Editing Theodore Hall (section)

==FBI investigation==
The US Army's Signal Intelligence Service [[Venona project]], decrypted some Soviet messages and in January 1950 uncovered one cable identifying Hall and Sax by name as Soviet spies (albeit misspelled as Teodor Kholl and Savil Sachs), but until the document's public release along with many other pages of Soviet wartime spy cables in July 1995,<ref name=Kross>{{cite magazine|last=Kross|first=Peter|title=The Venona project revealed espionage in the United States after WWII – until it was in turn compromised|magazine=Military History|date=July 1, 2006|volume=23|issue=5|page=70}}</ref> nearly all of the espionage regarding the Los Alamos nuclear weapons program was attributed to Klaus Fuchs. Hall was questioned by the [[Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI]] in March 1951 but was not charged. The FBI and Justice Department claimed this was because their only evidence was the Venona document and that the US did not want to let the Soviets know they had broken their elaborate and supposedly "unbreakable" code. [[Alan H. Belmont]], the number-three man in the FBI, claims he decided at that time that information coming out of the Venona project would be inadmissible in court as [[hearsay]] evidence, so its value in the case was not worth compromising the program.<ref name="Dornan2012" />

However, journalist [[Dave Lindorff]], writing in ''[[The Nation]]'' on January 4, 2022, obtained through the [[Freedom of Information Act (United States)|Freedom of Information Act]], Hall's FBI file in 2021. This 130-page file included communications between FBI Director [[J. Edgar Hoover]] to the head of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Gen. [[Joseph Carroll (DIA)|Joseph F. Carroll]], showing that Carroll had effectively blocked Hoover's intended pursuit of Hall and Sax, probably fearing that Hall's arrest would have, in the political climate of the [[McCarthyism|McCarthy Era]], forced the Air Force to furlough and lose their top missile expert, Edward Hall. Carroll, a former top aide to Hoover before he became the first head of the USAF OSI, ultimately allowed Hoover's agents to question Ed Hall on June 12, 1951 (with an OSI officer monitoring the interview). Within several weeks of that session, the Air Force, which had conducted and completed its own investigation into Edward Hall's loyalty (having their own investigators question him four times), promoted him to Lt. Colonel, and later Colonel, and elevated him from assistant director to director of its missile development program. The promotions were a clear slap in the face to Hoover. Ed Hall went on to complete the development of the Minuteman missile program, and then retired. In 1999 the Air Force honored him seven years before his death, by adding him to the Air Force Aerospace Hall of Fame.<ref name=Brother/>

Lindorff co-produced the 2022 documentary film ''[[A Compassionate Spy]]'' based on Hall's life and spying.<ref>{{Cite magazine |url=https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/a-compassionate-spy-steve-james-ted-hall-1235210819/ |title='A Compassionate Spy' Review: Steve James Doc Is a Nuanced Portrait of Love and Espionage |first=Daniel |last=Fienberg |magazine=[[The Hollywood Reporter]] |date=2022-09-02 |access-date=2022-10-06}}</ref>  In 2023, Lindorff wrote the book ''Spy for No Country: The Story of Ted Hall, the Teenage Atomic Spy Who May Have Saved the World''.

===Statements in 1990s===
[[File:Decision to maintain contact with Theodore Hall 1944.gif|thumb|right|200px|Report on recruiting of Theodore Hall from the [[Venona project]]]]

The Venona project became public knowledge in July 1995.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Venona Documents |url=https://www.nsa.gov/Helpful-Links/NSA-FOIA/Declassification-Transparency-Initiatives/Historical-Releases/Venona/ |access-date=2023-07-25 |website=www.nsa.gov}}</ref>

In a written statement published in 1997, Hall came very close to admitting that the Soviet spy cable identifying him as a Soviet asset was accurate, although obliquely, saying that in the immediate postwar years, he felt strongly that "an American monopoly" on nuclear weapons "was dangerous and should be avoided":

{{blockquote|To help prevent that monopoly I contemplated a brief encounter with a Soviet agent, just to inform them of the existence of the A-bomb project. I anticipated a very limited contact. With any luck, it might easily have turned out that way, but it was not to be.<ref>{{cite news |first=Alan |last=Cowell |date=10 November 1999 |title=Theodore Hall, prodigy and atomic spy, dies at 74 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |type=obituary |page=C‑31 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/11/10/world/theodore-hall-prodigy-and-atomic-spy-dies-at-74.html}}</ref>}}

A year before his death, he gave a more direct confession in an interview for the TV-series ''[[Cold War (TV series)|Cold War]]'' on [[CNN]] in 1998, saying:

{{blockquote|I decided to give atomic secrets to the Russians because it seemed to me that it was important that there should be no monopoly, which could turn one nation into a menace and turn it loose on the world as ... Nazi Germany developed. There seemed to be only one answer to what one should do. The right thing to do was to act to break the American monopoly.<ref name="Dornan2012">{{cite book |first=Ellen |last=Dornan |year=2012 |title=Forgotten Tales of New Mexico |publisher=The History Press |isbn=978-1-60949-485-8 |pages=77 ff  |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NtlHl58HNZEC&pg=PA77}}</ref>}}