Julius and Ethel Rosenberg | |
|---|---|
 Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1951 | |
| Born |
|
| Died |
|
| Cause of death | Execution by electrocution |
| Resting place | Wellwood Cemetery,New York, U.S. |
| Criminal status | Executed (June 19, 1953; 71 years ago (1953-06-19)) |
| Children | |
| Conviction | Conspiracy to commit espionage (50 U.S.C. § 32) |
| Criminal penalty | Death by electrocution |
Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) andEthel Rosenberg (néeGreenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted ofspying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about Americanradar,sonar,jet propulsion engines, andnuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they wereexecuted by the federal government of the United States in 1953 using New York's state execution chamber inSing Sing inOssining,[1] New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime.[2][3][4][5] Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother,David Greenglass (who had made aplea agreement),Harry Gold, andMorton Sobell.Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working at theLos Alamos Laboratory, was convicted in the United Kingdom.[6][7] For decades, many people, including the Rosenbergs' sons (Michael andRobert Meeropol), have maintained that Ethel was innocent of spying and have sought an exoneration on her behalf from multiple U.S. presidents.[8]
Among records the U.S. government declassified after thefall of the Soviet Union are many related to the Rosenbergs, included a trove ofdecoded Soviet cables (code-name Venona), which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets. In 2008, theNational Archives of the United States published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs.[9]Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed about the Rosenbergs and the legal case against them have resulted in additional U.S. government records being made public, including formerly classified materials from U.S. intelligence agencies.
Julius Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, in New York City to a family ofJewish immigrants from theRussian Empire. The family moved to theLower East Side by the time Julius was 11. His parents worked in the shops of the Lower East Side as Julius attendedSeward Park High School. Julius became a leader in theYoung Communist League USA while atCity College of New York during theGreat Depression. In 1939, he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.[10]
Ethel Greenglass was born on September 28, 1915, to a Jewish family inManhattan. She had a brother,David Greenglass. She originally was an aspiring actress and singer but eventually took a secretarial job at a shipping company. She became involved in labor disputes and joined the Young Communist League, where she met Julius in 1936. They married in 1939.[11]
Julius Rosenberg joined theArmy Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories atFort Monmouth, New Jersey, in 1940, where he worked as an engineer-inspector until 1945. He was discharged when theU.S. Army discovered his previous membership in theCommunist Party USA. Important research on electronics, communications,radar andguided missile controls was undertaken at Fort Monmouth duringWorld War II.[12]
According to a 2001 book by his formerhandlerAleksandr Feklisov, Rosenberg was originally recruited to spy for the interior ministry of the Soviet Union,NKVD, onLabor Day 1942 by a formerspymasterSemyon Semyonov.[13] By this time, following the invasion byNazi Germany in June 1941, the Soviet Union had become an ally of the Western powers, which included the United States after theattack on Pearl Harbor. Rosenberg had been introduced to Semyonov by Bernard Schuster, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party USA and NKVD liaison forEarl Browder. After Semyonov was recalled to Moscow in 1944 his duties were taken over by Feklisov.[13]
Rosenberg provided thousands of classified reports fromEmerson Radio, including a completeproximity fuze. Under Feklisov's supervision, Rosenberg recruited sympathetic individuals into NKVD service, includingJoel Barr,Alfred Sarant,William Perl, andMorton Sobell, also an engineer.[14] Perl supplied Feklisov, under Rosenberg's direction, with thousands of documents from theNational Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, including a complete set of design and production drawings forLockheed'sP-80 Shooting Star, the first U.S. operationaljet fighter. Feklisov learned through Rosenberg that Ethel's brother David was working on thetop-secretManhattan Project at theLos Alamos National Laboratory; he directed Julius to recruit Greenglass.[13]
In February 1944, Rosenberg succeeded in recruiting a second source of Manhattan Project information, engineerRussell McNutt, who worked on designs for the plants atOak Ridge National Laboratory. For this success Rosenberg received a $100 bonus. McNutt's employment provided access to secrets about processes for manufacturingweapons-grade uranium.[15][16] The U.S. did not share information with, nor seek assistance from, the Soviet Union regarding the Manhattan Project. The West was shocked by the speed with which the Soviets were able to stage "Joe 1", its firstnuclear test, on August 29, 1949.[17] However,Lavrentiy Beria, the head official of the Soviet nuclear project, used foreign intelligence only as a third-party check rather than giving it directly to the design teams, who he did notclear to know about the espionage efforts, and the development was indigenous. Considering that the pace of the Soviet program was set primarily by the amount of uranium that it could procure, it is difficult for scholars to judge accurately how much time was saved, if any.[18]
