THE_JOSEPH_MCCARTHY_NON_CONNECTION_CRYPTOLOGIC_ALMANAC_RELEASE_DATE_03-13-2025--DEBUROW.PDF

Doc Ref ID: A3992296 UNCLASSIFIED The Joseph McCarthy (Non) Connection Since the declassification and public release of VENONA translations in July 1995, personnel from the Center for Cryptologic History have done considerable lecturing on VENONA—the story of the decryption of KGB and GRU messages sent during World War IL Frequently, members ofthe audience ask how VENONA might have influenced the anticommunist investigations by Congress in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Since many Almanac readers may also be interested inthis question, we would like to present an article written by a former C…

Doc Ref ID: A3992296 UNCLASSIFIED tled a woman’s club audience in Wheeling, West Virginia, during an otherwise routine Lincoln Day speech, by waving in his hand a piece of paper on which he claimed were the names of 205 Communist agents still employed in the State Department. Apparently, these charges were originally based on FBI findings in sev- eral hundred security cases; most of the individuals were no longer with the department. But this speech ignited a firestorm of fear which lasted almost four years. The first story can be summed up like this: On 7January 1950, McCarthy sought the advi…

Doc Ref ID: A3992296 UNCLASSIFIED activity is true, it happened thirteen months after McCarthy made the Wheeling speech and half a year after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were arrested. Moreover, the evidence is pretty clear that Roy Cohn did not even meet Joseph McCarthy until the night ofthe senator’s reelection victory in November 1952 and did not go to work for him until early 1953. The question of McCarthy’s access to VENONA material, then, is an intriguing possibility, but, so far, rt is still nothing more than a possibility, and an unlikely one at that. (Based on materials contained in th…