Bentley provided no documentary evidence to support her claims. Reporters and historians were divided for decades as to the validity of her allegations. In the 1990s, declassification of both Soviet documents and the U.S. codebreaking Venona project lent some credence to Bentley's allegations. After she defected, the Soviet Union temporarily suspended espionage activities in the United States. But some of Bentley's claims remain controversial due to questions about the accuracy of translations and the vague nature of identities, given that agents were identified by code names in encrypted records captured in Venona.