used to regularly visit him and peer over his shoulder and admire the progress he was making. Gardner was rather a sad figure by the late 1960s. He felt very keenly that the cryptanalytical break he had made possible was a thing of mathematical beauty, and he was depressed at the use to which it had been put." Wright revealed that Gardner was upset that his research had resulted in McCarthyism and the executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Wright quotes Gardner as saying: "I never wanted it to get anyone into trouble." Wright added that Gardner "was appalled at the fact that his discovery had led, almost inevitably, to the electric chair, and felt (as I did) that the Rosenbergs, while guilty, ought to have been given clemency. In Gardner's mind, VENONA was almost an art form, and he did not want it sullied by crude McCarthyism." Retirement 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. Shortly before his death, he appeared in the PBS documentary Secrets, Lies, and Atomic Spies. Notes References 1912 births 2002 deaths Cold War espionage Mathematicians from Mississippi National Security Agency cryptographers People from Austin, Texas People from Okolona, Mississippi Pre-computer cryptographers Signals Intelligence Service cryptographers University of Akron faculty University of Texas at Austin alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty