The Spies and the Evidence: Soviet Operatives and the Venona Project

The Cold War, as commonly understood, lasted approximately from 1946 to 1990. But the history of Soviet espionage networks inside the United States goes back much further. One key element of those networks was the Communist Party in the U.S. (CPUSA).

Far from being a political party, taking positions on issues and nominating candidates for elections, the CPUSA was organized to steal military and diplomatic secrets, to influence American government decision-making, and to keep ready a sabotage organization. The CPUSA was prepared to use violence if the moment came for an armed revolution inside the United States.

The U.S. Army’s Signal Intelligence Service was aware of the CPUSA’s activities. Sophisticated mathematics and technology were coordinated in the Venona Project, which confirmed “the involvement of American Communists with Soviet espionage during World War II,” in the words of Maurice Isserman.

The Venona project intercepted and decrypted messages to Moscow from operatives inside the U.S. These messages, directed to intelligence agencies in the Soviet Union, revealed details “about the involvement of several score (perhaps as many as 300) American Communists as accomplices of Soviet espionage during World War II.”

The Soviet Socialst government had a collection of intelligence agencies, with names like NKVD. The famous KGB wasn’t formed until 1954.

Although the Venona Project began yielding data as early as 1943, it was not made public until many years later. Even within the U.S. government, very few people knew about Venona. It was imperative to keep it secret, so that the Soviet Socialists didn’t know that Americans were able to intercept their communications, as Maurice Isserman writes:

“Venona” was the code name assigned a top-secret National Security Agency operation, whose existence was revealed to historians and the public only in 1995. During World War II, codebreakers from the United States Army’s Signal Intelligence Service (a precursor to the National Security Agency) began decrypting thousands of intercepted telegraphic cables sent from the Soviet Embassy and consulates in the United States to Moscow. Among the first decoded Venona cables was conclusive evidence that Soviet spies had managed to penetrate America’s most closely guarded wartime secret, the Manhattan Project. Later decoded messages helped lead F.B.I. agents to an American involved in atomic espionage.

Among other spies, Julius Rosenberg and his wife Ethel were discovered by the Venona Project. The Rosenbergs transmitted secret information about nuclear weapons to the Soviet. These transmissions enabled the Soviets to develop their own arsenal of highly destructive weapons. Small and large nations were hesitant to oppose or resist Soviet takeovers of weaker countries. Thus the Rosenbergs were complicit in the deaths of millions of people who died under these Soviet-sponsored dictatorships.

The Venona Project, which lasted in various forms until 1980, revealed not only contemporaneous Soviet espionage, but also earlier spy activity. Cases going back to the 1930s were uncovered:

From small beginnings in the 30’s, Soviet espionage efforts in the United States increased exponentially during the war years. Pro-Soviet Americans, many of them secret members of the Communist Party, working within such sensitive agencies as the State Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the C.I.A., provided K.G.B. agents with reams of useful information, ranging from well-informed political comments to purloined classified documents. Alger Hiss and Harry Dexter White are among those whose long-suspected involvement in such activities seems to be confirmed by the Venona cables.

Some individuals, confronted with evidence from the Venona Project, quickly “defected” and began working for the Americans, and were able to provide even more information about the Soviet Socialist spy network inside the U.S. One such individual was “Elizabeth Bentley, the notorious ‘spy queen’ who gathered information for transmission to Moscow from dozens of Federal employees.”

Other Soviet agents did not cooperate with the U.S. government after their crimes were discovered. They were dealt with, but in low-profile ways, so as not to attract attention and alert the Soviets to the fact the the Americans were able to intercept their communications:

Some of those compromised by their activities during the war left Government service voluntarily; others departed under suspicion and pressure. A few, most notably Hiss, suffered legal consequences. One of the ironies of the Venona Project was that while it helped the F.B.I. detect spies, it did little to enable their prosecution by the Justice Department; the last thing American intelligence services wanted to see at the height of the cold war was a lengthy courtroom discussion of the means by which they were able to ferret out the opposition's agents.

So even after being discovered by the U.S. intelligence agencies, the “hidden landscape of Soviet espionage in the United States in the 30’s and 40’s” remained largely unknown. Only a few specialists inside the U.S. government knew about the Soviet spies, their activities, and how the Americans eventually discovered and deactivated them.

