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{{short description|American spies for the Soviet Union (d. 1953)}} | |||
{{Infobox Criminal | |||
{{Use American English|date=June 2023}} | |||
| subject_name = Julius and Ethel Rosenberg | |||
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2023}} | |||
| image_name = Julius and Ethel Rosenberg NYWTS.jpg | |||
{{Infobox criminal | |||
| image_size = 200px | |||
| name = Julius and Ethel Rosenberg | |||
| image_caption = Ethel and Julius Rosenberg after their conviction | |||
| image = Julius and Ethel Rosenberg NYWTS.jpg | |||
| date_of_birth = {{birth date|mf=yes|1918|5|12|mf=y}} (Julius)<br>{{birth date|mf=yes|1915|9|28|mf=y}} (Ethel) | |||
| caption = Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in 1951 | |||
| place_of_birth = ], ] (both) | |||
| birth_date = {{plainlist| | |||
| date_of_death = {{death date and age|mf=yes|1953|6|19|1918|5|12|mf=y}} Julius<br>{{death date and age|mf=yes|1953|6|19|1915|9|28|mf=y}} Ethel | |||
* '''Julius Rosenberg'''<br>{{birth date|mf=yes|1918|05|12}}<br>], New York, U.S. | |||
| place_of_death = ] (both) | |||
* '''Ethel Greenglass'''<br/>{{birth date|mf=yes|1915|09|28}}<br/>Manhattan, New York, U.S. | |||
| charge = ] to commit ] | |||
}} | |||
| penalty = ] | |||
| children = {{hlist|]|]}} | |||
| status = Executed | |||
| conviction = ] | |||
| occupation = ] (Julius), ], Singer, ] (Ethel) | |||
| criminal_penalty = ] by electrocution | |||
| spouse = | |||
| criminal_status = ] ({{start date and age|1953|06|19}}) | |||
| parents = | |||
| death_date = {{plainlist| | |||
| children = ], ] | |||
* '''Julius'''<br>{{death date and age|mf=yes|1953|06|19|1918|05|12}}<br>], ], New York, U.S. | |||
* '''Ethel'''<br>{{death date and age|mf=yes|1953|06|19|1915|09|28}}<br>Sing Sing Prison, Ossining, New York, U.S. | |||
}} | |||
| death_cause = ] | |||
| resting_place = ], ], U.S. | |||
}} | }} | ||
'''Julius Rosenberg''' (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and '''Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg''' (September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were ] ] who were executed in 1953 after having been found guilty of conspiracy to commit ]. The charges were in relation to the passing of information about the ] to the ]. Their execution was the first of civilians, for espionage, in United States history.<ref name=usatoday/> | |||
'''Julius Rosenberg''' (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and '''Ethel Rosenberg''' (née '''Greenglass'''; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted of ], including providing top-secret information about American ], ], ] engines, and ]s. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were ] in 1953 using New York's state execution chamber in ] in ],<ref>The Federal government has the power to use state correctional centers to carry out its executions as per 18 U.S. Code § 3597.</ref> New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime.<ref name="Rosenbergs Redux">{{cite news |last1=Radosh |first1=Ronald |title=Rosenbergs Redux |url=http://www.weeklystandard.com/rosenbergs-redux/article/2002765 |date=June 10, 2016 |access-date=October 5, 2016 |archive-date=July 3, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160703012517/http://www.weeklystandard.com/rosenbergs-redux/article/2002765 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/opinion/what-the-kgb-files-show-about-ethel-rosenberg.html |title=What the K.G.B. Files Show About Ethel Rosenberg |work=The New York Times |date=August 13, 2015 |access-date=February 10, 2017 |archive-date=November 7, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161107093341/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/opinion/what-the-kgb-files-show-about-ethel-rosenberg.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Weekly Standard">{{cite news |last1=Radosh |first1=Ronald |last2=Klehr |first2=Harvey |last3=Haynes |first3=John Earl |last4=Hornblum |first4=Allen M. |last5=Usdin |first5=Steven |title=The New York Times Gets Greenglass Wrong |url=http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-new-york-times-gets-greenglass-wrong/article/816451 |access-date=October 5, 2016 |work=Weekly Standard |date=October 17, 2014 |archive-date=June 12, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180612163147/https://www.weeklystandard.com/the-new-york-times-gets-greenglass-wrong/article/816451 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|title= Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg|encyclopedia= Encyclopædia Britannica|year= 2020|publisher= Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.|url= https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Rosenberg-and-Ethel-Rosenberg|access-date= October 18, 2020|archive-date= October 19, 2020|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20201019140253/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Julius-Rosenberg-and-Ethel-Rosenberg|url-status= live}}</ref> Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, ] (who had made a ]), ], and ]. ], a German scientist working at ], was convicted in the United Kingdom.<ref>{{cite news |first=Edward |last=Ranzal |title=Greenglass, in Prison, Vows to Kin He Told Truth about Rosenbergs |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1953/03/19/archives/greenglass-in-prison-vows-to-kin-he-told-truth-about-rosenbergs.html |quote=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. |work=The New York Times |date=March 19, 1953 |access-date=July 7, 2008 |archive-date=February 5, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170205133548/http://www.nytimes.com/1953/03/19/archives/greenglass-in-prison-vows-to-kin-he-told-truth-about-rosenbergs.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=1972 Death of Harry Gold Revealed |author-link=Alden Whitman |first=Alden |last=Whitman |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/14/archives/1972-death-of-harry-gold-revealed.html |quote=Harry Gold, who served fifteen years in Federal prison as a confessed atomic spy courier, for ], 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. |work=The New York Times |date=February 14, 1974 |access-date=July 7, 2008 |archive-date=May 28, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230528065908/https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/14/archives/1972-death-of-harry-gold-revealed.html |url-status=live }}</ref> For decades, many people, including the Rosenbergs' sons (] and ]), have maintained that Ethel was innocent of spying and have sought an exoneration on her behalf from multiple U.S. presidents.<ref>{{cite web |title=Exonerate Ethel |url=https://www.rfc.org/exonerate-ethel |website=Rosenberg Fund for Children |date=September 10, 2024 |access-date=30 September 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240930161714/https://www.rfc.org/exonerate-ethel |archive-date=30 September 2024 |url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
Since the execution, decoded Soviet cables have confirmed courtroom testimony that Julius acted as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets, but doubts remain about the level of Ethel's active involvement.<ref>{{cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Rosenberg sons acknowledge dad was spy |url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26761635 |quote=The guilt of the Rosenbergs, the conduct of their trial, and the appropriateness of their sentence have been the subject of continued debate since their arrest and trial. While independent corroboration has indicated that Julius Rosenberg did pass information to the Soviets, there is little evidence that his wife Ethel participated in espionage. |work=] at ] |date=September 17, 2008 |accessdate=2009-03-13 }}</ref><ref name=role/> The decision to execute the Rosenbergs was, and still is, controversial. The other atomic spies that were caught by the ] offered confessions and were not executed. Ethel's brother, ], who supplied documents to Julius from ], served 10 years of his 15 year sentence.<ref>{{cite news |first=Edward |last=Ranzal |title=Greenglass, in Prison, Vows to Kin He Told Truth About Rosenbergs |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00714FE3D59107A93CBA81788D85F478585F9 |quote=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. |publisher=] |date=March 19, 1953 |accessdate=2008-07-07}}</ref> ], who identified Greenglass and the Rosenbergs, served 15 years in Federal prison as the courier for the British scientist, ], who supplied much more detailed information to the Soviets on the atomic bomb.<ref>{{cite news |title=1972 Death of Harry Gold Revealed |first=Alden | |||
|last=Whitman |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F50B1EFA3D541A7493C6A81789D85F408785F9 |quote=Harry Gold, who served 15 years in Federal prison as a confessed atomic spy courier, for Klaus 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. |publisher=] |date=February 14, 1974 |accessdate=2008-07-07}}</ref> ], who was tried with the Rosenbergs, served 17 years and 9 months.<ref>{{cite news |first=Edward |last=Ranzal |title=Morton Sobell Free As Spy Term Ends |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30B14F63C5E147493C7A8178AD85F4D8685F9 |quote=Morton Sobell, sentenced to 30 years for a wartime espionage conspiracy to deliver vital national secrets to the Soviet Union, was released from prison yesterday after serving 17 years and 9 months.|publisher=] |date=January 15, 1969 |accessdate=2008-07-07 }}</ref> In 2008, Sobell admitted he was a spy and confirmed Julius Rosenberg was "in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information and what the American government described as the secret to the atomic bomb."<ref name=sobell>{{cite news |first=Sam |last=Roberts |title=For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss |quote=Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.}}</ref> | |||
Among records the U.S. government declassified after the ] are many related to the Rosenbergs, included a trove of ] (code-name Venona), which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets. In 2008, the ] published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs.<ref>{{cite web |title=National Archives of the United States of America |url=https://catalog.archives.gov/id/2321340 |website=National Archives Catalog |publisher=National Archives and Records Administration |access-date=December 3, 2022 |archive-date=December 3, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221203022434/https://catalog.archives.gov/id/2321340 |url-status=dead }}</ref> ] (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. In September 2024, a new document was released in response to a FOIA request filed by the couple's sons. Written by the ]'s chief decryptor and analyst a week after Ethel's arrest, this 1950 memo provides an analysis of the decrypted Soviet Union intelligence on Julius and Ethel, reviewing Julius' spying activities and codenames, and concluding that Ethel was not engaged in espionage work for the Soviet Union.<ref>{{cite news |author1=Tucker |first=Eric |date=10 September 2024 |title=Declassified documents shed light on Ethel Rosenberg's involvement in her husband's Cold War spy case |url=https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/declassified-documents-shed-light-on-ethel-rosenbergs-involvement-in-her-husbands-cold-war-spy-case#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20A%20top,mother%20was%20not%20a%20spy |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240930013934/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/declassified-documents-shed-light-on-ethel-rosenbergs-involvement-in-her-husbands-cold-war-spy-case#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20A%20top,mother%20was%20not%20a%20spy |archive-date=30 September 2024 |access-date=29 September 2024 |work=PBS News |agency=Associated Press}}</ref> | |||
==Background== | |||
Julius Rosenberg was born to a family of ] immigrants in ] on May 12, 1918. Nineteen-twenty census records show that his family lived at 205 East 113th Street when Julius was about 2 years old, but moved to the Lower East Side by the time he was 11 years old.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
==Early lives and education== | |||
His parents worked in the shops of the Lower East Side, as Julius attended Seward Park High School. Julius eventually became a leader in the ] where, in 1936, he met Ethel Greenglass, whom he married three years later. He graduated from the ] with a degree in ] in 1939 and joined the ] in 1940, where he worked on ] equipment.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
] (2005)]] | |||
Julius Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, in New York City to a family of ] immigrants from the ]. The family moved to the ] by the time Julius was 11. His parents worked in the shops of the Lower East Side as Julius attended ]. Julius became a leader in the ] while at ] during the ]. In 1939, he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.<ref name="Denison">{{cite book |last=Denison |first=Charles and Chuck |title=The Great American Songbook |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TPOS7AMCOhoC&pg=PA45 |page=45 |year=2004 |publisher=Author's Choice Publishing |isbn=978-1-931741-42-2}}</ref> | |||
Ethel Greenglass was born on September 28, 1915, in ], also to a Jewish family. She 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 ], where she met Julius. The Rosenbergs had two sons, ] and ], who were adopted by teacher and songwriter ] (and took the Meeropol surname) after their parents' execution.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
Ethel Greenglass was born on September 28, 1915, to a Jewish family in ]. She had a brother, ]. 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.<ref>Martin J. Manning and Clarence R. Wyatt, eds. ''Encyclopedia of Media and Propaganda in Wartime America'', Volume 1 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 753.</ref> | |||
According to his former ] handler, ], Julius Rosenberg was originally recruited by the ] on ] 1942, by former NKVD ] ].<ref name="Feklisov">{{cite book |last=Feklisov |first=Aleksandr |coauthors=Sergei Kostin |title=The Man Behind the Rosenbergs |publisher=Enigma Books |year=2001 |isbn=1-929631-08-1}}</ref> Julius had been introduced to Semenov by ], a high-ranking member of the ] as well as ]'s personal NKVD liaison, and after Semenov was recalled to ] in 1944, his duties were taken over by his apprentice, Feklisov.<ref name="Feklisov"/> | |||
==Espionage== | |||
According to Feklisov, Julius provided thousands of classified reports from ], including a complete ], the same design that was used to shoot down ]'s ] in 1960. Under Feklisov's administration, Julius Rosenberg is said to have recruited sympathetic individuals to the KGB’s service, including ], ], ] and ].<ref>{{cite book |last=Feklisov |first=Aleksandr |coauthors=Sergei Kostin |title=The Man Behind the Rosenbergs |publisher=Enigma Books |year=2001 |isbn=1-929631-08-1|pages=140–147}}</ref> | |||
Julius Rosenberg joined the ] Engineering Laboratories at ], New Jersey, in 1940, where he worked as an engineer-inspector until 1945. He was discharged when the ] discovered his previous membership in the ]. Important research on electronics, communications, ] and ] controls was undertaken at Fort Monmouth during ].<ref>{{cite book |last=Wang |first=Jessica |title=American Science in An Age of Anxiety |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ok_A5UV1mdoC&pg=PA262 |page=262 |year=1999 |publisher=UNC Press |isbn=978-0-8078-4749-7}}</ref> | |||
According to a 2001 book by his former ] ], Rosenberg was originally recruited to spy for the interior ministry of the Soviet Union, ], on ] 1942 by a former ] ].<ref name="Feklisov">{{cite book |last=Feklisov |first=Aleksandr |author-link=Aleksandr Feklisov |author2=Sergei Kostin |title=The Man Behind the Rosenbergs |publisher=Enigma Books |year=2001 |isbn=978-1-929631-08-7 |url=https://archive.org/details/manbehindrosenbe00fekl }}</ref> By this time, following the invasion by ] in June 1941, the Soviet Union had become an ally of the Western powers, which included the United States after the ]. Rosenberg had been introduced to Semyonov by Bernard Schuster, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party USA and NKVD liaison for ]. After Semyonov was recalled to Moscow in 1944 his duties were taken over by Feklisov.<ref name="Feklisov"/> | |||
