VENONA

In July 1995 the Intelligence Community ended a 50-year silence regarding one of cryptology's most splendid successes - the VENONA Project. VENONA was the codename used for the U.S. Signals Intelligence effort to collect and decrypt the text of Soviet KGB and GRU messages from the 1940's. These messages provided extraordinary insight into Soviet attempts to infiltrate the highest levels of the United States Goverment.

Today, we are proud to offer these exceptional documents on the NSA home page and we invite you to study and interpret them in the context of history. NSA has declassified over 3000 messages related to VENONA. We believe they will not only provide a window into Soviet espionage during the 1940's, but will also give you a glimpse of the important contributions signals intelligence and cryptographic expertise make to our nation's security.