The Venona Project files have now made things a little uncomfortable for the radical academics who built their professional careers on agonizing over the dark ghost of McCarthyism.

The Venona transcripts are thousands of Soviet intelligence messages that were intercepted and decoded over four decades by the FBI and the NSA (National Security Agency). Released over the past few years, these files prove that there was a large-scale Communist penetration of the U.S. government, and that Communist spies passed on valuable information to the KGB.

The deciphered Venona cables confirm that the American Communist Party successfully established secret caucuses in government agencies throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s. They prove that 349 Americans had covert ties to Soviet intelligence – much as McCarthy had charged. They also indicate that Alger Hiss, who was accused in 1949 of spying for the Soviets, did leak material – even though he denied his guilt. On top of this, the number 349 is clearly a low estimate, because out of 25,000 intercepted telegrams, only 2,900 were decoded.

Many of the spies detected in Venona were investigated for espionage in the early 1950s, and were brought before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although the U.S. government had accumulated enough evidence through Venona to charge these spies, many of them were never prosecuted, because the government could not expose its success in cracking the Soviet codes. The names of the spies therefore remained a secret until now. Thus, while McCarthy’s critics attacked him for his "baseless" accusations, we now know that the U.S. Senator was right in making most of them - but he was hung out to dry.