Venona Project
In 1946, Gardner began work on a highly-secret project (later codenamed Venona) to break the Soviet cryptosystems. The Soviet encryption system involved the use of one-time pads, and thus was thought to be unbreakable. However, the Soviets made the mistake of reusing certain pages of their pads.
Later that same year, Gardner made the first breakthrough on Venona by identifying the ciphers used for spelling English words. By May 1947 Gardner had read a decrypt that implied the Soviets ran an agent with access to sensitive information from the War Department General Staff, U.S. Army Air Corps Major William Ludwig Ullman. It became apparent to Gardner that he was reading KGB messages showing massive Soviet espionage in the United States.
Gardner retired in 1972, yet his work remained mostly secret until 1996, when the NSA, the CIA, and the Center for Democracy honored Gardner and his colleagues in a formal ceremony that was the result of campaigning by U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Gardner died on August 9, 2002 in Chevy Chase, Maryland, at the age of 89.
Read more about this topic: Meredith Gardner
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