Most of these spies did not do their work because they needed money, or because the Soviets were blackmailing them, although both of those scenarios did occasionally occur. Most of them did it because they embraced the Soviet ideology. Whether they understood what the Soviets were really doing, or whether they were under the illusion of an idealized version of Soviet Socialism, is difficult to discern. Maurice Isserman writes:

Many of them, of course, understood perfectly well the real purpose of the persistent inquiries from Bentley and the other American go-betweens who came by trolling for information. Looking back at their actions and the consequences of those actions, knowing what we now know about the horrific character of the Soviet Union in the Stalin years, knowing also the ultimate fate of the Communist system and ideology, I find it difficult to make the imaginative leap necessary to understand why they did it.

In any case, the danger from Soviet Socialist espionage, from the 1930s up to the 1980s, was greater than most Americans knew. Happily, the heroism of American cryptographers during those years was also greater than most people knew.

The Early American Militia: The Structure of Democracy and Freedom

The early settlers of the Thirteen Colonies, i.e., the settlers of the region that would become the United States, were faced with questions about how to provide for their own defense. Each colony, and each village within each colony, formed a militia unit. A ‘militia’ unit is a group of trained and armed citizens who are not professional soldiers, who are not paid, and who are not part of the army.

Members of a militia are ordinary people who have regular jobs: lawyers, farmers, teachers, nurses, cooks, etc. When there is a need for defensive action, they meet their fellow militia members as a military unit. When the action is over, they return to their everyday lives.

During the 1600s and 1700s, the militia was the primary defensive force in British North America. The British army was present, but proved to be less effective, and more expensive, than the militia groups. Residents of the Thirteen Colonies resented the fact that they had to pay taxes to pay for this useless presence. As historians Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski write,

The most important response to the dangerous military realities was the creation of a militia system in each colony. The British military heritage, the all-pervasive sense of military insecurity, and the inability of the economically poor colonies to maintain an expensive professional army all combined to guarantee that the Elizabethan militia would be transplanted to the North American wilderness. No colonial institution was more complex than the militia. In many respects it was static and homogeneous, varying little from colony to colony and from generation to generation. Yet the militia was also evolutionary and heterogeneous, as diverse as the thirteen colonies and ever-changing within individual colonies.

The concept of the militia was shaped by democracy and equality. Rich or poor, men were equally obliged to serve in the militia, and served side-by-side. The militia was an expression of the community, and the people spoke of “our” militia.

The soldiers in the army, on the other hand, were not part of the community. They were from far away. They had no affection for, or loyalty to, the local villages. Quite the opposite: such soldiers were often problems for the neighborhood residents.

At the heart of the militia was the principle of universal military obligation for all able-bodied males. Colonial laws regularly declared that all able-bodied men between certain ages automatically belonged to the militia. Yet within the context of this immutable principle, variations abounded. While the normal age limits were from 16 to 60, this was not universal practice. Connecticut, for example, began with an upper age limit of 60 but gradually reduced it to 45. Sometimes the lower age limit was 18 or even 21. Each colony also established occupational exemptions from militia training. Invariably the exemption list began small but grew to become a seemingly endless list that reduced the militia's theoretical strength.

The community spirit grew as most families contributed in one way or another to the shared work of defending the land. The feeling of equality grew as elite men and ordinary men served together. The sense of democracy grew as the people of the village made decisions together.

The dangers to the settlers varied from decade to decade: Indians (“Native Amerians”), French, Spanish, and other forces attacked from time to time. Millett and Maslowski explain:

If a man was in the militia, he participated in periodic musters, or training days, with the other members of his unit. Attendance at musters was compulsory; militia laws levied fines for nonattendance. During the initial years of settlement, when dangers seemed particularly acute, musters were frequent. However, as the Indian threat receded, the trend was toward fewer muster days, and by the early 1700s most colonies had decided that four peacetime musters per year were sufficient.

The main weapons were muskets, hatchets, and swords. Gradually, the rifle replaced the musket.

Almost every home had a firearm anyway, because hunting was a fundamental way of providing food for families.