In January 1950, the U.S. discovered thatKlaus Fuchs, a German refugee andtheoretical physicist working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, had given key documents to the Soviets throughout the war. Fuchs identified his courier as AmericanHarry Gold, who was arrested on May 23, 1950.[19] On June 15, 1950, Greenglass was arrested by the FBI for espionage and soon confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR through Gold. He also claimed that Julius Rosenberg had convinced David's wife Ruth to recruit him while visiting him in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1944. He said Julius had passed secrets and thus linked him to the Soviet contact agentAnatoli Yakovlev. This connection would be necessary as evidence if there was to be a conviction for espionage of the Rosenbergs.[20][21]
On July 17, 1950, Julius was arrested on suspicion of espionage,[22] based on Greenglass's confession. On August 11, 1950, Ethel was arrested after testifying before a grand jury.[21] Another conspirator,Morton Sobell, fled with his family to Mexico City after Greenglass was arrested. They took assumed names, and he tried to figure out a way to reach Europe without a passport. Abandoning that effort, he returned to Mexico City. He claimed that he was kidnapped by members of the Mexicansecret police and driven to the U.S. border, where he was arrested by U.S. forces.[23][24] The U.S. government claimed Sobell was arrested by the Mexican police for bank robbery on August 16, 1950, and he was extradited the next day to the United States in Laredo, Texas.[24]
Twenty senior government officials met secretly on February 8, 1950, to discuss the Rosenberg case.Gordon Dean, the chairman of theAtomic Energy Commission, said: "It looks as though Rosenberg is the kingpin of a very large ring, and if there is any way of breaking him by having the shadow of a death penalty over him, we want to do it."Myles Lane, a member of the prosecution team, said that the case against Ethel was "not too strong", but that it was "very important that she be convicted too, and given a stiff sentence."[25] FBI directorJ. Edgar Hoover wrote that "proceeding against the wife will serve as a lever" to make Julius talk.[26]
Their case against Ethel was resolved 10 days before the start of the trial, when David and Ruth Greenglass were interviewed a second time. They were persuaded to change their original stories. David originally had said that he had passed the atomic data he had collected to Julius on a New York street corner. After being interviewed this second time, he said that he had given this information to Julius in the living room of the Rosenbergs' New York apartment. Ethel, at Julius's request, had taken his notes and "typed them up." In her second interview, Ruth expanded on her husband's version:
Julius then took the info into the bathroom and read it and when he came out he called Ethel and told her she had to type this information immediately ... Ethel then sat down at the typewriter which she placed on a bridge table in the living room and proceeded to type the information that David had given to Julius.
As a result of this new testimony, all charges against Ruth were dropped.[27] On August 11, Ethel testified before a grand jury. For all questions, she asserted her right to not answer as provided by theU.S. Constitution'sFifth Amendment againstself-incrimination. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. Her attorney asked the U.S. commissioner toparole her in his custody over the weekend so that she could make arrangements for her two young children. The request was denied.[28] Julius and Ethel were put under pressure to incriminate others involved in the spy ring. Neither offered any further information. On August 17, the grand jury returned an indictment alleging 11 overt acts. Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted, as were David Greenglass and Yakovlev.[29]
The trial of the Rosenbergs and Sobell on federal espionage charges began on March 6, 1951, in theU.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. JudgeIrving Kaufman presided over the trial, withAssistant U.S. AttorneyIrving Saypol leading the prosecution and criminal defense lawyerEmmanuel Bloch representing the Rosenbergs.[30][31] The prosecution's primary witness, David Greenglass, said that he turned over to Julius a sketch of the cross-section of an implosion-type atom bomb. This was the "Fat Man" bomb dropped onNagasaki, Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device used in the "Little Boy" bomb dropped onHiroshima.[32]
On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. They were sentenced to death on April 5 under Section 2 of theEspionage Act of 1917,[33] which provides that anyone convicted of transmitting or attempting to transmit to a foreign government "information relating to the national defense" may be imprisoned for life or put to death.[34]
ProsecutorRoy Cohn later claimed that his influence led to both Kaufman and Saypol being appointed to the Rosenberg case and that Kaufman imposed the death penalty based on Cohn's personal recommendation. Cohn would go on later to work for SenatorJoseph McCarthy, appointed as chief counsel to the investigations subcommittee during McCarthy's tenure as chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee.[35] In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman observed that he held the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage but for American deaths in theKorean War:[36]
I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country.