According to Feklisov's account, he was supplied by Perl, under Julius Rosenberg’s direction, with thousands of documents from the ] including a complete set of design and production drawings for the ]. Feklisov says he learned through Julius that his brother-in-law ] was working on the ] ] at the ] and used Julius to recruit him.<ref name="Feklisov"/> | |||
Rosenberg provided thousands of classified reports from ], including a complete ]. Under Feklisov's supervision, Rosenberg recruited sympathetic individuals into NKVD service, including ], ], ], and ], also an engineer.<ref>{{cite book |last=Feklisov |first=Aleksandr |url=https://archive.org/details/manbehindrosenbe00fekl/page/140 |title=The Man Behind the Rosenbergs |author2=Kostin |first2=Sergei |publisher=Enigma Books |year=2001 |isbn=978-1-929631-08-7 |pages=}}</ref> Perl supplied Feklisov, under Rosenberg's direction, with thousands of documents from the ], including a complete set of design and production drawings for ] ], the first U.S. operational ]. Feklisov learned through Rosenberg that Ethel's brother David was working on the ] ] at the ]; he directed Julius to recruit Greenglass.<ref name="Feklisov"/> | |||
The ] and the U.S. became allies during ] after Nazi Germany's surprise attack on the USSR in 1941, but the ] was highly suspicious of ]'s long-term intentions. Therefore the Americans did not share information or seek assistance from the Soviet Union for the ]. However, the Soviets were aware of the project as a result of espionage penetration of the U.S. government and made a number of attempts to infiltrate its operations at the ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} A number of project members—some high-profile, others lower in rank—did voluntarily give secret information to Soviet agents, many because they were sympathetic to ] (or the Soviet Union's role in the war) and did not feel the U.S. should have a ] on atomic weapons.<ref>See Joseph Albright and Marcia Kunstell, ''Bombshell'', Times Books, 1997 (ISBN 0-8129-2861-X) with reference to ] and ] and their motives.</ref> | |||
In February 1944, Rosenberg succeeded in recruiting a second source of Manhattan Project information, engineer ], who worked on designs for the plants at ]. For this success Rosenberg received a $100 bonus. McNutt's employment provided access to secrets about processes for manufacturing ].<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Radosh|first1=Ronald|title=Rosenbergs Redux|magazine=New Republic|date=December 6, 2010|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/79648/rosenbergs-redux-julius-ethel-communist-spies|access-date=October 6, 2016|archive-date=October 9, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161009122707/https://newrepublic.com/article/79648/rosenbergs-redux-julius-ethel-communist-spies|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Haynes|first1=John Earl|title=Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-15572-3|page=|url=https://archive.org/details/spiesrisefallofk00john|url-access=registration|access-date=October 6, 2016|language=en|year=2009}}</ref> 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 "]", its first ], on August 29, 1949.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ziegler |first1=Charles A. |last2=Jacobson |first2=David |title=Spying without spies |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mIVto1lFdFEC&pg=PA220 |page=220 |year=1995 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-275-95049-1}}</ref> However, ], 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 not ] 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Holloway |first=David |title=Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 |location=New Haven, Connecticut |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1994 |isbn=0-300-06056-4|oclc=29911222 |pages=220–224}}</ref> | |||
After the war, the U.S. continued to protect its nuclear secrets, but the Soviet Union was able to produce its own atomic weapons by 1949. The ] was shocked by the speed with which the Soviets were able to stage their first ], "]."{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} It was then discovered in January 1950 that a German ] ] working for the ] mission in the Manhattan Project, ], had given key documents to the Russians throughout the war. Fuchs' identified his ] as ], who was arrested on May 23, 1950.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} ] also confessed and identified Sergeant ], a former ] at Los Alamos, and the Rosenbergs as additional sources. Greenglass confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR through Gold as well. Though he initially denied any involvement by his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, he claimed that her husband, Julius, had convinced his wife to recruit him while on a visit to him in ] in 1944 and that Julius had also passed secrets.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} Another accused conspirator, ], was on vacation in ] when both Rosenbergs were arrested. According to his story published in ''On Doing Time'', he tried to figure out a way to reach Europe without a ] but ultimately abandoned that effort and was back in Mexico City when he was kidnapped by members of the ] ] and driven to the ] where he was arrested.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} The government claimed he had been deported, but in 1956 the ] officially declared that he had never been ]. Regardless of how he was returned to the U.S., he was arrested and stood trial with the Rosenbergs on one count of conspiracy to commit ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
==Rosenberg case== | |||
==Trial and conviction== | |||
===Arrest=== | |||
] | |||
] | |||
In January 1950, the U.S. discovered that ], a German refugee and ] working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, had given key documents to the Soviets throughout the war. Fuchs identified his courier as American ], who was arrested on May 23, 1950.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Radosh |first1=Ronald |author-link=Ronald Radosh |last2=Milton |first2=Joyce |title=The Rosenberg file |url=https://archive.org/details/rosenbergfile00rado |url-access=registration |year=1997 |pages=–40 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-07205-1}}</ref> 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 agent ]. This connection would be necessary as evidence if there was to be a conviction for espionage of the Rosenbergs.<ref>{{cite book |last=Theoharis |first=Athan G. |author-link=Athan Theoharis |title=The FBI: a comprehensive reference guide |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VnQduXa4JdoC&pg=PA65 |pages=65–66 |year=1999 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-89774-991-6}}</ref><ref name="NSA-GWU">{{cite web| title = Rosenberg Atomic Espionage Spy Case Chronology| publisher = National Security Archive at George Washington University| url = https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20080911/PP%20-%20Rosenberg%20Spy%20Case%20Chronology.pdf| date = September 11, 2008| access-date = October 27, 2018| archive-date = August 24, 2017| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170824232848/http://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/news/20080911/PP%20-%20Rosenberg%20Spy%20Case%20Chronology.pdf| url-status = live}}</ref> | |||
On July 17, 1950, Julius was arrested on suspicion of espionage,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/atom-spy-caserosenbergs|title=Atom Spy Case/Rosenbergs|access-date=January 28, 2020|archive-date=February 14, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200214050536/https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/atom-spy-caserosenbergs|url-status=live}}</ref> based on Greenglass's confession. On August 11, 1950, Ethel was arrested after testifying before a grand jury.<ref name="NSA-GWU" /> Another conspirator, ], 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 Mexican ] and driven to the U.S. border, where he was arrested by U.S. forces.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Haynes|first1=John Earl|last2=Klehr|first2=Harvey|title=Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-1-139-46024-8|page=159|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pNwEyL1b6XQC&pg=PA159|language=en|year=2006}}</ref><ref name="Neville1995p25">{{cite book |last=Neville |first=John F. |title=The Press, the Rosenbergs, and the Cold War |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CeY15p_CuYAC&pg=PA25 |page=25 |year=1995 |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-275-94995-2}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Neville1995p25" /> | |||
] | |||
===Grand jury=== | |||
The trial of the Rosenbergs and Sobell began on March 6, 1951. The judge was ] and the attorney for the Rosenbergs was ].<ref>http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1353311/Julius-Rosenberg-and-Ethel-Rosenberg</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Died |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,860424,00.html |work=] |year=1954 |accessdate=2008-06-21}}</ref> The trial attracted a great deal of attention from the ]. During the trial, Rosenberg was universally condemned by the media (including the ] and Communist press).{{Citation needed|date=January 2009}} The first break in the media unanimity did not occur until after the trial in August 1951, when a series of articles ran in the left-wing ] ''The National Guardian''.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
] | |||
Twenty senior government officials met secretly on February 8, 1950, to discuss the Rosenberg case. ], the chairman of the ], 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." ], 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."<ref>Sol Stern and Ronald Radosh, ''The New Republic'' (June 23, 1979)</ref> FBI director ] wrote that "proceeding against the wife will serve as a lever" to make Julius talk.<ref name=guardian-20210619>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/19/rosenbergs-executed-for-spying-1953-can-sons-reveal-truth |title=The Rosenbergs were executed for spying in 1953. Can their sons reveal the truth? |last=Freeman |first=Hadley |newspaper=The Guardian |date=June 19, 2021 |access-date=June 19, 2021 |archive-date=June 19, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210619103709/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jun/19/rosenbergs-executed-for-spying-1953-can-sons-reveal-truth |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
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: | |||
The prosecution's primary witness, ], stated that his sister Ethel typed notes containing U.S. nuclear secrets in the Rosenberg apartment in September 1945. He also testified that he turned over to Julius Rosenberg a sketch of the cross-section of an implosion-type atom bomb (the "]" bomb dropped on ], Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device as used in the "]" bomb dropped on ]).{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was relevant to the Soviet atomic bomb project and some suggest Ethel was indicted along with Julius was so that the prosecution could use her to pressure Julius into giving up the names of others who were involved.<ref>{{cite book |last=Roberts |first=Sam |title=The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case |publisher=Random House |year=2001 |isbn=0-375-76124-1 |pages=425–426, 432}}</ref> However, neither Julius nor Ethel Rosenberg named anyone else and during testimony each asserted their right under the ] ] to not incriminate themselves whenever asked about involvement in the ] or with its members. Then-U.S. Deputy Attorney General ], when later asked about the failure of the indictment of Ethel to leverage a full confession by Julius, reportedly said, "She called our bluff."<ref>{{cite news |first=Sam |last=Roberts |title=Spies and Secrecy |url=http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/podcast-spies-and-secrecy/#more-3235 |quote=No, he replied, the goal wasn’t to kill the couple. The strategy was to leverage 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. |work=] |date=June 26, 2008 |accessdate=2008-06-27}}</ref> | |||
<blockquote>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.</blockquote> As a result of this new testimony, all charges against Ruth were dropped.<ref>{{cite web |author=Simkin |first=John |title=Ethel Rosenberg |url=http://spartacus-educational.com/USArosenbergE.htm |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140630232050/http://spartacus-educational.com/USArosenbergE.htm |archive-date=June 30, 2014 |access-date=August 7, 2014 |publisher=Spartacus Educational Publishers Ltd.}}</ref> On August 11, Ethel testified before a grand jury. For all questions, she asserted her right to not answer as provided by the ] ] against ]. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. Her attorney asked the U.S. commissioner to ] her in his custody over the weekend so that she could make arrangements for her two young children. The request was denied.<ref>{{cite news |title=Plot to Have G.I. Give Bomb Data to Soviet Is Laid to His Sister Here |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 12, 1950 |pages=1, 30 <!-- not 19 --> |url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/08/12/96216090.pdf |access-date=June 14, 2018 |archive-date=February 17, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240217042009/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/08/12/96216090.html?pdf_redirect=true&site=false |url-status=live }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/the-atom-spy-case/the-atom-spy-case |title=The Atom Spy Case |work=Famous Cases and Criminals |publisher=Federal Bureau of Investigation |access-date=January 13, 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110514024909/http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/the-atom-spy-case/the-atom-spy-case |archive-date=May 14, 2011}}</ref> | |||
===Trial and conviction=== | |||
The Rosenbergs were convicted on March 29, 1951, and on April 5 were sentenced to death by Judge ] under Section 2 of the ], 50 '']'' 32 (now 18 ''U.S. Code'' 794), which prohibits transmitting or attempting to transmit to a foreign government information "relating to the national defense."{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} The conviction helped to fuel ] ]'s investigations into ] activities by U.S. citizens. While their devotion to the Communist cause was well-documented, the Rosenbergs denied the espionage charges even as they faced the ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
], illustrating what he allegedly gave the Rosenbergs to pass on to the Soviet Union]] | |||
The trial of the Rosenbergs and Sobell on federal espionage charges began on March 6, 1951, in the ]. Judge ] presided over the trial, with ] ] leading the prosecution and criminal defense lawyer ] representing the Rosenbergs.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |access-date=September 4, 2011 |url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1353311/Julius-Rosenberg-and-Ethel-Rosenberg |encyclopedia=Britannica.com |title=Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg (American spies) – Britannica Online Encyclopedia |first=John Philip |last=Jenkins |archive-date=October 4, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111004094817/http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1353311/Julius-Rosenberg-and-Ethel-Rosenberg |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine|title=Milestones, February 8, 1954 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,860424,00.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090114205201/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,860424,00.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=January 14, 2009|magazine=Time|access-date=June 21, 2008|date=February 8, 1954}}</ref> 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 "]" bomb dropped on ], Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device used in the "]" bomb dropped on ].<ref>{{cite book|last=Roberts|first=Sam|title=The Brother: the Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case|pages=|quote=On February 28, 1945, the NKVD submitted to ] a comprehensive report on nuclear weaponry, including implosion research, based chiefly on intelligence from Hall and Greenglass.|year=2003|publisher=Random House|isbn=978-0-375-76124-9|url=https://archive.org/details/brother00samr/page/403}}</ref> | |||
