Product Description: The Venona Files are several intercepted communiques between the Soviet Union and American Communists following WWII.
Amazon.com Review: Some historians and journalists are starting to regard the cold-war-era American Communist Party as nothing more than a quaint club of polite if misguided ideologues. In The Venona Secrets, Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel intend to create a new impression of treacherous Americans "who willfully gave their primary allegiance to a foreign power, the USSR.... For Communists, true patriotism meant helping to make the world a better place by advancing the interests of the Soviet Union in any way possible." By using the now-celebrated Venona documents--top-secret Soviet cables sent between Moscow and Washington, D.C., in the 1940s--Romerstein and Breindel tell a frightening story of how deeply spies penetrated the U.S. government. There was the famous case of Alger Hiss, whose guilt as a Soviet spy is now beyond doubt thanks to Venona. Less well known, but still important, were the roles of Harry Hopkins in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's White House and Harry Dexter White in the Treasury Department.
Romerstein, a veteran cold warrior, and Breindel, the former editorial-page editor of The New York Post (he died before the book's publication, at the age of 42), are not the first to discuss the Venona papers in depth--readers of The Haunted Wood, by Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, and Whittaker Chambers, by Sam Tanenhaus, will know much of the story. Yet this may its most aggressive telling. Romerstein and Breindel include necessary chapters on the Hiss-Chambers dispute, the Elizabeth Bentley spy ring, and the charges against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They are particularly forceful in arguing that journalist I.F. Stone and atomic scientist Robert Oppenheimer were Soviet spies. Another target--and a provocative one--is Albert Einstein, whom they describe as "tainted" by his indirect ties to Soviet intelligence. The Venona Secrets will make heads turn, and it will show that the debates over the cold war and its meaning can be as hot now as they were then. --John J. Miller
Must read for those on the fence about the American Communist movement and who ran and supported it. It saddens me how some people still think The Rosenbergs,Hiss and others were somehow just misled or completely innocent. In the real world when I study those peoples words I usually can write them off as only following the party line to defend what is wrong despite any evidence or proof otherwise. This book puts one more salvo through an already dead theory that there was no communist subversion plot in the US. That does not detract from it's usefulness as a great reference or primer on US communist subversion. Read it for an even more in depth study of VENONA (already well described in previous reviews) Sometimes the authors do leave you to put some pieces together,nothing wrong with that,a decent education in the real world will bring you to many of the same conclusions.If the topic was not so important I would give it 4 stars for being a bit dry at times,but the juicy bits make up for it and you will come away with a better knowledge of who Americas traitors were and how they were controlled by Moscow.One last note to those on the left who may avoid this book based on reviews or content,when I read Chomsky I still come away with knowledge and a feeling I gained something, just the same as when I read Buchanan (who also says absurd things to annoy me). The truth usually lies between the extremes if you do not search both sides you will often be in the wrong.
Shocking Details Much in the way revelations about the cracking of the German Enigma code have forever altered the history of the Second World War, the Venona Secrets should change the history of Soviet espionage in the United States.
This book reveals details about the extensive Soviet penetration of the Communist Party of the United States, unions, the government, industry, the Democratic Party and the media. No account of the era of McCarthyism can be viewed as complete without including some evidence of how extensive was the decades-long Soviet infiltration of the U.S. government at the highest levels -- including Harry Hopkins, a close advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt -- and of the atomic program. Soviet spying, which led to the Russian atomic bomb only four years after our own, reached the highest levels of the Manhattan Project, including J. Robert Oppenheimer; Soviet spies even targeted Albert Einstein for anti-Western propaganda efforts.
One result of the successful Soviet atomic spying was that Stalin, who knew about the atomic bomb, felt secure in giving the green light for the North Korean invasion of the south in 1950, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.
My only, relatively minor, criticism of the book is that it is almost too detailed for a casual student of history. As someone who hasn't studied Soviet history for twenty years, some of the names had faded from my memory.
A Biased Account The Venona Secrets is a deceptive book. It tries to pass itself off as an objective portrait of Soviet spying in the US, but by the time the reader is a third of the way in it becomes apparent that the authors are more interested in smearing "Liberals" than in painting a true portrait of their subject. Although the information the authors provide is interesting, the biased and heavy-handed way it's presented negates whatever scientific value it might have. For example, the authors insist that J. Robert Oppenheimer was working for the Soviets (they call this a "fact") yet they present absolutely no proof that Oppenheimer was anything more than an idealistic, naive man who couldn't keep his mouth shut and whose only contribution to the advancement of Communism in America was money to the CPUSA. The book is full of these so-called "facts" with little to nothing to back them up. The authors praise Joe McCarthy and claim in the last chapter of the book that he was barely a factor in the anti-Communist hysteria of the 1940's and 1950's, ignoring the fact that MCCarthy capitalized on fears of Communism obscenely and was wrong far more than he was right about who was and was not loyal. McCarthy's methods of terrorism and hypocrisy in running hearings that could have been chaired by Stalin are completely overlooked, as are the innocent lives he destroyed in his smear campaign. The authors also praise Senator Henry Jackson as some sort of all-American crusader against Communism, not even mentioning that all of Jackson's anti-Communist attacks were motivated by his virulent anti-Semistism and hatred of blacks. Overall this book is nothing more than an indictment of Liberal ideology -- one can simply hear the disdain for Liberals dripping from the authors' prose -- and should not be given much credence by scholars not interested in right-wing propaganda who want an objective account of Venona. The authors have sacrificed their credibility for their Conservative agenda; they deserve not to be taken seriously.
An Important Book on USSR espionage If you went to school before the Soviet archives & Venona papers were opened up/released (1991-1995), you must read this book. If you don't know what the Venona Project's papers say, then your knowledge on immediate pre and post WWII Soviet espionage is incomplete and, most importantly, probably not accurate. The truth is uncomfortable to some- Alger Hiss was definitely a spy, as were the Rosenbergs, and penetration into New Deal personnel was very deep. Plenty of material for the anti-FDR types, and the "McCarthy was right" folks. I personally feel very uncomfortable with the fact that about 2 our of every 3 names that pop up here as spies were Jewish. Most humiliating. The authors, no anti-semites they, make the irony of Jews spying for the virulent Jew-hater Uncle Joe very clear. Like many peoples, though perhaps more so, Jews have an unfortunate tendency towards self-delusion. The book is a bit of a bumpy read, sometimes flowing smoothly, sometimes reading like its out of Reader's Digest (a bit...lowbrow??), which accounts for the 4 stars, rather than 5. It has photos of many of the spies, but overall the photographs could be much stronger.
The Facts Laid Bare This book is the most complete "who's who" of the entire Soviet Communist movement from the early 1900s on. It effectively destroys the old notions that there was no connection between the Communist Party U.S.A. and Moscow. It demonstrates beyond question that Moscow's two-fold plan in the United States - influencing government policy and spying - were carried out for years by the people identified in the government hearings. The Venona decrypts, together with the examination of Soviet and American Communist archives, bring together the entire despicable story. A must-read book for those who want to sort fact from fiction concerning the history of the Soviet Union.
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