Editing Theodore Hall (section)

===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>}}