Militiamen had to provide and maintain their own weapons. Militia laws detailed the required weaponry, which underwent a rapid evolution in the New World. Initially a militiaman was armed much like a European soldier, laden with armor, equipped with either a pike or matchlock musket, and carrying a sword. But Indian warfare was not European warfare, and most of this weaponry proved of limited value. By the mid-1670s colonial armaments had been revolutionized. Armor, which made it difficult to traverse rugged terrain and pursue Indians, disappeared. Pikes were equally cumbersome and of little use against Indians, who neither stood their ground when assaulted nor made massed charges. At times the matchlock was superior to Indian bows and arrows, but its disadvantages were many. It took two minutes to load, and misfired approximately three times in every ten shots. The weapon discharged when a slow-burning match came in contact with the priming powder, but keeping the match lit on rainy or windy days was difficult, and the combination of a burning match and gunpowder in close proximity often resulted in serious accidents. The flintlock musket replaced the matchlock. Depending on flint scraping against steel for discharge, flintlocks could be loaded in thirty seconds and misfired less often. Swords remained common weapons, but colonists increasingly preferred hatchets for close-quarter combat. Although both weapons were valuable in a melee, hatchets were also useful for a variety of domestic purposes.

Almost everyone in the community contributed to the task of defense in some way. Those who weren’t directly in the militia could, e.g., provide materials and supplies for the militiamen, or tend to the house and land of a militiaman who was away from home on militia work.

Those with little money received equipment from the community. Those who weren’t actively part of the militia were sometimes still required to maintain weapons ready in their homes, as Allan Millett and Peter Maslowski note:

Militia laws emphasized the importance of a well-armed citizenry in numerous ways. To ensure that each man had the requisite weapons and accoutrements, colonies instituted a review of arms, imposing the duty. of conducting it on militia officers, muster masters, or other specially appointed officials. Every colony's law detailed how destitute citizens could be armed at public expense, and legislatures provided for public arsenals to supplement individually owned armaments. Colonies also required that even men exempted from attending musters should be completely armed and equipped.

To participate in the community’s militia was a duty and even an obligation, as Adam Winkler writes:

A 1792 federal law mandated every eligible man to purchase a military-style gun and ammunition for his service in the citizen militia. Such men had to report for frequent musters — where their guns would be inspected.

Although the militia was a military concept, it shaped civilian culture and society, promoting a sense of mutuality and equality, and instilling a sense of duty, responsibility, and obligation into the individual citizens as they provided for their own defense, and participated in that defense, at the local level, not entrusting it to some far off imperial capital.

Originally instituted to protect the colonies from outside dangers, i.e., to keep the colonies safely a part of the empire, the militias would then be used to gain independence from the empire.

George Washington Visits a Synagogue: Religious Liberty in Action

As president of the United States, George Washington had a consistent, intentional, and long-lasting relationship with the Jewish people in the new country. He understood that not only the Americans, but also the rest of the world, would be watching to see if this new country would live up to the ideals stated in its founding documents.

At that time, the United States was unique in the world as a nation founded, not on the hereditary right of a dynastic family to rule, but rather on a set of concepts, as historian Yaari Nadav Tal writes:

President George Washington captured the new path his young nation was taking in his 1790 letter to the Jews of Newport. Unlike Europe, which still imposed liabilities based on religion and regulated the public expression of faith, the United States guaranteed people irrespective of their faith the equal enjoyment of religious freedom: “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship.” The United States secured religious freedom not grudgingly but graciously: “It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Jews in America were keenly aware of the fact that in England, and in some parts of Europe, Jewish people were not able to attain the status of a full citizen and that their civil rights were limited. Many of them had come to North America to seek full religious freedom and at the same time the right to participate fully in civic government.

To underscore the promise of America to these Jewish citizens, Washington not only wrote warmly to them, but also visited their synagogue. The act of the U.S. president setting foot into a synagogue was dramatic and radical.

Most heads of state in Europe or Great Britain didn’t do such things. The integrity of a nation founded on concepts is based on the consistency and honesty with which it applies those concepts to concrete specific situations. Washington understood that, at the very beginning of United States history, it was important for him to take such actions, as Yaari Nadav Tal explains:

On August 18, 1790, congregants of the Touro Synagogue of Newport, Rhode Island, warmly welcomed George Washington to both their place of worship and their city. Washington’s letter of response to the synagogue, delivered on the same day, has become famous for reinforcing the ideal of religious liberty in American life. Washington promised the synagogue more than mere religious tolerance, explaining that "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights." The letter continued with the promise that "the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

Washington understood that it was not despite his own firm religious beliefs that he could work to ensure the freedom for various other religions to be practiced, but rather that it was precisely because of his own beliefs that he was motivated to guarantee religious liberty to religions which differed from his own.

