Robert, left, and Michael Rosenberg in June 1953.
Posted on 06/15/2003 6:43:14 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Robert, left, and Michael Rosenberg in June 1953.
Fifty years ago Thursday, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing. Their execution, originally set for 11 p.m. on Friday, June 19, 1953, was rescheduled for 8 p.m. to avoid conflict with the Jewish sabbath.
"They were to be killed more quickly than planned," the playwright Arthur Miller wrote, "to avoid any shadow of bad taste."
A shadow lingers.
"I grew up believing Ethel and Julius were completely innocent," Robert Meeropol, who was 6 years old in 1953, says of the Rosenbergs, his parents. "By the time I completed law school in 1985, however, I realized that the evidence we had amassed did not actually prove my parents' innocence but rather only demonstrated that they had been framed."
After digesting newly released American decryptions of Soviet cables a decade later, Mr. Meeropol came to a revised conclusion. "While the transcriptions seemed inconclusive, they forced me to accept the possibility that my father had participated in an illegal and covert effort to help the Soviet Union defeat the Nazis," he writes in his new memoir, "An Execution in the Family: One Son's Journey" (St. Martin's Press).
Of course, the Rosenbergs weren't executed for helping the Soviets defeat the Nazis, but as atom spies for helping Stalin end America's brief nuclear monopoly. They weren't charged with treason (the Russians were technically an ally in the mid-1940's) or even with actual spying. Rather, they were accused of conspiracy to commit espionage — including enlisting Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, through his wife, Ruth, to steal atomic secrets from the Los Alamos weapons laboratory where he was stationed as an Army machinist during World War II. Mr. Greenglass's chief contribution was to corroborate what the Soviets had already gleaned from other spies, which by 1949 enabled them to replicate the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. (He confessed, testified against his sister and brother-in-law and was imprisoned for 10 years; Ruth testified, too, and was spared prosecution.)
As leverage against Julius, Ethel was also indicted on what, in retrospect, appears to have been flimsy evidence. The government didn't have to prove that anything of value was delivered to the Soviets, only that the participants acted to advance their goal.
"When you're dealing with a conspiracy, you don't have to be the kingpin, you have to participate," says James Kilsheimer, who helped prosecute the Rosenbergs. "You can't be partially guilty any more than you can be partially pregnant."
But to justify the death penalty, which was invoked to press the Rosenbergs to confess and implicate others, the government left the impression that the couple had handed America's mightiest weapon to the Soviets and precipitated the Korean War.
Records of the grand jury that voted the indictment remain sealed. But we now know the Soviet cables decoded before the trial provided no hard evidence of Ethel's complicity. And Mr. Greenglass has recently admitted that he lied about the most incriminating evidence against his sister. The government's strategy backfired. Ethel wouldn't budge. The Rosenbergs refused to confess and were convicted.
"She called our bluff," William P. Rogers, the deputy attorney general at the time, said shortly before he died in 2001.
"They had the key to the death chamber in their hands," Mr. Kilsheimer says. "They never used it."
Whatever military and technical secrets Julius delivered to the Russians — and it now seems all but certain that, as a committed Communist, he did provide information — the Rosenbergs proved more valuable as martyrs than as spies.
"The Soviets did win the propaganda war," said Robert J. Lamphere, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The war isn't over. David Greenglass is 81; Ruth Greenglass is 79. They live under a pseudonym because their surname has become synonymous with betrayal of kin and country. "Perhaps," Mr. Meeropol says, "this is David and Ruth's final punishment."
On Thursday, Mr. Meeropol, who is 56, and his brother Michael, who is 60, (they took their adoptive parents' name) will attend a program at City Center in Manhattan to "commemorate the Rosenbergs' resistance" and benefit the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which Robert runs.
Michael Meeropol is chairman of the economics department at Western New England College. Would any evidence ever convince him that his father was a spy? "If Soviet documents were verified as historically accurate, I'd certainly believe that," he replied.
