The Red Scare Was Real

...No such doubt exists concerning i Harry Hopkins, FDR's highly valued all- 'o sage from "Mlad" and "Charles"-- code December 2000 /January 62 200r . The American Spectator purpose aide, who as the war years went on insinuated himself increasingly in foreign affairs and national security matters...

...government knew and when it knew it, the answers to which turn out to be: a) a lot, and b) a lot earlier than the rest of us...

...Unindicted, Hall moved to Eng- the project to completion, it is the product land in 1962 , where he was interviewed by of a life's work in pursuit of truths too Romerstein in 1995...

...Nor, as Romerstein and Breindel recount, was that the only time Hopkins exploited his position to advantage the Soviets...

...them did not read...

...As such, mainfralnes crunching numbers, but by human beings, armed only with sharpened pencils and even sharper mathematical intellects, poring names for spies Theodore Hall and over printouts in hopes of discerning Klaus Fuchs, who were at Los Alamos order in oceans of numbers...

...They ical supplies to reach the beleaguered the House Committee on Un-American influenced U.S...

...Those agents helped the USSR obtain a nuclear weapon more While earlier commentators have Soviet Union spied aggressively and suc- decoded witl say much about our interest cessfully against the United States, turning any number of Americans, some serving our understanding of the Cold War...

...Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindel's story t e r s - f o r a few months in deals in facts that strain to dispel fictions, some of them durable falsehoods now more than 50 }'ears old...

...policy toward the Soviet Polish forces...

...bomb effort, with Stalin receiving reports When Oppenheimer was denied secuon America's atomic program as early rity clearance in 1954, it was on grounds as 1941...

...While the official U.S...

...Impossibly, helping prepare the test blast...

...export approval of a Soviet request for several tons of uranium from a New York City chemical company, flagged by U.S...

...characterized Hopkins as merely a "liberal in a hurry" or even, as one put it, "an stein is a one-time pad, perfectly posiunconscious agent" of the USSR, a May The Hall episode stands as a snapshot tioned to riddle out the enigma of Soviet 1943 Venona intercept suggests a harsher of what Romerstein and Breindel's careful espionage in the United States...

...government's most highly' classified files, beyond reach of an...

...Take Theodore Hall, ern Europe...

...Army officials as highly suspect...

...of the interlocutors who so publicly and passionately' debated the issue of Soviet espionage in America...

...rience, published by the Heritage Foun- known for two weeks, courtesy of a mesA man with spies in high places The Venona Secrets is a case stud)in they found patterns, translating numbers what the U.S...

...Yet capturing the signals was one thing, cracking the code quite DANIEL McGROARTY is a senior director Truman drew Stalin aside at Potsdam and that efforts to enlist Oppenheimer as to make his careful statement that Amer- an agent were high on their list...

...Later still, when a decrypt of a 1944 Venona intercept a spy story tellingly told, no worse for the in May 1945, President Truman sent Hop- implicated him in atomic espionage...

...N 63 TheAmerican Spectator - December 2000 / January 2ooI the American effort to build the bomb, el lies on top of terrible truths-as well as who as a committed member of the the tacit assistance of other American Young Communist League dutifully officials too embarrassed at how high the reported on America's atomic weapons infiltration had reached to endure the progress to his Soviet spymasters...

...When ly engaged in espionage against the U.S., America's Traitors Herbert Romerstein arzd Eric Breindel Reg~ery Publishing 400 pages / $29.95 BY REVIEWED Daniel McGroarty T he Venona Secrets is a spy story, but not of the usual kind...

...During the European endgame of World War II, when the Polish Home Army rose up against Nazi forces, FDR and Churchill pressed Stal- Venona are household names in to approve landing rights to allow crit- to anyone familiar with the hearings of rapidly than it would have otherwise...

...Shown the Venona decr}q)ts that documented his activities as clopedic knowledge of the American a Soviet agent, Hall would not confirm his Communist Party, Soviet spy tradecraft, as life as a spy, though he did, recounts Rome> well as the ways of U.S.-based progressive stein, "express concern that even at that and peace movements, Herbert Romerlate date he might be prosecuted...