The Rosenbergs were the only two American civilians to be executed for espionage-related activity during the ].<ref name=false>{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1695240.stm |date=December 6, 2001 | work=] |title=False testimony clinched Rosenberg spy trial |accessdate=2008-07-30}}</ref> In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman noted that he held them responsible not only for espionage but also for the deaths of the ]: | |||
On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. They were sentenced to death on April 5 under Section 2 of the ],<ref>50 ] § 32 (now 18 U.S.C. § 794).</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Huberich |first=Charles Henry |title=The law relating to trading with the enemy |url=https://archive.org/details/lawrelatingtotr00hubegoog |page= |year=1918 |publisher=Baker, Voorhis & Company}}</ref> | |||
{{cquote|I consider your crime worse than ]...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 ], with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your ]. Indeed, by your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country. No one can say that we do not live in a constant state of tension. We have evidence of your treachery all around us every day for the civilian defense activities throughout the nation are aimed at preparing us for an atom bomb attack.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_SENT.HTM |title=Judge Kaufman's Statement Upon Sentencing the Rosenbergs |publisher=] |accessdate=2008-06-24 }}</ref>}} | |||
Prosecutor ] 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 Senator ], appointed as chief counsel to the investigations subcommittee during McCarthy's tenure as chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Radosh |first1=Ronald |url=https://archive.org/details/rosenbergfile00rado/page/278/mode/2up |title=The Rosenberg File |last2=Milton |first2=Joyce |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-300-07205-1 |location=New Haven, Connecticut |pages=278 |language=en |oclc=861792736}}</ref> In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman observed that he held the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage but for American deaths in the ]:<ref>{{Cite web|date=July 2, 2008|title=Judge Kaufman's Sentencing Statement in the Rosenberg Case|url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_SENT.HTM|access-date=February 1, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080702015209/http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/rosenb/ROS_SENT.HTM|archive-date=July 2, 2008}}</ref> | |||
After the publication of an investigative series in '']'' and the formation of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, some Americans came to believe both Rosenbergs were innocent or received too harsh a punishment, and a ] campaign was started to try to stop the couple's execution. Between the trial and the executions there were widespread protests and claims of ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
<blockquote>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.</blockquote> | |||
] winner ] called the case "a legal ] which smears with blood a whole nation. By killing the Rosenbergs, you have quite simply tried to halt the progress of science by ]. Magic, ]s, ], sacrifices — we are here getting to the point: your country is sick with fear... you are afraid of the shadow of your own bomb."<ref>{{cite book |last=Schneir |first=Walter |title=Invitation to an Inquest |year=1983 |publisher=Pantheon Books |isbn=0394714962 |page=254}}</ref> Others, including non-Communists such as ] and ]-winning atomic scientist and chemist ],{{Citation needed|date=April 2008}} as well as Communists or left-leaning artists such as ], ], ], ] and ], protested the position of the American government in what some termed America's ]. In May 1951, ] wrote for French newspaper ''L’Humanité'', "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place."<ref>{{cite web |first=Elizabeth |last=Schulte |url=http://www.isreview.org/issues/29/rosenbergs.shtml |title=The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg |accessdate=2008-10-05 |publisher=International Socialist Review |date=Issue 29, May–June 2003}}</ref> ] also condemned the execution.<ref>{{cite book |first=Ellen |last=Schrecker |title=Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America |year=1998 |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |page=137 |isbn=0316774707}}</ref> The all-black International Longshoremen’s Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest.<ref>{{cite news |title=Unions throughout U.S. joining in plea to save the Rosenbergs |publisher=Daily Worker |date=January 15, 1953}}</ref> Cinema artists such as ] and ] registered their protest.<ref>{{cite book |last=Sharp |first=Malcolm P. |year=1956 |title=Was Justice Done? The Rosenberg-Sobell Case |publisher=Monthly Review Press |page=132 |id=56-10953}}</ref>] ] appealed to ] ] to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953, and all other appeals were also unsuccessful.<ref>{{cite news |first=Arnaldo |last=Cortes |title=Pope Made Appeal to Aid Rosenbergs. |url=http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0C14FF345E177B93C6A81789D85F478585F9 |quote=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. |work=] |date=February 14, 1953 |accessdate=2008-09-17 }}</ref> | |||
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."<ref name=guardian-20210619/> | |||
Their case has been at the center of the controversy over Communism in the United States ever since, with supporters steadfastly maintaining that their conviction was an egregious example of political persecution (see ]) and likening it to the witch hunts that marred ] and ] (a comparison that provided the inspiration for ]'s critically acclaimed play, '']'').{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
==After conviction== | |||
On September 12, 2008, co-defendant ] admitted that he and ] were guilty of spying for the Soviet Union. He believed Ethel was aware of the espionage, but did not actively participate.<ref name=sobell/> | |||
===Campaign for clemency=== | |||
After the publication of an investigative series in the '']'' and the formation of the ], 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 of ]. At a time when American fears about communism were high, the Rosenbergs did not receive support from mainstream Jewish organizations. The ] did not find any civil liberties violations in the case.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Radosh |first1=Ronald |last2=Milton |first2=Joyce |title=The Rosenberg File |url=https://archive.org/details/rosenbergfile00rado |url-access=registration |page= |year=1997 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-07205-1}}</ref> | |||
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. ], an existentialist philosopher and writer who won the ], described the trial as "a legal ]".<ref>{{cite book |last=Schneir|first=Walter |author-link=Walter Schneir |title=Invitation to an Inquest|year=1983|publisher=Pantheon Books|isbn=978-0-394-71496-7|page=254}}</ref> Others, including non-communists such as ] and ], a Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist,<ref name="feklisov">{{cite book|last1=Feklisov|first1=Aleksandr|last2=Kostine|first2=Sergei|title=The Man behind the Rosenbergs|page=|quote=The great physicists Albert Einstein and Harold Urey asked President Truman to pardon the couple.|year=2001|publisher=Enigma Books|isbn=978-1-929631-08-7|url=https://archive.org/details/manbehindrosenbe00fekl/page/311}}</ref> as well as left-leaning figures—some being communist—such as ], ], ], ], ], and ], protested the position of the American government in what the French termed the American ].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Radosh|first1=Ronald|last2=Milton|first2=Joyce|title=The Rosenberg File|page=|year=1997|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-07205-1|quote=But it was the apparent parallel with France's own ] that touched the deepest chords in the national psyche.|url=https://archive.org/details/rosenbergfile00rado/page/352}}</ref> Einstein and Urey pleaded with President ] to ] the Rosenbergs. In May 1951, ] wrote for the communist French newspaper '']'': "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place."<ref>{{cite web|first=Elizabeth|last=Schulte|url=http://www.isreview.org/issues/29/rosenbergs.shtml|title=The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg|access-date=October 5, 2008|work=International Socialist Review|issue=29|date=May–June 2003|archive-date=October 28, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081028152811/http://www.isreview.org/issues/29/rosenbergs.shtml|url-status=dead}}</ref> The all-black labor union ] Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest.<ref>{{cite news |title=Unions throughout U.S. joining in plea to save the Rosenbergs|work=Daily Worker|date=January 15, 1953}}</ref> Cinema artists such as ] registered their protest.<ref>{{cite book|last=Sharp|first=Malcolm P.|year =1956|title=Was Justice Done? The Rosenberg-Sobell Case|publisher=Monthly Review Press|page=132|id=56-10953}}</ref> President ], supported by public opinion and the media at home, ignored the overseas demands.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Clune |first1=Lori |year=2011 |title=Great Importance World-Wide: Presidential Decision-Making and the Executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg |journal=American Communist History |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=263–284 |doi=10.1080/14743892.2011.631822 |s2cid=143679694}}</ref> ] appealed to Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953. All other appeals were also unsuccessful.<ref>{{cite book|first=Ellen|last=Schrecker|author-link=Ellen Schrecker|title=Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America|year=1998|publisher=Little, Brown and Company|page=|isbn=978-0-316-77470-3|url=https://archive.org/details/manyarecrimesmcc00schr/page/137}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|first=Arnaldo|last=Cortes|title=Pope Made Appeal to Aid Rosenbergs.|url=https://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0C14FF345E177B93C6A81789D85F478585F9|quote=] appealed to the United States Government for clemency in the Rosenberg atomic spy case, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano revealed today.|work=The New York Times|date=February 14, 1953|access-date=September 17, 2008|archive-date=January 29, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120129094634/http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0C14FF345E177B93C6A81789D85F478585F9|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
==Execution== | |||
Because the United States ] did not operate an ] at the time, the Rosenbergs were transferred to the New York State-run ] in ] for execution. The couple were executed at sundown in the electric chair on June 19, 1953.<ref name=usatoday>{{cite news |title=50 years later, Rosenberg execution is still fresh |work=] in ] |date=2003-06-17 |url=http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-06-17-rosenbergs_x.htm |accessdate=2008-01-08}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Execution of the Rosenbergs |url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1953/jun/20/usa.fromthearchive |quote=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 |work=] |date=June 20, 1953 |accessdate=2008-06-24}}</ref> This was delayed from the originally scheduled date of June 18 because, on June 17, ] ] ] had granted a ]. That stay resulted from the intervention in the case of ], a ] lawyer whose efforts had previously met with scorn from the Rosenbergs' attorney.<ref>{{cite news |first=E. Thomas |last=Wood |url=http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/6/17/nashville_now_and_then_a_lawyers_last_gamble_and_a_universitys_divorce |work=] |quote=Farmer, working at no charge against the opposition of not only the government but also the Rosenbergs' legal team, had showed up at Douglas's chambers without an appointment, on the day after the high court adjourned for the term. Farmer convinced the jurist 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. |title=Nashville now and then: A lawyer's last gamble |accessdate=2007-08-08 |date=2007-06-17}}</ref> | |||
Defense of the Rosenbergs surged in November and December 1952 and was organized by the ]{{sfn|Radosh|2012|p=83}}—confirmation of which occurred with the publication of ] documents obtained by ] in 2011.{{sfn|Radosh|2012|p=85}} Proponents of clemency argued that the Rosenbergs were actually "innocent Jewish peace activists".{{sfn|Radosh|2012|p=84}} According to American historian ], the Soviet Union's goal was "to deflect the world's attention from the sordid execution of the innocent ] defendants] in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia.{{sfn|Radosh|2012|p=84}} | |||
On June 18, the Court was called back into special session to dispose of Douglas' stay rather than let the execution be delayed for months while the appeal that was the basis of the stay wended its way through the lower courts. The Court did not vacate Douglas' stay until noon on June 19. Thus, the execution then was scheduled for later in the evening after the start of the ].<ref name=sundown/> Desperately playing for more time, their lawyer, ], filed a complaint that this offended their Jewish heritage, so the execution was scheduled before sunset.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
===Execution=== | |||
] testimony (as given by a ] report featured in the 1982 ] '']'') describes the circumstances of the Rosenbergs' death, noting that while Julius Rosenberg died after the first series of electrocutions, his wife did not. After the normal course of electrocutions, attendants removed the strapping and other equipment only to have doctors determine that Mrs. Rosenberg had not yet died (her heart was still beating). Three courses of electrocution were ultimately applied, and at conclusion eyewitnesses reported a grisly scene with smoke rising from her head in the chamber.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
The execution was delayed from the scheduled date of June 18 because Supreme Court Associate Justice ] had granted a ] on the previous day. This stay resulted from intervention in the case by ], a Tennessee lawyer whose efforts had been scorned by Bloch.<ref>{{cite news |first=E. Thomas |last=Wood |url=http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/6/17/nashville_now_and_then_a_lawyers_last_gamble_and_a_universitys_divorce |work=Nashville Post |quote=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. |title=Nashville now and then: A lawyer's last gamble |access-date=August 8, 2007 |date=June 17, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070930184745/http://www.nashvillepost.com/news/2007/6/17/nashville_now_and_then_a_lawyers_last_gamble_and_a_universitys_divorce |archive-date=September 30, 2007}}</ref> The execution was scheduled for 11 p.m. the evening of June 19, during the Sabbath, which begins and ends around sunset.<ref name="sundown" /> 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.<ref>{{cite book |author=Radosh |first=Ronald |url=https://archive.org/details/rosenbergfile00rado |title=The Rosenberg File |author2=Milton |first2=Joyce |publisher=Yale University Press |year=1997 |isbn=978-0-300-07205-1 |page= |quote=rhoda Laks. |url-access=registration}}</ref> 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 at ] where they were being held.<ref>{{cite book |last=Roberts |first=Sam |title=The Brother: the untold story of the Rosenberg case |url=https://archive.org/details/brother00samr |url-access=registration |page= |year=2003 |publisher=Random House |isbn=978-0-375-76124-9|quote=(According to Orthodox tradition, the Sabbath begins eighteen minutes before sunset Friday and ends the following evening.)}}</ref> | |||
Ethel and |
