Showing posts with label Venona Papers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Venona Papers. Show all posts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Why I won't be patronizing Oppenheimer by seeing it: He was a Stalinist and a traitor

 Daniel J. Flynn, here:

As described in this column previously, Pavel Sudoplatov, so high-ranking that the Soviets placed him in charge of murdering Leon Trotsky, maintained in his autobiography that “Oppenheimer supplied … the Soviet Union with crucial information for it to successfully test its own atomic bomb in 1949.” He details Oppenheimer’s role, “which included allowing moles access to secret data to copy it, and describes him as ‘knowingly part of the scheme.’”

Material from the files of both Soviet and U.S. intelligence supports Sudoplatov’s claim: “An Oct. 2, 1944, memo from the Soviet archives, signed in receipt by chief of secret police Lavrentiy Beria, identifies Oppenheimer as a ‘member of the apparatus of Comrade [Earl] Browder’ who ‘provided cooperation in access to research for several of our tested sources including a relative of [the Communist Party USA leader].’”

Venona project decrypts refer to Oppenheimer under a codename, monikers in most but not all circumstances reserved for Soviet assets. A decoded March 1945 intercept “instructs Soviet agents to ‘re-establish contact with “Veskel” … as soon as possible.’ Veskel, the National Security Administration determined conclusively, referred to Oppenheimer.”

In The Venona Secrets, late authors Herb Romerstein and Eric Breindel wrote: “In May [of 1945] the Rezidentura sent Moscow another report from [Theodore] Hall on atom bomb research. It revealed the locations of work being done and the names of the heads of each research group. All of the names were clearly written out except one, that of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was listed as ‘Veskel,’ the head of Los Alamos.”

Oppenheimer’s critics lacked this information in 1954, so one better understands their restrained classification of him as merely a security risk rather than charging that he lacked, in the words of President Dwight Eisenhower’s Executive Order 10450, a “complete and unswerving loyalty to the United States.” What’s the excuse of the NBC News Studios documentary airing on MSNBC for omitting so much information from credible sources in the U.S. and U.S.S.R. intelligence apparatus painting a grim picture of Oppenheimer’s trustworthiness? ...

Oppenheimer donated large sums to Communist causes, subscribed to Communist publications, and married a Communist. Other associates in the party included his brother, sister-in-law, landlady, the girlfriend who later became his mistress, and numerous students. He attended secret meetings of Communist professors while teaching at Berkeley.

 Most damning of all, Haakon Chevalier, a friend and professor at Berkeley, approached Oppenheimer with the idea of passing on Manhattan Project secrets to the Soviet Union. Oppenheimer did not report this event to his superiors for many months and, when he did, described the events dishonestly, i.e., by omitting both himself and Chevalier from the story. Rather than steer clear of someone petitioning him to commit espionage, Oppenheimer continued to see Chevalier socially for years.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Ron Radosh Skewers Filmmaker Oliver Stone's Mendacious Stalinism


According to his own testimony, if he had become president, Wallace would have made Harry Dexter White his secretary of the Treasury and given a position in government to Laurence Duggan. Both men were Soviet agents. As a KGB cable found in the Venona archives shows, the Soviets hoped that Duggan would aid them “by using his friendship” with Wallace for “extracting .  .  . interesting information.” ... Stone allows no critical opinions by scholars who have studied the Soviet archives to disturb his rehash of Communist propaganda themes. His sainted Henry Wallace opposed the creation of NATO, advocated abandoning Berlin in response to the Soviet blockade, denounced the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction as “the martial plan,” and justified the 1948 Communist coup in Czechoslovakia as a measure to thwart a plot by fascist forces. Precisely the Kremlin line.