The U.S. government offered to spare the lives of both Julius and Ethel if Julius provided the names of other spies and they admitted their guilt. The Rosenbergs made a public statement: "By asking us to repudiate the truth of our innocence, the government admits its own doubts concerning our guilt... we will not be coerced, even under pain of death, to bear false witness."[26]
After the publication of an investigative series in theNational Guardian and the formation of theNational Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, some Americans came to believe both Rosenbergs were innocent or had received too harsh a sentence, particularly Ethel. A campaign was started to try to prevent the couple's execution. Between the trial and the executions, there were widespread protests and claims ofantisemitism. At a time when American fears about communism were high, the Rosenbergs did not receive support from mainstream Jewish organizations. TheAmerican Civil Liberties Union did not find any civil liberties violations in the case.[37]
Across the world, especially in Western European capitals, there were numerous protests with picketing and demonstrations in favor of the Rosenbergs, along with editorials in otherwise pro-American newspapers.Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist philosopher and writer who won theNobel Prize for Literature, described the trial as "a legallynching".[38] Others, including non-communists such asJean Cocteau andHarold Urey, a Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist,[39] as well as left-leaning figures—some being communist—such asNelson Algren,Bertolt Brecht,Albert Einstein,Dashiell Hammett,Frida Kahlo, andDiego Rivera, protested the position of the American government in what the French termed the AmericanDreyfus affair.[40] Einstein and Urey pleaded with PresidentHarry S. Truman topardon the Rosenbergs. In May 1951,Pablo Picasso wrote for the communist French newspaperL'Humanité: "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place."[41] The all-black labor unionInternational Longshoremen's Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest.[42] Cinema artists such asFritz Lang registered their protest.[43] PresidentDwight D. Eisenhower, supported by public opinion and the media at home, ignored the overseas demands.[44]Pope Pius XII appealed to Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953. All other appeals were also unsuccessful.[45][46]
Defense of the Rosenbergs surged in November and December 1952 and was organized by theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union[47]—confirmation of which occurred with the publication ofKGB documents obtained byAlexander Vassiliev in 2011.[48] Proponents of clemency argued that the Rosenbergs were actually "innocent Jewish peace activists".[49] According to American historianRonald Radosh, the Soviet Union's goal was "to deflect the world's attention from the sordid execution of the innocent [JewishSlánský trial defendants] in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia.[49]
The execution was delayed from the scheduled date of June 18 because Supreme Court Associate JusticeWilliam O. Douglas had granted astay of execution on the previous day. This stay resulted from intervention in the case byFyke Farmer, a Tennessee lawyer whose efforts had been scorned by Bloch.[50] The execution was scheduled for 11 p.m. the evening of June 19, during the Sabbath, which begins and ends around sunset.[51] Bloch asked for more time, filing a complaint that execution on the Sabbath offended the defendants' Jewish heritage. Rhoda Laks, another attorney on the Rosenbergs' defense team, also made this argument before Judge Kaufman.[52] The defense's strategy backfired. Kaufman, who stated his concerns about executing the Rosenbergs on the Sabbath, rescheduled the execution for 8 p.m.—before sunset and the Sabbath—the regular time for executions atSing Sing where they were being held.[53]
On June 19, 1953, Julius died from the firstelectric shock. Ethel's execution did not go smoothly. After she was given the normal course of three electric shocks, attendants removed the strapping and other equipment only to have doctors determine that her heart was still beating. Two more electric shocks were applied, and at the conclusion eyewitnesses reported that smoke rose from her head.[54] The Rosenbergs were the only American civilians executed for espionage during theCold War.[55][56][57] The funeral services were held in Brooklyn on June 21. The Rosenbergs were buried atWellwood Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York.[51]The Times reported that 500 people attended and some 10,000 stood outside:[58]
The bodies had been brought from Sing Sing prison by the national "Rosenberg committee" which undertook the funeral arrangements, and an all-night vigil was held in one of the largest mortuary chapels in Brooklyn. Many hundreds of people filed past the biers. Most of them clearly regarded the Rosenbergs as martyred heroes and more than 500 mourners attended to-day's services, while a crowd estimated at 10,000 stood outside in burning heat. Mr. Bloch [their counsel], who delivered one of the main orations, bitterly exclaimed that America was "living under the heel of a military dictator garbed in civilian attire": the Rosenbergs were "Sweet. Tender. And Intelligent" and the course they took was one of "courage and heroism."
