3
When the National Security Agency released the decryptions in the mid-1990s it released them as
photocopies of the deciphered cables translated into English and typed on the manual typewriters used by
NSA cryptanalysts the 1940–1980 period. Later it scanned the photocopies and placed them on the web
at: <
http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/
>. The scanned decryptions on the web are
images and while they can be downloaded and printed, they cannot be electronically searched. The
decryptions are on the web in chronological order with cables between Moscow and the different field
stations and agencies mixed together. There is no index or table of contents. This makes it very
difficult for anyone except a specialist to find the particular cable that may be relevant to their interest.
The more than 3,000 cables amount to more than 5,000 pages of material. Some are also difficult to
read because of the age of the original manually typed document. If one is looking for cables that
mention a particular person, the only way to be sure that one has located them all is to read all 5,000 plus
pages. Further, many of the persons discussed in the cables are there only under a cover name, and one
needs to know the cover name and keep in mind that cover names are changed from time to time and
some cover names are reused and may apply to an entirely different person. Consequently, knowledge
of these changes is necessary to accurate locate the cables where the person of interest is discussed.
One of the major barriers to use of the Venona decryptions was the lack of the availability of
them in electronic format so that names or other terms could be electronically searched. Under the
direction of Robert J. Heibel, Executive Director of the Institute of Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst
College in Erie, PA, students of the Institute over many years transcribed the photocopies into Microsoft
Word files. Researchers are much in debt to the students of the Institute of Intelligence Studies for
undertaking this task. In 2009 Director Heibel gave a set of these transcriptions to John Earl Haynes,
modern political historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Dr. Haynes, then
starting a year-long research fellowship at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center, undertook a project to
create this combined index and concordance to both the Alexander Vassiliev notebooks and the cables
decoded by the Venona project.
To facilitate access, the more than 3,000 cables are compiled into forty-five
volumes according to
what Soviet agency was involved and the location of the field station that send or received the cables.
This creation of artificial books also creates page numbers that facilitates indexing and makes moving
from the index entry to the actual cable easy. The volumes of transcribed cables are available on the
web at: <
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/venona-project
>. The transcriptions are highly accurate,
but occasional typos occur and some words on the original are difficult to read. Dr. Haynes in the
process of indexing corrected typos that occurred in index items, but not for non-index words. Anyone
wishing to check the transcription against the scan of the original can go to NSA’s Venona site and locate
the image of the original cable by the date.
Only the cables between Moscow and its American stations (which includes most of the cables
decoded) are completely indexed. These Moscow-USA cables are compiled into twelve volumes:
Venona New York KGB 1941-42
Venona New York KGB 1943
Venona New York KGB 1944
Venona New York KGB 1945
Venona Washington KGB
Venona San Francisco KGB
Venona USA GRU
Venona USA Naval GRU
Venona USA Diplomatic
Venona USA Trade
Venona New York/Buenos Aires Secret Writings
Venona Special Studies.
4
However, Americans and some other significant figures who appear in these Moscow-USA
volumes are also indexed to where they appear in non-USA traffic. There are citations to
Venona
Mexico City KGB,
Venona Ottawa GRU,
Venona London KGB, and
Venona London GRU.
The titles indicate the sorts of cables in each volume.
Venona New York KGB 1944, for example,
consists of cables between the Moscow headquarters of the KGB
3
and its station operating out of the
Soviet consulate in New York while the volume entitled
Venona USA GRU contains the deciphered
cables between the Moscow headquarters of Soviet military intelligence (GRU) and its American stations.
The Venona USA Diplomatic volume consists of cables Venona analysts judged to be of purely
diplomatic character and not connected of Soviet security or intelligence activity. Venona USA Trade
consists of cables dealing with the shipment of Lend-Lease supplies to the USSR. Venona New
York/Buenos Aires Secret Writings consists not of cables but of international postal letters between
persons in Argentina and the United States that wartime mail censorship discovered to have in them
hidden (invisible) writing in cipher that dealt with Soviet intelligence activity. The letters were given to
the Venona project for deciphering and appear to deal with KGB activities. Venona Special Studies
compiles a number of summaries Venona analysts prepared during the early years of the project about the
progress of deciphering cover names and identifying real names. Occasionally information on the real
identify of a cover name was provided in a special study and not as a footnote to a particular decoded
cable. Consequently, it was judged appropriate to index the special studies as well as the cables
themselves. The index also indexes the footnotes Venona analysts added to most decoded cables as well
as the decoded text in view of the often abundant information provided in the footnotes about those
persons and activities discussed in the cable text.
The deciphered cables in these volumes are not in strict chronological order. Nor are cables to
and from Moscow separated. These volumes are paginated, and an index entry references the page of
the cited volume. Page number are in the upper right hand corner of each page. For example, the entry
for the cover name ACORN is as follows:
************************************************************************************
ACORN [ZHOLUD'] (cover name in Venona): Bela (William) Gold.
Venona New York KGB 1945 8–9,
16; Venona Special Studies, 27.
************************************************************************************
ACORN is the translated cover name as it appears in the deciphered Venona cables. In this case
ACORN appears on page 8, 9, and 16 of the compiled volumes of decoded cables entitled Venona New
York KGB 1945 and page 27 of
Venona Special Studies The Venona project follow the convention of
placing cover names in all capital letters without quotation marks.
———————————
3. The KGB (Committee for State Security) and its foreign intelligence arm have a complex
organizational history. The predecessors to the KGB, which came into existence in 1954, include the
Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage), GPU (State
Political Directorate), OGPU (United State Political Directorate), NKVD (People’s Commissariat of
Internal Affairs), GUGB (Main Administration of State Security), NKGB (People’s Commissariat of
State Security), MGB (Ministry of State Security), KI (Committee of Information), and MVD (Ministry
of Internal Affairs). For simplicity, the term KGB will be used to designate these various predecessor
organizations.