The death this week of Allen Weinstein, ninth archivist of the United States, garnered a long and well-deserved piece in the Washington Post.  However, Weinstein's role as co-chairman, with CIA Director John Deutch, of the Venona Conference in 1996 (and sponsored by CIA and NSA) was oddly omitted in the obituary article.

Venona is the code name for the interception and deciphering by the US Army Signal Intelligence Corps -- forerunner of the National Security Agency -- of over 200,000 cables sent by the USSR to its American agents from 1943 to 1980. Finally, intelligence verified that atomic spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were guilty of espionage for the USSR against the United States. Also identified in Venona was Alger Hiss, who caused the most acrimony, insisting he was innocent until his death at age 92 in 1996. As of today, with only 10 percent of the 200,000-plus cables deciphered,  over 400 Soviet agents have been identified working in the US government from the mid-1930s to the 1950s.

I attended the Venona Conference at the National War College, on the campus of Fort McNair in Washington, DC. For two days, Weinstein and Deutch presided over scholars and operatives who presented segments concerning the revelations in Venona.  From the opening session, a cadre of  dissenters instigated a protest designed to discredit Venona information.  The ringleader was the elderly Morton Sobell, convicted and sentenced in 1951 to a 30-year prison sentence as a co-conspirator in the Rosenberg spy ring.

Order was restored but Sobell's merry prankster tactics succeeded. The only news coverage of the conference, even though every important major media outlet was in attendance, appeared in my weekly Spectator in North Carolina. Not until seven weeks later  did the Washington Post publish a human interest feature on chief Venona codebreaker Meredith Gardner.

How the most dramatic story in Cold War history could be ignored, and years after hardly mentioned, is a testament to the pervasive influence of the Left in the United States, who have managed to prevent criticism of their fellow travelling brothers and sisters. Not only did the MSM deprive the public of crucial information clarifying a major schism in Left/Right politics, it also ignored the newsworthy  cast of characters attending Venona.

For instance Robert and Michael Meeropol, the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were adopted after the execution of their parents;  leading historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.;  US Senator  Patrick Moynihan; Christopher Andrew of Cambridge University,  the top intelligence expert of the Cold War; Robert Lamphere, the FBI investigator who identified Alger Hiss's typewriter; along with Morton Sobell, John Deutch and Weinstein, among a slew of intelligence grandees.

As usual, the media win and the public loses. Venona should be a household word and its revelations permanently imprinted history. What else have the MSM swept under the rug because it doesn’t suit the Left?  Questions about Obama's history, perhaps?