In 1953, socialist historianW.E.B. Du Bois wrote a poem titled "The Rosenbergs", which began "Crucify us, Vengeance of God, as we crucify two more Jews" and ended "Who has been crowned on yonder stair? Red Resurrection? Or Black Despair?"[59]
SenatorDaniel Patrick Moynihan, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, investigated how much the Soviet spy ring helped the USSR to build its bomb. Moynihan found that in 1945 physicistHans Bethe estimated that the Soviets would build its bomb within five years. Moynihan wrote in his bookSecrecy: "Thanks to information provided by their agents, they did it in four."[60]
Nikita Khrushchev, leader of theSoviet Union from 1953 to 1964, wrote in his posthumously published memoir that he "cannot specifically say what kind of help the Rosenbergs provided us" but that he learned fromJoseph Stalin andVyacheslav Molotov that they "had provided very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb."[61] Boris V. Brokhovich, the engineer who later became director ofChelyabinsk-40, the plutonium production reactor and extraction facility that the Soviet Union used to create its first bomb material, alleged that Khrushchev was a "silly fool". He said the Soviets had developed their own bomb by trial and error. He stated: "You sat the Rosenbergs in the electric chair for nothing. We got nothing from the Rosenbergs."[62] The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was directly used in the Soviet atomic bomb project.[63] According to Julius's contact Feklisov, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He [Julius] didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."[64]
GeneralLeslie Groves, who developed the American nuclear program as part of theManhattan Project, said during a United States Atomic Energy Commission hearing onRobert Oppenheimer that he thought that "the data that went out in the case of the Rosenbergs was of minor value", and that he "always felt the effects were greatly exaggerated, that the Russians did not get too much information out of it". Groves requested that this "should be kept very quiet" as he still believed the Rosenbergs deserved to die. This part of his testimony was redacted from the publicly released 1954 transcript of the Commission's hearing on Oppenheimer and remained classified until 2014.[65][66]
TheVenona project was a United Statescounterintelligence program to decrypt messages transmitted by theintelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the U.S., the program continued during theCold War when it was considered an enemy.[67] The Venona messages did not feature in the Rosenbergs' trial, which relied instead on testimony from their collaborators, but they heavily informed the U.S. government's overall approach to investigating and prosecuting domestic communists.[68]
In 1995, the U.S. government made public many documents decoded by the Venona project, showing Julius Rosenberg's role as part of a productive ring of spies.[69] For example, a 1944 cable (which gives the name of Ruth Greenglass in clear text) says that Ruth's husband David is being recruited as a spy by his sister (that is, Ethel Rosenberg) and her husband. The cable also makes clear that the sister's husband is involved enough in espionage to have his own codename ("Antenna" and later "Liberal").[70] Ethel did not have a codename;[26] however,KGB messages which were contained in the Venona project'sAlexander Vassiliev files, and which were not made public until 2009,[71][72] revealed that both Ethel and Julius had regular contact with at least two KGB agents and were active in recruiting both David Greenglass andRussell McNutt.[73][71][72]
In 2001, David Greenglass recanted his testimony about his sister having typed the notes. He said "I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don't remember."[74] He said he gave false testimony to protect himself and his wife and that he was encouraged by the prosecution to do so. "My wife is more important to me than my sister. Or my mother or my father, OK? And she was the mother of my children."[74] He refused to express remorse for his decision to betray his sister, saying only that he did not realize that the prosecution would push for the death penalty. He stated, "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister."[55]
At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write [the information] down on a piece of paper?" She replied, "Yes, I wrote [the information] down on a piece of paper and [Julius Rosenberg] took it with him." At the trial, she testified that Ethel typed notes about the atomic bomb.[75] Numerous articles were published in 2008 related to the Rosenberg case. Deputy Attorney General of the United StatesWilliam P. Rogers, who had been part of the prosecution of the Rosenbergs, discussed their strategy at the time in relation to seeking the death sentence for Ethel. He said they had urged the death sentence for Ethel in an effort to extract a full confession from Julius. He reportedly said "she called our bluff" as she made no effort to push her husband to any action.[76]
In September 2008, Morton Sobell was interviewed byThe New York Times after the revelations from grand jury testimony. He admitted that he had given documents to the Soviet contact but said these had to do with defensive radar and weaponry. He confirmed that Julius Rosenberg was "in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information ... [on] the atomic bomb", and "[Julius] never told me about anything else that he was engaged in."[77]