On June 19, 1953, Julius died from the first ]. 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.<ref>{{cite book |last=Philipson |first=Ilene |title=Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8g6JU4hTJ2AC&pg=PA351 |pages=351–352 |year=1993 |publisher=Rutgers University Press |isbn=978-0-8135-1917-3}}</ref> The Rosenbergs were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the ].<ref name="false">{{cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1695240.stm |date=December 6, 2001 |work=BBC News |title=False testimony clinched Rosenberg spy trial |access-date=July 30, 2008 |archive-date=April 20, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190420131828/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1695240.stm |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="usatoday">{{cite news |title=50 years later, Rosenberg execution is still fresh |agency=Associated Press |work=USA Today |date=June 17, 2003 |url=https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-06-17-rosenbergs_x.htm |access-date=January 8, 2008 |archive-date=August 21, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110821152142/https://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-06-17-rosenbergs_x.htm |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |title=Execution of the Rosenbergs |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/1953/jun/20/usa.fromthearchive |quote=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 |work=The Guardian |date=June 20, 1953 |access-date=June 24, 2008 |location=London |archive-date=April 27, 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190427012818/https://www.theguardian.com/world/1953/jun/20/usa.fromthearchive |url-status=live }}</ref> The funeral services were held in Brooklyn on June 21. The Rosenbergs were buried at ], a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York.<ref name="sundown">{{cite news |first=Clyde |last=Haberman |title=Executed at Sundown, 50 Years Ago. |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F01E6D81E38F933A15755C0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all |quote=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. |work=The New York Times |date=June 20, 2003 |access-date=June 23, 2008 |archive-date=February 17, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240217042221/https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/20/nyregion/nyc-executed-at-sundown-50-years-ago.html |url-status=live }}</ref> ''The Times'' reported that 500 people attended and some 10,000 stood outside:<ref>{{cite news |date=June 21, 1953 |title=Funeral Tributes To Rosenbergs: Execution Denounced |url=http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/article/1953-06-22/6/12.html#start%3D1953-06-21%26end%3D1953-06-22%26terms%3DRosenberg%26back%3D/tto/archive/find/Rosenberg/w:1953-06-21%7E1953-06-22/1 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210712104449/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/archive/article/1953-06-22/6/12.html#start%3D1953-06-21%26end%3D1953-06-22%26terms%3DRosenberg%26back%3D/tto/archive/find/Rosenberg/w:1953-06-21%7E1953-06-22/1 |archive-date=July 12, 2021 |access-date=June 20, 2015 |work=The Times |location=London}}</ref> | ||
{{blockquote|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 , 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."}} | |||
==Post execution== | |||
===Alexandre Feklisov=== | |||
According to ], the former Soviet agent who was Julius' contact, he had not provided Russia with any useful material about the atomic bomb, "He didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."<ref name=role>{{cite news |first=Alessandra |last=Stanley |title=K.G.B. Agent Plays Down Atomic Role Of Rosenbergs |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B06E2DF1438F935A25750C0A961958260&scp=3&sq=feklisov&st=nyt |quote=A retired K.G.B. colonel has for the first time disclosed his role as the human conduit between Moscow and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg ... Aleksandr Feklisov, 83, said ... while Julius Rosenberg did give away military secrets, he had not provided Russia with any useful material about the atomic bomb. |work=] |date=March 16, 1997 |accessdate=2008-06-24 }}</ref> | |||
In 1953, socialist historian ] 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?"<ref>{{Cite web |title=Never Losing Faith for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg |publisher=National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case |date=1953 |url=https://freedomarchives.org/search/search.php?view_collection=309 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230223074604/https://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC511_scans/511.Rosenbergs.NeverLosingFaith.pdf |archive-date=February 23, 2023 |access-date=February 23, 2023 }}</ref> | |||
===David Greenglass=== | |||
David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother and key prosecution witness, recanted his testimony about his sister's typed notes. He stated in an interview in 2001: "I don't know who typed it, frankly, and to this day I can't remember that the typing took place. I had no memory of that at all—none whatsoever."<ref name=false/> He said he gave false testimony to protect himself and his wife, Ruth, and that he was encouraged by the prosecution to do so; "I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister."<ref name=false/> He refused to express any remorse for his decision to sacrifice his sister, saying only that he did not realize that the death penalty would be invoked.<ref name=false/> | |||
==Soviet nuclear program== | |||
===The Rosenbergs' children=== | |||
Senator ], 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 physicist ] estimated that the Soviets would build its bomb within five years. Moynihan wrote in his book ''Secrecy'': "Thanks to information provided by their agents, they did it in four."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Moynihan |first=Daniel Patrick |title=Secrecy |publisher=Yale Univ. Press |year=1999 |location=New Haven |pages=143–44}}</ref> | |||
The Rosenbergs' two sons, ] and ], spent years trying to prove the innocence of their parents, until 2008 when they admitted that their father had likely been involved after ], at age 91, confessed.<ref name=meeropol/> The Rosenberg children were orphaned by the executions and no relatives adopted them. They were finally adopted by the songwriter ] and his wife Anne, and they assumed the Meeropol surname. Abel Meeropol (under the pen name of Lewis Allan) wrote the classic anti-lynching anthem "]", made famous by singer ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} Robert and Michael co-wrote a book about the experience, ''We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg'' (1975), and Robert wrote another book in 2003, ''An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey.''{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} In 1990, Robert founded the ], a non-profit foundation that provides support for children of targeted progressive activists, and youth who are targeted activists themselves. Michael is listed as the Chair and Professor of Economics, School of Arts and Sciences, Economics at Western New England College in ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} Michael's daughter, ], directed a 2003 documentary about her grandparents, ''Heir to an Execution,'' which was featured at the ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
], leader of the ] 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 from ] and ] that they "had provided very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb."<ref>{{Cite book|first=Nikita |last=Khrushchev |title=Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes |editor1=Jerrold L. Schecter |editor2=Vyacheslav V. Luchkov |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |location=Boston |year=1990 |page=194}}</ref> Boris V. Brokhovich, the engineer who later became director of ], 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."<ref>{{cite news |first=Robert |last=McFadden |title=Khrushchev on Rosenbergs: Stoking Old Embers |quote=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. |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0DC103FF936A1575AC0A966958260 |work=The New York Times |date=September 25, 2008 |access-date=August 13, 2008 |archive-date=February 17, 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240217042707/https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/25/world/khrushchev-on-rosenbergs-stoking-old-embers.html |url-status=live }}</ref> The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was directly used in the Soviet atomic bomb project.<ref>{{cite book|last=Roberts|first=Sam|title=The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case|publisher=Random House|year=2001|isbn=978-0-375-76124-9|pages=|url=https://archive.org/details/brother00samr/page/425}}</ref> According to Julius's contact Feklisov, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."<ref>{{cite news|last1=Stanley|first1=Alessandra|title=K.G.B. Agent Plays Down Atomic Role Of Rosenbergs|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/16/world/kgb-agent-plays-down-atomic-role-of-rosenbergs.html|access-date=October 5, 2016|work=The New York Times|date=March 16, 1997|archive-date=October 23, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161023163700/http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/16/world/kgb-agent-plays-down-atomic-role-of-rosenbergs.html|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
] and ] believe that "whatever atomic bomb information their father passed to the Russians was, at best, superfluous; the case was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct; their mother was convicted on flimsy evidence to place leverage on her husband; and neither deserved the death penalty."<ref name=meeropol>{{cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Father Was a Spy, Sons Conclude With Regret |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/nyregion/17rosenbergs.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin |quote=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. |work=] |date=September 16, 2008 |accessdate=2008-09-17 }}</ref> | |||
General ], who developed the American nuclear program as part of the ], said during a United States Atomic Energy Commission hearing on ] 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. <ref>{{Cite news |last=Roberts |first=Sam |date=October 6, 2014 |title=Newly Released Letters Illuminate Rosenbergs' Parental Anxieties |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/nyregion/newly-released-letters-illuminate-rosenbergs-parental-anxieties.html |work=]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150326070312/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/nyregion/newly-released-letters-illuminate-rosenbergs-parental-anxieties.html |archive-date=March 26, 2015 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Record of Classified Deletions |url=https://www.osti.gov/includes/opennet/includes/Oppenheimer%20hearings/Record%20of%20Classified%20Deletions.pdf |website=U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information}}</ref> | |||
===2008 document release=== | |||
In a hearing, U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein decided to make public the grand jury testimony of 36 of the 46 witnesses but not that of Greenglass. Citing the objections of Greenglass and two other living witnesses, the judge claimed that their privacy rights "overrides the public’s need to know."<ref name="case"/> ] law professor ] argued on behalf of historical groups that because of recent interviews, Greenglass forfeited the privacy he now claims and that the testimony should be released. Hellerstein was not moved. The testimony of the other seven witnesses will be released upon their consent, or confirmation that they are dead or impossible to find.<ref name="case">{{cite news |title=Judge hears case for historic Rosenberg spy trial |url=http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/07/22/2008-07-22_judge_hears_case_for_historic_rosenberg_.html |work=] |publisher=] |date=July 22, 2008 |accessdate=2008-07-30 }}</ref> | |||
==Later developments== | |||
In September 2008, hundreds of pages of grand jury transcripts were released. With this release, it was revealed that Ruth Greenglass had irreconcilable differences in her grand jury testimony in August 1950 and the testimony she gave at trial. At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write down on a piece of paper?"<ref name="ruth"/> She replied, "Yes, I wrote down a piece of paper and took it with him."<ref name="ruth"/> But, at the trial she testified that Ethel Rosenberg typed up notes about the atomic bomb.<ref name="ruth">{{cite news |first=Holly |last=Watt |title=Witness Changed Her Story During Rosenberg Spy Case |url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103887.html |publisher= ] |date=2008-09-12 }}</ref> | |||
===1995 Venona decryptions=== | |||
The ] was a United States ] program to decrypt messages transmitted by the ] of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the U.S., the program continued during the ] when it was considered an enemy.<ref name="NSA_Venona">{{Cite web |title=Venona |url=https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/venona/ |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210729083031/https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/venona/ |archive-date=July 29, 2021 |access-date=November 15, 2020 |website=NSA.gov |quote=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}}</ref> 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.<ref name="NYT_Haynes">{{Cite web |author1=Haynes, John Earl |author2=Klehr, Harvey |date=1999 |title=Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/haynes-venona.html?_r=1 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210126020434/https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/h/haynes-venona.html?_r=1 |archive-date=January 26, 2021 |access-date=November 15, 2020 |work=The New York Times |quote=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.}}</ref> | |||
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.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Haynes|first1=John Earl|last2=Klehr|first2=Harvey|title=Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-08462-7|page=15|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nIYC5pd1XQoC|language=en|year=2000}}</ref> 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").<ref name="PBS_1944">{{Cite web |url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/inte_19440921.html |title=The September 21, 1944 cable: The Rosenbergs and the Greenglasses |last=Tyson |first=Peter |work=PBS |quote=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 |date=2002 |access-date=November 15, 2020 |archive-date=November 17, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201117042302/https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/inte_19440921.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Ethel did not have a codename;<ref name=guardian-20210619/> however, ] messages which were contained in the Venona project's ] files, and which were not made public until 2009,<ref name="NYT2018" /><ref name="WSJ" /> revealed that both Ethel and Julius had regular contact with at least two KGB agents and were active in recruiting both David Greenglass and ].<ref name=ethelnotcleared>{{cite news|url=https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/01/05/julius-rosenberg-soviet-spying-mark-kramer|title=Why Ethel Rosenberg Should Not Be Exonerated|first=Mark|last=Kramer|publisher=WBUR|date=January 5, 2017|accessdate=May 2, 2022|archive-date=May 2, 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220502162453/https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2017/01/05/julius-rosenberg-soviet-spying-mark-kramer|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="NYT2018" /><ref name="WSJ" /> | |||
===Memoir of Nikita Khrushchev=== | |||
], leader of the ] from 1958 to 1964, wrote of the Rosenbergs in his memoir, published posthumously in 1990. According to the memoir, Kruschchev learned from ] and ] that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg "had provided very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb." He further wrote: | |||
===2001 David Greenglass statements=== | |||
{{cquote|Let this be a worthy tribute to the memory of those people. Let my words serve as an expression of gratitude to those who sacrificed their lives to a great cause of the Soviet state at a time when the U.S. was using its advantage over our state to ] our state and undermine its ] cause.}}{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
], brother of Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg and key prosecution witness]] | |||
