AUSTRALIA’S KGB NETWORK 1944-1950: A NOTE ON AUSTRALIAN VENONA The nature and origins of the Venona material are sufficiently well-known among those interested in such matters to avoid the need for detailed description here. Put briefly, Venona described a programme begun in 1943 by the U.S.Army’s Signals Intelligence Service (a forerunner of the National Security Agency (NSA)) to examine encrypted Soviet diplomatic communications which had been gathered since 1939. It turned out that these communications covered not only diplomatic but espionage matters, and their exploitation enabled the identification of Soviet spies principally in the US but also in Australia. There are further details at https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures-publications/ publications/coldwar/assets/files/venona_story.pdf Exploitation of the Venona material continued until 1 October 1980. While the material began to be released in 1995, word of its existence and other details had emerged years before. Thus the journalist David C Martin, working from CIA sources, was able in 1980 to describe how the Army cryptanalysts broke the Soviet codes - one-time pads had been re-used - and to discuss how the Venona material had brought undone people such as Maclean, Fuchs and Hiss (although there is continuing controversy about whether or not Hiss was a spy). He also knew that it was William Weisband who had betrayed to the KGB the fact of the break, and was even aware of some of the KGB code names such as PETER. Six public releases of VENONA translations and related materials were made in the 1990s. Most of those relating to Australia - that is, messages between the KGB in Moscow and the KGB Resident in Canberra - were in release no 5 which was made in October 1996, although two 1943 messages Moscow-Canberra from 12 September and 2 December were released in October 1995 (Ball and Horner xix). The latter two were general circulars sent to a number of residencies. The releases concerning Australia contained 189 messages amounting to 328 pages, which according to Ball and Horner (xix) ‘represents a small proportion of the Australian Venona material’. These figures are the same as those quoted by the NSA in a ‘Memorandum for the Record’ dated 20 September 1996, (at https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassifieddocuments/venona/assets/files/declass_materials/doc-37.pdf). A later entry on the NSA website has ‘more than 200 messages’ concerning Australia being decrypted and translated. Unlike any other group of VENONA messages, some KGB messages on the Canberra-Moscow communications link were decrypted in near real-time, that is, close to the date of transmission. Further, the Canberra material, though of modest volume, is readable (if intermittently) for the longest period of time, 1943 to 1948. More than 200 messages were decrypted and translated, these representing a fraction of the messages sent and received by the Canberra KGB residency. The Venona messages are reproduced on the web at https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/ declassified-documents/venona/. Horner at 298 has some figures (not sourced, but presumably NSA) on the numbers of messages going to and fro between Moscow and Canberra between 1943 and 1945. In 1943 there were 233 cables from Moscow to Canberra, only six of which were broken; no CanberraMoscow cables were broken in that year. In 1944 there were 274 Moscow-Canberra cables, only nine of which were broken; again, no Canberra-Moscow messages were broken. In 1945 29 of the 269 Moscow-Canberra cables were broken, but 58 of the 100 Canberra-Moscow messages, the first time such messages were broken. These must have been early provisional figures, as they do not correspond with the numbers of the released messages quoted above. No Canberra-Moscow messages were decrypted after 8 May 1946. Many of the Australian KGB messages on the web are not about identified spies, some being concerned with bureaucratic matters such as expenses, some with movements of KGB staff, some with general instructions about tradecraft, and some with tittle-tattle. Thus a message to Moscow from Canberra of 1 September 1945 recorded that in a conversation with the Soviet Ambassador Lifanov, the Australian Minister for External Affairs, Dr H V Evatt, expressed his annoyance with the Australian Minister in Moscow, James Maloney, because he was going to Sweden to buy furniture. Another limitation is that while some messages may have been decrypted in near real-time, others for various reasons took years: a message from Canberra dated October 1945 mentioning Milner and Hill by name was not decrypted until November 1949 (Horner 128). Finally, it should be noted that a good many of the messages could not be completely decrypted - ‘groups unrecovered’ or ‘groups unrecoverable’ are depressingly frequent interruptions. (The difference between the two is that ‘unrecovered’ means that the missing words could in principle be discovered, whereas ‘unrecoverable’ means that they could not - presumably because the encryption had been properly carried out.) The messages on the web are listed under year and month, rather than by release number (although this is also listed), and have a one-line summary of their contents as well as the full message. As they appear in chronological order irrespective of origin or destination, they do not make easy reading for those interested only in Australia. The relevant Australian messages have accordingly been extracted and appear below. Those concerning individual spies and not bureaucratic matters and the like (although the distinction is not always easy to maintain) amount to a total of 113 messages, about half of the total number of messages in Australian Venona. The treatment of some messages by the NSA is baffling. For example, a message of 2 June 1948 from Moscow to Canberra on the web is in manuscript and reads [*Filed at 25 Sept 1946 (date of Item 1)]. The numbers going to and from for each year are: 1943 two from Moscow, none from Canberra; 1944 four from Moscow, none from Canberra; 1945 20 from Moscow, 36 from Canberra; 1946 11 from Moscow, five from Canberra; 1947 17 from Moscow, none from Canberra; 1948 15 from Moscow, none from Canberra. While the exchanges between Moscow and Canberra are illuminating, those messages giving only one side are frustrating - as are the largely incomplete messages. Reading them in sequence, however, uninterrupted by messages of a financial or bureaucratic kind, gives a good idea of the scale of Soviet espionage, particularly in 1945 and bearing in mind that these are only a fraction of the messages sent and received, and that many are incomplete. Another list of the Canberra Venona messages, issued by GCHQ, is in the UK National Archives in the HW series. The series HW15/1 covers the period from 21 August 1943 to 30 January 1948, while the series 15/2 covers the overlapping period from 16 February 1946 to 5 June 1948. The numbers 15/1/1 below etc identify each message, the letters HW before each not being reproduced. The messages are not digitised but only summarised. Thus the summary of the first message below can be retrieved by entering HW15/1/1 in the UK National Archives Discovery website. This search (under Canberra Venona) yielded 221 responses, but five of these on my count were reports about the messages (15/58/3, 15/59/7 and 15/60/3) or introductions by the National Archives to the messages (HW15 and 15/1). The GCHQ list itself is not free from error (as at 29 December 2017). The message from Canberra of 10 August 1945 concerning Maloney’s report (15/1/67) is also wrongly shown as having been sent on 10 August 1944 (15/1/19); the duplication has been reported to the Archives. A curious anomaly is that four of the messages in the UK National Archives records are not on the NSA list. Two are reproduced below in full, in italics, for ease of access, while the other two are referred to, also in italics; as the two in full below were known to Ball and Horner, they must have been in the hard copy list published in 1996. The 2 February 1945 message about Clayton is discussed by them at 225, while the 5 July 1945 message about Bernie is discussed at 246. The other two - of 3 and 5 May 1945 - concerned the Royal Australian Institute of Architects and the Association of Scientific Workers. The Association (which existed from 1939 to 1949) seems to have been a Communist front organisation: Dr Leonard Ulysses Hibbard, a member of the Federal Council of the Association and a Communist Party member, gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Espionage on 5 November 1954 that ‘at least 100 members of the Association were members of the Communist Party’. Yet another partial list of the Canberra-Moscow Venona messages comes from MI5, although probably ultimately from GCHQ. (National Archives UK file KV2/3476, available on-line). On 10 May 1955 MI5 sent to its Security Liaison Officer in Australia the following list: ‘Documents known from [redacted, but presumably Venona] to have been transmitted by Canberra… with dates of transmission’ (National Archives UK file KV2/3476 part 