September 1978: CIA Manager Asks Other Agencies to Evaluate Anti-Soviet Signals Intelligence Project

David Blee, head of counterintelligence at the CIA, asks the NSA, FBI, and allied representatives to form a committee to evaluate the potential for a signals intelligence project codenamed VENONA and directed against the Soviet Union over the next two years. Howard W. Kulp and Mildred Hayes, who will go on to head the VENONA unit in later years, represent the NSA on the committee. [Center for Cryptologic History, 1/1/2001 ]