“Of spies and spin: Cold War politics and
communist espionage”
Newberry Teachers’ Consortium
November 10, 2006
David Krugler, presenter
Origins of the CPUSA
Why did the USSR want to spy?
Stalinist Valentine—creepy…
Why did Soviet spying go
undetected?
•Lack of coordinated
procedure
•More worried about the
Fascists
Why did people spy?
• Greed
• True believers
in communism
• Nationalism
• Arrogance, the
glory of
spying
Spies for the Soviet Union
Lawrence Duggan a.k.a KNYaZ
•State
Department
•Found out
in 1948,
jumped out
of a building
in NYC
•Some say
he was
murdered
Congressman(!) Samuel Dickstein
•a.k.a CROOK
•Took bribes,
spied for money
•Made $150,000
(2006 dollars)
Harry Dexter White
• Top official in the
Treasury Department
• Used spy Nathan Gregory
Silvermaster to pass
documents & information
• In 1944, he told the
Soviets that Vice President
Henry Wallace and
Secretary of State Cordell
Hull had discussed giving
the USSR a $5 billion loan
Atomic spy Klaus Fuchs
David & Ruth Greenglass
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
• Photograph taken during a
court appearance, August
23, 1950
• The Rosenbergs were
executed in June, 1953
• Their two young sons
were left orphans
Theodore Alvin Hall
• Hall graduated from
Harvard at age 18
• Both he and his
roommate were
communists
• The Manhattan Project
recruited Hall; he then
offered his services to
the Soviets
Elizabeth Bentley
• Graduate of Vassar
and Columbia
• Joined CPUSA in
1935
• She worked as a
courier
• In 1945, she
“defected” & became
a FBI informant
Whittaker Chambers
Chambers shown
at his desk at
Time Magazine
Alger Hiss, a.k.a “ALES”
• Hiss testifying
before HUAC in
August 1948
• Hiss emphatically
denied passing
government
documents to
Chambers
Hiss on stage with President Harry S. Truman, 1945
Congressman Richard Nixon reviewing the
“Pumpkin Papers” provided by Chambers
Venona
Uncovering the secrets of
Soviet espionage in the 1940s
Venona was an extraordinary decoding
operation that remained secret for 50 years
• It “broke” the code to 3000 Soviet
messages—more than 5000 pages of text
• Begun in 1943 as a wartime precaution,
Venona did not decode messages until 1946
• Thanks to Venona, the US uncovered the
depth of and damage caused by Soviet
espionage
Venona Shows that Hiss is Guilty
Soviet encryption and encoding
•
Text converted into 4 digit numerical
codes
•
Codebooks were like dictionaries, except
they converted words into numbers
[Following examples taken from John Earl Haynes and
Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in
America (Yale University Press, 1999), 26-28]
Example of 4 digit coding
PILOT DELIVERED REPORT ABOUT FUEL
7934
2157
1139
3872
2166
Conversion into 5 digit sets
Pilot
delivered
report
about
fuel
7934
2157
1139
3872
2166
79342
15711
39387
22166
One-Time Pads
Each page has 60 five digit groups
Sending clerk uses “cue” group: first group
from the upper left-hand corner of the first
page
Groups are paired, then added . . .
Adding the numbers
Codebook
One-time
pad
79342 15711 39387 22166
26473 56328 29731 35682 23798
(cue
group)
Enciphered 26473 25660 34442 64969 45854
message
Numbers then converted into letters
1. = I
2.
3.
4.
5.
=
=
=
=
U
Z
T
R
6. = E
7.= W
8.= A
9.= P
0.= O
Our message thus becomes . . .
UETWZ UREEO ZTTTU
ETPEP TRART
Receiving clerk then . . .
• Converts letters back into numbers
• Using cue group, consults the proper onetime pad
• Subtracts the pad groupings to produce the
original five digit sets
• Slides the 5th number back to the preceding
set.
• Consults the code book . . . .
. . . and is able to read the message:
“PILOT delivered report about fuel”
Venona and McCarthy
Telegram and Wheeling Speech
Truman’s Response (unsent?)