2). The list read: (a) Autumn 1945. Copy of A.S.S. reports supplied by G.2 (See our L 305/Government/30 of 15.6.49 and text of message of 1.9.45) (b) 10.8.45 MOLONEY (sic) report on unknown subject (c) 30.9.45 Gist of Foreign Office telegram of 24 July 1945 on Greek Foreign Minister. Also possibly other External Affairs documents. (d) 1.10.45 Resume MOLONEY (sic) report on Soviet Trade Unions. (e) 1.10.45 Text of further Foreign Office telegram of 24 July 1945 on Big Three negotiations about Greece. Also apparently further telegram about Greece. (f) 11.10.45 Texts of three Foreign Office telegrams on Bulgaria (g) 11.10.45 Batch of Foreign Office telegrams handed over by MILNER and HILL as described in message of 30.9.45 (sent to you) which contains details other leakages of Australian documents. Dates of Foreign Office telegrams 29.12.44 to 8.8.45 or later. All appear to concern South East Europe. (h) 8.11.45 Summaries of Foreign Office telegrams on Argentina and Poland. (i) 15.11.45 Summary Foreign Office telegrams 9.10.45 and 10.10.45 on Indonesia. (j) 7.12.45 Believed summary Foreign Office telegram on Poland (k) 15.2.46 Two reports by Ashby (l) 22.2.46 MacMahon Ball report on visit to Indonesia. (m) 23.3.46 P.H.P papers (see our telegram DS 2172 of 11.5.55) (Moloney, Ashby and Macmahon Ball are identified below). While most of the list can be correlated with the releases listed below (assuming that numbers (c) (e) and (g) were all transmitting the material handed over by Hill on 29 September, or by Hill and Milner), there are some exceptions. Document (d) does not appear in the other lists, although there are references to Maloney’s report in the messages of 10 and 12 August and 29 September; see (b) also. Documents (k) and (l) might be similar muddles: only Ashby’s travels, and plans to get his report, are mentioned in the messages of 16 and 17 February 1946, while Macmahon Ball is mentioned only in relation to Japan in the 8 May 1946 message, although it contained references to ‘Java’. The released messages which specifically concern spying are set out below. As noted, those in italics are not on the NSA website and are taken from the records at the (UK) National Archives. 1943 (all Moscow to Canberra) 21 Aug 1943: instructions and inquiries concerning MAKAROVICH (in future “UCN44”), Soldatov (Aleksej) and certain probationers 15/1/1; Soldatov was the First Secretary at the Soviet Embassy in Canberra; Makarovich is not known; 17 Sept 1943: report on Smirnov, Smirnova and Kranidova, the last two having ‘neighbourly relations’; AMARILIS; the translator noted that Smirnov was the cashier at the Soviet Legation in Canberra, Smirnova his wife and Kranidova a Russian emigre who became an ‘Australian citizen’ in 1930 HW15/1/5 [note: she would have become a British subject in 1930, as Australian citizenship did not exist until 1949] [Horner at 487 has AMARILIS as ‘not known, never identified’] 1944 (all Moscow to Canberra) 3 August: reference to a meeting in August 1944, part of the message unrecoverable 15/1/17 8 August: reference to new duties for EFIM (Makarov, the KGB resident in Canberra), 15/1/18 29 August: notification of impending arrival in Sydney of PALM (Eliacheff, the French ConsulGeneral, who was ‘recruited for our work at the end of 1943’), and instructions for meeting him; 15/1/20 30 Aug 1944: reference to GRANDSON (VNUK) to be used ‘only in the dark’; the translator notes ‘it appears that this expression refers to the “unconscious” use of a source’; the message adds ‘by personal observation try to discover the real intentions of GRANDSON, his interest in further work with us’; 15/1/21 Horner at 487 has Vnuk or Grandson as ‘possibly Albert Thomas Grundeman, who worked in Evatt’s Sydney office, but could also be Allan Dalziel’, who also worked there; 1945 (origin of each message evident or shown) not on web: 2 February: Moscow sugests bringing CLAYTON into KGB work; ‘Tel TECHNICIAN [TEKhNIK)] at the next regular meeting with CLAYTON [KLEJTON] to clarify how and through whom he could obtain a copy of [the Minister for the Interior’s] order. [Advise] whether C [Clayton] could not be brought into our work’. 15/1/24 [Technician was Feodor Nosov, the TASS correspondent based in Sydney, and another KGB agent]. 1 March: a report from Canberra re PALM (Eliacheff), who was the leader of the French delegation, concerning the UN Conference at Lapstone, NSW; 15/1/26 17 March: incomplete message from Canberra mainly concerning Alfred Hughes (a NSW police officer and a wartime member of the Commonwealth Security Service, later codenamed BEN), also mentioning Nosov (TECHNIK), Clayton, and the Labor Party politicians Beasley, Maloney and Evatt; 15/1/27 19 March: further report from Canberra re PALM; 15/1/29 5 April: incomplete message from Canberra referring to an unidentified person making a trip from Cambridge to Moscow in 1938, and also to the Sydney University Students’ newspaper Honi Soit; 15/1/30 10 April: instructions to Canberra regarding unidentified Russian-born British subject; 15/1/32 13 April: from Moscow mentioning cover name NESTOR who has not yet arrived in Australia 15/1/34;[according to Horner this was Krokhin, a Soviet official - perhaps a tradesman: see 8 June message below] 20 April: from Canberra asking for advice on the object of ’N’s’ trip; 15/1/35 25 April (3): reports from Canberra on the Association of Scientific Workers of Australia and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects 15/1/38; report from KLOD (Clayton) via TECHNIK re ‘Francisca Burny’ [Frances Bernie, later code-named SESTRA or SISTER] ‘who began work 4 or 5 months ago with Evatt as a secretary-typist’ and who ‘is an undercover member of the Communist Party’ 15/1/41; report from KLOD on Irene Saxby’s comments on the Australian Mission in Moscow - she was ‘a Sydney communist who had made several long visits to the Soviet Union including almost two years working in the Australian Legation in Moscow’ (Horner 294) 15/1/43; 15/1/44 says see entry for 25 April; not on web: 3 May: reports on Association… and Royal… (see 25 April); 15/1/39 and 5 May same 15/1/40 5 May (3): from Canberra giving particulars of members of the Federal Council of the Association of Scientific Workers of Australia 15/1/45; account of meeting with KLOD, who was given £15 ‘for the first time on the plausible pretext of compensating him for his personal efforts and the expenditure which he incurs when he meets people on assignments of ours’; KLOD said he had a secret assignment with BEN and would give a further report on SESTRA (15/1/42 & 46) ; 22 May: question to Moscow re ZAJTsEV’s departure, he having told Soldatov ‘not long ago’ that he would be leaving for the Soviet Union ‘in about a year’s time; 15/1/49 23 May: from Canberra: report from PALM about speeches by Archbishop Panico, the Apostolic Delegate of the Vatican to Australia, and the Polish Consul Gruszka; 15/1/50 1 June: from Canberra re cessation of liaison with L (‘never identified’ - Horner 486); 15/1/52 8 June: NESTER (NESTOR?) arrived in Canberra; working on ‘prophylactic measures’ opening up skirtings, fittings, gratings; 15/1/53 13 June: PALM had evidently asked for a present (a technical encyclopaedia) but Moscow did not approve; Moscow agrees with NESTOR’s plan of action; 15/1/54 27 June: from Canberra: GRANDSON (VNUK) reports on an anti-Soviet article in the Lang newspaper CENTURY, quoting ‘rash statements Maloney made to his trade union friends upon his recent arrival in Australia…an exceptionally foul-mouthed and filthy libel on our country and its people’; 15/1/57; [Maloney was the Australian Minister in Moscow from December 1943 until February 1946; see Phillip Deery, 'Maloney, James Joseph (1901–1982)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/maloney-james-joseph-14672/text25809, published first in hardcopy 2012, accessed online 29 January 2018.] [Lang was the politician and publisher Jack Lang - see Bede Nairn, 'Lang, John Thomas (Jack) (1876–1975)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/lang-john-thomas-jack-7027/text12223, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 13 March 2018] 1 July: from Moscow: ’With a view to making a study of aspects of the domestic life of the country in which you are residing, of strife between parties and of internal political interrelationships, we [Moscow] are interested in obtaining sources from within the progressive parties (Labour, Liberal etc)’. KLOD was to be asked to find out whether the Communist Party had its own people in these parties and who he could recommend ‘to us for use in our line’; (15/1/58) 3 July (2): report from KLOD that BEN has brought security material on the Soviet Legation and the TASS representative; the material on the Legation is of no special interest as the main files are in Canberra; there was a file on Mikheev (the first TASS correspondent in Sydney) and another on German Organisations in Sydney, as well as ‘a lot of information [from BEN] about the organisational structure of Australia’s intelligence organs’; the second message referred to BEN’s documents and suggested that in view of KLOD’s lack of experience in photographing documents TECHNIK should help; (15/1/59 & 60) not on web: 5 July: rom Canberra: biographical details relating to Francisca Bernie alias SISTER;’ “Claude” [KLOD] has given additional data about “SISTER” [SESTRA]. In 1942 she took an active part in the work of the “EUREKA” youth organisation (the local Young Communist League [KOMSOMOL] and since 1943 has been a member of the “FRATERNAL” [BRATSKAYA]. In 1943 “SISTER” was working as assistant secretary of the “EUREKA” organisation. At this period the FRATERNAL had some doubts about her social past, environment and connections. The doubts were raised by the instability of her conduct. SISTER comes rom the middle levels of the population. Her family was against her becoming a member of the FRATERNAL. Despite this, SISTER later of her own accord entered the FRATERNAL but did not become an active member. In 1943 SISTER let her parents.She wanted to get away rom family restrictions and be a bit nearer to the centre of the youth organisation. While in the latter, she once appealed to CLAUDE to get her into a post in the FRATERNAL organisation [APPARAT]. Being at that time in an extremely poor state of health (advanced tuberculosis) she was advised to go back to her family and rest for about six months. Some months later she came back again and was told of a decision to find some sort of work.’ Groups unrecoverable]. There was also much information about her husband Gluck. Then more on SISTER, thus: ‘A good quality in SISTER as C notes is that she is not talkative. However, he thinks that a lot of work wil need to be put in on her in order to turn her into a worker we can be sure of. C has begun to carry out work along these lines. He has already had a number of meetings with her. C thinks SISTER is EVATT’s secretaries’ typist for secret correspondence. She sits in a separate room. At one of the meetings she brought C copies of some of secretary DALZIEL’s letters to his Minister EVATT in SAN FRANCISCO. The materials are of no great interest. However, there are some data on the increasing strugle between the Liberal Party (MENZIES) and the labour people and also on the growing squabble for power within the Labour Government, in view of which D giving vent to the opinion of some Labour Party members, advises him to hurry back to AUSTRALIA and make himself the power in the government. [groups unrecoverable] urgently put forward the necessary propaganda and agitation in opposition to the reactionary Liberal Party. C warned me that for a start he rerained rom accepting any documents rom SISTER and instructed her on the lines that she should try to give interesting accounts herself rom memory.’ 15/1/42; same date, title is: see entry for 25 Apr 1945 15/1/61 6 July: Makarov sought consent to recruit Mark Younger, a Polish-born businessman who had arrived in Sydney 28 years previously and was a Party member, as was his wife; KLOD thought he lacked ‘adequate theoretical training’; (15/1/62) 7 July: incomplete message from Moscow about TECHNIK and BEN - ‘Your reason for proposing to put TECHNIK into direct liaison with BEN not understood’; (15/1/63) 21 July: from Canberra: KLOD given tasks in accordance with Moscow instructions (see 1 July above); TECHNIK knows Younger well; (15/1/65) 26 July: incomplete message from Moscow apparently saying that KLOD should provide exhaustive personal reports (see previous message); Younger ‘of no direct interest to us’; (15/1/66) 10 August: photograph of Maloney’s report on Russian trade unions provided by KLOD; may have come from Melbourne (see the message of 29 September below); (15/1/67) 18 August: also on Maloney’s report; (15/1/68) 29 August: report from KLOD on the Australian scientist and Communist Party member Eric Burhop; (15/1/70) 1 September: long report from KLOD re information received from BEN concerning the Australian Security Service - the Commonwealth Investigation Branch, the Federal Police, State police forces, sections of the NSW Police and their responsibilities, including organisations being investigated e.g. Political Research Society Ltd ‘a reactionary organisation set up by the Liberal Party to combat left-wing organisations’; ‘the materials we are sending by post’; (15/1/72) 7 September: message from Moscow re PALM: ‘we advise that we have not the slightest intention of authorising PALM’s entry into the USSR’; 15/1/74 15 September: message from Moscow expressing appreciation of report on counter-intelligence organs (see message of 1 September); mention of BEN, KLOD and TECHNIK; (15/1/75) 19 September: message from Moscow very critical of PALM and his information (‘his information does not satisfy us’); 15/1/81 20 September: Moscow approves gift for TECHNIK; 15/1/82 29 September: [one of the most significant messages from Canberra] at both the first and second meetings, Milner and Hill told KLOD ‘many interesting things’; in addition ‘Hill gave him copies of official telegrams received from the British Foreign Office and a copy of a [most?] secret report of the Australian Department of External Affairs and the Institute of International Relations on the political and economic situation in South-East Europe…The report was prepared on Evatt’s instructions and sent to him in London on 26th September by airmail’; ‘on his second visit to Canberra KLOD found a young Communist woman called DZHON …who will be able to get hold of copies of enciphered telegrams’; KLOD ‘has taken steps to organise a source for obtaining Maloney’s report through Melbourne’; (15/1/83) [Hill was James Hill, and Milner Ian Milner, both then in External Affairs;Horner at 486 has DZHON as Eileen Dorothy Jordan, who later married Ric Throssell] 30 September: report from KLOD re Throssell son of Communist Party member Katherine Prichard; he has been appointed third secretary to Australian Legation in Moscow; KLOD had hinted that from the point of view of the Party it would have been better if he went to a post in Europe, e g Holland; but she wanted him to go to Moscow and had her way; KLOD has been given the task of discovering ‘the real ulterior motive for Throssell’s appointment and detailed information about his character’; (15/1/84) 6 October: Moscow comments on Canberra’s message of 29 September, noting that as KLOD is ‘a rather well-known figure…his activities in attracting new sources of information are dangerous’; it should be recommended to KLOD ‘not to burden himself with obtaining information of little importance to us [such as the Maloney material] but to concentrate his attention on essential materials of an operational and intelligence nature’; basic personal details and detailed biographical descriptions for Milner and Hill were to be sent by the next post; the message went on to say that ‘if possible do not take any steps in the way of bringing in new agents without a decision from us’; re Milner and Hill ‘you automatically gave your consent to their employment without having informed us and are already receiving materials’; the translator’s note refers to an incompletely recovered two-part message of 1 October 1945, which ‘appears to contain a series of resumes of various Foreign Office telegrams on rather general political subjects’; 15/1/86 11 October: gist of British telegrams on Bulgaria provided by KLOD; 15/1/87 15 October; from Canberra: reference to TROSNIKOV [who was according to Horner at 487 probably Karpunin a Soviet official]; 15/1/88; also 15/59/7 discusses possible identification by NSA of Trosnikov 15 October: Canberra suggests that ‘in view of the [favourable?] outlook for the development of our work here’, a cadre worker should be sent to Sydney to become the deputy head of the TASS office; such a move would ‘permit us to exercise increased control of KLOD and thereafter substantially lighten his load’; it would also mean an appropriate agent net in Sydney and Melbourne; FED [probably Aleksej Osipov, a clerk at the Soviet Legation in Canberra Horner 486] is proposed for the position; (15/1/89) 17 October: Moscow says that ‘you should not receive from KLOD and transmit by telegraph textual intelligence information that is a year old’ - the translator’s note says that this is a reference to a message from Canberra of 12 October (not listed separately) containing ‘a resume of telegrams dating from December 1944 to March 1945 dealing with the situation in Rumania and the attitudes of the British and US Governments’; (15/1/90) 20 October: this is Moscow’s reply to Canberra’s message of 15 October; Moscow says that TECHNIK should be brought into the work, but ‘do not be over-eager to achieve success to the detriment of security and maximum caution’; ‘…concentrate you attention only on the Department of External Affairs, the political parties and the intelligence and counterintelligence organisations’; a replacement for FED is being selected; 15/1/91 21 October: a manuscript note on this message refers to the defection of the GRU agent Gouzenko on 5 September 1945, which may have prompted this message; it reads: ‘For specially important reasons, tell TECHNIK not to receive any documentary written materials from KLOD until special orders are received