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."<ref name="Greenglass92-1">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/david-greenglass-spy-who-helped-seal-the-rosenbergs-doom-dies-at-92.html|title=David Greenglass, the Brother Who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg, Dies at 92|author=Robert D. McFadden|date=October 14, 2014|work=The New York Times|access-date=February 10, 2017|archive-date=October 4, 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231004090737/https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/us/david-greenglass-spy-who-helped-seal-the-rosenbergs-doom-dies-at-92.html|url-status=live}}</ref> 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."<ref name="Greenglass92-1"/> 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."<ref name="false" /> | |||
===2008 release of grand jury testimony=== | |||
However, the director of the organization where the Soviet Union developed its first atomic bomb denied any involvement by the Rosenbergs. In 1989, Boris V. Brokhovich told '']'' in an interview that development of the bomb had been a matter of trial and error. "You sat the Rosenbergs in the electric chair for nothing", he said. "We got nothing from the Rosenbergs."<ref>{{cite news |first=Robert |last=McFadden |title= Khrushchev on Rosenbergs: Stoking Old Embers|quote=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. |url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0DC103FF936A1575AC0A966958260 |work=] |date=] |accessdate=2008-08-13 }}</ref> | |||
At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write down on a piece of paper?" She replied, "Yes, I wrote down on a piece of paper and took it with him." At the trial, she testified that Ethel typed notes about the atomic bomb.<ref name="ruth">{{cite news |first=Holly |last=Watt |title=Witness Changed Her Story During Rosenberg Spy Case |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103887.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |date=September 12, 2008 |access-date=September 2, 2017 |archive-date=October 25, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171025022646/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103887.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Numerous articles were published in 2008 related to the Rosenberg case. Deputy Attorney General of the United States ], 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.<ref>{{cite news|first=Sam|last=Roberts|title=Spies and Secrecy|url=http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/podcast-spies-and-secrecy/#more-3235|quote=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.|work=The New York Times|date=June 26, 2008|access-date=June 27, 2008|archive-date=June 27, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080627153410/http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/podcast-spies-and-secrecy/#more-3235|url-status=live}}</ref> | |||
===Morton Sobell=== | ===2008 Morton Sobell's statements=== | ||
] (left), ], ], Franz Loeser, April 19, 1976]] | |||
In 2008, after many years of denial, ] finally admitted he was a Soviet spy and confirmed Julius Rosenberg was "in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information ... the atomic bomb."<ref name=sobell/> However, he stated that the hand-drawn diagrams and other atomic bomb details that were acquired by ] and passed to Julius were of "little value" to Soviet Union, and were used to corroborate what they had learned from the other atomic spies.<ref name=sobell/> He also stated that Ethel Rosenberg was completely innocent; she was aware of her husband's misdeeds, but took no part in it.<ref name=sobell/><!-- In a subsequent letter to '']'', Sobell asserted that he had no direct knowledge from Julius Rosenberg about Rosenberg's alleged involvement in atomic espionage. According to Sobell, Julius Rosenberg never told him about any other espionage activities Rosenberg might have been engaged in.--> | |||
In September 2008, Morton Sobell was interviewed by ''The 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{{nbsp}}... the atomic bomb", and " never told me about anything else that he was engaged in."<ref name=sobell>{{cite news |first=Sam |last=Roberts |author-link=Sam Roberts (newspaper journalist) |title=For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss |quote=Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy. |work=The New York Times |date=September 12, 2008 |access-date=May 7, 2010 |url-access=subscription |archive-date=February 5, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170205133615/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12spy.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
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.<ref name=sobell/> In a follow-up letter to ''The 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.<ref>{{cite news |author=Sobell |first=Morton |date=September 19, 2008 |title=Letter: The Rosenberg Case |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03EFD9163AF93AA2575AC0A96E9C8B63&ref=julius_rosenberg |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171021005404/https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03EFD9163AF93AA2575AC0A96E9C8B63&ref=julius_rosenberg |archive-date=October 21, 2017 |access-date=February 10, 2017 |work=The New York Times}}</ref> | |||
==Fictional portrayals== | |||
* The Rosenbergs have figured in several film, television and literary works. Ethel Rosenberg is a major supporting character in ]'s critically acclaimed play '']'', in which her ghost haunts a dying ]. In the ] ], she was portrayed by ]. In the 1992 film '']'', she is portrayed by ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
===2009 Vassiliev notebooks based on KGB archives=== | |||
* ], a celebrated revolutionary poet of ], praised Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's sacrifices in his poems which are now classics of ] poetry.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
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 by ], ], and Alexander Vassiliev; Vassiliev's notebooks included KGB comments concerning Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2010/04/spies-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-kgb-in-america/ |title=Review: ''Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America'' (Benjamin L. Landis, 2010) |access-date=November 15, 2020 |archive-date=January 15, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210115173441/https://americandiplomacy.web.unc.edu/2010/04/spies-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-kgb-in-america/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and make clear that the KGB considered Julius Rosenberg an effective agent and Ethel a supporter of his work.<ref name="NYT2018">{{Cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/books/review/howard-blum-in-the-enemys-house.html |title=In This True-Life Spy Story, It's America vs. Russia, the Early Years |last=Radosh |first=Ronald |work=The New York Times |quote=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. |date=April 10, 2018 |access-date=November 15, 2020 |archive-date=November 9, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201109032308/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/books/review/howard-blum-in-the-enemys-house.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="WSJ">{{Cite web |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/grasping-at-straws-to-try-to-exonerate-ethel-rosenberg-1437342393 |title=Grasping at Straws to Try to Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg |last=Radosh |first=Ronald |work=The Wall Street Journal |quote=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.' She could be used independently, but she should not be overworked. Poor health.' |date=July 19, 2015 |access-date=November 15, 2020 |archive-date=December 10, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201210125857/https://www.wsj.com/articles/grasping-at-straws-to-try-to-exonerate-ethel-rosenberg-1437342393 |url-status=live }}</ref> According to Vassiliev, Julius and Ethel worked personally with KGB agents who were given the codenames ''Twain'' and ''Callistratus'', and were also described as being the ones who recruited Greenglass and McNutt for the Manhattan Project spy mission.<ref name="NYT2018" /><ref name="ethelnotcleared" /><ref name="WSJ" /> Although the public release of Vassiliev's notebooks did not occur until 2009, the notebooks had been originally intercepted during the Venona decryptions.<ref name="ethelnotcleared" /> | |||
* The ] novel, '']'', is based on the Rosenberg case as seen through the eyes of the (fictionalized) son. It inspired the ] film, '']'', starring ].{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
* The other major novel dealing extensively with the case is ]'s '']''. Unlike Doctorow, Coover uses real names for most protagonists of the case, and uses a fictionalized ] as his narrator for half of the chapters. This sparked a long delay in the publication of the novel, since publishing houses feared lawsuits from people appearing as characters in the book. Further fictional treatments of the case are ]'s fictional autobiography ''Ethel'' and ]'s fictional biography ''Harry Gold''.{{Citation needed|date=July 2009}} | |||
===Rosenberg children=== | |||
] (2011)]] | |||
] (2007)]] | |||
The Rosenbergs' two sons, ] and ], 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.<ref name=guardian-20210619/> They were adopted by the communist activist ] and his wife Anne and assumed the Meeropol surname.<ref name="meeropol"/><ref name=guardian-20210619/> 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.<ref name="meeropol">{{cite news |first=Sam |last=Roberts |title=Father Was a Spy, Sons Conclude With Regret |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/nyregion/17rosenbergs.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin |quote=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. |work=The New York Times |date=September 16, 2008 |access-date=September 17, 2008 |archive-date=November 29, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151129034005/http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/17/nyregion/17rosenbergs.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin |url-status=live }}</ref> | |||
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 memoir ''An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey'' (2003). In 1990, he founded the ], a nonprofit foundation that provides support for children of targeted liberal activists and youth who are targeted as activists.<ref name="democracy now">{{cite news | title=My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act | url=http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/30/son_of_julius_and_ethel_rosenberg | work=Democracy Now! | date=December 30, 2010 | access-date=January 6, 2011 | archive-date=January 6, 2011 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110106082908/http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/30/son_of_julius_and_ethel_rosenberg | url-status=live }}</ref> Michael's daughter ] directed a 2004 documentary about her grandparents, ''Heir to an Execution'', which was featured at the ].<ref>{{cite news |date=January 20, 2004 |title=Sundance: ''Heir To An Execution'' |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sundance-heir-to-an-execution/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110523225713/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/20/entertainment/main594590.shtml |archive-date=May 23, 2011 |access-date=January 6, 2011 |work=CBS News}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Meeropol |first1=Michael |last2=Meeropol |first2=Robert |title=The Meeropol Brothers: Exonerate Our Mother, Ethel Rosenberg |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/opinion/the-meeropol-brothers-exonerate-our-mother-ethel-rosenberg.html |access-date=October 5, 2016 |work=The New York Times |date=August 10, 2015 |archive-date=October 7, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161007080603/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/opinion/the-meeropol-brothers-exonerate-our-mother-ethel-rosenberg.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="guardian-20210619" /> | |||
In 2015, following the most recent grand jury transcript release, Michael and Robert Meeropol called on U.S. President ]'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.<ref name="the New York Times">{{cite news |title=The Meeropol brothers: Exonerate our mother, Ethel Rosenberg |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/opinion/the-meeropol-brothers-exonerate-our-mother-ethel-rosenberg.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 10, 2015 |access-date=April 9, 2016 |archive-date=November 26, 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151126073039/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/10/opinion/the-meeropol-brothers-exonerate-our-mother-ethel-rosenberg.html |url-status=live }}</ref> In March 2016, Michael and Robert (via the Rosenberg Fund for Children) launched a petition campaign calling on President Obama and U.S. Attorney General ] to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg.<ref name="rosenberg fund for children">{{cite news |title=Exonerate our mother, Ethel Rosenberg |url=http://rfc.org/ethel |publisher=Rosenberg Fund for Children |date=March 1, 2016 |access-date=April 9, 2016 |archive-date=April 11, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160411203515/http://www.rfc.org/ethel |url-status=live }}</ref> In October 2016, both Michael and Robert Meeropol spoke with ] in an interview which aired on '']''.<ref>{{cite news |author=McCandless |first=Brit |date=October 16, 2016 |title=The Rosenberg boys: The Cold War's most famous orphans |url=https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-rosenberg-boys-the-cold-wars-most-famous-orphans/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220502163201/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-rosenberg-boys-the-cold-wars-most-famous-orphans/ |archive-date=May 2, 2022 |accessdate=May 2, 2022 |work=60 Minutes Overtime |publisher=CBS News}}</ref> In January 2017, Senator ] sent Obama a letter requesting consideration of the exoneration request.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.gazettenet.com/Sen-Warren-joins-growing-list-calling-for-Ethel-Rosenberg-s-exoneration-7450555|title=Sen. Warren joins call for Ethel Rosenberg's exoneration|publisher=Daily Hampshire Gazette|access-date=June 21, 2021|date=January 13, 2017|archive-date=June 24, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624202327/https://www.gazettenet.com/Sen-Warren-joins-growing-list-calling-for-Ethel-Rosenberg-s-exoneration-7450555|url-status=live}}</ref><ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210709183504/https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/01/12/warren-neal-ask-obama-consider-pardoning-ethel-rosenberg/bykKauCJmP7fRcFxZriJaN/story.html |date=July 9, 2021 }} The ''Globe'' talks about "pardon", but all the petitioners mean "exoneration", in that "The government's prosecution and execution of my mother was wrongful and unjust" (Robert Meeropol)</ref> In 2021, Ethel's sons restarted the campaign to pardon Ethel as they were optimistic that President ] would consider this favorably. ''Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy'' by ] was published by Orion Books in 2021.<ref name="guardian-20210619" /><ref>{{cite book |last1=Sebba |first1=Anne |title=Ethel Rosenberg : a Cold War tragedy |date=2021 |publisher=Orion |location=London |isbn=9780297871019 |url=https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/titles/anne-sebba/ethel-rosenberg/9780297871019/ |access-date=June 24, 2021 |archive-date=June 24, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210624203633/https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/titles/anne-sebba/ethel-rosenberg/9780297871019/ |url-status=live }}</ref> {{As of|June 2023}} Michael and Robert were requesting Director of National Intelligence ] to release the records related to their mother's case,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/70-years-after-their-executions-rosenberg-sons-still-looking-to-clear-mothers-name|title=70 Years After Their Executions, Rosenberg Sons Still Looking to Clear Mother's Name|website=Death Penalty Information Center}}</ref> per a 2009 executive order.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-classified-national-security-information|title=Executive Order 13526- Classified National Security Information|date=December 29, 2009|website=whitehouse.gov}}</ref> | |||
