In 1995 when the National Security Agency (formerly the Army Security Agency or ASA) declassified the Venona Project one noteworthy revelation was that an ASA cryptanalyst in the late 1940's had associated J. Robert Oppenheimer with the KGB codename VEKSEL. In a cryptographic publication accompanying the Venona declassification NSA officials commented, “the role played by the person covernamed VEKSEL remains uncertain but troubling.” [1] The covername VEKSEL is found in just two Venona messages. The NSA's concern derived from several facts:
- (a) one of the messages identified VEKSEL as the “Director [of] the main practical research” site
for the atomic bomb,
(b) that site was believed (now confirmed) to be Los Alamos,
(c) among the four atomic lab directors mentioned, only one had a codename, the real names of the
other three were given.
Moscow to New York, No. 259, 21 March 1945
Chronologically, the first VEKSEL message was sent by Moscow Center to its New York station on 21 March 1945, attention to Leonid Kvasnikov (ANTON), the U.S. Resident for Scientific and Technical Intelligence (XY line). This message, No. 259, issued instructions on 4 matters, one of which pertained to the individual who was VEKSEL. Portions relevant to this essay are abstracted below:
- To ANTON
1. In our Nos. 5823 of 9 December 1944, 309 of 17 January 1945 and 606 of 1 February 1945 instructions were given to send HURON to Chicago to re-establish contact with VEKSEL’. Carry these out as soon as possible. HURON should also make use of his stay in Chicago to renew his acquaintance with [REDACTED surname or covername], who is known to you and who is taking part in the work on ENORMOUS.
2. ...... [15 groups unrecovered] ......Breit is taking part in the work on ENORMOUS.
3. ..... [4 groups unrecovered] ......759 of 8 February 1945 [2 groups unrecovered] ...with RAMSEY.
4. By the next mail .... Bureau of Standards.
[Signed] VIKTOR
[NSA] Footnotes:
ANTON: Leonid Kvasnikov, engineer in AMTORG
GURON: i.e. “HURON”; unidentified covername.
VEKSEL’: i.e. "BILL OF EXCHANGE/ the surname WECHSEL". Sent as VEKSEL: cf "VEKSEL' " in New York's No. 799 of 26 May 1945 (3/NBF/T5). Possibly Dr. Julius Robert OPPENHEIMER [2]
Vassiliev’s Notebooks
In 2009, new perspective on the identity of VEKSEL was introduced. This came from Vassiliev’s notebooks and the attendant book, Spies. Vassiliev’s notebooks conclusively show that unidentified Venona covername HURON was Byron Darling. The notebooks further show that Darling was assigned the task of contacting Enrico Fermi, who worked at the Met Lab in Chicago before going to Los Alamos in 1944. Finally, the notebooks reveal that Fermi had a KGB codename, “VEKTOR.” From these basic facts, it was Vassiliev’s conclusion that “VEKSEL was likely a decoding garble for VEKTOR.” Such being the case, purportedly, the decoding garble was imputed to ASA actions. Mr. Vassiliev was a trained KGB Officer. As such he would have a basic understanding of crypto communications. Yet no explanation is suggested or asserted by him on the nature of a decoding garble that could have produced VEKSEL from the intended VEKTOR. [3]
In this regard, the definition of garble should be reviewed: "garble, v.t, to scramble a signal or message by erroneous encoding or faulty transmission." Strictly speaking, since encryption and transmission precede decryption, the word decoding is not an appropriate modifier for garble. There is a scenario, however, in which the decryption of the code groups representing VEKTOR might have resulted in VEKSEL. This would entail a Moscow Center case officer who, if Vassiliev is right, wrote Fermi’s Russian codename, VEKTOR, in his message draft of No. 259. The message then went to a code clerk for encryption and transmission. If VEKTOR was erroneously enciphered (one time pad) or transmitted, one can conceive how the last three letter groups of VEKTOR (for one example) could have been corrupted such that ASA’s decoding was the word VEKSEL.
