DOCID_3034869_SEALED_OK.PDF

Doc ID: 3034869                                      Doc Ref ID: A701760
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IV. THE VENONA BREAKTHROUGH 
A Arlington Hall in 1946 
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IB THE VENQNA BREAKTHROUGH 
At the end of the war, the Signal Security Agency, with headquarters at Arlington Hall, became the Army 
Security Agency (ASA). Just before the renaming of the organization, Arlington Hall and all Army cryptologic 
activities worldwide were placed under the direct control of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2.1 
Captain Bill Smith's Russian unit great…

Doc ID: 3034869                                      Doc Ref ID: A701760
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W THE VENQNA BREAKTHROUGH 
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• High echelon Russian naval traffic was enccypte .__ _____________________ 
,... 
~ 
Border Guard)sy,te~swere als ____________________ __. 
B. The Venona Breakthrough ofDecember 1946 
Meredith Gardner justly deservesthe creditfor the Venona breakthrough as the first bookbreakerand then 
translator of th~ 
f(KGB)traffic. He was the first to recognize the true nature of that material and 
issue intelligence …

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IV. THE VENQNA BREAKTHROUGH 
Meredith Gardner (2nd row left): a typical analytic area at Arlington Hall in the 1940s. 
Meredith Knox Gardner joined the Russian unit in October 1945 at the suggestion of Dr. Dubberstein. 
Gardner had received a Master's in German from the University of Texas and had been a PhD. candidate at the 
University of Wisconsin. While at the University of Texas he took private lessons in Russian from the 
Russian-born grandmother of a fellow student (this was in about 1937). From 1…

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Iv. THE VENONA BREAKTHROUGH 
Russian Dip systems must be intelligence service. But from the records, and most recollections, all we know 
for sure is that before Meredith Gardner's bookbreaking, JADE (which had many earlier names and which 
would become known as! 
~. was considered a mid-sized Dip system, in third place after Trade and 
Consular, that seemed likely to be exploitable.10 
Gardner begaq._ __ 
.... ~ookbreaking in summer, or perhaps late Spring, of 1946. By that time about 2000 
code grou…

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IY. THE VENONA BREAKTHROUGH 
On or about 31 July 1946, Gardner made his first tentative translation of a phrase, in a KGB message NY 
-> Moscow, dated 10 August 1944, in which a phrase in the English language seemed to have been put in the 
Russian alphabet. Gardner suggested that it had the form: 
D F NSW NOTWI WO 
- -
-
-
-
He then _assumed that the phrase was actually "Defense Will Not Win Wars" (the O in WO giving the sound of 
an A). Curiously, just as this first opening was made, Gardner was put on…

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.__ __________ .....,.......,.,,--~-~--~-----:------::-:------!INonetheless, in those messages 
that could be matched, the parts in digraph code would prove exceptionally vulnerable. On 13 December 1946., 
Gardner made a translation of part of a 2 May 1944 message from the KGB New York to Moscow Center: 
I 
Your telegram (No.) 2108, first clause [unknown number of groups not recovered]. If the 
election were held today Roosevelt would probably obtain slender majority of popu…

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Iv. THE VENONA BREAKTHROUGH 
indicator system in use from 1Mayl944.__ ______________ __, Meredith was working 
,__ ___ ....,)material: that is, the Oecemb~r 1943 code book as encrypted under the 1 May 1944 and after pad 
indicator system. 
• The greatest number of Venona decryptsprith~ US-Moscow lanes are of messages dated 1 May 1944 
through 1945, but especially for those last 7 months()f1944. 
• A second grouping of KGB messages woul…

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N. THE VENONA BREAKTHROUGH 
Staff. Gardner wrote out the first translation in longhand, one of the earliest original Venona translations that 
has survived.18 In a 3 part message of 13 December 1944, KGB New York advised Moscow as follows: 
ToVIKTOR 
. ROBERT has transmitted the secret document herein contained 'Postwar Troop Basis of 
the War Department' prepared by Division G-3 19 August. 
The rest of the message consisted of row, column and heading indicators and the troop strength figures, as 
the KG…