Index and Concordance to Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and Soviet Cables Deciphered by the National Security Agency’s Venona Project
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Index and Concordance to Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks and Soviet Cables Deciphered by the National Security Agency’s Venona Project (Updated 30 May 2013)
This index and concordance indexes twenty-one volumes of KGB archival material: nine notebooks written by Alexander Vassiliev and twelve compilations of the Soviet international telegraphic cables deciphered by the U.S. National Security Agency’s Venona project. Indexed are proper names, cover names, and organizational titles along with some geographic entities, events, diplomatic conferences, and subjects. When known, cover names are cross-indexed with the real name behind the cover name. Brief biographical or explanatory information is provided for significant figures, tradecraft terminology is defined, and obscure abbreviations expanded.
the Library of Congress. 1 Scanned versions of the notebooks along with transcriptions into word-processed Cyrillic Russian and translations into English are available on the web at: < http://digitalarchive.org/collection/86/Vassiliev-Notebooks >. All three versions have identical pagination. The Russian transcriptions and the English translations are electronically searchable. This index/concordance indexes the English translations. Vassiliev’s notebooks are entitled:
These notebooks are paginated, and an index entry referenced the page of the cited volume. Page number are in the upper right hand corner of each page. For example, the entry for the cover name “Achilles” is as follows:
************************************************************************************ “Achilles” [“Akhill”] (cover name in Vassiliev’s notebooks): Karl Dunts. Vassiliev Black Notebook, 27, 100; Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99, 106. ************************************************************************************
In this case, “Achilles” appears on pages 27 and 100 of Vassiliev Black Notebook and pages 99 and 106 ———————————
1. For the background of composition of the notebooks, see: John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), ix-liii.
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of Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1. Cover names in Vassiliev’s notebooks are usually within quotation marks and are usually in title case with the first letter capitalized. (The Venona project followed a different convention.)
[“Akhill”] is the Cyrillic Russian original transliterated into the Latin alphabet of the cover name “Achilles.” “Akhill” does not appear in the translated Vassiliev notebooks in the Latin alphabet but does appear in Cyrillic Russian in the transcribed and original handwritten versions of Vassiliev’s notebooks. Since the pagination of all three versions is the same, the page citation to the English translation is also accurate for the two Cyrillic Russian versions. “Akhill” is in the Latin alphabet with the transliteration from Cyrillic done using the BGN/PCGN transliteration system.
real identify of the cover named person is not known. In those cases, the entry indicates that the cover name is unidentified but may cite something about that person’s attributes if those are given in the text of Vassiliev’s notebooks.
When the real name behind a cover name is known, there is also an index entry for the real name. In the of “Achilles”/Dunts, the entry reads:
************************************************************************************ Dunts, Karl Adamovich: Soviet intelligence officer. Cover name in Vassiliev’s notebooks: “Achilles”. As Dunts: Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99. As “Achilles”: Vassiliev Black Notebook, 27, 100; Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99, 106. ************************************************************************************ As Dunts: Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1, 99 indicates that he appears under his real name on page 99 of Vassiliev Yellow Notebook #1.
indicates where he appears under his cover name.
subordinate stations around the world were deciphered by the U.S. National Security Agency in a project entitled Venona. 2 The earliest cables dated from 1941 and the latest to 1950. Most were from the period 1943 to 1945. The project started in 1943, decoded its first cable in 1946, and continued until NSA shut down the project in 1980 when it judged the remaining cables vulnerable to decryption, almost all from the early 1940s, were too old to be of any current intelligence interest. While cables from Soviet stations in sixteen nations were deciphered, the great majority were between Moscow and its stations in the United States.
——————————— 2. For the background of the Venona project, see; Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response 1939–1957 (Washington, D.C.: National Security Agency; Central Intelligence Agency, 1996), vii-xliv; Robert L. Benson, The Venona Story (Ft. Meade, MD: Center for Cryptologic History, National Security Agency, 2001); and John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press [Nota Bene], 2000), 8–56.