Sobell said that he thought the hand-drawn diagrams and other atomic-bomb details acquired by Greenglass and passed to Julius were of "little value" to the Soviet Union and were used only to corroborate what they had learned from the other atomic spies. He also said that he believed Ethel Rosenberg was aware of her husband's deeds but took no part in them.[77] In a follow-up letter toThe New York Times, one week after the first interview was published, Sobell denied that he knew anything about Julius Rosenberg's alleged atomic espionage activities, and that the only thing he knew for sure was what he himself did in association with Julius Rosenberg.[78]
In 2009, extensive notes collected from KGB archives were made public in a book published by Yale University Press:Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, written byJohn Earl Haynes,Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev; Vassiliev's notebooks included KGB comments concerning Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,[79] and make clear that the KGB considered Julius Rosenberg an effective agent and Ethel a supporter of his work.[71][72] According to Vassiliev, Julius and Ethel worked personally with KGB agents who were given the codenamesTwain andCallistratus, and were also described as being the ones who recruited Greenglass and McNutt for the Manhattan Project spy mission.[71][73][72] Although the public release of Vassiliev's notebooks did not occur until 2009, the notebooks had been originally intercepted during the Venona decryptions.[73]
The Rosenbergs' two sons,Michael andRobert, spent years trying to prove the innocence of their parents. They were orphaned by the executions and were not adopted by their many aunts or uncles, although they initially spent time under the care of their grandmothers and in a children's home.[26] They were adopted by the communist activistAbel Meeropol and his wife Anne and assumed the Meeropol surname.[80][26] After Sobell's 2008 confession, they acknowledged their father had been involved in espionage but that in their view the case was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct, that their mother was convicted on flimsy evidence to place leverage on her husband, and that neither deserved the death penalty.[80]
Michael and Robert co-wrote a book about their and their parents' lives,We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg (1975). Robert wrote the memoirAn Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (2003). In 1990, he founded theRosenberg Fund for Children, a nonprofit foundation that provides support for children of targeted liberal activists and youth who are targeted as activists.[81] Michael's daughterIvy Meeropol directed a 2004 documentary about her grandparents,Heir to an Execution, which was featured at theSundance Film Festival.[82] Their sons' current position is that Julius was legally guilty of the conspiracy charge, although not of atomic spying, while Ethel was only generally aware of his activities. The children say that their father did not deserve the death penalty and that their mother was wrongly convicted. They continue to campaign for Ethel to be posthumously legally exonerated.[83][26]
In 2015, following the most recent grand jury transcript release, Michael and Robert Meeropol called on U.S. PresidentBarack Obama's administration to acknowledge that Ethel Rosenberg's conviction and execution was wrongful and to issue a proclamation exonerating her, though her innocence is still not proven.[84] In March 2016, Michael and Robert (via the Rosenberg Fund for Children) launched a petition campaign calling on President Obama and U.S. Attorney GeneralLoretta Lynch to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg.[85] In October 2016, both Michael and Robert Meeropol spoke withAnderson Cooper in an interview which aired on60 Minutes.[86] In January 2017, SenatorElizabeth Warren sent Obama a letter requesting consideration of the exoneration request.[87][88] In 2021, Ethel's sons restarted the campaign to pardon Ethel as they were optimistic that PresidentJoe Biden would consider this favorably.Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy byAnne Sebba was published by Orion Books in 2021.[26][89] As of June 2023[update] Michael and Robert were requesting Director of National IntelligenceAvril Haines to release the records related to their mother's case,[90] per a 2009 executive order.[91]
In 2024, the Meeropols were given a copy of a contemporary hand-written memo byMeredith Gardner, a linguist and codebreaker at what later became the NSA, based on Russian decrypts. It claimed that Ethel Rosenberg knew about Julius' espionage work but that "due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself".[92][93]
The song "Julius and Ethel" written byBob Dylan in 1983 is based on the Rosenberg case.[94] Images of the Rosenbergs are engraved on a memorial in Havana, Cuba. The accompanying caption says they were murdered.[95] Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz dedicated a poem to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Its title in Urdu is "Hum Jo Tareek Raho May Mary Gaye".[96]
David Greenglass, serving 15 years as a confessed atom spy, denied to members of his family recently that he had been coached by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the drawing of segments of the atom bomb.