...govemment was not prepared to make cases this volume represents the last work of a against Soviet spies based solely on Venona life cut short...

...postArmy "liberating" Poland and intent on Rosenberg, etc.--others are essentially war policy in ways that helped the Soviets pausing the Red Army's march long unknown, call them the USSR's unsung erect their puppet state empire in Eastenough to be sure the Nazis annihilated heroes of espionage...

...atomic passing atomic secrets to the Soviets...

...Astonishingly, the encryptionencrusted Venona intercepts IfVenona categorically confirms the into Cyrillic script, a language most of identity of some Soviet spies, in other instances the intercepts tighten the circle, By late 1946, the code crackers at the but fall maddeningly short of certitude...

...Strategic Airforces in Europe) of his intent to withhold cables from Winston Churchill obloquy of exposing it...

...position was to BreindeI, who died in 1998 at the age of 42 , press for free elections in Eastern Europe, Hopkins remained silent on the elections issue, and instead impressed on the Soviet dictator that the U.S...

...Venona was the name given to the wartime effort to intercept and decipher broadcasts originating from radio transmitters atop the Soviet Embassy in Washington, as well as messages from the Soviets' U.N...

...ambassador in London that All of which makes The Venona Secrets Hall was questioned bythe FBI in 195o might rekindle FDR's resolve...

...By 1945, over 2oo,ooo such messages had been intercepted and transcribed...

...Hopkins's sympathy toward the Soviets took unusual forms: As head of Lend-Lease, Hopkins intervened to urge U.S...

...With his encydesired to see friendly countries all along the Soviet borders...

...Only the Soviets' occasional reuse of "one-tinle pads"- code keys that allowed the bearer to render seemingly random ribbons of numbers into letearl} 1942 opened the door to U.S...

...The evidence unearthed by the authors lay encased for the past half-cen- were not broken by' massive tury in some of the U.S...

...What we truth: The highly-placed "Agent *9" who detective work shows in ample detail: The make of the message he and Breindel have passed along minutes of a private meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt was in finally separating fact from fiction in none other than Harry Hopkins...

...For Eric stonewalling the FBI, given that the U.S...

...Stalin, bent on the Soviet Activities--Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Union during the war, as well as U.S...

...Hall wear that the events in question occurred kins to Moscow to meet with Stalin...

...Tales From Decrypts The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and another...

...At a critical moment when Roo- year-old Harvard undergrad, enlisted into apologists who knowingly sought to shovsevelt's interest in resupplying the Poles ebbed, Hopkins told the Deputy Commander for Operations (of the U.S...

...In 1995, just less than 3,000 Venona messages that had been partially or fully decrypted were declassified...

...Breindel and Romerstein tread lightly, on the technical feat of the Venona decrypts, an astonishing accomplishment in its own right...

...desired "a Poland friendly to the Soviet Union and in fact many do not want told...

...What Venona shows is unaware until he ascended to the pres- that many of those same friends were not idency that America had the bomb: He merely Party members, but were activelearned the news after Stalin did...

...missions in NewYork and San Francisco...

...lied about his involvement, effectively more than a half century ago...

...Venona, i author of Trinnietta Gets a Chance: Six ica had successfully tested a "weapon of however, cannot answer whether their Families and Their School Choice Expe- unusual destructive force," Stalin had attempts succeeded...

...for Romerstein, who saw &crypts...

...or the U.S...

...Which means not only--as is that so many of his friends were Ameriwidely remarked-was Harry Truman can Communists...

...Typically, spy stories exist in fiction, and strain for the feel of fact...

...W hile some of the agents whose at the highest levels of government, into identities are validated by Soviet agents...

...In their work these agents of the Polish renegades, was vehemently for instance, a brilliant and eccentric 19- influence had the assistance of active opposed...

...with the White House Writers Group and dation Press...

...U.S...

...code crackers...

...Under Hopkins's pressure, the uranium export approval was granted...

...Armv's Arlington Hall facility deci- Consider the case of atomic physicist J. phered a message indicating that the Robert Oppenheimer, long suspected of Soviets had penetrated the U.S...

...fortunately, the company was unable to locate a supply to fill the Soviet order...