Washington was a Christian, and more specifically, he was an Anglican or Episcopalian. He was more than a mere member or attender of church. He was a vestryman and churchwarden, dedicating time and energy to his faith community.

The belief system to which he was committed demanded that he honor the religious liberties of other people, and the strength of his commitment was the force which drove him to ensure those freedoms for other faiths.

The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and the Monument Honoring its Men

Quickly after President Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, the first military unit composed of African Americans was formed. Many other units would be organized soon thereafter.

The 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment became famous during and after the U.S. Civil War. To honor the 54th’s soldiers, a monument was built in Boston, the city where the unit was organized. Philip Marcelo describes the carving: “Black men, rifles to their shoulders, march resolutely,” depicted in bronze, “on their way to battle.”

The towering bronze relief in downtown Boston captures the stirring call to arms answered by Black soldiers who served in the state’s famed Civil War fighting unit, which was popularized in the 1989 Oscar-winning movie “Glory.”

The monument was unveiled in 1897. The artist Augustus Saint-Gaudens had worked on it for fourteen years. Encouragement and funding for the cenotaph came from both Black and White citizen of Boston:

The creation of the memorial in the aftermath of the Civil War was championed by prominent Black Bostonians of the day.

Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was the commander of the regiment. His family was dedicated to the cause of ending slavery. They championed the 54th during the war, and cherished its memory afterward.

“The colonel’s family, a wealthy Boston” family, wanted to ensure that the monument would recognize the Black soldiers. The Shaw family, “strongly opposed to slavery, requested that” the monument “also honor the Black men who served and died” bravely and with committed perseverance “during their famed charge on Fort Wagner in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1863.”

The monument is also significant because it’s the nation’s first honoring Black soldiers, said Elizabeth Vizza, executive director of the Friends of the Public Garden, a group helping pay for a $3 million restoration of the monument, which started in earnest in May.

Saint-Gaudens spent 14 years creating a richly detailed bas relief, using Black men of different ages as models for his realistic soldiers. After it was unveiled to fanfare in 1897, American author Henry James declared the work “real perfection,” according to the National Park Service.

“This was a radical piece of art,” Vizza said. “It was not lost on people back then.”

For over a century, the monument has been a symbol and an inspiration to African Americans and their advancement toward civil rights. Philip Marcello continues:

Roughly half the regiment’s 600 soldiers were killed, wounded, captured or presumed dead following the failed assault on Fort Wagner, and their heroism inspired tens of thousands of Black men and others to sign up for the Union Army, helping turn the tide of the war.

Sgt. William Carney became the first Black man awarded the Medal of Honor for saving the regiment’s flag from capture. Two sons of prominent Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had pushed Lincoln to allow Blacks to serve in the war, also fought at Fort Wagner.

The powerful and uplifting monument, created to “recognize the achievements of the Black soldiers” is located prominently in one of Boston’s more important neighborhoods — a neighborhood called Beacon Hill.

A Moral Conflict: To Use Federal Troops in an American City

It is generally a bad thing for the leader of a country, and especially the leader of a free country, to command troops into action inside the borders of his own land. Such behavior is usually associated with the worst types of dictators.

But are there times when it’s right or necessary?

President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower was faced with this question in 1957. He’d appointed Earl Warren to be the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and Warren had presided over the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ruling. The decision had led to changes in the operation of various public school systems around the country.

Those changes met with fierce opposition in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas.

When the Democatic Party made Orval Faubus governor of that state, and when he complied by refusing to allow African American students to attend Little Rock Central High School, Eisenhower was faced with an instance of a local official directly and defiantly refusing to comply with a Supreme Court decision.

As a military leader with substantial experience, Ike knew that he could not allow this to continue. After discussions with Faubus and the consideration of various alternatives, Ike ordered the legendary 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock. If the Democratic Party would not allow the school to be desegregated and integrated, then the U.S. Army would do the job.