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When the National Security Agency released the decryptions in the mid-1990s it released them as photocopies of the deciphered cables translated into English and typed on the manual typewriters used by NSA cryptanalysts the 1940–1980 period. Later it scanned the photocopies and placed them on the web at: < http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/ >. The scanned decryptions on the web are images and while they can be downloaded and printed, they cannot be electronically searched. The decryptions are on the web in chronological order with cables between Moscow and the different field stations and agencies mixed together. There is no index or table of contents. This makes it very difficult for anyone except a specialist to find the particular cable that may be relevant to their interest. The more than 3,000 cables amount to more than 5,000 pages of material. Some are also difficult to read because of the age of the original manually typed document. If one is looking for cables that mention a particular person, the only way to be sure that one has located them all is to read all 5,000 plus pages. Further, many of the persons discussed in the cables are there only under a cover name, and one needs to know the cover name and keep in mind that cover names are changed from time to time and some cover names are reused and may apply to an entirely different person. Consequently, knowledge of these changes is necessary to accurate locate the cables where the person of interest is discussed.
them in electronic format so that names or other terms could be electronically searched. Under the direction of Robert J. Heibel, Executive Director of the Institute of Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst College in Erie, PA, students of the Institute over many years transcribed the photocopies into Microsoft Word files. Researchers are much in debt to the students of the Institute of Intelligence Studies for undertaking this task. In 2009 Director Heibel gave a set of these transcriptions to John Earl Haynes, modern political historian in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Dr. Haynes, then starting a year-long research fellowship at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center, undertook a project to create this combined index and concordance to both the Alexander Vassiliev notebooks and the cables decoded by the Venona project.
To facilitate access, the more than 3,000 cables are compiled into forty-five volumes according to what Soviet agency was involved and the location of the field station that send or received the cables. This creation of artificial books also creates page numbers that facilitates indexing and makes moving from the index entry to the actual cable easy. The volumes of transcribed cables are available on the web at: < http://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/venona-project >. The transcriptions are highly accurate, but occasional typos occur and some words on the original are difficult to read. Dr. Haynes in the process of indexing corrected typos that occurred in index items, but not for non-index words. Anyone wishing to check the transcription against the scan of the original can go to NSA’s Venona site and locate the image of the original cable by the date.
Only the cables between Moscow and its American stations (which includes most of the cables decoded) are completely indexed. These Moscow-USA cables are compiled into twelve volumes: Venona New York KGB 1941-42 Venona New York KGB 1943 Venona New York KGB 1944 Venona New York KGB 1945 Venona Washington KGB Venona San Francisco KGB Venona USA GRU Venona USA Naval GRU Venona USA Diplomatic Venona USA Trade Venona New York/Buenos Aires Secret Writings Venona Special Studies.
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However, Americans and some other significant figures who appear in these Moscow-USA volumes are also indexed to where they appear in non-USA traffic. There are citations to Venona Mexico City KGB, Venona Ottawa GRU, Venona London KGB, and Venona London GRU.
The titles indicate the sorts of cables in each volume. Venona New York KGB 1944, for example, consists of cables between the Moscow headquarters of the KGB 3 and its station operating out of the Soviet consulate in New York while the volume entitled Venona USA GRU contains the deciphered cables between the Moscow headquarters of Soviet military intelligence (GRU) and its American stations. The Venona USA Diplomatic volume consists of cables Venona analysts judged to be of purely diplomatic character and not connected of Soviet security or intelligence activity. Venona USA Trade consists of cables dealing with the shipment of Lend-Lease supplies to the USSR. Venona New
persons in Argentina and the United States that wartime mail censorship discovered to have in them hidden (invisible) writing in cipher that dealt with Soviet intelligence activity. The letters were given to the Venona project for deciphering and appear to deal with KGB activities. Venona Special Studies compiles a number of summaries Venona analysts prepared during the early years of the project about the progress of deciphering cover names and identifying real names. Occasionally information on the real identify of a cover name was provided in a special study and not as a footnote to a particular decoded cable. Consequently, it was judged appropriate to index the special studies as well as the cables themselves. The index also indexes the footnotes Venona analysts added to most decoded cables as well as the decoded text in view of the often abundant information provided in the footnotes about those persons and activities discussed in the cable text.
The deciphered cables in these volumes are not in strict chronological order. Nor are cables to and from Moscow separated. These volumes are paginated, and an index entry references the page of the cited volume. Page number are in the upper right hand corner of each page. For example, the entry for the cover name ACORN is as follows:
************************************************************************************ ACORN [ZHOLUD'] (cover name in Venona): Bela (William) Gold. Venona New York KGB 1945 8–9, 16; Venona Special Studies, 27. ************************************************************************************
ACORN is the translated cover name as it appears in the deciphered Venona cables. In this case ACORN appears on page 8, 9, and 16 of the compiled volumes of decoded cables entitled Venona New York KGB 1945 and page 27 of Venona Special Studies The Venona project follow the convention of placing cover names in all capital letters without quotation marks.
