”The Venona Secrets” is a book that unwraps the shroud that surrounds Soviet spying in the United States during World War II. It has been the position of the political left that any accusation made against its beloved Soviets was at best ”redbaiting” and at worst, that most egregious of transgressions, ”McCarthyism!”

Using the term ”Soviet” spying is something of a misnomer simply because the agents in question, in very many instances, were American citizens who usually joined the Communist Party of the United States. They then were recruited into clandestine work because of their ideological purity and their access to classified documents and, finally, betrayed their homeland for the Comintern. In the overview of this rather scintillating period, the FBI – once Herbert Hoover determined that there really were Soviet agents about – deserves the nation’s approbation at least when compared to contemporary events including the slaughter at Waco and the bureau’s apparent effort to cover up the demise of Flight 800 and the nastiness at the Murrah Federal Building. The Venona papers were released by the National Security Agency in 1995, and they are the intercepts of Soviet spy communications during the war. And, yes, the old 1950s TV show that I watched with religious regularity, ‘I Led Three Lives,’ was pretty close to the way it was; secret radio transmitters, cutouts, safe houses, clandestine meetings, the whole works. One of the more interesting questions addressed in the book is, Why were so many of the Soviet agents Jews• The authors, both Jewish themselves, reveal that the Soviet hierarchy ”… displayed systematic and consistent anti-Semitism … the Venona files reveal a total cynicism in the manipulation of Jewish interests by the Communists.” The Zionist movement was targeted by the Soviet secret police, as were Jews who were considered in opposition to Soviet expansionist efforts in eastern Europe, and many of them were ruthlessly liquidated. Even while their co-religionists were suffering under the horrific pogroms of Joseph Stalin, American Jews constituted half the membership and a quarter of the leadership of the CPUSA. In the end, we can only conclude that these people were ”true” believers in Marxism and somehow found a way to overlook the persecutions of Stalin and his henchmen, whose virulent anti-Semitism rivaled that of the Nazis. The authors also reveal that the CPUSA was actually disguised as a political party; its real purpose was to recruit and place spies in manufacturing, research and governmental agencies for the purpose of collecting data and transmitting that information. The CPUSA and other communist spies successfully penetrated the Office of Strategic Services, the Justice and State Departments, the Manhattan Project and the White House. While the reader should make his or her own determination regarding President Franklin Roosevelt’s efforts to guard the nation’s secrets from Soviet spies, the authors are particularly solicitous toward President Harry Truman. Truman, the authors declare, instituted Executive Order 9835 in March of 1947 ”… which effectively barred most Communist Party members from government employment.” This late and feeble effort was followed the next year by Truman’s defamatory and erroneous charge that the Republican-controlled House Committee on Un-American Activities hearings on the Alger Hiss case was a ”red herring,” and his orders to the attorney general to ”get a statement of facts from the FBI about the meddling of the (committee) and how they dried up sources of information which would have been useful in the prosecution of spies and communists.” But Truman wasn’t done – he further tried to undermine the committee’s work by suggesting it be accused of ”contributing to the escape of certain Communists who should have been indicted.” The authors declare that Truman’s efforts were ”… animated solely by partisan consideration.” We hope they’re correct. The meat and potatoes of the book are the chapters on Soviet efforts to steal atomic bomb secrets and the actions of such notables as Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Klaus Fuchs, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and a myriad of lesser lights. The chapters alone are worth the price of the book. The American Communist spies were very successful in their treason. Harry Dexter White, an agent of influence, held a number of key posts under FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau. White was singularly successful in relaying the contents of private conversation among high-ranking administration officials to his Soviet handlers. In 1946, he was nominated by Truman to represent the United States in the International Monetary Fund. White had already been confirmed by the Senate when Truman was informed of his treasonous activities. Instead of withdrawing his nomination or asking him to resign, Truman did nothing to stop a known Communist agent from eventually becoming the executive director of the International Monetary Fund. Several years later, the disingenuous Truman said that he had selected White for the post in order ”… to keep from exposing an FBI investigation of an alleged espionage ring.” The next day, while testifying before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, J. Edgar Hoover refuted Truman’s nonsense. While ”The Venona Secrets” is a bit truncated and, on occasion, slows down, it is not a John LeCarre thriller. The book succeeds at its intended goal, which is an overview of Soviet spy activity in the United States during the war and of the machinations of the CPUSA. In the end, America survived this threat – not because of our myopic political leadership, but because ”Uncle Joe” Stalin was a paranoid nut ball. Though the authors give short shrift to the admitted hyperbole of Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin, you have to believe that up there, somewhere, old ”tail-gunner” Joe is smiling. Robert C. Cheeks is a Lisbon, Ohio, free-lance writer for the Tribune-Review.

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