from us cancelling these instructions. Cut down meetings between TECHNIK and KLOD to one a month. Pass word to KLOD that during this period he should maintain only organisational liaison with BEN and the workers in the Australian NOOK (Department of External Affairs) and indoctrinate them in the direction which we require. Try to check to see whether TECHNIK is being watched. Help him to proceed with secrecy in this matter. If it should be noticed that he or our representatives are being made the subject of more intensive investigation, temporarily discontinue the liaisons of [the rest of the message was unrecoverable]’ (15/1/92) 28 October: from Moscow: Ambassador Lifanov reports offer of information by visitor to the Soviet Embassy in Canberra; ’why don’t you inform us about this incident?’15/1/93 31 October: a somewhat confused message to Moscow, with several parts missing, the gist of which is that Stuart Henry Moore, an RAAF officer from Sydney, offered documents and his services to the Soviet Embassy; he was the subject of a report by KLOD who had made inquiries about him - apparently before he appeared at the Embassy - and had learned from one of his contacts that Moore was ‘an enthusiast who is persistently trying to convince the party of his truthfulness’; 15/1/94 (see the next message); 6 Nov: Moscow considers that Moore ‘is evidently a plant by the competitors’ (other intelligence organisations), and no further interest should be taken in him; KLOD should be warned accordingly; 15/1/96 8 Nov: British Foreign Office telegrams supplied by KLOD; they refer to ‘The Argentine’ and Poland; (15/1/97) 10 Nov: Alexander Kerenskij , Prime Minister of Provisional Government of Russia in 1917, arrived Melbourne 8 Nov 1945 with his Australian-born wife, maiden name Nell Tritton, to visit her family in Brisbane; ‘do you consider it expedient to charge FORMER BYVShIJ to go out to Brisbane and find out there details about the visit’; 15/1/99; Horner at 486 has him as not known at the time but later thought to be Repin, a Sydney businessman who was a close associate of Nosov, and for whom see the message of 24 July 1946 below; 10 Nov: part of a message to Moscow re John Stanley Gooden, who studied nuclear physics at Sydney University and went to the UK in 1946 to continue his work at Birmingham University; he had joined the Communist Party in 1944, as had his wife; he is not mentioned by Horner, but a Google search shows that he returned to Australia in 1950 and took up a position at the Australian National University with Professor Marcus Oliphant; only a month after his return he died in Adelaide, on 9 June 1950, aged about 30; (15/1/98) 10 Nov: from Canberra: references to FORMER BYVShIJ; 15/1/99 14 Nov: from Moscow: ’I authorise the journey of FORMER BYVShIJ to Brisbane’; 15/1/100 16 Nov: telegrams on problems in Indonesia exchanged between Australian and British Governments and Mountbatten; 15/1/101 4 December: a message from Moscow concerning TECHNIK and an unidentified proposal Moscow has for him; 15/1/103 7 December: ‘materials of KLOD’ concerning Poland and Iceland; (15/1/104) 8 December (2): TECHNIK agrees to Moscow’s proposal (still unidentified).15/1/105 (also 15/1/76 but looks like 15 Sept report above) 1946 (origin of each message evident or shown) 16 February: Moscow refers to Canberra’s telegram of 8 January 1946 [evidently not recovered] in which a report from KLOD said that Ashby sent a report to External Affairs about his journey to Vladivostok; but so far as Moscow is aware, he did not go there; (15/2/1) 17 February: Canberra was to ascertain through KLOD the essentials of Ashby’s report and get a copy; (15/2/2) [Professor Eric Ashby of the University of Sydney was Scientific Attache to the Australian Legation in Moscow from November 1944 to December 1945; see Alan Burges and Richard J Eden: Ashby, Eric, Baron Ashby, (1904-1992), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004] 8 March: KLOD has found out some details of a document ‘which you know about’; ‘it was signed by three members of the British Defence Planning Committee’; a copy is in the ‘War Department’[in fact the Department of Defence] there held by the permanent secretary Frederick Shedden; the document found its way into External Affairs and ‘it will be possible to get hold of it once again in the middle of the month’; the Ashby matter is being rechecked by KLOD through his friends in External Affairs and ‘the friends’ (who are in good spirits and behaving with great caution) may need some time to find the required information; a Captain Mitchell of counter-intelligence is working in the Department; 15/2/4 9 March: from Canberra: PALM reports that he will be leaving Sydney and is being transferred to be at the disposal of the [French] Ministry of Finance and National Economy; the [French] Ministry of Foreign Affairs do not trust him and the professional elements tried to slander him; he asks that Moscow should allow him to work in future for only one master, not both Paris and Moscow; if Moscow will not allow him to go to the Soviet Union, he would like private work in Paris; 15/2/5 13 March: Moscow have had enough of PALM: in four years, ’not only did he not give us anything, but his conduct arouses suspicion’; ‘cease all liaison with him’; KLOD should be warned to be more careful in his work; until a ‘campaign that is being conducted against us in the Anglo-Saxon countries clears up’, stop receiving documents from KLOD and restrict yourself to oral information only once every three or four weeks; during this period ‘give him the task of studying people whom we require, working on them cautiously and indoctrinating them with a view to it becoming possible in the future to take them into direct liaison’; a welltried go-between should be selected to work with KLOD ‘to avoid subjecting him to unnecessary risk’; (15/2/8) 13 March: Instructions regarding KRANIDOVA (‘it is necessary to size her up carefully, to study her personal qualities’), BUROVA and ZOLOTUKhINA(‘…probationer material, showing their behaviour in the country, opportunities and personal qualities, after which settle the question of drawing them in’); 15/2/6; first two not known; for Z, see message of 14 Feb 1947 below; 19 March: describes the documents obtained by KLOD through his friends in External Affairs; Security of India and the Indian Ocean, copy no 78 and Security in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Eastern Atlantic, copy no 109, prepared by the English Post-Hostilities Planning Staff for the War Cabinet; the documents were ‘handed over to us for 35 minutes’, photographed and returned to KLOD; urgent instructions were sought about sending them by telegraph to Moscow; a footnote by the translator shows that Moscow replied on 21 March asking for the documents to sent by telegraph as soon as possible (unpublished message); the texts of both documents were sent to Moscow between 22 March and 3 April (unpublished messages); 15/2/19; [later investigation showed that at this time the documents were in the hands of Ian Milner]; 4 May: request from Moscow for details of any ‘diplomatic workers and workers of other departments’ or other people in Australia who have been appointed to work in the United Nations Secretariat; details of the Australian Permanent Representative to the UN; the message also inquired about ‘recruiting possibilities’ among those going; 15/2/29; see also message below of 24 August 1947 15/2/30; 4 May: from Canberra: garbled message re FORMER and reactions to possibility of war with USSR; FORMER mentioned in messages of 14/11/45, 24/7/46, 13/7/47 and Canberra’s 16/11/45, described in the second message above as ATHLETE; 15/2/32 8 May: report from KLOD about conversations in Japan by the Australian representative Macmahon Ball with Soviet Military Representative there; report by Sir Douglas Copland, the Australian Minister to China, about Java; and a report from the British Foreign Office about Java; [this is the last Venona message from Canberra to Moscow which was decrypted]; (15/2/34) 30 May: based on reports from others in the Embassy, Moscow criticises EFIM (the KGB Resident in Canberra, Makarov) for lax security, exceeding his rights, unpunctuality, unexplained absences, and making sharp remarks; 15/2/38; a further message on this subject on 10 June is blank 15/2/39; 24 July: from Moscow re ‘the ATHLETE BYVShIJ’ [possibly Repin - see below]; KUZNETsOVA & REPINA, who according to SMIRNOVA, are leaders of an emigre organisation in Sydney 15/2/41; the translator adds that K is ‘probably Raissa Szajewski, nee Hirsch, a ballet teacher known professionally as Madame K associated with the pro-Russian Social Club in Sydney; REPINA is ‘almost certainly a member of the family of Ivan Dimitri Repin, prominent member of the pro-Soviet section of the Russian community in Sydney’; while S is ‘probably Elsie Leahy, formerly S (or Smirnoff) formerly Surrest, nee Poolicchi, associated with the pro-Russian Social Club in Sydney; [for Repin, see Ian J. Bersten, 'Repin, Ivan Dmitrievitch (1888–1949)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/repin-ivandmitrievitch-11509/text20531, published first in hardcopy 2002, accessed online 14 March 2018.] 