1940s - 1950s
The Venona Project and the Reality of Soviet Espionage
The Venona Project was a highly crucial code-breaking effort undertaken by United States Military Intelligence (see Military Intelligence and the Jewish Threat).
Its findings provided definitive proof of the massive extent of Soviet espionage activities in America, which for many decades had been routinely denied by numerous mainstream journalists and historians.
The information gleaned from Venona played a crucial secret role in dismantling that hostile spy network during the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Jewish Leadership of Soviet Espionage
The Venona Decrypts revealed an undeniable reality concerning the composition of the Soviet espionage network within the United States government.
- Network Composition:
The Decrypts confirmed the existence of a large and overwhelmingly Jewish network of Stalinist agents situated near the top of the Roosevelt Administration.
- Historian Omissions:
The fact that the Venona Decrypts revealed the espionage activities of numerous Jewish spies, yet the term Venona and references to agents such as Harry Dexter White and the Rosenbergs are missing from the index of historian Joseph W. Bendersky’s 500-page book on the anti-Semitic politics of the US Army, raises severe doubts about his credibility as an objective historian.
Political Proximity to Communist Control
The information disclosed by the Venona Project underscored the extreme proximity of the US government to falling under Communist control during the early 1940s.
- Vice Presidential Influence:
From 1941 to 1944, Franklin D Roosevelt’s Vice President was Henry Wallace. Although Wallace himself was not disloyal, his top advisors were mostly Communist agents.
- Cabinet Appointments:
Wallace later stated that a Wallace Administration would have included Laurence Duggan as Secretary of State and Harry Dexter White as Secretary of the Treasury, thereby installing Stalinist henchmen at the top of the Cabinet, presumably supported by numerous lower-level officials of a similar political ilk.
This meant that America’s national government of the early 1940s actually came within a hair’s breadth of falling under Communist control.
The Project’s Near Destruction
Despite its vital importance, the Venona Project was nearly terminated by high-level political intervention.
- Directive to Shut Down:
In 1944, Soviet agents became aware of the crucial code-breaking effort. Soon afterwards, they arranged for the Roosevelt White House to issue a directive ordering the project shut down and all efforts to uncover Soviet spying abandoned.
- Military Defiance:
The only reason that Venona survived, allowing the reconstruction of the fateful politics of that era, was that the determined Military Intelligence officer in charge of the project risked a court-martial by directly disobeying that explicit Presidential order and continuing his work.
The Officer in Charge and the _Protocols_
The individual responsible for saving the Venona Project was a devoted Military Intelligence officer who held extreme views concerning the Jewish threat.
- Lifelong Belief:
It is a remarkable fact that the officer in charge of the vital Venona Project actually remained a lifelong believer in the importance of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, as late as the 1970s.
This officer quoted the _Protocols_ in a letter to a brother officer in 1977, questioning that if, as Jews claim, the Protocols were fabricated, why is it that so much they contain has already come to pass, and the rest is so strongly advocated by the _Washington Post_ and _The New York Times_.
- Historical Significance:
Historians must contend with the fact that the officer whose selfless determination saved Venona from destruction by the Roosevelt Administration was also a dedicated proponent of The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.
- This individual was also the target of particular condemnation by historian Joseph W. Bendersky for holding this belief in the _Protocols_ as late as the 1970s.