In 2024, the Meeropols were given a copy of a contemporary hand-written memo by ], a linguist and codebreaker at what later became the NSA, based on Russian decrypts. It stated that Ethel Rosenberg knew about Julius' espionage work but that "due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself".<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://apnews.com/article/ethel-rosenberg-atomic-espionage-soviet-union-c193f4db76b3e5dd7f49799929fb526c|title=Declassified memo from US codebreaker sheds light on Ethel Rosenberg's Cold War spy case|date=September 10, 2024|website=AP News}}</ref> | |||
==Artistic representations== | |||
The song "Julius and Ethel" written by ] in 1983 is based on the Rosenberg case.<ref>{{Cite magazine |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/hear-bob-dylans-lost-1983-song-julius-and-ethel-w436170 |title=Flashback: Hear Bob Dylan's Lost 1983 Song 'Julius and Ethel' |magazine=Rolling Stone |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160826003547/https://www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/hear-bob-dylans-lost-1983-song-julius-and-ethel-w436170 |date=August 25, 2016<!-- "8 hours ago" at 2016-08-26T00:35:47 --> |archive-date=August 26, 2016 |access-date=March 15, 2018 }}</ref> Images of the Rosenbergs are engraved on a memorial in Havana, Cuba. The accompanying caption says they were murdered.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://mltranslations.org/Cuba/rosenberg.htm |title=Rosenberg Memorial |website=MLTranslations.org |access-date=March 29, 2016 |archive-date=November 8, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201108095500/https://www.mltranslations.org/Cuba/rosenberg.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> 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''".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Muhammad |first=Ishaque |title=Hasan Nasar Ki Shahadat |date=2008 |publisher=Mahfouz Khan Shujat |edition=2nd |location=Multan, Pakistan |pages=57 |language=Urdu |trans-title=Hasan Nasar's Martyrdom}}</ref> | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
* ] | |||
{{commons|Rosenberg trial}} | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ], member of the prosecution team | |||
* ] | * ] | ||
==Notes== | ==Notes== | ||
{{reflist |
{{reflist}} | ||
==Works cited== | ==Works cited== | ||
* Feklisov, Aleksandr, and Kostin, Sergei. ''The Man Behind the Rosenbergs''. Enigma Books |
* Feklisov, Aleksandr, and Kostin, Sergei. ''The Man Behind the Rosenbergs''. Enigma Books, 2003. {{ISBN|978-1-929631-24-7}} | ||
* {{cite journal |last1=Radosh |first1=Ronald |author-link=Ronald Radosh |title=A Tale of Two Trials: Soviet Propaganda at Home and Abroad |journal=World Affairs |date=2012 |volume=175 |issue=1 |pages=80–87 |jstor=41638995 |issn=0043-8200}} | |||
* Roberts, Sam. ''The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case''. Random House, 2001. ISBN 0-375-76124-1. | |||
* Roberts, Sam. ''The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case''. Random House, 2001. {{ISBN|0-375-76124-1}}. | |||
* Schneir, Walter. ''Invitation to an Inquest''. Pantheon Books, 1983. ISBN 0394714962. | |||
* Schneir, Walter, and Scheir, Miriam. ''Invitation to an Inquest''. Pantheon Books, 1983. {{ISBN|0-394-71496-2}}. | |||
* Schrecker, Ellen. ''Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America''. Little, Brown and Company, 1998. ISBN 0316774707. | |||
* Schrecker, Ellen. ''Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America''. Little, Brown and Company, 1998. {{ISBN|0-316-77470-7}}. | |||
==Further reading== | ==Further reading== | ||
* Sebba, Anne, ''Ethel Rosenberg, A Cold War Tragedy'' (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021). {{ISBN?}} | |||
* Nason, Tema. ''Ethel: The Fictional Autobiography of Ethel Rosenberg''. Delacourt, 1990. ISBN 0-440-21110-7 and by Syracuse, 2002, ISBN 0-8156-0745-8. | |||
* Alman, Emily A. and David. ''Exoneration: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell – Prosecutorial deceptions, suborned perjuries, anti-Semitism, and precedent for today's unconstitutional trials''. , 2010. {{ISBN|978-0-9779058-3-6}} | |||
* Meeropol, Robert and Michael. ''We Are Your Sons, The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg''. University of Illinois Press, 1986. ISBN 0-252-01263-1. | |||
* |
* Carmichael, Virginia .''Framing history: the Rosenberg story and the Cold War'', (University of Minnesota Press, 1993) {{ISBN?}} | ||
* Clune, Lori. "Great Importance World-Wide: Presidential Decision-Making and the Executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg." ''American Communist History'' 10.3 (2011): 263–284. | |||
* Radosh, Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton. ''The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth''. Henry Holt (1983). ISBN 0-03-049036-7. | |||
* |
* Doctorow, E. L. ''The Book of Daniel''. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007. {{ISBN|978-0-8129-7817-9}} | ||
* Deborah Friedell, "How Utterly Depraved!" (review of ], ''Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy'', Weidenfeld, 2021, {{ISBN|978-0297871002}}, 288 pp.), '']'', vol. 43, no. 13 (July 1, 2021), pp. 11–13 | |||
* Yalkowsky, Stanley. ''The murder of the Rosenbergs''. Crucible Publications (July 1990). ISBN 978-0962098420. | |||
* Goldstein, Alvin H. ''The Unquiet Death of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg'', 1975. {{ISBN|978-0-88208-052-9}} | |||
* Harris, Brian. "Injustice", Sutton Publishing. 2006. {{ISBN|0-7509-4021-2}} (An examination of the trial) | |||
* Hornblum, Allen M. ''The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb'', Yale University Press. 2010. {{ISBN|0-300-15676-6}} | |||
* Meeropol, Michael, " 'A Spy Who Turned His Family In': Revisiting David Greenglass and the Rosenberg Case," ''American Communist History'' (May 2018) {{doi|10.1080/14743892.2018.1467702}} | |||
* Meeropol, Michael, ed. ''The Rosenberg Letters: A Complete Edition of the Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg''. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. {{ISBN|0-8240-5948-4}} | |||
* Meeropol, Robert and Michael Meeropol. ''We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg''. University of Illinois Press, 1986. {{ISBN|0-252-01263-1}}. Chapter 15 is a detailed refutation of Radosh and Milton's scholarship. | |||
* Meeropol, Robert. ''An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey''. St. Martin's Press, 2003. {{ISBN|0-312-30637-7}} | |||
* Nason, Tema. ''Ethel: The Fictional Autobiography of Ethel Rosenberg''. Delacourt, 1990. {{ISBN|0-440-21110-7}} and by Syracuse, 2002, {{ISBN|0-8156-0745-8}} | |||
* {{cite web |url=http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20150715/Greenglass.pdf |title=David Greenglass grand jury testimony transcript |date=August 7, 1950 |publisher=National Security Archive, Gelman Library, George Washington University |access-date=July 16, 2015}} | |||
* Radosh, Ronald and Joyce Milton. ''The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth''. Henry Holt (1983). {{ISBN|0-03-049036-7}}. a standard scholarly history | |||
* Roberts, Sam. ''The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case'', Random House, 2003, {{ISBN|0-375-76124-1}} | |||
* {{Cite news |last=Roberts |first=Sam |date=July 15, 2015 |title=Secret Grand Jury Testimony From Ethel Rosenberg's Brother Is Released |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/16/nyregion/david-greenglass-grand-jury-testimony-ethel-rosenberg.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=July 16, 2015}} | |||
* Sam Roberts, ''The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair'', Random House, 2001. {{ISBN|978-0-375-50013-8}} | |||
* Walter Schneir & Miriam Schneir, ''Invitation to an Inquest: Reopening the Rosenberg Case'', 1973. {{ISBN|978-0-14-003333-5}} | |||
* Schneir, Walter. ''Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case'', Melville House, 2010. {{ISBN|1-935554-16-6}} | |||
* Trahair, Richard C.S. and Robert Miller. ''Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations.'' Enigma Books, 2009. {{ISBN|978-1-929631-75-9}} | |||
* Wexley, John. ''The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg''. Ballantine Books, 1977. {{ISBN|0-345-24869-4}} | |||
* Yalkowsky, Stanley (1990). ''The Murder of the Rosenbergs''. Crucible Publications. {{ISBN|978-0-9620984-2-0}} | |||
* Zinn, Howard. ''A People's History of the United States''. p. 434 {{ISBN?}} | |||
* Zion, Sidney. ''The autobiography of ]'', Lyle Stuart Inc, 1988. {{ISBN|0-8184-0471-X}} | |||
===Other languages=== | |||
* {{in lang|fr}} Florin Aftalion, ''La Trahison des Rosenberg'', JC Lattès, Paris, 2003 | |||
* {{in lang|fr}} ], ''Mémoire d'un Rouge'', éd. Payot & Rivage. Intéressant, traite de toute la période de l'avant seconde guerre mondiale et après (MacCarthysme, etc.) aux États-Unis. Nombreux témoignages. Plusieurs passages sur les Rosenberg notamment pp. 349 à 359 | |||
* {{in lang|fr}} Gérard A. Jaeger, ''Les Rosenberg. La chaise électrique pour délit d'opinion'', Le Félin, 2003 | |||
* {{in lang|fr}} Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, ''Lettres de la maison de la mort'', Gallimard, 1953 | |||
* {{in lang|fr}} ], ''On condamne bien les innocents'', Hier et demain, 1974 | |||
==External links== | ==External links== | ||
{{Spoken Misplaced Pages|Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg.ogg|date=August 29, 2019}} | |||
* | |||
{{Commons|Rosenberg trial}} | |||
* | |||
* (excerpts as HTML, and the entire 2,563 page transcript as a PDF file) | |||
===Archival collections=== | |||
* . Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. | |||
===Other links=== | |||
* | |||
* | |||
* (excerpts as HTML, and the entire 2,563-page transcript as a PDF file) | |||
* | * | ||
* | * | ||
* | * | ||
* (summary only) | * (summary only) | ||
* |
* – An HBO documentary by Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius. | ||
* | * | ||
* | * | ||
* | * | ||
* | * {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060828131417/http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people%2FRosenberg%2C+Ethel |date=August 28, 2006 }} | ||
* | * {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060828130215/http://alsos.wlu.edu/qsearch.aspx?browse=people%2FRosenberg%2C+Julius |date=August 28, 2006 }} | ||
* for Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks | |||
* {{findagrave|901|name=Ethel Rosenberg}} | |||
* – video report by ] | |||
* {{findagrave|902|name=Julius Rosenberg}} | |||
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Latest revision as of 19:54, 27 December 2024
American spies for the Soviet Union (d. 1953)
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(s) | Conspiracy to commit espionage (50 U.S.C. § 32) |
Criminal penalty | Death by electrocution |
Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (née Greenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon designs. Convicted of espionage in 1951, they were executed by the federal government of the United States in 1953 using New York's state execution chamber in Sing Sing in Ossining, New York, becoming the first American civilians to be executed for such charges and the first to be executed during peacetime. Other convicted co-conspirators were sentenced to prison, including Ethel's brother, David Greenglass (who had made a plea agreement), Harry Gold, and Morton Sobell. Klaus Fuchs, a German scientist working at Los Alamos Laboratory, was convicted in the United Kingdom. For decades, many people, including the Rosenbergs' sons (Michael and Robert Meeropol), have maintained that Ethel was innocent of spying and have sought an exoneration on her behalf from multiple U.S. presidents.
Among records the U.S. government declassified after the fall of the Soviet Union are many related to the Rosenbergs, included a trove of decoded Soviet cables (code-name Venona), which detailed Julius's role as a courier and recruiter for the Soviets. In 2008, the National Archives of the United States published most of the grand jury testimony related to the prosecution of the Rosenbergs. 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. In September 2024, a new document was released in response to a FOIA request filed by the couple's sons. Written by the National Security Agency's chief decryptor and analyst a week after Ethel's arrest, this 1950 memo provides an analysis of the decrypted Soviet Union intelligence on Julius and Ethel, reviewing Julius' spying activities and codenames, and concluding that Ethel was not engaged in espionage work for the Soviet Union.
Early lives and education
Julius Rosenberg was born on May 12, 1918, in New York City to a family of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. The family moved to the Lower East Side by the time Julius was 11. His parents worked in the shops of the Lower East Side as Julius attended Seward Park High School. Julius became a leader in the Young Communist League USA while at City College of New York during the Great Depression. In 1939, he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering.
Ethel Greenglass was born on September 28, 1915, to a Jewish family in Manhattan. 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.
Espionage
Julius Rosenberg joined the Army Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in 1940, where he worked as an engineer-inspector until 1945. He was discharged when the U.S. Army discovered his previous membership in the Communist Party USA. Important research on electronics, communications, radar and guided missile controls was undertaken at Fort Monmouth during World War II.
According to a 2001 book by his former handler Alexander Feklisov, Rosenberg was originally recruited to spy for the interior ministry of the Soviet Union, NKVD, on Labor Day 1942 by a former spymaster Semyon Semyonov. By this time, following the invasion by Nazi Germany in June 1941, the Soviet Union had become an ally of the Western powers, which included the United States after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Rosenberg had been introduced to Semyonov by Bernard Schuster, a high-ranking member of the Communist Party USA and NKVD liaison for Earl Browder. After Semyonov was recalled to Moscow in 1944 his duties were taken over by Feklisov.
Rosenberg provided thousands of classified reports from Emerson Radio, including a complete proximity fuse. Under Feklisov's supervision, Rosenberg recruited sympathetic individuals into NKVD service, including Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant, William Perl, and Morton Sobell, also an engineer. Perl supplied Feklisov, under Rosenberg's direction, with thousands of documents from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, including a complete set of design and production drawings for Lockheed's P-80 Shooting Star, the first U.S. operational jet fighter. Feklisov learned through Rosenberg that Ethel's brother David was working on the top-secret Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory; he directed Julius to recruit Greenglass.
In February 1944, Rosenberg succeeded in recruiting a second source of Manhattan Project information, engineer Russell McNutt, who worked on designs for the plants at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. For this success Rosenberg received a $100 bonus. McNutt's employment provided access to secrets about processes for manufacturing weapons-grade uranium. 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 first nuclear test, on August 29, 1949. 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 not clear 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.
Rosenberg case
Arrest
In January 1950, the U.S. discovered that Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee and theoretical 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 American Harry Gold, who was arrested on May 23, 1950. 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 agent Anatoli Yakovlev. This connection would be necessary as evidence if there was to be a conviction for espionage of the Rosenbergs.
On July 17, 1950, Julius was arrested on suspicion of espionage, based on Greenglass's confession. On August 11, 1950, Ethel was arrested after testifying before a grand jury. 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 Mexican secret police and driven to the U.S. border, where he was arrested by U.S. forces. 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.