1 August: a garbled message from Moscow which seems to suggest that conditions in Australia are becoming less favourable for legal activity by the Party, and it must be expected that there will be increased surveillance of members; TECHNIK is to consider a question with KLOD and proposals are to be submitted to Moscow; opportunities which KLOD has ‘for stepping up his work for us’ are to be stated, as well as for arranging for trips to England ‘under conditions of complete safety from compromise’; (15/2/42 & 15/1/77 but again looks like 15 Sept report above) 1 September: SANTO (Gubanov, an Embassy official) is to be given all materials on the ATHLETES (15/2/43); [according to Ball and Horner at 210, these were ‘probationary agents, who were used to provide information or for other assignments on behalf of the residency, but who were yet to be fully recruited’]; see also below under 8 April 1947; SANTO is also mentioned at 15/2/45, /15/2/46, 15/2/47 and 15/2/48, but only in connection with his allowances; 24 October: based on information which has reached Moscow, it warns that surveillance of the Soviet colonies in the British Commonwealth has been intensified; Moscow considers it ‘necessary for you to suspend work for the time being’; KLOD should be informed of the temporary suspension of liaison with him; a reliable means of communication and a password should be arranged in case work is resumed; there are no specific threats but these precautions need to be taken; KLOD should ‘observe great care in the matter of contact with people of whom he has already made use for our common ends’; (15/2/51); it might be worth noting that only four messages from that month were released, and four in November. 30 Nov: ZAJTsEVs recall agreed by the Centre; 15/2/52 [he was the GRU resident in Canberra] 1947 (all Moscow to Canberra) 9 January: a long but incomplete message from Moscow concerning instructions and warnings about TECHNIK and his contacts, about KLOD and BITI; TECHNIK should be careful when meeting with KLOD and in other situations; KLOD evidently offered an unspecified note via BITI [not traced, and the translator suggests it is perhaps a transliteration of a surname such as Beatty or a diminutive form of Beatrice]; there is a suggestion that BITI was passing notes to the Ambassador, but the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is instructing him not to meet her any more nor to accept any notes from her; (15/2/53) [BITI may have been Beeby? See Horner 298 and 487] 25 January: further instructions from Moscow about meeting TECHNIK, perhaps in response to a query from Canberra; 15/2/56 29 Jan: possible breaches of security by secretaries to ‘Engineers’ (Heads of Mission), also sent to several other residencies; 15/2/58 5 February: a message from Moscow, again perhaps in response to a Canberra message, about the theft of several copies of an unspecified document; 15/2/60 14 Feb: precautions to be taken with regard to ZOLOTUKhINA’s recall home (she was the secretary to the Soviet Minister in Canberra); continuous surveillance was to be arranged and arrangements were to be made with the Engineer about stopping her meetings with YOUNG (not identified); 15/2/63 31 March: again a response by Moscow to a Canberra message which is not available; there are references to data about Paramonov and Simonov being indecipherable; [Horner notes at 487 that the code name SKORPION or SCORPION was ‘not identified by 1960, but later thought possibly Sergei Jacques Paramonov, a Russian Australian working in the CSIR’]; see the message of 30 May below; 15/2/67 15/2/71 8 April: further message from Moscow re Paramonov and Simonov, but mostly unrecovered or unrecoverable; 15/2/70 8 April: message from Moscow referring to SANTO and the ATHLETES SPIRITED and GLORY - see the 1 September 1946 message above; there was a correction about this message, and these two and the preceding message were the only three messages released for April 1947; (15/2/69) 9 May: Moscow sanctioned the recruitment of A V Vysel’skij; ‘give the job to our worker SANTO to do’; a note on the message identifies Vysel’skij as an Embassy official who arrived in Canberra in January 1947, being initially described as as Press Attache, then from August 1948 as Third Secretary; Ball and Horner have him at 129-130 as a KGB officer with the codename of VASSILI; 30 May: another message mostly unrecovered our unrecoverable, but identifies Paramonov as SCORPION; see the message of 30 March 1947 above; only five messages were released for May; 15/2/71 3 July: unintelligible message from Moscow referring to Simonov; 15/2/68 13 July: message from Moscow inquiring about FORMER 15/2/76; and ‘for the time being you should not meet KLOD’; [according to Ball and Horner at 210, FORMER was one of the first Australian ATHLETES and ‘his employment authorised by Moscow Centre in November 1945’; although they refer to the Venona documents, there is no such message in the releases on the website]; these two messages were the only ones released for July; 24 Aug : instructions to several residencies regarding inquiries to be made about the composition of United Nations General Assembly delegation from ‘your country’ and ‘come to an agreement with these people about the possibility of contact with them in New York’ ; 15/2/30 and 15/2/78 [it is worth interpolating here that James Hill, then in External Affairs - see the message above of 29 September 1945 - attended the Assembly in 1947 as part of the Australian delegation; although he admitted to the Petrov Royal Commission that he had seen Ian Milner in New York, there is no record of any contact he may have had with either the Soviet Embassy in Canberra or the Soviet delegation in New York] 10 September: Moscow authorised a meeting between TIKHON and SCORPION [TIKHON according to Horner at 487 was Tenukest, a naturalised Australian who worked in the Czech Consulate-General in Sydney]; Canberra was told to continue study KEU (15/2/80) [according to Horner at 287, this was possibly Kenneth Key, who worked at the CSIR]. 9 December: message from Moscow addressed to Makarov asking whether ‘you are personally acquainted with KLOD and whether you have had a business acquaintance with him; whether TECHNIK has arranged with KLOD a password by which it is possible to establish contact with KLOD for the new comrade; and your opinion about meetings etc whether it is advisable to organise meetings with KLOD at the present time and if such is the case who is the best person to meet him’; (15/2/86) 15 December: evidently a reply from Moscow to Canberra’s response (not available) to the message of 9 December; ‘as contact with KLOD was broken a long time ago he has doubtless stopped coming for meetings arranged with a password. Discuss with TECHNIK and report… to summon KLOD to the first meeting….Until you receive permission from us no practical steps are to be taken to establish contact with KLOD.’; a manuscript note on an earlier version of this message says ‘See 15 Sept 1945’; the only released message for this date is above; it relevance is not immediately apparent; (15/1/78 but again looks like 15 Sept report) 19 December: another message from Moscow mentioning KLOD and TECHNIK but almost all of it is either unrecoverable or unrec0vered; 15/2/88 (15/1/78 but again 15 Sept report) 1948 (all Moscow to Canberra) 30 January: a request from Moscow ‘to report briefly how and from whom TECHNIK found out about what you reported in your telegram no 3’; that telegram is ‘not available’; this was one of only two messages released for that month; 15/2/90; (15/1/80 but again 15 Sept report) 17 February: another message from Moscow ‘giving you [EFIM] the task of personally conducting the meeting with KLOD on 19 February. TECHNIK is to introduce you to KLOD. In the opening stages of the conversation find out precisely what KLOD’s position is, what the position is of all his people who are working for us and what opportunities they have at the present time’; the rest of the message is either unrecoverable or unrecovered; this was the only message released for that month; (15/2/91) 8 March: another in the series about KLOD but again missing a Canberra telegram; this Moscow message reproaches EFIM: ‘in spite of our warning, the meeting with KLOD has been fixed by you too soon…It is essential to get biographical particulars and detailed character descriptions from KLOD of the group leaders whom he is going to recommend to us…Discuss with KLOD how best to contact the group leaders…Do not establish contact with the group leaders without our permission..Give KLOD £50 in old notes.’ More criticism and finally a reference to ‘the surnames of new ATHLETES and of persons to be cultivated’ being sent by separate telegram; 15/2/92 17 March: query re the duties to which SANTO can be transferred; 15/2/93 24 March: Moscow proposes, bearing in mind the curtailment in the use of athletes, recruitment of A V Vysel’skij (Embassy official) for work on SK (watching and reporting to Moscow on the conduct and political reliability of members of Embassy staff and other Soviet citizens visiting or residing in a given country); 15/2/94 26 March: a request from Moscow to ‘State how and from whom KLOD received the information reported by you in… ‘(unrecovered); (15/2/95) 31 March: a security instruction from Moscow on procedure for separate reporting of intelligence and operational information, referring to ATHLETES; 15/2/96 12 April: the password for a meeting with GUR’YaNOV 15/2/97; [Horner at 486 has him ‘not known; never identified’] 12 April: reference to SANTO; there is no vacant post for probationer; ‘state to what other post he can be transferred’; 15/2/98 15 April: more instructions concerning contact with KLOD, referring to earlier telegrams (one of them possibly 17 February above); (15/2/99) 5 May: only a partially deciphered telegram referring to meetings with KLOD, to the husband of TOURIST’s sister [TOURIST was James Frederick Hill - Horner 487], and to TOURIST being an academician, KLOD reported this as far back as 1946 [the translator has academician as ‘probably member of the Communist Party’ but this seems unlikely]; (15/2/100) 15 May: Canberra was asked to report ‘who had a conversation with SHEPEK’ who is not known; 15/2/102 16 May: questions to be put to KLOD at a meeting on 20 May: ‘among his old sources whose material he passed to us formerly, whom does he recommend that we should take on, apart from PROFESSOR and TOURIST? What opportunities have FERRO and GIRLFRIEND and does KLOD recommend that we should use them…for example Legge’; much is unrecoverable; 15/2/103; PROFESSOR on Horner’s account at 487 is possibly Frederick Rose, a communist who worked in several Australian government departments; FERRO was Ric Pritchard Throssell, who worked in External Affairs; GIRLFRIEND was on Horner’s account at 487 ‘later thought possibly to be Doris Isobel Beeby, one-time Tribune correspondent in Canberra who assisted Clayton’; the translator’s note said that Legge was ’probably John Williamson Legge’, who according to Ball and Horner at 227 was ‘a member of the party and an associate of Clayton’ and also a cousin of George Legge, who worked in External Affairs and would later come into contact with Petrov (Horner 306-7); 23 May: Moscow’s inquiry about resumption of liaison with TECHNIK; 15/2/104 5 June: EFIM is asked at his next meeting with KLOD to ascertain what positions SISTER and BEN occupy at present and whether they can be used for our work; the possibility of using GIRLFRIEND in the future; where are FERRO and ARTIST living; is it advisable to bring FERRO into our work in view of the fact that his mother is well known in Australia as an influential academician; how is it proposed to organise liaison between FERRO and MASTERCRAFTSMAN as they live in different towns; will KLOD release ARTIST from secretarial work; 15/2/107; ARTIST was on Horner’s account at 486 Herbert Tattersall, a builder and active member of the Communist Party and the de facto husband of Doris Beeby; and MASTERCRAFTSMAN was Wilbur Christiansen, a radio physicist in the CSIR and brother-in-law of James Hill. Interception of the Venona messages ended in August 1948, ‘probably as a result of Weisband’s warning’, as Andrew put it at 378. William Weisband was a Soviet agent who was working for the Armed Forces Security Agency (later the NSA) which as noted had at that time the Venona material. The single subsequent release, in 1951, was a summary of the material about HOMER (Donald Maclean). ______________________ Analysis of the messages reveals that some of the wilder claims, possibly made initially by the NSA, and repeated by Ball and Horner, are without foundation. Thus Ball and Horner claim at 213 that In September 1945 KLOD arranged with Hill for the latter to provide him with copies of telegrams from the British Foreign Office to the department of External Affairs in Canberra. Over the next twelve months, Hill (TOURIST) gave KLOD hundreds of these telegrams, some dating back to December 1944 but most of them current; detailed resumes of their contents were regularly cabled to Moscow. And again at 264-5: Hill and Clayton evidently established contact soon after Hill moved to Canberra in June 1945, and at the two joint meetings with Milner and Clayton in September, Hill gave Clayton ‘copies of several official telegrams received from the British Foreign Office’ as well as copies of other secret reports. Hill also gave Clayton ‘a series of resumes of various Foreign Office telegrams on rather general political subjects’, which was sent to Moscow on 1 October. At another meeting during the first week of October, he handed over copies of Foreign Office telegrams sent to Canberra in May and August… Over the next year, Hill gave Clayton something every week or two… The Venona message of 29 September 1945 shows only that ‘Hill gave him [Clayton] copies of official telegrams received from the British Foreign Office and a copy of a [most?] secret report of the Australian Department of External Affairs and the Institute of International Relations on the political and economic situation in South-East Europe…The report was prepared on Evatt’s instructions and sent to him in London on 26th September by airmail’. Hill is not thereafter mentioned by name or codename until 5 May 1948. Nor do the messages support either of the assertions that large numbers of telegrams were sent or that the source was providing them ‘every week or two’ for ‘over a year’. There is a further similar passage at 297: By the end of 1947 Arlington Hall had informed GCHQ that KhILL had provided copies of telegrams from Whitehall to the Department of External Affairs in Canberra dealing with British postwar foreign policy. During 1948 information had been decrypted about TOURIST’s membership of the Communist Party, his family relations and his continuing supply of important information. There is no reference to Hill as KhILL in the messages, and those of 5 and 16 May 1948, shown above, do not support the sweeping statement in the second sentence. A less excitable account of the Australian Venona is by West in chapter IV. The claims in Ball and Horner are not repeated in Horner’s history of ASIO, although following the NSA he now has at 55 ‘more than 200 cables between Canberra and Moscow’. He repeats at 55-6 the common mistake that Milner’s codename, BUR, occurred in the Venona material; in fact, it was revealed by Petrov after his defection. (Manne, 186) The dates of the messages in 1945-46 suggest that the source for the telegrams may not have been Hill (or Milner) but Frances Bernie, who worked in Evatt’s office in Sydney from November 1944 until April 1946. She confessed to ASIO to taking material from the office to Clayton during this time and would have had access to telegrams forwarded from Canberra. ‘Resumes’ may also be a clue, as Bernie admitted to ASIO that she typed up her own summaries of documents - Horner 300. Although as noted elsewhere, not too much store should be set by the dates of the messages - given that material was also being sent from Canberra to Moscow by bag, and that only a fraction of the messages was decrypted - the coincidence of the dates of the messages about the cables and the dates of Bernie’s employment is striking. The messages about the cables or other material - apart from the September 1945 batch, which clearly came from Hill - occurred on 11 and 12 October (although the MI5 list, as noted, also has telegrams about Greece on 30 September and 1 October), 8 and 16 November and 7 December 1945, and 8 January and 8 May 1946, when the messages from Canberra to Moscow ceased to be decrypted. Except for the last message, they all fall within the dates of Bernie’s employment in Evatt’s office - November 1944 until April 1946. The frequency of the messages in October and November 1945 also suggests Bernie as the source. She was able to visit Clayton in the city during her lunch hour; but were Hill to have been the source it would have meant that Clayton would have gone to Canberra on or near each of these dates. Such frequent meetings with Hill (or Milner) would have been very risky, although Hill might have given the material to Jordan or Beeby (see below) Clayton could have passed the material to the TASS representative (and KGB officer) in Sydney, Feodor Nosov, who on Ball and Horner’s account at 131, ‘visited Canberra fairly regularly’…’averaged at least a dozen trips to Canberra a year’. It is plain from the messages that it was Nosov rather than Clayton who had the greater contact with Makarov at the Soviet Embassy. Indeed, the messages of late 1947 and early 1948 suggest that at that stage Makarov had not even met Clayton. As to the security of documents in Evatt’s Sydney office, during a visit there in mid-August 1945 Throssell noted that it was ‘a hive of activity, with visitors coming and going without escort and “armfuls of official papers [dumped] on the girls’ desks” ’. (Ball and Horner 151-2) Also relevant are Clayton’s comments on Bernie. As reproduced above, TECHNIK reported on 25 April 1945 that KLOD is giving her detailed instruction on how to conduct herself while working in EVATT’S outfit particularly