Posted on 02/05/2002 5:33:53 PM PST by edwin hubble
Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies
NOVA reveals startling new evidence that Soviet spies penetrated America's deepest secrets, including the Manhattan Project, in the 1940's. By cracking the code of Soviet diplomatic cables, the FBI was able to hunt down "atom spies" such as Klaus Fuchs and Julius Rosenberg. But the true "master spy," a physicist named Ted Hall, got away -- and his gripping story is presented for the first time by NOVA.
Original broadcast date: 2/5/2002 Topics: biography, mathematics, technology/crime, technology/weapons and warfare
*************** (from NOVA website:) Welcome to the companion Web site to "Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies," scheduled for broadcast on February 5, 2002. The program chronicles the lives and covert activities of the so-called "atom spies" in the 1940s, including the big one that got away, Theodore Alvin Hall. Here's what you'll find online:
Read Venona Intercepts Released by the National Security Agency, these once top-secret messages, encoded by their Soviet senders and decrypted by Venona codebreakers, reveal compelling, behind-the-scenes details of Soviet espionage.
Family of Spies In a series of interviews alternately gushing and reserved, embittered and accepting, the sons of the Rosenbergs, Ted Hall's wife and elder daughter, and other family members of Venona-era spies offer their views about their spying relatives.
20th-Century Deceptions Mata Hari. Alger Hiss. Kim Philby. Aldrich Ames. Their names stick in our collective consciousness, though whether famously or infamously depends on whose side you're on.
Decipher a Coded Message (Hot Science) Learn some of the tricks codebreakers use to solve ciphers, then use your new talents to make sense of what looks like a bunch of gibberish.
Plus Resources and a Teacher's Guide
**************
This program vindicates the charges against Alger Hiss, among others.
Look for this to be re-broadcast within the week on many PBS stations.
:) ttt
Joan Hall's comments made me very angry. Ted Hall deserved what one of his colleagues recommended - that he be extradited to the United States, called back to military service, tried at court martial, and shot.
Expect this story to be remarkably UNreported everywhere.
They were among the many who actually idealized Stalin and mistrusted their own country.
They didn't trot out the chorus of the defenders of Hiss. Just the immediate kin of Hall and Rosenberg. And then overcame those comments with the last word from those on the inside of the Venona project.
Worth seeing in re-broadcast if you missed it.
THIS IS DEFINITELY A KEEPER. It is being replayed on Friday night at 11PM here in Connecticut on Channel 24, the Hartford PBS station.
The program also revealed that FDR's administrative assistant himself showed up on Russian spy code messages, and flatly stated that every major government agency had been infiltrated with Russian spies. The US broke the Russian code because of a mistake -- the Russians used code panels for more than one message. While less than 1% of the messages were actually decoded, there were hundreds of spies that had been given cover names by the Russians. But alas, NOVA concluded that perhaps less than 5 people identified by McCarthy as communist spies were discovered on Venona Project code messages.
Definitely worth watching IMO.
The spy within the U.S. codebreaking unit (Weidman?) was described in the program as the single most destructive spy in the history of U.S. counter-espionage.
Further, the implication was made by the program that if the public had been told what was known by the FBI at the time, that the country would not have been so torn in two by the events of the McCarthy hearings. Much of the acrimony that this country went through in the 1950's might have been avoided.
It would have meant letting the Russians know that we had broken their code, but their mole had already tipped them off.
According to the program, McCarthy was basically right, but he had no idea why. The government didn't want the truth out.
That is because the evidence points to the fact that he was a spy under the codename "Garnet". Vasili Mitrokhin's stolen KGB archives also prove so in his book The Sword and the Shield.
Yes, like Ted Hall's widow, some of these folks are still 'true believers' in the Students' and Workers' Paradise.
It is a shame the country had to go through such a wrenching time.
I read recently a historian describing the 40-year Cold War as the actual "World War Three". When we look back on the extent of the struggle for the minds of Americans, it really was a world war. Cuba, Korea, Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, were all just battles.
and only China is left.
As the program indicated, McCarthy was right in general, i.e., the government was full of Soviet Spies, but he was apprently off the mark in the details; i.e., only two or three of the folks that McCarthy denounced as spies were actually spies (so far as they could tell.)
All in all, it was a very informatiom program, and I took great personal satisfaction at the revelation that Hiss was without a doubt a Soviet spy, having once sat less than six feet from the scumbag while he wasted an hour of our class time protesting his innocence. I had no doubt he was lying at the time, and it is nice to know my impression of him has been vindicated.
I admire your screen name, BTW. It ranks up there with "OBAFGKMN".
But I think that much of the truth of the cold war may never see the light of day. (Kennedy's death...)
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