Index and Concordance to Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and Soviet Cables Deciphered by the National Security Agency’s Venona Project
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- Bu səhifədəki naviqasiya:
- Bela (William) Gold
- Use of the Index
- Cover names are reused.
- Two separate but overlapping set of documentation.
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[ZHOLUD'] is the Russian original of the translated ACORN. The deciphered cables often contain both the original Russian in transliterated form and the translation into English. Many cables, however have only the translation or the transliteration. Consequently both forms are indexed. In this case there is a separate index entry of ZHOLUD' as well as for ACORN. While Vassiliev’s notebooks were transliterated with a single transliteration system (BGN/PCGN), the cables of the Venona project were decrypted and translated over a more than thirty year period by many different cryptanalysts and translators. Several different transliteration systems were used and there is significant inconsistency in how Russian names and terms are rendered into the Latin alphabet. In order to simplify the indexing task, all transliterated cover names appear in the index in all capital letters (following the Venona convention for the English translation) no matter how it actually appears in the decryption (ZHOLUD', for examples, appears as ZhOULD'). The transcribed decryptions, however, reproduce exactly the format of the original Venona project decryption.
however, the real identify of the cover named person is not known. In those cases, the entry indicates that the cover name is unidentified but may cite something about that person’s attributes if those are given in the text of the decrypted messages. As with Vassiliev’s notebooks, there is a separate entry for the real name that cites where the real name occurs and where the cover name (or names) of that person occurs.
While they are not indexed, the non-USA Venona cables have been transcribed into electronic format, compiled into thirty-three volumes, and are electronically searchable. The unindexed volumes are:
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Venona Stockholm Diplomatic Venona Stockholm GRU Venona Stockholm KGB Venona Stockholm Naval GRU Venona Tokyo Diplomatic.
Use of the Index : Points to keep in mind
during his association with the KGB. Each cover name has its own entry with citations to the pages where it appears. The real name entry cites where the real name appears and repeats the cover name citations as well.
Cover names are reused. Four different persons, for example, had the cover name “Smith” at one time or another. When more than one person had the same cover name this index attempts to separate out the different “Smiths”. Usually this is without difficulty because the multiple uses are well separated by time or activity. Occasionally, however, it is difficult and in those cases the lack of certainty is indicated in the entry.
Identifying the real name behind a cover name. Often this is without difficulty because the text of Vassiliev’s notebooks or the deciphered Venona messages simply provides the real name without ambiguity. Where the real name is not provided by the text, then the description of that person’s activity, where he or she worked, where they lived, or what trips they took at a particular time may make identification possible. In the case of the Venona decryptions, when the text did not provide a real name, most of the work of identification was done by the FBI whose field agents used the information about the activities of a cover name to pin down the real person behind it. Often, however, the information was insufficient to establish identification. Consequently, more than half of the cover names in this index are unidentified. When evidence about a cover name suggests an identification but is not conclusive, the uncertainty is noted.
quoted extracts and summaries he made of KGB archival material on KGB activities in the United States from the early 1930s to the early 1950s with some scattered later material as well. The deciphered cables of the Venona project dated from 1941 to 1950 with the bulk in the period 1943 to 1945. Most are also about KGB activity in the United States although there are also decoded cables of other Soviet agencies as well. There is, consequently, a considerable overlap in the two sets of material for KGB activity in the United States in the 1940s. In a number of cases a passage in Vassiliev’s notebooks turns out to be the complete text of a Venona cable that was only partially decoded. Vassiliev’s notebooks and the Venona decryptions have identical real name identification for nearly two hundred cover names. Vassiliev’s notebooks provide the real names for more than sixty cover names that were unidentified in the Venona decryptions. The Venona decryptions provide the real names behind nearly thirty cover names that are unidentified in Vassiliev’s notebooks. Vassiliev’s notebooks correct misidentification of four cover names in the Venona decryptions.
messages were fully decoded, most had passages that were indecipherable and sometimes names were only partially spelled. These partial spellings are indexed with eclipses indicating the missing letters. In both the Venona cables and Vassiliev’s notebooks often only the surname of a person is given in the text. When originally written, this would have been perfectly understandable to those reading the
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