emphasising to her that she should be scrupulously careful in speaking about her work so that none of her friends, or even her relatives, with the exception of himself (KLOD) should know what she is doing and what materials pass through her hands. …At the next meeting with KLOD, TECHNIK will ask for detailed data about her and also will establish whether KLOD is receiving any materials through her and how. In the 5 July 1945 message quoted above, Clayton told Nosov that he needed to do ‘a lot of work…on her in order to turn her into a worker we can be sure of ’, and that he had ‘begun to carry out work along these lines’. In October she passed to Clayton ‘a mass of internal political material’. (Ball and Horner 246) Again, all this fits with the flow of cables from Bernie beginning in October. In 2011, Ball said in a newspaper article (details below) that ‘In 2008, Bernie admitted that she had given Walter Seddon Clayton, the organiser and co-ordinator of the KGB networks, much more important information than she had previously confessed’. In 2010 Mark Aarons recorded at 146 that his father Laurie had told him that Clayton had arranged Bernie’s employment in Evatt’s office, contrary to what she told the Royal Commission. Like his father before him, Laurie Aarons had been a member of the Communist Party of Australia for many years, and from 1965 to 1976 its National Secretary. Another possibility as the source of some of the leaked telegrams is Dorothy Jordan (DZhON, PODRUGA), who joined the Melbourne University branch of the Communist Party in 1942 and who began work as a ‘records clerk’ in the Department of External Affairs in Canberra on 10 August 1945. She resigned from the public service in August 1947 shortly before her marriage to Ric Throssell. As the 29 September 1945 message above shows, Clayton reported that she had access to ‘enciphered telegrams’. On ASIO’s information, Jordan visited Doris Beeby (possibly GIRLFRIEND) in Canberra every week, taking a briefcase with her; and Beeby was one of Clayton’s contacts in Canberra. Jordan denied to the Royal Commission that she had given official information to Beeby. The Petrovs did not know of her. ———————— The messages show strange use of codenames. Some e.g SISTER were identified by their own names in the material and thereafter the codename used. Did Katherine Susannah Prichard have a code name? She is referred to by Ball and Horner at 212 and again by Horner at 486 as ACADEMICIAN or ‘the influential ACADEMICIAN’ (message of 5 June 1948, where the translator suggests that this probably means she is a Communist Party member); but two factors count against this being her codename or meaning that she was a Party member. One is that the 30 September 1945 message which mentions her and Throssell refers to him as ‘the son of a member of the FRATERNAL’, viz Prichard. There are other references in the Venona material to Party members being in the Fraternal - e g the message of 10 November 1945 refers to Gooden and his wife both being members of the Fraternal, which the translator describes as the Communist Party. Further, the message of 5 May 1948 describes TOURIST (Jim Hill) as an ACADEMICIAN. Were it to mean a party member, it would also apply to Bernie, Jordan, Milner and others, to whom it was never applied in these messages. An alternative explanation is that ACADEMICIAN means something like ‘intellectual’ or ‘a well-educated person’ and this would explain Prichard being ‘the influential ACADEMICIAN’ and the term also being applied to Hill. Were ACADEMICIAN to be Prichard’s codename, that description makes no sense; but it does make sense as ‘the influential intellectual’. Finally, it is worth noting that ACADEMICIAN does not appear in the list of Canberra codenames prepared by the NSA (National Archives UK file 15/60/3); nor in West’s Glossary of Soviet Covernames - but as against that it does appear in his Glossary of Soviet Cryptonyms as meaning ‘Communist Party member’. (Venona, pp 353 and 365). Its only mention in the two volumes arising from the Vassiliev material (see below) is: ‘“Academic” [Akademich] (cover name in Vassiliev notebooks): A 1948 cover name with unclear meaning, possibly Communist activity or espionage work. ‘ see Cover Name, Cryptonym, Pseudonym, and Real Name Index, A Research Historian’s Working Reference Compiled by John Earl Haynes: http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/ Worth noting also is the reference to Throssell in the message of 5 June 1948 where the question is asked ‘Is it advisable to bring [him] into our work..?’ On one reading, this suggests that he had not previously been in ‘our work’. The question asked in the same message about those known to have been active earlier - SISTER and BEN - is ‘whether they can be used for our work’. Worth asking is why there is an apparent two-year gap between May 1946, when KLOD made a report based on material he got from External Affairs, and May 1948, when Moscow started asking questions about members of KLOD’s group, in some cases showing that it had little idea about some of them e g SISTER who had effectively dropped out of the group in April 1946 when she left Evatt’s office. The answer would seem to lie in the defection in September 1945 in Canada of Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet cypher clerk. Weinstein and Vassiliev note at 104 (footnote) that ‘Gouzenko’s defection …provoked intense concern by Soviet intelligence chiefs in Moscow over protecting their agent networks not only in Canada and the United States but in England’. And in Australia too, one might add - see the message Moscow-Canberra of 21 October 1945 mentioned above. According to them, contact with US sources was not resumed until 1947. ——————————— One of the more fascinating passages (at 82-86) in Robert Lamphere’s book on his experiences with the Venona material while he was in the FBI - he was the first to work on it there concerns his relationship with Meredith Gardner, the cryptanalyst at the Army Security Agency who was working on the KGB messages. Lamphere was able to help Gardner by not only providing from FBI records plain texts of some enciphered materials but also by furnishing him with ‘memoranda that described what the KGB might be referring to in some of [the messages]’. This interaction is similar to that which exists - or ought to exist - in investigative agencies between intelligence officers and investigators: to paraphrase the philosopher Kant, investigations without intelligence are blind, and intelligence without investigations is empty. While the Army Security Agency and GCHQ exchanged cryptanalysts from the early days of Venona, it is not clear that there was any attempt to put together those in GCHQ with the MI5 officers who were doing the investigating. One drawback with the London material was that there was relatively little of it, as KGB messages between Moscow and the Soviet Embassy in London were not intercepted between August 1941 and June 1945 (Andrew 376). Neither does there seem to have been any early attempt to pass the Canberra material to and fro between cryptanalyst and investigator, although the tyranny of distance in those days would have rendered any such relationship difficult. In fact, the arrangements made with the material were such as to inhibit investigative insights: the first ASIO officers working on the KGB group in Australia were not even allowed to see the Venona material (Horner 124-5). The MI5 officer in Australia who had custody of it told them what he thought they should know. As Andrew observed at 380 - but the remark did not apply to the US - ‘The value of VENONA as a counter-espionage tool was diminished, sometimes seriously, by the extreme secrecy with which it was handled’. There is no suggestion in Horner that such investigative advances as were made were fed back to the cryptanalysts. He notes at 488 that ‘despite much research effort’ by the late 1950s little progress had been made with investigations arising from the Venona material; but that ‘nonetheless, research into the Venona material would keep analysts busy for a further two or three decades’. Ron Richards, ASIO’s most senior operational officer, was not indoctrinated into Venona until April 1952, and when he visited the UK later that year, he was on Horner’s account at 299 able to study the material held there about ‘the case’. He confirmed the identifications that had already been made, and obtained considerable additional material about these and other suspects. We’ll never know the extent of the harm done to the investigations by these delays. West recorded at 35 that counter-intelligence experts from the five-eyes countries (Canada, the US, New Zealand, Australia and the UK) were brought together, initially in 1967 in Melbourne, in a group known as CAZAB, to provide VENONA with global support. Eventually CAZAB became the basis of VENONA exploitation, with individual officers from the five countries cleared to handle the material and develop it by sharing collateral, particularly that provided by defectors, and holding annual conferences to discuss progress. The author of volume 2 