HURON: Fermi and Oppenheimer
It is the Vassiliev position that Moscow in fact cabled, “reestablish contact with VEKTOR,” not 'reestablish contact with VEKSEL.' This determination derives from the content of KGB No. 259, as well as other Vassiliev notes that clearly connect HURON (Byron Darling) to Enrico Fermi. In chronological order, from three different Vassiliev notebooks, those HURON-Fermi associations are:
-
Yellow #1 Moscow to NY, 22 November 1943. “Plant Huron with Ramsay through Chap. HURON is personally acquainted with employees at the U. of Chicago, including Fermi.”
White #1 Semenov report to Fitin, late 1944. “HURON … on a lead from the fellowcountrymen, PhD in physics, synthetic rubber ... politically mature, steadfast, should be trusted. While studying and working at the Universities of Chicago and Michigan, acquired connections among scientific circles in the field of physics. The connection of greatest interest is the Italian professor Fermi, who was involved in Enormous while working at Columbia University, Currently, according to HURON, Fermi works at the University in Chicago.”
White #1 Letter from Anton to Center, 19 March 1945. “Develop the cultivation of Fermi started through HURON; work on the possibility of approaching Oppenheimer through Ernst [Paul Nahin].”
Black Letter, NY to Center, 26 June 1945. “ALEKSEY [Anatoli Yatskov] on meeting with HURON 1 April 1945 … ALEKSEY went to Detroit to see HURON … HURON has as yet done nothing to renew his acquaintance with Fermi, He has not written to Goldsmith , or to Fermi himself. [HURON needs to get a job with Fermi or Goldsmith … There has been no success with Oppenheimer either.]
Added to these, are two other Vassilieve notes that associate HURON only with Robert Oppenheimer:
Black Moscow to New York, 10 November 1944. “Renew ties with Ernst [Nahin] through HURON, with the aim of using him to cultivate “Chester” – Robert Oppenhimer, an American Jew, a secret member of the fraternal [Party], works in camp “y” on the development of the atomic bomb.”
Yellow #1 New York to Moscow, 20 October 1945. “Report by Anton … HURON spoke with METHOD [Joseph Weinberg] on 5th and 6th October in New York … METHOD said that he himself does not see YEW [Oppenheimer] at all these days … this creates the impression that METHOD continues to maintain contact with YEW, and that the views he expressed to HURON may, in part, express YEW’s own point of view … Aleksey met with HURON.”
New York to Moscow, No. 799, 26 May 1945
In April 1945, Ted Hall (MLAD) at Los Alamos prepared a report for Soviet intelligence that he passed to Saville Sax in Albuquerque, NM. Sax returned to the East Coast and delivered it to his KGB contact. The following month, the New York station prepared message, No. 799 to the Center containing the information from Hall:
- To VIKTOR
“MLAD’s” material contains:
- (a) A list of places where work on ENORMOUS is being carried out:
1. HANFORD, State of Washington, production of 49.
2. State of NEW JERSEY, production of 25 by the diffusion method. Director UREY.
3. BERKELEY, State of California, production of 25 by the electromagnetic method. Director LAWRENCE.
4. “NOVOSTROJ”, administrative center for ENORMOUS; also production of 25 by the spectrographic method. Director COMPTON.
5. CHICAGO, ARGONNE Laboratories – nuclear research. At present work there has almost ceased. Director COMPTON.
6. “The RESERVATION [ZAPOVEDNIK],” the main practical research work on ENORMOUS. Director “VEKSEL’”.
7. Camp [2 groups unrecovered] base in the area of CARLSBAD, State of New Mexico, the place for the practical testing of the ENORMOUS bomb.
