Venona project

"Venona" redirects here. For the place in Roman Britain, see Venonae.

The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980.[1] It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union (e.g. the NKVD, the KGB, and the GRU).[2] Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy.

During the 37-year duration of the Venona project, the Signal Intelligence Service decrypted and translated approximately 3,000 messages.[3] The signals intelligence yield included discovery of the Cambridge Five espionage ring in the United Kingdom[4] and Soviet espionage of the Manhattan Project in the US[5] (known as Project Enormous). Some of the espionage was undertaken to support the Soviet atomic bomb project.[6] The Venona project remained secret for more than 15 years after it concluded. Some of the decoded Soviet messages were not declassified and published by the United States until 1995.[7][8]

  1. ^ Benson 2001, pp. 7–8.
  2. ^ Benson 2001, p. 5.
  3. ^ Benson 2001, p. 14.
  4. ^ Benson 2001, p. 34.
  5. ^ Benson 2001, pp. 20–22.
  6. ^ Benson, Robert L. "The Venona Story" (PDF). www.nsa.gov. p. 1. Retrieved November 9, 2024.
  7. ^ "Venona: Soviet Espionage and The American Response, 1939-1957 - CSI". www.cia.gov. Retrieved November 9, 2024.
  8. ^ "Venona Documents". www.nsa.gov. Retrieved November 9, 2024.