As the co-author of the book The Rosenberg File, I would like to add a few comments to this post. The Rosenberg case was unusual in that most espionage cases do not result in a jury trial. The reason is that when a defendant is brought into court he is entitled to be presented with the evidence against him. In practice, this can mean not only revealing the substance of the secrets stolen, but also the tradecraft and methods used to identify him -- disclosures that can cripple future counter-espionage operations and potentially endanger lives.
It was possible to convict the Rosenbergs because there were living witnesses (the Greenglasses, Harry Gold) to testify against them. Also -- and this is key -- the Communist Party USA turned its back on the Rosenbergs. The international propaganda campaign on their behalf did not begin until after their conviction, when it was used to divert attention from the anti-Semitic purges, such as the Slansky trial, going on in Eastern Europe.
Had the CPUSA thrown its resources behind the Rosenbergs, a more aggressive defense team might have been able to abort or overturn the conviction by pressing the government to reveal more about its methodology.
The same issues that make it difficult to obtain jury verdicts against spies apply to terrorists. But the stakes are much higher. Spies, once exposed, spy no more. Terrorists can leave the country, only to resume their activities abroad and maybe even return to the U.S. under another identity.
Edvard Radzinsky in his book "Stalin" argues that while at one time Stalin hoped Jewish financial capital would help rebuild the Soviet Union after the war, Stalin found the prospect of suborning himself to the Baruch Plan world government anathema. That plan had way too many Jewish signatures on it.
This refusal lead to a total break by Stalin who after fomenting the Doctor's plot hysteria and breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel, was within days of preparing to exile the Soviet Jews to the Gulag (as was done previously with various other ethnic minorities such as the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, etc.), and initiate another great purge along the lines of 1938 to once again prepare the Soviet Union for war.
The important thing to recall is that the Doctor's Plot happened at the same time as the McCarthy anti communist business from 1950-54
Stalin already had the concentration camps set up. And some of the preliminary accusations had gone out for the Doctor's Plot.
At the same time the Rosenburgs were tried and executed for treason in the USA--and this less than a decade after the Holocaust. This naturally caused fear and suspicion in the US Jewish community. This fear and suspicion was played upon by knowledgeable communists and leftists--large numbers of whom were jewish. These folk not only knew about what Stalin had done in the 1930's and was about to do with the doctor's plot but also saw the Rosenburg trials as show trials american style ... that is, a prelude to an american pogrom.
What Stalin had planned to do-- in a brilliant piece of jujitsu --leftists and communists imputed to Americans on the right. But it was done soto voce. Basically a blood libel was perpetrated on Americans without their knowing it.
While the American public outside NY/LA were generally given the view that the McCarthy era was an age when innocent men were unjustly tried by suspicious anti semites like McCarthy & Nixon--the NY/LA Jewish establishment was given a different story. They were given to understand that the democrats/liberals had prevented the US from visiting a holocaust on them. And that therefor American Jews owed their loyalty to the liberal democrats because the liberal democrats were the protectors of the Jews.
And this story line went on untouched for decades after McCarthy.
This dual track story line didn't crack until the early 1990's when the kgb/nkvd/gru opened up their files on the WWII-McCarthy Period. In 1995 the US's NSA agency opened up their Venona files. Both Russian and American spy agency files showed that McCarthy was right. The US government --as well as the Manhattan Project--had been at one time soaked with Russian Spies. The Rosenburgs were guilty. While McCarthy was wrong in all the details he got the general outline of the story right. Why did he get the outline right and the detail wrong. The reason is McCarthy's relationship to hoover was the same as hoover's relationship to the NSA.(The NSA told the FBI about the Venona intercepts but insisted that the FBI could not use NSA intercepts as evidence in court. The FBI had to develop their own leads. In 1950 J Edgar Hoover began weekly meetings with Joseph McCarthy. Those meetings ended in 1954. The beginning and end of those meetings coincided with the beginning and end of McCarthy star turn in the national spot light. To this day the FBI denies that Hoover told McCarthy anything about the Venona Cables and maybe Hoover said nothing explicit to McCarthy for which Hoover could be liable in court.)
Needless to say, an American style shoah was never in the cards.
The reason that hollywood hated Ronald Reagan so much was that he was an anti communist in hollywood during the McCarthy period--when anti communist was synonymous with anti semetic.(He was among the first wave of FDR democrats to switch parties.) Reagan was blacklisted from Hollywood. He couldn't get work there after McCarthy. However, his experiences in Hollywood served him well when he went into public service. He always understood the jujitsu of media talk of the age. Something that cannot be said of Nixon.
Actor George Clooney's is directing a McCarthy topic film now open in theatres. The film called "Good Night and Good Luck", in which Clooney also stars, is a look at the impact of McCarthyism on 1950s America.
That Clooney should step up and take on this topic shows that he's either really bright or really stooopid.
I suspect the latter. But I'll never know for sure. Since I won't go see his movie. I went to "A Beautiful Mind" and came out of that movie spitting mad.
When I hear American based Moslems talking about McCarthyism being visited on them. I have to laugh. They don't know that they have pronounced themselves guilty in the eyes of many Americans.
As for the democrats, part of the reason for the loss of their inner coherence has been that part their foundational raison d'être steming from the McCarthy era was revealed to be based on a lie. So now the core of the democratic party is the sodomites. Those folks are not just confusing. They are confused.