8. MONTREAL, CANADA – theoretical research.
[NSA] Comments:
VIKTOR: Lt Gen P. M. Fitin [Head, First Chief Directorate, KGB]
MLAD: i.e. “YOUNG” [Theodore Alvin Hall, a physicist employed at Los Alamos Laboratory]
The RESERVATION [ZAPOVEDNIK]: Possibly Los Alamos Laboratory
VEKSEL’: i.e. “Bill of Exchange”; possibly Julius Robert Oppenheimer [4] The majority of KGB traffic was sent as encrypted text over commercial telegraph lines. In such instances, the U.S. Army obtained copies of the telegrams from Western Union by fiat of national security. If there was an encryption or typographical error in these messages it would be a Soviet, or perhaps commercial telegraph, issue. In certain circumstances KGB traffic was sent by radio frequency transmission between Moscow and its stations in America. In this case, the U.S. Army monitored KGB frequencies and attempted to capture/record their transmissions. Garbles in these RF messages could be attributed to KGB personnel, equipment or natural phenomena. But garbles in these messages could also arise from U.S. SIGINT failures, which in fact frequently occurred. Innumerable Venona decrypts contain the phrase/caveat, “# groups unrecovered/unrecoverable.” In this regard, a total of 21 code groups were “unrecovered” in No. 259, suggesting that it was an RF message. [5]
Summary Arguments
A. The great value of Vassiliev’s notebooks is their unimpeachable provenance and bona fides. From the authors: “Although he was prohibited from making photocopies, Vassiliev was allowed to make handwritten notes without restriction, including copying passages verbatim out of hundreds of individual documents.”… “There are also a number of KGB messages that were only partially broken in Venona that Vassiliev copied in toto.” Having credited that, it is important to recognize that Vassiliev’s notes do not include material from either KGB No. 259 or No. 799. This seems incongruous in the case of No. 259, since that message relates to the use of Darling (HURON) to develop sources at the Chicago Met Lab. Vassiliev transcribed or abstracted umpteen other messages regarding Darling and atomic sources, but evidently did not read No. 259 of 21 March 1945. What makes it particularly curious is that No. 259 is quite probably a reply to Vassiliev White #1 of 19 March 1945, which instructs NY: “Tasks: step up the cultivation of Ramsay. Develop the cultivation of Fermi started through Huron; work on the possibility of approaching Oppenheimer through Ernst.” The absence of either No. 259 or 799 from Vassiliev’s notes should amount to a yellow caution on the notion that VEKSEL was an error for VEKTOR.
B. Although not explicitly stated, the Vassiliev view that VEKSEL was a decoding garble for VEKTOR implies that the originals of Nos. 259 and 799 in KGB archives reflect the cyrillic Russian word, VEKTOR. But there is no evidence that Vassiliev saw, read or copied either of these messages. If he had done, the notebooks would have included transcriptions matching the Venona decrypts but for the word VEKTOR. Such, of course, would be tangible evidence that something had gone amiss with the ASA intercept/decryption process. Absent that, a "decoding garble" seems a weak attempt to explain a provocative circumstance, i.e. a codename for Oppenheimer.
C. The major problem with the Vassiliev rejection of VEKSEL in Venona is that it means the exact same decoding garble happened in two completely different, independent situations. Thus, according to Vassiliev, in March 1945 a KGB officer at the Center used Fermi’s codename, VEKTOR, in a message sent to the NY residentura; then, two months later, a KGB officer at the NY station, in a completely unrelated matter, used VEKTOR in a message report to Moscow. The definition of a garble carries the notion of a random event. The odds that two different code clerks would mis-encrypt, or mis-type, or mis-send the exact same code group/s for VEKTOR is fundamentally prohibitive. If 'fundamentally prohibitive' can be equated to 70% unlikely, the reality is more likely 90%. Consider: Message No. 259 is undoubtedly an RF message transmitted by Moscow to New York. As discussed above the interception, recordation and decipherment by the ASA of such messages was problematic. For example, 21 code groups of No. 259 were not captured. Notwithstanding, the first paragraph of 259 containing "VEKSEL" was recovered without error and in toto (Note 2). More assurance that VEKSEL was not a garble is found in No. 799, almost certainly a Western Union cable which the ASA received a printed copy of. The 'VEK???' codegroups in this virtually 100% reliable message also decrypted to VEKSEL. Thus, the two messages reinforce each other as to the validity of VEKSEL.
