> Ah, the archives. Just like the Venona decrypts "proved"
> I.F. Stone was a Soviet agent? A pretty low standard of
> proof, if you ask me.
Indeed. The decrypts *exonerate* IF Stone.
It may or may not interest this list that I have been reading the Venona decrypts in some detail.
They "prove" nothing. So far as I can tell they are inadmissible as testimony. Even for Rosenberg, Alan Belmont (3rd man in FBI) at the time argued against using the decrypts because they could never pass the hearsay rule.
Here is an example decrypt of a supposed KGB agent in the State Department See http://www.nsa.gov/docs/venona/docs/Mar44/20_Mar_1944_R3_p1.gif:
NSA web page caption: KGB Illegal MAYOR signs a message about KGB agent in US Government
And here is the message:
From: NEW YORK To: MOSCOW No: 380 20 March 1944
[3 groups unrecovered] communication of FRANK[i] of 18th March: [440 groups unrecoverable] [3 groups unrecovered]
No. 186 MAYOR
Comments: [1] FRANK: Probably Laurence Duggan
[2] MAYOR: Probably Iskhak Abdulovich Akhmerov
25 July, 1966
It isn't explained how FRANK is identified as Laurence Duggan. It isn't explained how the NSA "knows" who FRANK is. There is nothing in the message indicating anything suspicious. And without the source code and work sheets, one cannot be sure that FRANK is the correct decrypt.
There is no justification in the message that either FRANK or Duggan is a KGB agent.
My guess is, the NSA (FBI?) used Whittaker Chambers's accusations in 1939 about Duggan to finger Duggan as a KGB agent. Duggan was a friend of Hiss. See http://homepages.nyu.edu/~th15/laurence.html
In other words, the "archives" are circular. Unproven allegations are made in the 30s, then NSA (FBI?) analysts use those allegations to annotate their decrypts, and finally our present day Right uses the annotated decrypts to validate the original unproven allegations.
This is not to say I may not find more on FRANK that will change my mind. But so far, I am singularly unimpressed with VENONA. I'm talking only about VENONA, but I share Curtiss's suspicion about other "archives."
-- John K. Taber
