "[7 groups unrecovered]", and substitute ", being a weak-willed man". 1 June (Release 5)
 4FEB_AMENDMENT_MOUNTAINEER.PDFAmendment: Origin of material provided by "MOUNTAINEER"
 10APR_AMENDMENTS.PDFAmendments 10 April (Release 5)
 7JUN_AMENDMENT_GENNADIJ.PDFAMENDMENTS to "GENNADIJ" 7 June (Release 5)
 16APR_FINANCIAL_RETURN_AMENDMENT.PDFAmendments to Financial return for 1944 16 April (Release 5)
 24MAY_FED.PDFAmendments to Mention of "FED"
 24MAY_AMENDMENT_FED.PDFAmendments to Mention of "FED"
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