Soviet attempts to infiltrate highest levels of the US gov - VENONA Project

[Nie Trink Wasser]

Introduction to the VENONA Project
An Effort to Digitize and Enhance the VENONA Documents
by Mr. William P. Crowell, Former Deputy Director, National Security Agency

In July 1995 the Intelligence Community ended a 50-year silence regarding one of cryptology's most splendid successes - the VENONA Project. VENONA was the codename used for the U.S. Signals Intelligence effort to collect and decrypt the text of Soviet KGB and GRU messages from the 1940's. These messages provided extraordinary insight into Soviet attempts to infiltrate the highest levels of the United States Goverment.

Today, we are proud to offer these exceptional documents on the NSA home page and we invite you to study and interpret them in the context of history. NSA has declassified over 3000 messages related to VENONA. We believe they will not only provide a window into Soviet espionage during the 1940's, but will also give you a glimpse of the important contributions signals intelligence and cryptographic expertise make to our nation's security.

http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/

[ImpyTimpy]

There's a pretty good book called Spy Catcher that deals in part with the VENONA project and how it all came about. It's actually more of an inside perspective, since it's written by an ex MI5 director. I'd give more details on the book but I forgot the author's name (read it a long time ago).

:p