Case closed: The Rosenbergs were Soviet spies (FReeper LS cited)

Los Angeles Times ^ | September 17, 2008 | Ronald Radosh

[abb]

Julius and ethel Rosenberg were executed 55 years ago, on June 19, 1953. But last week, they were back in the headlines when Morton Sobell, the co-defendant in their famous espionage trial, finally admitted that he and his friend, Julius, had both been Soviet agents.

It was a stunning admission; Sobell, now 91 years old, had adamantly maintained his innocence for more than half a century. After his comments were published, even the Rosenbergs' children, Robert and Michael Meeropol, were left with little hope to hang on to -- and this week, in comments unlike any they've made previously, the brothers acknowledged having reached the difficult conclusion that their father was, indeed, a spy. "I don't have any reason to doubt Morty," Michael Meeropol told Sam Roberts of the New York Times.

snip

Since the couple's trial, the left has portrayed them as martyrs for civil liberties, righteous dissenters whose chief crime was to express their constitutionally protected political beliefs. In the end, the left has argued, the two communists were put to death not for spying but for their unpopular opinions, at a time when the Truman and Eisenhower administrations were seeking to stem opposition to their anti-Soviet foreign policy during the Cold War.

To this day, this received wisdom permeates our educational system. A recent study by historian Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton has found that very few college history textbooks say simply that the Rosenbergs were guilty; according to Schweikart, most either state that the couple were innocent or that the trial was "controversial," or they "excuse what [the Rosenbergs] did by saying, 'It wasn't that bad. What they provided wasn't important.' "

snip

[abb]

Of interest to FRee Republic.

[abb]

ping

[Puppage]

Sobell, now 91 years old, had adamantly maintained his innocence for more than half a century

Wow...a lying commie. What are the chances?

[Travis McGee]

I’m shocked! Shocked!

[abb]

This thread is also pertinent.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2080345/posts

Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits Spying for Soviets
New York Times ^ | 11 Sep 2008 | Sam Roberts

Posted on Thursday, September 11, 2008 5:45:45 PM by RKV

[Puppage]

It was a stunning admission; Sobell

So, when's HIS date with the chair?

[bcsco]

It was a stunning admission

Only to those who refused to believe the truth. Of course, coming from a newspaper that fails to capitalize the given name of a central player, I can understand why this would be considered "stunning".

[sauropod]

read

[mlocher]

What a shock! Next someone will probably tell me that there is no Santa Clause and that liberals have my best interests at heart.

[princeofdarkness]

OMG! Does this mean they weren’t a victim of McCarthy-era scare tactics and perish the thought actually....GUILTY?! Will wonders ever cease.<s

[Mr. K]

Ann Coulters book “Treason” covers their guilt VERY well as well as proving McCarthy was one hell of a good guy and patriot.

McCarthyism got a bad name that means the opposite of his good intentions.

This was done in the same way that ‘Swift Boating’ has come to mean fraudulent character assassination, when what it actually meant was factual character assessment.

[230FMJ]

Can you imagine what it must have been like for McCarthy?

Picture the venomous, all-out media assault on Sarah without the new media to illuminate the lies of the commie presstitutes!

[jveritas]

Congratulations professor :)

[sickoflibs]

I have always been fascinated with the American communist movement of that era (Stalin era), and their religious like beliefs in man as God and Heaven on earth and as the USSR as their only hope. David Horowitz does a great job explaining it in a number of his books on this subject because his parents were believers and he was raised as a US communist. HBO made a very interesting documentary that gives some sympathy to this group of believers (Stalin era American communists) ,HBO is very liberal ,but still shows that they were guilty of treason and gets them to open up about their Communist beliefs. To the believer the world has no national boundaries we are all workers and the USSR was the test model for the world nation socialist paradise.

“Heir to an Execution: A Granddaughter's Story” is filmmaker Ivy Meeropol’s poignant search for the truth about the lives, alleged crimes, and deaths of her grandparents. Meeropol blends archival footage and new interviews with her grandparents’ friends, as well as the Rosenbergs’ two sons — her father Michael Meeropol, and uncle Robert Meeropol. Most moving are the reminiscences of 103-year-old Harry Steingart, whose life was saved when the Rosenbergs, though offered a commutation of their death sentence to life imprisonment, refused to testify against him. Meeropol doesn't arrive at facile answers about her grandparents’ guilt, innocence, or decisions; her family is shown dealing with the prospect that Julius Rosenberg may have been a spy, although it's unlikely that he committed the crimes for which he was convicted. Still, in this compelling documentary, Meeropol is more concerned with humanizing her grandparents and rescuing them from a half-century of myth and conjecture. “It's really about bringing them back home,” she says. “It's reclaiming this story for our family.”

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2004/09/19/revisiting_the_rosenbergs_family_legacy/

[texson66]

Some years ago, I thought that KGB records were found to clearly indicate that the Rosenbergs were Soviet agents and filthy traitors. Does anyone recall that news story?

[rrrod]

DEAD COMMIE SALUTE!

[Zap Brannigan]

You are thinking of the Venona Project. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona

[George Smiley]

Old news.

The release of the VENONA documents a decade ago settled this question to all except for those who deliberately chose to ignore conclusive evidence.

Hiss, too.

Except for the fact that when someone would state, “Alger Hiss was not a KGB agent”, it was true.

He was recruited by the GRU (Soviet military intelligence).

[jerod]

The Rosenbergs were innocent and Alger Hiss was just another nice guy.

Just ask William Ayers, he’ll gladly tell you that.

[Fiji Hill]

To this day, this received wisdom permeates our educational system. A recent study by historian Larry Schweikart of the University of Dayton has found that very few college history textbooks say simply that the Rosenbergs were guilty;

In 1994, I was assigned to write a short biography of the Rosenbergs for a reference series aimed at junior high school students and published by a subsidiary of Gale, a prestigious publisher of refrence books. Using as my main sources, Ronald Radosh's authoritative The Rosenberg File (Holt, 1983), The FBI-KGB War by Robert J. Lamphere (Random House, 1986), which revealed the existence of the Venona project in which the FBI decrypted coded cables from the Soviet embassy in Washington, and Special Tasks, the memoirs of Soviet spymaster Pavel Sudoplatov (Little, Brown & Co., 1994) I made a solid argument that not only were the Rosenbergs guilty as charged, but that they were also very likely connected to other espionage cases.

However, the editor apparently wanted me to portray the Rosenbergs as victims of McCarthyism. I got paid for my article, but when the book was published, another article was in its place that showed the Rosenbergs as, indeed, victims of McCarthyism and which included far-left publications among its sources.

Immediately after the book was published, the government released the Venona cables, proving that Lamphere and Sudoplatov wre telling the truth. Since then, Alexander Feklisov, the Rosenbergs' NKVD case officer has written his memoirs, and Alexander Vassiliev and Allen Weinstein have revealed even more NKVD secrets in The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America--The Stalin Years (Random House, 1998). Now, it seems Morton Sobell has fessed up.

Those that continue to want to portray the Rosenbergs as victims will have an increasingly tough row to hoe.