Grand jury
Twenty senior government officials met secretly on February 8, 1950, to discuss the Rosenberg case. Gordon Dean, the chairman of the Atomic 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." FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote that "proceeding against the wife will serve as a lever" to make Julius talk.
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. On August 11, Ethel testified before a grand jury. For all questions, she asserted her right to not answer as provided by the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination. FBI agents took her into custody as she left the courthouse. Her attorney asked the U.S. commissioner to parole her in his custody over the weekend so that she could make arrangements for her two young children. The request was denied. 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.
Trial and conviction
The trial of the Rosenbergs and Sobell on federal espionage charges began on March 6, 1951, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Judge Irving Kaufman presided over the trial, with Assistant U.S. Attorney Irving Saypol leading the prosecution and criminal defense lawyer Emmanuel Bloch representing the Rosenbergs. 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 on Nagasaki, Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device used in the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
On March 29, 1951, the Rosenbergs were convicted of espionage. They were sentenced to death on April 5 under Section 2 of the Espionage Act of 1917, 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.
Prosecutor Roy 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 Senator Joseph McCarthy, appointed as chief counsel to the investigations subcommittee during McCarthy's tenure as chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee. In imposing the death penalty, Kaufman observed that he held the Rosenbergs responsible not only for espionage but for American deaths in the Korean War:
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."
After conviction
Campaign for clemency
After the publication of an investigative series in the National Guardian and the formation of the National 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 of antisemitism. At a time when American fears about communism were high, the Rosenbergs did not receive support from mainstream Jewish organizations. The American Civil Liberties Union did not find any civil liberties violations in the case.
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 the Nobel Prize for Literature, described the trial as "a legal lynching". Others, including non-communists such as Jean Cocteau and Harold Urey, a Nobel Prize-winning physical chemist, as well as left-leaning figures—some being communist—such as Nelson Algren, Bertolt Brecht, Albert Einstein, Dashiell Hammett, Frida Kahlo, and Diego Rivera, protested the position of the American government in what the French termed the American Dreyfus affair. Einstein and Urey pleaded with President Harry S. Truman to pardon the Rosenbergs. In May 1951, Pablo Picasso wrote for the communist French newspaper L'Humanité: "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place." The all-black labor union International Longshoremen's Association Local 968 stopped working for a day in protest. Cinema artists such as Fritz Lang registered their protest. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, supported by public opinion and the media at home, ignored the overseas demands. Pope Pius XII appealed to Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953. All other appeals were also unsuccessful.
Defense of the Rosenbergs surged in November and December 1952 and was organized by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—confirmation of which occurred with the publication of KGB documents obtained by Alexander Vassiliev in 2011. Proponents of clemency argued that the Rosenbergs were actually "innocent Jewish peace activists". According to American historian Ronald Radosh, the Soviet Union's goal was "to deflect the world's attention from the sordid execution of the innocent in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia.
Execution
The execution was delayed from the scheduled date of June 18 because Supreme Court Associate Justice William O. Douglas had granted a stay of execution on the previous day. This stay resulted from intervention in the case by Fyke Farmer, a Tennessee lawyer whose efforts had been scorned by Bloch. The execution was scheduled for 11 p.m. the evening of June 19, during the Sabbath, which begins and ends around sunset. 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. 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 at Sing Sing where they were being held.
On June 19, 1953, Julius died from the first electric 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. The Rosenbergs were the only American civilians executed for espionage during the Cold War. The funeral services were held in Brooklyn on June 21. The Rosenbergs were buried at Wellwood Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Pinelawn, New York. The Times reported that 500 people attended and some 10,000 stood outside:
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 , 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 historian W.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?"
Soviet nuclear program
Senator Daniel 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 physicist Hans Bethe estimated that the Soviets would build its bomb within five years. Moynihan wrote in his book Secrecy: "Thanks to information provided by their agents, they did it in four."
Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet 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 from Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov that they "had provided very significant help in accelerating the production of our atomic bomb." Boris V. Brokhovich, the engineer who later became director of Chelyabinsk-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." The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was directly used in the Soviet atomic bomb project. According to Julius's contact Feklisov, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."
General Leslie Groves, who developed the American nuclear program as part of the Manhattan Project, said during a United States Atomic Energy Commission hearing on Robert 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.
Later developments
1995 Venona decryptions
The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the U.S., the program continued during the Cold War when it was considered an enemy. 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.
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. 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"). Ethel did not have a codename; however, KGB messages which were contained in the Venona project's Alexander Vassiliev files, and which were not made public until 2009, revealed that both Ethel and Julius had regular contact with at least two KGB agents and were active in recruiting both David Greenglass and Russell McNutt.
2001 David Greenglass statements
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." 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." 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."
2008 release of grand jury testimony
At the grand jury, Ruth Greenglass was asked, "Didn't you write down on a piece of paper?" She replied, "Yes, I wrote down on a piece of paper and took it with him." At the trial, she testified that Ethel typed notes about the atomic bomb. Numerous articles were published in 2008 related to the Rosenberg case. Deputy Attorney General of the United States William 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.
2008 Morton Sobell's statements
In September 2008, Morton Sobell was interviewed by The 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 ... the atomic bomb", and " never told me about anything else that he was engaged in."
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. In a follow-up letter to The 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.
2009 Vassiliev notebooks based on KGB archives
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 by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev; Vassiliev's notebooks included KGB comments concerning Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and make clear that the KGB considered Julius Rosenberg an effective agent and Ethel a supporter of his work. According to Vassiliev, Julius and Ethel worked personally with KGB agents who were given the codenames Twain and Callistratus, and were also described as being the ones who recruited Greenglass and McNutt for the Manhattan Project spy mission. Although the public release of Vassiliev's notebooks did not occur until 2009, the notebooks had been originally intercepted during the Venona decryptions.
Rosenberg children
The Rosenbergs' two sons, Michael and Robert, 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. They were adopted by the communist activist Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne and assumed the Meeropol surname. 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.
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 memoir An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey (2003). In 1990, he founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children, a nonprofit foundation that provides support for children of targeted liberal activists and youth who are targeted as activists. Michael's daughter Ivy Meeropol directed a 2004 documentary about her grandparents, Heir to an Execution, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. 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.
In 2015, following the most recent grand jury transcript release, Michael and Robert Meeropol called on U.S. President Barack 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. In March 2016, Michael and Robert (via the Rosenberg Fund for Children) launched a petition campaign calling on President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg. In October 2016, both Michael and Robert Meeropol spoke with Anderson Cooper in an interview which aired on 60 Minutes. In January 2017, Senator Elizabeth Warren sent Obama a letter requesting consideration of the exoneration request. In 2021, Ethel's sons restarted the campaign to pardon Ethel as they were optimistic that President Joe Biden would consider this favorably. Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy by Anne Sebba was published by Orion Books in 2021. As of June 2023 Michael and Robert were requesting Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to release the records related to their mother's case, per a 2009 executive order.
In 2024, the Meeropols were given a copy of a contemporary hand-written memo by Meredith Gardner, a linguist and codebreaker at what later became the NSA, based on Russian decrypts. It stated that Ethel Rosenberg knew about Julius' espionage work but that "due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself".
Artistic representations
The song "Julius and Ethel" written by Bob Dylan in 1983 is based on the Rosenberg case. Images of the Rosenbergs are engraved on a memorial in Havana, Cuba. The accompanying caption says they were murdered. 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".
See also
- Atomic spies
- Capital punishment by the United States federal government
- List of people executed by the United States federal government
- Soviet atomic bomb project
Notes
- The Federal government has the power to use state correctional centers to carry out its executions as per 18 U.S. Code § 3597.
- Radosh, Ronald (June 10, 2016). "Rosenbergs Redux". Archived from the original on July 3, 2016. Retrieved October 5, 2016.
- "What the K.G.B. Files Show About Ethel Rosenberg". The New York Times. August 13, 2015. Archived from the original on November 7, 2016. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
- Radosh, Ronald; Klehr, Harvey; Haynes, John Earl; Hornblum, Allen M.; Usdin, Steven (October 17, 2014). "The New York Times Gets Greenglass Wrong". Weekly Standard. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2016.
- "Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 2020. Archived from the original on October 19, 2020. Retrieved October 18, 2020.
- Ranzal, Edward (March 19, 1953). "Greenglass, in Prison, Vows to Kin He Told Truth about Rosenbergs". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 5, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2008.
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.
- Whitman, Alden (February 14, 1974). "1972 Death of Harry Gold Revealed". The New York Times. Archived from the original on May 28, 2023. Retrieved July 7, 2008.
Harry Gold, who served fifteen years in Federal prison as a confessed atomic spy courier, for Klaus 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.
- "Exonerate Ethel". Rosenberg Fund for Children. September 10, 2024. Archived from the original on September 30, 2024. Retrieved September 30, 2024.
- "National Archives of the United States of America". National Archives Catalog. National Archives and Records Administration. Archived from the original on December 3, 2022. Retrieved December 3, 2022.
- Tucker, Eric (September 10, 2024). "Declassified documents shed light on Ethel Rosenberg's involvement in her husband's Cold War spy case". PBS News. Associated Press. Archived from the original on September 30, 2024. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
- Denison, Charles and Chuck (2004). The Great American Songbook. Author's Choice Publishing. p. 45. ISBN 978-1-931741-42-2.
- Martin J. Manning and Clarence R. Wyatt, eds. Encyclopedia of Media and Propaganda in Wartime America, Volume 1 (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 753.
- Wang, Jessica (1999). American Science in An Age of Anxiety. UNC Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-8078-4749-7.
- ^ Feklisov, Aleksandr; Sergei Kostin (2001). The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. Enigma Books. ISBN 978-1-929631-08-7.
- Feklisov, Aleksandr; Kostin, Sergei (2001). The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. Enigma Books. pp. 140–47. ISBN 978-1-929631-08-7.
- Radosh, Ronald (December 6, 2010). "Rosenbergs Redux". New Republic. Archived from the original on October 9, 2016. Retrieved October 6, 2016.
- Haynes, John Earl (2009). Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. Yale University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-300-15572-3. Retrieved October 6, 2016.
- Ziegler, Charles A.; Jacobson, David (1995). Spying without spies. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-275-95049-1.
- Holloway, David (1994). Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. pp. 220–224. ISBN 0-300-06056-4. OCLC 29911222.
- Radosh, Ronald; Milton, Joyce (1997). The Rosenberg file. Yale University Press. pp. 39–40. ISBN 978-0-300-07205-1.
- Theoharis, Athan G. (1999). The FBI: a comprehensive reference guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 65–66. ISBN 978-0-89774-991-6.
- ^ "Rosenberg Atomic Espionage Spy Case Chronology" (PDF). National Security Archive at George Washington University. September 11, 2008. Archived (PDF) from the original on August 24, 2017. Retrieved October 27, 2018.
- "Atom Spy Case/Rosenbergs". Archived from the original on February 14, 2020. Retrieved January 28, 2020.
- Haynes, John Earl; Klehr, Harvey (2006). Early Cold War Spies: The Espionage Trials that Shaped American Politics. Cambridge University Press. p. 159. ISBN 978-1-139-46024-8.
- ^ Neville, John F. (1995). The Press, the Rosenbergs, and the Cold War. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-275-94995-2.
- Sol Stern and Ronald Radosh, The New Republic (June 23, 1979)
- ^ Freeman, Hadley (June 19, 2021). "The Rosenbergs were executed for spying in 1953. Can their sons reveal the truth?". The Guardian. Archived from the original on June 19, 2021. Retrieved June 19, 2021.
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On February 28, 1945, the NKVD submitted to Lavrenti Beria a comprehensive report on nuclear weaponry, including implosion research, based chiefly on intelligence from Hall and Greenglass.
- 50 USC § 32 (now 18 U.S.C. § 794).
- Huberich, Charles Henry (1918). The law relating to trading with the enemy. Baker, Voorhis & Company. p. 349.
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- Schneir, Walter (1983). Invitation to an Inquest. Pantheon Books. p. 254. ISBN 978-0-394-71496-7.
- Feklisov, Aleksandr; Kostine, Sergei (2001). The Man behind the Rosenbergs. Enigma Books. p. 311. ISBN 978-1-929631-08-7.
The great physicists Albert Einstein and Harold Urey asked President Truman to pardon the couple.
- Radosh, Ronald; Milton, Joyce (1997). The Rosenberg File. Yale University Press. p. 352. ISBN 978-0-300-07205-1.
But it was the apparent parallel with France's own Dreyfus case that touched the deepest chords in the national psyche.
- Schulte, Elizabeth (May–June 2003). "The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg". International Socialist Review. Archived from the original on October 28, 2008. Retrieved October 5, 2008.
- "Unions throughout U.S. joining in plea to save the Rosenbergs". Daily Worker. January 15, 1953.
- Sharp, Malcolm P. (1956). Was Justice Done? The Rosenberg-Sobell Case. Monthly Review Press. p. 132. 56-10953.
- Clune, Lori (2011). "Great Importance World-Wide: Presidential Decision-Making and the Executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg". American Communist History. 10 (3): 263–284. doi:10.1080/14743892.2011.631822. S2CID 143679694.
- Schrecker, Ellen (1998). Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown and Company. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-316-77470-3.
