In the Enemy’s House:
Venona and the Maturation of American Counterintelligence [1]

Presented at the
2005 Symposium on Cryptologic History
10/27/2005
John F. Fox, Jr., FBI Historian

One man was tall, thin, a genius linguist at the NSA who was working on breaking coded telegrams sent from Soviet offices in the US to Moscow. [2] The other was a lawyer and cop, a young FBI supervisor recently transferred to Headquarters. A relationship did not blossom immediately and neither man knew what, if anything, to expect from the other. Some might predict that men from such diverse institutional cultures would be incompatible.  Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire   And yet within weeks, a working relationship and, thereafter, a friendship grew between the NSA's Merideth Gardner and FBI Special Agent Lamphere. Lamphere later described this success saying:

"I stood in the vestibule of the enemy's house, having entered by stealth. I held in my hand a set of keys ...and we were determined to use them. [3]