Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's Un-American Legacy By Edward Renehan, Jr. Mr. Renehan is the author of several books, most recently The Kennedys at War, 1937-1945, published by Doubleday. His home on the web is http://renehan.blogspot.com.

Robert Meeropol - a Springfield, Massachusetts attorney and the younger son of atom spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg - is the founder and administrator of an interesting and ironic institution. Launched in 1990, the Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC) exists, according to its mission statement, "to provide for the educational and emotional needs of children whose parents have suffered because of their progressive activities and who therefore are no longer able to provide fully for their children."

The inference seems to be that Robert and his brother Michael themselves had parents who suffered because of "progressive activities," rather than because of their willful, treasonous disobedience of American laws against espionage. Indeed, as the web site for the RFC states: "The Fund bears the name of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage. On June 19, 1953, the Rosenbergs were executed because they refused to implicate others by falsely confessing to giving the 'secret' of the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union."

Falsely confessing? All of the evidence that has come out in the 49 years since their executions tends to indict, rather than exonerate, the Rosenbergs. In 1995, the CIA released "the Venona Cables" - decoded Soviet communications that document, along with other espionage doings, the antics of Julius and Ethel. Khrushchev himself mentions the Rosenbergs in his memoirs, identifying them as spies for Russia. Recently released KGB files backup Khrushchev's assertion. In addition, former KGB agent Alexander Feklisov has admitted to more than 50 meetings with Julius beginning in 1943, around the time Julius left the Communist Party (standard procedure for all American Communists recruited as spies). Whether Ethel Rosenberg's involvement was active or passive, it is clear that at the very least she knew of, endorsed and abetted her husband's intrigues.

Named for convicted traitors, it is perhaps fitting that the RFC includes a convicted felon on its Advisory Board: Leonard Peltier, the well-known American Indian Movement (AIM) activist. Peltier, who murdered a pair of FBI agents at the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975, is currently serving two consecutive life terms in federal prison. On its web site, the RFC refers to Peltier as a "political prisoner."

Another "political prisoner" identified with the RFC is one Linda Evans (no, not the Dynasty actress). Before receiving executive clemency from Bill Clinton on January 20, 2001, Evans had served 15 years of a 40-year federal sentence. At the time of her arrest in 1985, she had 740 pounds of dynamite in her possession and a list of would-be targets that included the US Capitol Building, the National War College, the Washington Navy Yard Computer Center, the Washington Navy Yard Officers Club, the headquarters of the FBI, and the offices of the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. A web site sympathetic to Evans describes her occupation in the 1980s as "working to develop clandestine resistance capable of conducting armed struggle as part of a multi-level overall revolutionary strategy."

The RFC also claims a close relationship with Tom Manning. This domestic terrorist was captured in 1985 and sentenced to 58 years by the federal courts after a series of bombings. Looking back fondly on those explosions, an unapologetic Manning today calls them exercises in "armed propaganda against apartheid and US imperialism." Manning also participated in the murder of a New Jersey state trooper, Philip Lamonaco, four days before Christmas in 1981.

Peltier, Evans and Manning - all of whom advertise themselves as artists as well as revolutionaries - have on occasion donated sketches, paintings and handmade quilts to various RFC fundraising events.

Lately, in talks delivered on campuses across the nation, Robert Meeropol has embraced yet another celebrity radical: cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, whom Meeropol singles out as the first "political prisoner" in the US to face execution since the Rosenbergs. "About once a generation," says Meeropol, "our government has to demonstrate the dangerous nature of those who work to transform our society by executing those who symbolize radical social movements."

Of course, as regards day-to-day RFC grantmaking, the children of real political prisoners around the world need not apply. Their parents - Cuban and Chinese dissidents imprisoned for aspiring to the type of freedom that Peltier, Evans, Manning and Meeropol find so abhorrent - are not "progressive" in the eyes of the RFC.

And that's appropriate. In fact, it's exactly how Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (Stalinists both) would have wanted things to be.

Judge Kaufman's Statement Upon Sentencing the Rosenbergs

Citizens of this country who betray their fellow-countrymen can be under none of the delusions about the benignity of Soviet power that they might have been prior to World War II. The nature of Russian terrorism is now self-evident. Idealism as a rational dissolves . . .

I consider your crime worse than murder. Plain deliberate contemplated murder is dwarfed in magnitude by comparison with the crime you have committed. In committing the act of murder, the criminal kills only his victim. The immediate family is brought to grief and when justice is meted out the chapter is closed. But in your case, 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.

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. Nor can it be said in mitigation of the offense that the power which set the conspiracy in motion and profited from it was not openly hostile to the United States at the time of the conspiracy. If this was your excuse the error of your ways in setting yourselves above our properly constituted authorities and the decision of those authorities not to share the information with Russia must now be obvious . . .

In the light of this, I can only conclude that the defendants entered into this most serious conspiracy against their country with full realization of its implications . . .

The statute of which the defendants at the bar stand convicted is clear. I have previously stated my view that the verdict of guilty was amply justified by the evidence. In the light of the circumstances, I feel that I must pass such sentence upon the principals in this diabolical conspiracy to destroy a God-fearing nation, which will demonstrate with finality that this nation's security must remain inviolate; that traffic in military secrets, whether promoted by slavish devotion to a foreign ideology or by a desire for monetary gains must cease.

The evidence indicated quite clearly that Julius Rosenberg was the prime mover in this conspiracy. However, let no mistake be made about the role which his wife, Ethel Rosenberg, played in this conspiracy. Instead of deterring him from pursuing his ignoble cause, she encouraged and assisted the cause. She was a mature woman--almost three years older than her husband and almost seven years older than her younger brother. She was a full-fledged partner in this crime.

Indeed the defendants Julius and Ethel Rosenberg placed their devotion to their cause above their own personal safety and were conscious that they were sacrificing their own children, should their misdeeds be detected--all of which did not deter them from pursuing their course. Love for their cause dominated their lives--it was even greater than their love for their children."

LINK TO MAIN PAGE

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.