The soldiers of the 101st Airborne protected the Black students who wanted to attend school. The soldiers escorted the students into, and out of, school, and made sure that they were safe before, during, and after school.

It was an agonizing decision for Eisenhower. He knew that these students had the legal right to attend school, but he also knew that he was treading on thin ice to use troops inside the borders of the United States. He decided to go ahead with the action, saying that it was “a matter of justice.”

As historian Kasey Pipes explains:

The Little Rock crisis was the gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. Eisenhower’s actions were watched by many, including Senator John F. Kennedy. At the time, JFK was somewhat critical of Ike’s handling of the crisis. Five years later, in 1962, in a deliberate effort to avoid what he viewed as Ike’s overreaction at Little Rock, President Kennedy sent only U.S. Marshals into Ole Miss during the integration crisis there. When the mobs overwhelmed the Marshals, Kennedy relented and sent federal troops. He even instructed his aides to draw up the executive order based on the Eisenhower order at Little Rock.

Ike not only fixed the situation in Little Rock, but he laid the foundation for JFK’s actions at the University of Mississippi.

Still, it was a painful moment for the nation. No country wants to see its own army required to enforce a court ruling.

No president relishes the thought of sending soldiers into an American city. Eisenhower agonized over it. The day after the 101st Airborne arrived in Little Rock, Ike told a friend it had been a painful decision, as difficult as ordering the D-Day invasion. Ike’s deliberation is a measure of his leadership.

Eisenhower expressed his determination to do the right thing in a televised address to the nation. His military training and composure allowed him to express his thoughts clearly and without passion. He was focused on implementing what others later called a matter of justice.

The IRS and Payroll Withholding: Taking People’s Money When They’re Not Aware

In 1942, Congress imposed the first major income tax increase in many years, and one of the harshest. Many people had never paid income tax before. Prior to that time, it was imposed on only the wealthiest people. The taxes were to be paid on March 15, 1943.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) realized that millions of people didn’t understand that they had to pay. They didn’t understand how much they had to pay, and that they’d need to save up all year long to make such a big payment all at once. The new tax law was creating a disaster. What would happen when the day came, and people weren’t able to pay?

The IRS is part of the Treasury Department and is responsible for collecting taxes.

The government didn’t want to file charges against millions of taxpayers. It wouldn’t have even been possible to do so, because there were so many people involved. The legal fees in many cases would have been greater than the anticipated tax revenue.

Hurriedly, the IRS hoped to make people aware of what they had to do, as historian Amity Shlaes writes:

The Treasury nervously launched a huge public relations campaign to remind Americans of their new duties. A Treasury Department poster exhorted citizens: “You are one of 50,000,000 Americans who must fill out an income tax form by March 15. DO IT NOW!” For wartime theatergoers, Disney had prepared an animated short film featuring citizen Donald Duck laboring over his tax return beside a bottle of aspirin. Donald claimed exemptions and dependent credits for Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

The eventual solution to the problem was the invention and implementation of the payroll withholding system. Invented by Beardsley Ruml, this system collected taxes all year long, taking a percentage of an employee’s pay before the employee received his pay. The beauty of this system is that people don’t have to worry about accidentally forgetting to save up to pay a massive, once-a-year tax bill. It’s automatically saved for them.

Ruml’s system was put into practice in mid 1943, and has been operating ever since.

This system was and is highly successful. Everyone who gets paid, with a few exceptions, has a bit of her or his pay confiscated every week or every month, and that confiscated money is saved up to pay that person’s annual tax bill. The government has reliable access to people’s money.

There is, however, a problem with this system. It has been in place nearly a century, so long that people often forget that it exists. Workers can forget that the government is taking their money on a regular basis. When employees feel that their pay is too small, they don’t realize that a significant percentage of their wages are being confiscated by the government.

If hourly workers were allowed to receive their full hourly wage, and if salaried workers were allowed to receive their full annual salary, they would suddenly experience a massive increase in disposable income.

The problem has been compounded by the fact that most of the fifty states, and a few cities, have also implemented payroll withholding programs. The government often takes 10%, 20%, or even 30% of a worker’s wages.

The payroll withholding system has not only allowed the government to take huge amounts of people’s money, but also to take it in a way that causes people to forget, or not to realize, that it’s being taken.