On Mon, 27 Jul 1998, Jim Gillogly wrote:
Woops, cryptography relevance inadvertently embedded in a farrago by Attila:
I always wanted to believe Alger Hiss was innocent as his son Tony was in my class at Harvard --he wasnt innocent, nor were the Rosenbergs as the CIA had cracked the code but would not show it in court --they even knew who handed over the trigger mechanism (never punished and he left the U.S. after the Manhattan project and taught for many years at Oxford).
For one thing, the CIA didn't crack the VENONA ciphers: it was the Signal Intelligence Service at Arlington Hall, a predecessor of the NSA, and NSA continued the cracks for the next three decades.
you are absolutely correct --my gaffe. CIA has never worked code to my knowledge. in fact, the old man who was the lead mathematician on the Verona project just died, did he not?
While the VENONA decrypts do indeed establish the Rosenbergs' guilt beyond reasonable doubt, the evidence about Alger Hiss is more tenuous. The only relevant evidence released is a single decrypt at http://www.nsa.gov:8080/docs/venona/docs/Mar45/30_Mar_1945_R3_m4_p1.gif about an interview with a Communist agent code-named ALES. A footnote says ALES is "Probably Alger Hiss". The text of the message says that ALES was at the Yalta conference (Alger Hiss was in fact there) and went on to Moscow (I don't know whether Hiss did this or not, nor how many others of the rather large American team did so).
I believe he went on to Moscow since he was one of FDR's two or three top people. I would need to reread the rather long paper on the various people involved and just how close McCarthy was to a truth he could not prove --didn't make McCarthy any less of a scumbag, though. I read the Alger Hiss portions of the documen- tation rather carefully because of the personal friendship I had with Tony who was a very genuine, refined individual (we were on the Harvard Crimson editorial staff together). I will also check your reference on Verona, but I believe there is more in the open records which ties it down. what is interesting is the number of intelligent individuals who not only believe in the concept of socialism/communism, but were essentially apologists for Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, etc. through the period 1917-1950. it was if the pain of Russia's people was just a catharsis on the road to Utopia --by 1950, the apologia wore rather thin... the guilt of the man who passed the trigger from White Sands is confirmed beyond a doubt by Verona also.
In any case, the identification is less than certain, and much less definitive than the Rosenberg data.
granted, but with the outside information, sufficient I believe to raise more than an eyebrow and Alger Hiss certainly should not have been in the position of trust and power that he was. part of the evidence is based on process of elimination --if not Hiss, who was standing at FDR's side in incident or "give-up" time and time again? with or without the McCarthy Red scare, I think the evidence was sufficient to convict, but then and again, I am known to be wrong --as above... __________________________________________________________________________ go not unto usenet for advice, for the inhabitants thereof will say: yes, and no, and maybe, and I don't know, and fuck-off. _________________________________________________________________ attila__