of the official history of ASIO, John Blaxland, was not greatly interested in the Venona material, and readers are not helped by the defective index, which has only four references to Venona, whereas there are several more in the text. Blaxland recorded at 272 that both GCHQ in 1968 and MI5 in 1972 (Peter Wright) sent officers to Australia to debrief the Petrovs further on the Venona material. He also described at 277-8 the CAZAB forum and its role with the Venona material, but added the depressing comment that ‘the sensitivity of the source meant that the information might not be passed on to ASIO’s counterespionage staff ’. ASIO was still working with the material as late as 1971 (363-4). Blaxland also dealt briefly at 375-6 with the early days of the Royal Commission on Intelligence and Security appointed in 1974, and discussions the Royal Commissioner Mr Justice Hope had with other security agencies concerning the safeguarding of the Venona material; and the Venona briefing in 1973 by the then Director General, Peter Barbour of Prime Minister Whitlam (343, 355-6). There is very little meat on any of these bones. What is also disappointing is how little discussion there has been in Australia generally on the Venona material. __________________________ Although work on the Venona material ceased in the US in 1980, it attracted attention again in 1999 and 2009 when two books were published based on material obtained from the KGB archives in 1994-96 by Alexander Vassiliev. As he recounts in the second volume, Spies, (Introduction, pp xxvii-liii), Vassiliev was himself a former KGB officer who was approached in 1994 by his old employer (by then the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)) and asked to cooperate in writing a book about Soviet espionage in the US in the 1930s and 1940s. The book was to be one of several based on KGB archives, the proceeds to go to the (Russian) Association of Retired Intelligence Officers, whose pension fund was evidently in need of fortification. Over the next two years Vassiliev filled eight notebooks (four yellow, three white and one black, and so referred to in sources) with material amounting to 1115 pages, some of which he copied by hand (photocopying was forbidden) and some of which he summarised. Vassiliev left the Soviet Union in May 1996, apprehensive that President Yeltsin would lose the forthcoming election and that the forces of darkness would resume control. Fearful that the notebooks might be confiscated as he left the country, he left them behind and took with him some floppy discs containing draft chapters based on the material he had obtained, and copies of some other documents. This and some other material his co-author, Allen Weinstein, had already taken to the US became The Haunted Wood (Random House 1999). Weinstein himself had visited the USSR more than two dozen times while Vassiliev was doing his work, and things became quite chummy. Weinstein was wined and dined by the SVR and there were surprise encounters with famous KGB spies. George Blake was ‘a fluent and gracious dinner partner’. Friends and relatives of the 40 or so West German agents in East Germany identified by Blake and then executed would no doubt have taken a different view (Andrew, 490). Weinstein was also taken ‘to a nearby SVR hospital for a rare visit with the aged and ailing Morris Cohen (a.k.a. Peter Kroger)…who provided fascinating stories of his life as an American Communist.’ Sadly for interested antipodean observers, no inside information on how and Cohen and his wife obtained New Zealand passports in Paris - perhaps from Desmond Patrick Costell0 - appeared to have been offered or sought. Several senior SVR people also visited the US as Weinstein’s guests, and there were chats with the CIA and the FBI - and William Donovan, the founder of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (a forerunner of the CIA), an organisation which contained ‘an astounding number of [KGB] sources’. (Spies, 293). Vassiliev retrieved his notebooks in 2001 and they formed the basis of the second book, Spies, which he wrote with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. As the Vassiliev material covered much the same period as the Venona material, it threw new light on it, mainly by revealing its limitations: as against the Vassiliev material, which included summaries or complete reports from KGB agents in the US or from Moscow Centre, and was sourced and recorded systematically, the Venona material is shown up more sharply as random, terse and incomplete. The point might best be illustrated from the Notes at pp 345-376 of The Haunted Wood. They refer in Chapter 1 to one Venona message; in chapter 2 to none; in chapter 3 to one; and so on, rising to 14 in chapter 9, out of 182 references. The pattern is similar is Spies: three for Chapter 1, 17 in Chapter two (from 182 references)… On the other hand, it is only fair to record that according to John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr: - based on our earlier work on Venona and our examination over the past three years of - Vassiliev’s notebooks, we were able to provide corroboration for the real names identified by the Venona project for 177 cover names; significantly, we discovered only four cases where Venona analysts made incorrect identifications; 63 unidentified names in Venona were identified in the Vassiliev material; there were eight cover names revealed where NSA/FBI analysts made an identification, but NSA redacted the real names when it released Venona; there are twenty-eight unidentified cover names in Vassiliev’s notebooks where Venona supplies a real name. Some work continues to be done on the Venona and similar material, e g by the Russian historian Dr Svetlana Chervonnaya, to whom Chapman Pincher was ‘indebted’ (Treachery, 628). The two of them identified a spy with the codename of Milord as James MacGibbon (1912-2000), a prominent London publisher (the firm was MacGibbon and Kee) who had joined the Communist Party in 1936 and who had provided such valuable information to the USSR during the war that he was awarded the Order of Lenin. (Treachery 109-113) Much of Dr Chervonnaya’s output is published on her website documentstalk.com, where among other matters she challenges the received versions of some US Venona material and some of the conclusions in the two books mentioned above based on the Vassiliev notebooks. Sadly, there is no mention - so far - of the Australian Venona. It seems unlikely that the arrangement made in 1994 with the proceeds going to retired intelligence officers will be repeated: President Putin, himself a KGB alumnus, is likely to have looked after his former colleagues. Denis Lenihan London May 2018 References Aarons, Mark: The Family File, Melbourne, 2010 Andrew, Christopher: The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5, London, 2009 Ball, Desmond: ‘The moles at the very heart of government’ The Australian, April 16, 2011; https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/the-moles-at-the-very-heart-of-government/ news-story/cdfaf618ed39b562057f9df7a20433e4?sv=1a9a6b12bcb54f10f0e521c898e70fe Ball, Desmond and Horner, David: Breaking the Codes: Australia’s KGB Network 1944-1950, Sydney, 1998 Blaxland, John: The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO 1963-1975, Sydney, 2015 Haynes, John Earl and Klehr, Harvey: Venona and Alexander Vassiliev’s Notebooks: Confirming and Correcting Identified Venona Cover Names and Revealing the Unidentified, 2009 Symposium on Cryptologic History; http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/ Haynes, John Earl, Klehr, Harvey and Vassiliev, Alexander: Spies: The Rise and Fal of the KGB in America, New Haven, 2009 Horner, David: The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO 1949-1963, Sydney, 2015 kiwispies.com has further details of Cohen and Costello Lamphere, Robert J and Shachtman, Tom: The FBI-KGB War, New York, 1986 Manne, Robert: The Petrov Affair, Sydney, 1987 Martin, David C: The Wilderness of Mirrors, New York, 1980 National Archives Australia: the only reference to Venona, by that name, in the ASIO records in the National Archives Australia is to the following file: Memo Top Secret Venona (Reference in History of ASIO Volume 1) Miscellaneous Papers A6122/2714; it comprises a digitised ninepage extract from an undated memorandum labelled TOP SECRET -VENONA and canvasses the accusations made by Evatt as to ASIO fabricating material and helping Menzies win the 1954 election; it includes some exchanges between the Petrov Royal Commissioners and London. National Security Agency/Central Security Service: Fith Venona Release, Fort George G Meade, Maryland, October 1996; this volume is not publicly available in London, even inquiries to MI5 and the US Embassy proving unsuccessful Pincher, Chapman: Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders and Cover-ups: Six Decades of Espionage, Edinburgh, 2011 Weinstein, Allen and Vassiliev, Alexander: The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America - the Stalin Era, New York, 1999 West, Nigel: Venona: The Greatest Secret of the Cold War, London, 1999