D. Ted Hall arrived at Los Alamos in January 1944 from Harvard, Robert Oppenheimer's alma mater. He and other junior scientists were given White Badge status immediately. Their orientation lecture, classified Top Secret, was delivered by Robert Bacher, a long time Oppenheimer friend and associate. This lecture covered the mission and organization of the Lab, the Army Role vs the civilian leadership, etc. As a so-called "White Badger," Hall was eligible to attend Oppenheimer’s weekly Colloquia. Enrico Fermi arrived at Los Alamos six months after Hall, July/August 1944. In December 1944, Hall was drafed into the Army and sent to Fort Bliss for boot camp. Oppenheimer, not Fermi, personally interceded with General Groves and Hall was quickly returned to Los Alamos. The strongest argument that Oppenheimer was VEKSEL, lies in the virtual impossibity that Ted Hall, after working at Los Alamos for a year and a half, did not know who his Director was, but correctly named the directors of four other labs?
E. A proven rule of thumb when choosing between competing theories or explanations is Occam’s Razor, translated from the Latin as, “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” Occam’s Razor has other formulations such as, “The simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations.” There are two competing views on the identity of VEKSEL: The Vassiliev proposition that VEKSEL was Fermi, and the Venona suggestion that VEKSEL was Oppenheimer. The former necessitates that Ted Hall did not know that Oppenheimer was the Director of Los Alamos plus a host of other errors by different parties in Moscow and New York. The latter view, VEKSEL was Oppenheimer, is simpler by orders of magnitude: It necessitates only that Hall correctly named Oppenheimer as Director of Los Alamos, that KGB New York correctly encrypted Oppenheimer’s codername and that ASA accurately recovered and decoded No. 799, as they did thousands of other KGB messages.
Conclusion
VEKSEL’ was not an error in either of the two Venona intercepts in which it occured. VEKSEL was yet another codename for J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Op-Ed
There seems to be reluctance on the part of authors and historians to accept that VEKSEL was almost certainly Robert Oppenheimer. This is curious in that it has now been shown beyond any reasonable doubt that Oppenheimer was a member of the American Communist Party, in fact a special secret member reportedly on the rolls of the Earl Browder Section in New York. (This would not be surprising in view of the fact that Oppenheimer was a native New Yorker and married to Kitty Dallet, a personal acquaintance of Browder.) An exclamation mark to Oppenheimer’s Communist ties is the fact that Vassiliev’s notebooks show that he had three covernames in KGB messages, "Chester," "Chemist" and "Yew." These may not have been KGB assigned, but picked-up from usage by persons connected to the CPUSA's Secret Apparatus. In any case, since none of the covername instances, including VEKSEL', prove espionage by Oppenheimer, what difference does a fourth make? Individually, perhaps not much, but in the aggregate they are certainly “troubling.”
Oppenheimer’s multiple KGB covernames are facts that were not available to the 1954 Personnel Security Board that reviewed his eligibility to hold an atomic security clearance. But that does not prevent current historians and writers, considering how Oppenheimer degraded U.S. security after the war, from affirming Eisenhower's decision and the Security Board's prejudicial action.
Notes, Sources, References
1. "In a cryptographic publication ... uncertain but troubling": Venona, Soviet Espionage and the American Response, CIA/NSA Cryptographic Series, Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner, Editors, 1996, p.456.
2. Venona, M to NY, No.259, 21 March 1945
3. Vassiliev Notebooks (The Wilson Center)
4. Venona, NY to M, No.799, 26 May 1945
5. "The majority of KGB traffic ... by fiat of national security.": The best understanding of the FBI’s involvement in the Venona messages is had in Robert Lamphere’s book The FBI-KGB War, A Special Agents Story. On the subject of the physical nature of the Soviet messages, he wrote this: “The sheaf upon sheaf of undeciphered KGB messages that the ASA had were ones that had been sent over regular commercial cable wires from the Soviet consulate in New York and from the the Soviet embassy in Washington, to Moscow. How had these been obtained?..." (pps 84-5).