This book uses evidence provided by US govenment intelligence agencies to prove that US government intelligence agencies were justified in investigating and prosecuting critics of policies made by US government intelligence agencies. For books which make similar arguments but are more convincing by virtue of their use of other sources of info, try the work of Allen Weinstein, Ron Radosh, or Ellen Schrecker.

One of the issues that probably most people are not aware of is that the Venona decrypts only decoded about 1/3 of 1% of the Soviet cable traffic during the WW2 time period. From that tiny fraction of decoded or partially decoded messages, about 300 code-names for Soviet agents/spies/traitors of various types were figured out. But of the 300 only about half were eventually identified with actual names. There may have been some agents with duplicate names, but even so, the number is staggeringly large. Most people who are even aware of all this probably think the number was very small. One wonders how many more names of spies might have been unmasked if more than three out of each thousand messages had been decoded.

These spies not only stole/gave away the atomic bomb, but they also made or influenced key policy decisions that favored Soviet Communist expansion. Today, we are still living with the nightmares created by the decisions made by those spies.

I wish that, although the decryption, based on one-time pads, and itself betrayed, AND enormously expensive and difficult would have continued. There are more pressing priorities today; nevertheless newer super computers, parallel processors, and other techniques might be able to help us embarrass some of the people who betrayed the people of United States, Europe and Asia.

This book is extremely informative and descriptive in detailing the Soviet's ability to influence our government from the 1920's through the 1950's in matters both political and military. It's amazing to discover how deeply the Soviets had penetrated our government. And the degree to which the Soviets were able to gain access to various levels within different government agencies. It is no wonder how the Soviets obtained secrets to the atom bomb and other highly sensitive military information.