Harry Gold, who served fifteen years in Federal prison as a confessed atomic spy courier, forKlaus Fuchs, a Soviet agent, and who was a key Government witness in the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg espionage case in 1951, died 18 months ago in Philadelphia.
On February 28, 1945, the NKVD submitted toLavrenti Beria a comprehensive report on nuclear weaponry, including implosion research, based chiefly on intelligence from Hall and Greenglass.
The great physicists Albert Einstein and Harold Urey asked President Truman to pardon the couple.
But it was the apparent parallel with France's ownDreyfus case that touched the deepest chords in the national psyche.
Pope Pius XII appealed to the United States Government for clemency in the Rosenberg atomic spy case, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano revealed today.
Farmer, working at no charge against the opposition of not only the government but also the Rosenbergs' legal team, showed up at Douglas's chambers without an appointment on the day after the high court adjourned for the term. Farmer convinced Douglas that the Rosenbergs had been tried under an invalid law. If they could be charged with any crime, he asserted, it would have to be a violation of the Atomic Energy Act, which did not carry a death penalty, rather than the Espionage Act of 1917.
Rosenberg. One more name out of thousands, representing all those souls on their journey through forever at Wellwood Cemetery, along the border between Nassau and Suffolk Counties...Usually at Sing Sing, the death penalty was carried out at 11 pm. But that June 19 was a Friday, and 11 pm would have pushed the executions well into the Jewish Sabbath, which begins at sundown. The federal judge in Manhattan who sentenced them to death, Irving R. Kaufman, said that the very idea of a Sabbath execution gave him 'considerable concern'. The Justice Department agreed. So the time was pushed forward.
rhoda Laks.
(According to Orthodox tradition, the Sabbath begins eighteen minutes before sunset Friday and ends the following evening.)
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed early this morning at Sing Sing Prison for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to Russia in World War II
Nearly four decades after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed for conspiring to pass America's atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union, the case that has haunted scholars, historians and partisans of the left and the right has found a new witness: Nikita S. Khrushchev.
The U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service, the precursor to the National Security Agency, began a secret program in February 1943 later codenamed VENONA. The mission of this small program was to examine and exploit Soviet diplomatic communications but after the program began, the message traffic included espionage efforts as well...The VENONA files are most famous for exposing Julius (code named LIBERAL) and Ethel Rosenberg and help give indisputable evidence of their involvement with the Soviet spy ring
Information from the Venona decryptions underlay the policies of U.S. government officials in their approach to the issue of domestic communism. The investigations and prosecutions of American Communists undertaken by the federal government in the late 1940s and early 1950s were premised on an assumption that the CPUSA had assisted Soviet espionage.
Ruth Greenglass told Julius Rosenberg about her husband's work. By then, Julius ("Liberal" in this cable) was heading up a sizeable group of spies working for the Soviets. As the cable suggests, Julius set about recruiting Ruth to join his group, with an eye to eventually pulling in her husband ... In this cable, Ruth's name is in clear text
Today, students of the case all agree that her involvement was only peripheral, and that her execution was unwarranted. Nonetheless, various Soviet archives do show that she urged her sister-in-law Ruth to recruit her husband, David Greenglass, into Julius's circle and that she also provided names to the Russians of those she thought were potential recruits. She was, then, guilty of being part of the conspiracy.
In Vassiliev's notebooks, an entry from the KGB says about Julius that 'His wife knows about her husband's work and personally knows 'Twain' and 'Callistratus.' [code names of Soviet agents.] She could be used independently, but she should not be overworked. Poor health.'
No, he replied, the goal wasn't to kill the couple. The strategy was to use the death sentence imposed on Ethel to wring a full confession from Julius – in hopes that Ethel's motherly instincts would trump unconditional loyalty to a noble but discredited cause. What went wrong? Rogers's explanation still haunts me. 'She called our bluff' he said.
Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.
Now, confronted with the surprising confession last week of Morton Sobell, Julius Rosenberg's City College classmate and co-defendant, the brothers have admitted to a painful conclusion: that their father was a spy.
