The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America's Traitors

by Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel

Book Overview

The Venona Secretspresents one of the last great, untold stories of World War II and the Cold War. In 1995, secret Soviet cable traffic from the 1940s that the United States intercepted and eventually... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0895262258
• ISBN13: 9780895262257
• Release Date: October 2001
• Publisher: Regnery History
• Length: 608 Pages
• Weight: 1.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.6" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

M.S. Butch is wrong and should not review a book not read

This book is an excellent, interesting, scary and well-research document - and I can say that because I actually read the book and I am now buying a second copy for a friend. M.S Butch is also wrong in saying McCarthy did not identitfy any communists in government. He also did not distroy any lives, including any Hollywood lives since he was not involved in the Hollywood Ten episode in any way, shape or form (everyone should know by now that you can't believe everything or anything you read in the New York Times). Here's a list of eight people Mc Carthy identified as communists - and guess what?! He was right!T.A. BissonMary Jane KeeneyCedric BelfrageSolomon AdlerFranz NeumannLeonard MinsGustavo DuranWilliam Remington

An amazing unappreciated episode

One of the issues that probably most people are not aware of is that the Venona decrypts only decoded about 1/3 of 1% of the Soviet cable traffic during the WW2 time period. From that tiny fraction of decoded or partially decoded messages, about 300 code-names for Soviet agents/spies/traitors of various types were figured out. But of the 300 only about half were eventually identified with actual names. There may have been some agents with duplicate names, but even so, the number is staggeringly large. Most people who are even aware of all this probably think the number was very small. One wonders how many more names of spies might have been unmasked if more than three out of each thousand messages had been decoded. These spies not only stole/gave away the atomic bomb, but they also made or influenced key policy decisions that favored Soviet Communist expansion. Today, we are still living with the nightmares created by the decisions made by those spies.I wish that, although the decryption, based on one-time pads, and itself betrayed, AND enormously expensive and difficult would have continued. There are more pressing priorities today; nevertheless newer super computers, parallel processors, and other techniques might be able to help us embarrass some of the people who betrayed the people of United States, Europe and Asia.

Soviet Spies and US Traitors

Over the years there has been a vast array of books about Soviet espionage and its American helpers: Alger Hiss, the Rosenbergs, Harry Dexter White, Nathan Gregory Silvermaster, and so many more.No matter the evidence, some members of the US press and intelligentsia refused to come to grips with the truth and admit that some of their great liberal heroes were actually agents of Stalin.Herbert Romerstein's book proves once and for all that they were all guilty as charged. During the Second World War the United States intercepted and decoded secret soviet radio transmissions from Moscow to their agents in America. Using these documents, and materials from Soviet archives, Romerstein narrates the incredible story of just how deeply KGB agents penetrated the American government to its highest levels.Romerstein's encyclopedic knowledge of the subject, based on years of research and study, puts the entire tragic story into historical pespective and makes fascination reading. If you are going to buy just one book of history this year, this is it!

Unambivalent Judgments

The VENONA Secrets offers further analysis of the worldwide WWII KGB/GRU espionage operations described in the encrypted telegrams (called VENONA) decoded after the war by US Army and British codebreakers and made public only in 1995 by NSA. These once top secret messages led to the arrest and conviction of the Rosenbergs and Klaus Fuchs, while providing the basis for shutting down many of the Soviet wartime espionage netowrks. They also documented the charges of Soviet espionage in America made by former Communist agents Whitticker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley and a number of others. This book, as opposed the the several others written on the topic, supplies new material in at least three areas. First, author Roemrstein's long experience in the field has allowed him to add documented perspective on the US Communist Party relationship to the Soviet secret services. In at least one case, that of Ruth Olsen, mentioned but unidentified in the VENONA material released, he provides the missing links. He also adds new details obtained from the so-called MAST decrypts that discussed mainly administrative matters between Soviets overseas and Moscow. Second, the authors apply their experience to three cases about which other authors have been more cautious: Harry Dexter White, Robert Oppenheimer, and Harry Hopkins, while discussing new materail on Albert Einstein and his tryst with a Soviet agent. Many liberal academics and others who continue to make the argument 'that the Rosenbergs and Hiss were innocent victims of lies told by Chambers, Bentley and the FBI', will scramble to find alternative explanations for the analysis that convinces Romerstein and Breindel that White was a cooperating communist agent before WWII started for America, and that Oppenheimer was the same during the war. It doesn't stop there. Perhaps most controversial of all conclusions is that Harry Hopkins (FDR's principal personal advisor) was a Communist before and VENONA's Agent 19 serving the Soviets during the war. Few will challenge the validity of evidence presented, though there is likely to be heartburn and skepticism with regard to the authors' analysis and conclusions. The judgment as to who is right is one for the reader.Third, while the focus of the book is mainly on America, the anti-semetic policies of the Soviet Union generally get a chapter based on new material. There are also chapters on the KGB use of jouralists as agents, the extensive KGB penetration of the OSS (America's wartime national intellignece service), and an appendix with selected VENONA documents to give the reader an idea of the raw evidence.For the scholar, intellignece historian, and the reader who has long sought to learn the truth and make some sense of the Communist activities in the USA during the period 1920 - 1950, The VENONA Secrets is a postive contribution that should be studied carefully.

Herbert Rommerstein is the leading expert on communist subve

Herbert Rommerstein,Jr. is by far the leading expert on the American Communist Party and subversion in America.I once had the opportunity to meet Mr.Rommerstein through a mutual friend assigned to the Spanish delagation of the U.N. during the 1950's. He was quite knowledgeable then and quite didactic on subversive activities.His book the Venona Secrets will be an eye opener for liberals and Soviet apologists and I assure you they will not be able to refute his keen research. John Rowland