——————————— 3. The KGB (Committee for State Security) and its foreign intelligence arm have a complex organizational history. The predecessors to the KGB, which came into existence in 1954, include the Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage), GPU (State Political Directorate), OGPU (United State Political Directorate), NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), GUGB (Main Administration of State Security), NKGB (People’s Commissariat of State Security), MGB (Ministry of State Security), KI (Committee of Information), and MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs). For simplicity, the term KGB will be used to designate these various predecessor organizations.
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[ZHOLUD'] is the Russian original of the translated ACORN. The deciphered cables often contain both the original Russian in transliterated form and the translation into English. Many cables, however have only the translation or the transliteration. Consequently both forms are indexed. In this case there is a separate index entry of ZHOLUD' as well as for ACORN. While Vassiliev’s notebooks were transliterated with a single transliteration system (BGN/PCGN), the cables of the Venona project were decrypted and translated over a more than thirty year period by many different cryptanalysts and translators. Several different transliteration systems were used and there is significant inconsistency in how Russian names and terms are rendered into the Latin alphabet. In order to simplify the indexing task, all transliterated cover names appear in the index in all capital letters (following the Venona convention for the English translation) no matter how it actually appears in the decryption (ZHOLUD', for examples, appears as ZhOULD'). The transcribed decryptions, however, reproduce exactly the format of the original Venona project decryption.
however, the real identify of the cover named person is not known. In those cases, the entry indicates that the cover name is unidentified but may cite something about that person’s attributes if those are given in the text of the decrypted messages. As with Vassiliev’s notebooks, there is a separate entry for the real name that cites where the real name occurs and where the cover name (or names) of that person occurs.
While they are not indexed, the non-USA Venona cables have been transcribed into electronic format, compiled into thirty-three volumes, and are electronically searchable. The unindexed volumes are:
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Venona Stockholm Diplomatic Venona Stockholm GRU Venona Stockholm KGB Venona Stockholm Naval GRU Venona Tokyo Diplomatic.
Use of the Index : Points to keep in mind
during his association with the KGB. Each cover name has its own entry with citations to the pages where it appears. The real name entry cites where the real name appears and repeats the cover name citations as well.
Cover names are reused. Four different persons, for example, had the cover name “Smith” at one time or another. When more than one person had the same cover name this index attempts to separate out the different “Smiths”. Usually this is without difficulty because the multiple uses are well separated by time or activity. Occasionally, however, it is difficult and in those cases the lack of certainty is indicated in the entry.
Identifying the real name behind a cover name. Often this is without difficulty because the text of Vassiliev’s notebooks or the deciphered Venona messages simply provides the real name without ambiguity. Where the real name is not provided by the text, then the description of that person’s activity, where he or she worked, where they lived, or what trips they took at a particular time may make identification possible. In the case of the Venona decryptions, when the text did not provide a real name, most of the work of identification was done by the FBI whose field agents used the information about the activities of a cover name to pin down the real person behind it. Often, however, the information was insufficient to establish identification. Consequently, more than half of the cover names in this index are unidentified. When evidence about a cover name suggests an identification but is not conclusive, the uncertainty is noted.
quoted extracts and summaries he made of KGB archival material on KGB activities in the United States from the early 1930s to the early 1950s with some scattered later material as well. The deciphered cables of the Venona project dated from 1941 to 1950 with the bulk in the period 1943 to 1945. Most are also about KGB activity in the United States although there are also decoded cables of other Soviet agencies as well. There is, consequently, a considerable overlap in the two sets of material for KGB activity in the United States in the 1940s. In a number of cases a passage in Vassiliev’s notebooks turns out to be the complete text of a Venona cable that was only partially decoded. Vassiliev’s notebooks and the Venona decryptions have identical real name identification for nearly two hundred cover names. Vassiliev’s notebooks provide the real names for more than sixty cover names that were unidentified in the Venona decryptions. The Venona decryptions provide the real names behind nearly thirty cover names that are unidentified in Vassiliev’s notebooks. Vassiliev’s notebooks correct misidentification of four cover names in the Venona decryptions.
messages were fully decoded, most had passages that were indecipherable and sometimes names were only partially spelled. These partial spellings are indexed with eclipses indicating the missing letters. In both the Venona cables and Vassiliev’s notebooks often only the surname of a person is given in the text. When originally written, this would have been perfectly understandable to those reading the
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message or document because they were aware of the identifies of the persons being discussed. And even today, often the context of the name allows one to attach a given name to a surname without difficulty. Still, however, there remain numerous surnames where the lack of information about the person prevents the attachment of a given name and leaves the person named only partially identified. A question mark, ?, indicates that a given name or, occasionally, a surname, is missing.
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