- Cortes, Arnaldo (February 14, 1953). "Pope Made Appeal to Aid Rosenbergs". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 29, 2012. Retrieved September 17, 2008.
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.
- Radosh 2012, p. 83.
- Radosh 2012, p. 85.
- ^ Radosh 2012, p. 84.
- Wood, E. Thomas (June 17, 2007). "Nashville now and then: A lawyer's last gamble". Nashville Post. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved August 8, 2007.
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.
- ^ Haberman, Clyde (June 20, 2003). "Executed at Sundown, 50 Years Ago". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 17, 2024. Retrieved June 23, 2008.
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.
- Radosh, Ronald; Milton, Joyce (1997). The Rosenberg File. Yale University Press. p. 413. ISBN 978-0-300-07205-1.
rhoda Laks.
- Roberts, Sam (2003). The Brother: the untold story of the Rosenberg case. Random House. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-375-76124-9.
(According to Orthodox tradition, the Sabbath begins eighteen minutes before sunset Friday and ends the following evening.)
- Philipson, Ilene (1993). Ethel Rosenberg: Beyond the Myths. Rutgers University Press. pp. 351–352. ISBN 978-0-8135-1917-3.
- ^ "False testimony clinched Rosenberg spy trial". BBC News. December 6, 2001. Archived from the original on April 20, 2019. Retrieved July 30, 2008.
- "50 years later, Rosenberg execution is still fresh". USA Today. Associated Press. June 17, 2003. Archived from the original on August 21, 2011. Retrieved January 8, 2008.
- "Execution of the Rosenbergs". The Guardian. London. June 20, 1953. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved June 24, 2008.
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
- "Funeral Tributes To Rosenbergs: Execution Denounced". The Times. London. June 21, 1953. Archived from the original on July 12, 2021. Retrieved June 20, 2015.
- "Never Losing Faith for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg". National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case. 1953. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 23, 2023. Retrieved February 23, 2023.
- Moynihan, Daniel Patrick (1999). Secrecy. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. pp. 143–44.
- Khrushchev, Nikita (1990). Jerrold L. Schecter; Vyacheslav V. Luchkov (eds.). Khrushchev Remembers: The Glasnost Tapes. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. p. 194.
- McFadden, Robert (September 25, 2008). "Khrushchev on Rosenbergs: Stoking Old Embers". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 17, 2024. Retrieved August 13, 2008.
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.
- Roberts, Sam (2001). The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case. Random House. pp. 425–26, 432. ISBN 978-0-375-76124-9.
- Stanley, Alessandra (March 16, 1997). "K.G.B. Agent Plays Down Atomic Role Of Rosenbergs". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 23, 2016. Retrieved October 5, 2016.
- Roberts, Sam (October 6, 2014). "Newly Released Letters Illuminate Rosenbergs' Parental Anxieties". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 26, 2015.
- "Record of Classified Deletions" (PDF). U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information.
- "Venona". NSA.gov. Archived from the original on July 29, 2021. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
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
- Haynes, John Earl; Klehr, Harvey (1999). "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America". The New York Times. Archived from the original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
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.
- Haynes, John Earl; Klehr, Harvey (2000). Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. Yale University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-300-08462-7.
- Tyson, Peter (2002). "The September 21, 1944 cable: The Rosenbergs and the Greenglasses". PBS. Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
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
- ^ Radosh, Ronald (April 10, 2018). "In This True-Life Spy Story, It's America vs. Russia, the Early Years". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 9, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
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.
- ^ Radosh, Ronald (July 19, 2015). "Grasping at Straws to Try to Exonerate Ethel Rosenberg". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on December 10, 2020. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
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.' She could be used independently, but she should not be overworked. Poor health.'
- ^ Kramer, Mark (January 5, 2017). "Why Ethel Rosenberg Should Not Be Exonerated". WBUR. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
- ^ Robert D. McFadden (October 14, 2014). "David Greenglass, the Brother Who Doomed Ethel Rosenberg, Dies at 92". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 4, 2023. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
- Watt, Holly (September 12, 2008). "Witness Changed Her Story During Rosenberg Spy Case". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on October 25, 2017. Retrieved September 2, 2017.
- Roberts, Sam (June 26, 2008). "Spies and Secrecy". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 27, 2008. Retrieved June 27, 2008.
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.
- ^ Roberts, Sam (September 12, 2008). "For First Time, Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 5, 2017. Retrieved May 7, 2010.
Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.
- Sobell, Morton (September 19, 2008). "Letter: The Rosenberg Case". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 21, 2017. Retrieved February 10, 2017.
- "Review: Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America (Benjamin L. Landis, 2010)". Archived from the original on January 15, 2021. Retrieved November 15, 2020.
- ^ Roberts, Sam (September 16, 2008). "Father Was a Spy, Sons Conclude With Regret". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 29, 2015. Retrieved September 17, 2008.
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.
- "My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act". Democracy Now!. December 30, 2010. Archived from the original on January 6, 2011. Retrieved January 6, 2011.
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- "The Meeropol brothers: Exonerate our mother, Ethel Rosenberg". The New York Times. August 10, 2015. Archived from the original on November 26, 2015. Retrieved April 9, 2016.
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- McCandless, Brit (October 16, 2016). "The Rosenberg boys: The Cold War's most famous orphans". 60 Minutes Overtime. CBS News. Archived from the original on May 2, 2022. Retrieved May 2, 2022.
- "Sen. Warren joins call for Ethel Rosenberg's exoneration". Daily Hampshire Gazette. January 13, 2017. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 21, 2021.
- "Warren, Neal ask Obama to consider pardoning Ethel Rosenberg" (Boston Globe, January 12, 2017) Archived July 9, 2021, at the Wayback Machine The Globe talks about "pardon", but all the petitioners mean "exoneration", in that "The government's prosecution and execution of my mother was wrongful and unjust" (Robert Meeropol)
- Sebba, Anne (2021). Ethel Rosenberg : a Cold War tragedy. London: Orion. ISBN 9780297871019. Archived from the original on June 24, 2021. Retrieved June 24, 2021.
- "70 Years After Their Executions, Rosenberg Sons Still Looking to Clear Mother's Name". Death Penalty Information Center.
- "Executive Order 13526- Classified National Security Information". whitehouse.gov. December 29, 2009.
- "Declassified memo from US codebreaker sheds light on Ethel Rosenberg's Cold War spy case". AP News. September 10, 2024.
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- Muhammad, Ishaque (2008). Hasan Nasar Ki Shahadat [Hasan Nasar's Martyrdom] (in Urdu) (2nd ed.). Multan, Pakistan: Mahfouz Khan Shujat. p. 57.
Works cited
- Feklisov, Aleksandr, and Kostin, Sergei. The Man Behind the Rosenbergs. Enigma Books, 2003. ISBN 978-1-929631-24-7
- Radosh, Ronald (2012). "A Tale of Two Trials: Soviet Propaganda at Home and Abroad". World Affairs. 175 (1): 80–87. ISSN 0043-8200. JSTOR 41638995.
- Roberts, Sam. The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case. Random House, 2001. ISBN 0-375-76124-1.
- Schneir, Walter, and Scheir, Miriam. Invitation to an Inquest. Pantheon Books, 1983. ISBN 0-394-71496-2.
- Schrecker, Ellen. Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America. Little, Brown and Company, 1998. ISBN 0-316-77470-7.
Further reading
- Sebba, Anne, Ethel Rosenberg, A Cold War Tragedy (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021).
- Alman, Emily A. and David. Exoneration: The Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell – Prosecutorial deceptions, suborned perjuries, anti-Semitism, and precedent for today's unconstitutional trials. Green Elms Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9779058-3-6
- Carmichael, Virginia .Framing history: the Rosenberg story and the Cold War, (University of Minnesota Press, 1993)
- Clune, Lori. "Great Importance World-Wide: Presidential Decision-Making and the Executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg." American Communist History 10.3 (2011): 263–284. online
- Doctorow, E. L. The Book of Daniel. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007. ISBN 978-0-8129-7817-9
- Deborah Friedell, "How Utterly Depraved!" (review of Anne Sebba, Ethel Rosenberg: A Cold War Tragedy, Weidenfeld, 2021, ISBN 978-0297871002, 288 pp.), London Review of Books, vol. 43, no. 13 (July 1, 2021), pp. 11–13
- Goldstein, Alvin H. The Unquiet Death of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, 1975. ISBN 978-0-88208-052-9
- Harris, Brian. "Injustice", Sutton Publishing. 2006. ISBN 0-7509-4021-2 (An examination of the trial)
- Hornblum, Allen M. The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb, Yale University Press. 2010. ISBN 0-300-15676-6
- Meeropol, Michael, " 'A Spy Who Turned His Family In': Revisiting David Greenglass and the Rosenberg Case," American Communist History (May 2018) doi:10.1080/14743892.2018.1467702
- Meeropol, Michael, ed. The Rosenberg Letters: A Complete Edition of the Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. ISBN 0-8240-5948-4
- Meeropol, Robert and Michael Meeropol. We Are Your Sons: The Legacy of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. University of Illinois Press, 1986. ISBN 0-252-01263-1. Chapter 15 is a detailed refutation of Radosh and Milton's scholarship.
- Meeropol, Robert. An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey. St. Martin's Press, 2003. ISBN 0-312-30637-7
- Nason, Tema. Ethel: The Fictional Autobiography of Ethel Rosenberg. Delacourt, 1990. ISBN 0-440-21110-7 and by Syracuse, 2002, ISBN 0-8156-0745-8
- "David Greenglass grand jury testimony transcript" (PDF). National Security Archive, Gelman Library, George Washington University. August 7, 1950. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
- Radosh, Ronald and Joyce Milton. The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth. Henry Holt (1983). ISBN 0-03-049036-7. a standard scholarly history
- Roberts, Sam. The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case, Random House, 2003, ISBN 0-375-76124-1
- Roberts, Sam (July 15, 2015). "Secret Grand Jury Testimony From Ethel Rosenberg's Brother Is Released". The New York Times. Retrieved July 16, 2015.
- Sam Roberts, The Brother: The Untold Story of Atomic Spy David Greenglass and How He Sent His Sister, Ethel Rosenberg, to the Electric Chair, Random House, 2001. ISBN 978-0-375-50013-8
- Walter Schneir & Miriam Schneir, Invitation to an Inquest: Reopening the Rosenberg Case, 1973. ISBN 978-0-14-003333-5
- Schneir, Walter. Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case, Melville House, 2010. ISBN 1-935554-16-6
- Trahair, Richard C.S. and Robert Miller. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies, and Secret Operations. Enigma Books, 2009. ISBN 978-1-929631-75-9
- Wexley, John. The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Ballantine Books, 1977. ISBN 0-345-24869-4
- Yalkowsky, Stanley (1990). The Murder of the Rosenbergs. Crucible Publications. ISBN 978-0-9620984-2-0
- Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. p. 434
- Zion, Sidney. The autobiography of Roy Cohn, Lyle Stuart Inc, 1988. ISBN 0-8184-0471-X
Other languages
- (in French) Florin Aftalion, La Trahison des Rosenberg, JC Lattès, Paris, 2003
- (in French) Howard Fast, Mémoire d'un Rouge, éd. Payot & Rivage. Intéressant, traite de toute la période de l'avant seconde guerre mondiale et après (MacCarthysme, etc.) aux États-Unis. Nombreux témoignages. Plusieurs passages sur les Rosenberg notamment pp. 349 à 359
- (in French) Gérard A. Jaeger, Les Rosenberg. La chaise électrique pour délit d'opinion, Le Félin, 2003
- (in French) Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Lettres de la maison de la mort, Gallimard, 1953
- (in French) Morton Sobell, On condamne bien les innocents, Hier et demain, 1974
External links
Listen to this article (22 minutes) This audio file was created from a revision of this article dated 29 August 2019 (2019-08-29), and does not reflect subsequent edits.(Audio help · More spoken articles)Archival collections
- Guide to the Playscript about the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Espionage Trial. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
Other links
- An Interactive Rosenberg Espionage Ring Timeline and Archive
- Timeline of Events Relating to the Rosenberg Trial.
- Rosenberg trial transcript (excerpts as HTML, and the entire 2,563-page transcript as a PDF file)
- Ethel's brother says he trumped up evidence.
- Documents relating to the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Case, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library
- Project Venona messages.
- Rosenberg FBI files (summary only)
- Heir to an Execution – An HBO documentary by Ivy Meeropol, the granddaughter of Ethel and Julius.
- A statement by the Rosenberg's sons in support of their exoneration
- An Interview with Robert Meeropol about the adoption
- National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case
- Annotated bibliography for Ethel Rosenberg from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived August 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- Annotated bibliography for Julius Rosenberg from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues Archived August 28, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
- The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) for Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks
- Rosenberg Son: "My Parents Were Executed Under the Unconstitutional Espionage Act" – video report by Democracy Now!
- History on Trial: The Rosenberg Case in E.L. Doctorow's The Book of Daniel Archived March 4, 2016, at the Wayback Machine by Santiago Juan-Navarro from The Grove: Working Papers on English Studies, Vol 6, 1999.
- Julius Rosenberg at court sentenced to death
- The WSWS speaks to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s son – An interview with Robert Meeropol
- Ethel Rosenberg on IMDb
- Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
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