Then what? How would he explain his father's behavior? "I would have to do some thinking about my parents being involved in dangerous things, but I can't judge people from the 1940's," he said. "He's not in the Army. He has bad eyesight. He can't make the contribution that others were making. I could argue that this was a way of doing it."
To this day, plenty of people would argue that he's wrong.
Sam Roberts, the deputy editor of the Week in Review, is the author of "The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case."
It is dynamite and explains why McCarthy got squirrelly.
The Feds knew Dr. Joseph Weinberg was a member of the CPUSA. They tried him for perjury when he denied it. But the Feds would not allow Crouch or his wife, who met Weinberg at Communist Party meetings, to testify because they would have to admit Oppenheimer was there too.
The Department of Justice covered up the fact Oppenheimer was a CPUSA member!
I really hate the Times--"The Paper of [a terrible] Record."
Wrong. One learns, if one learns at all, by debating. Also I wonder if you aren't applying a double standard...simply because you don't like my opinions.
Again, you're assuming that because you don't know much, neither does anyone else here
Wrong. Did it ever occur to you that I post to a conservative form under the name Liberallarry precisely because I question my opinions and value some of what I find here?
Many of the " intellectuals ", throughout American history, have been on the wrong side of issues
The heart of the matter.
Many intellectuals (no slanderous quotation marks) have also been on the right side of issues. The fact is these issues are complicated, many supposed facts are not facts at all, many interpretations are possible and believable. No sources are entirely trustworthy (but we must give at least provisional trust to some if we are to know anything at all) because all people have limitations and biases, and make mistakes. I make no apology for being human, for being wrong. There's no shame in it.
1)The Federalist papers and the debates which raged in the country just prior to the adoption of the Constitution
2)the debates around slavery and tariffs 1840-60
In fact, every major issue which has concerned this country produced such debates with intellectuals and "intellectuals" on both sides. The slanderous and short-sighted characterizations of intellectual effort which are too often found on the right today are not only contradictory (rational rather than emotional analysis is touted at the same time) but transparantly partisan and foolish.
The article which began this thread stated the government attempted to extort a confession - a clear violation of Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
A jury did convict them...Yet you seem to believe these cases are open. That there is doubt. That the U.S. government is the villian. Why?
Oh please. I know you don't believe what you're saying. You're not that innocent. Juries often do not settle issues - that's especially true in high profile cases. Is OJ innocent? Is secession Constitutionally legal? Is the government never the villian? A conservative "seriously" proposes that?
I hate it too. As an original ny'er I've been reading the Sunday edition forever. I now buy their puzzles on line but am tempted to switch to the Sunday Washington Post for reading. They're liberal but 100 times more balanced.
Even the Sunday Business section is anti-capitalist and Arts & Leisure is now run by the horrible Frank Rich.
The problem is Pinch.
What will the NYTimes do next? Finally print a paragraph or two on the past existence of Soviet gulags?
What is necessary in a leader is a good heart and common sense. Any group of university plutocrats is going to be dominated by overly ambitious, self-important back biters. I six years of college, I met perhaps three professors that I would support for political office.
A leader's qualities should be suited to the times - what works in war doesn't necessarily work in peace and vice-versa.
When all is said, leadership is still a somewhat mysterious quality - but I'll always prefer intelligence to stupidity.
A loaded question. Your daughter, of course. :)
Given a choice between thinkers and doers (of similar IQ), I prefer the company of people who make things.
Me too. But in this technological age the distinction is blurring. In the best universities, in the sciences and engineering, professors are quite often very good at doing (Who's better than a first-rate experimental scientist at testing the limits of our understanding?). It's in the social sciences where you find trouble - air-headed, unsubstantiated theories passed off as unchallangeable and other such outrages.
Since any discussion of smart or dumb politicians will eventually lead to Bush, I think he is a great manager. He has excellent judgement in his choice of advisors, a good sense of the limitations of the presidency (the ability to accomplish only two or three important things), and great priorities.
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.