Yes, They Were Guilty. But of What Exactly? [NYT FINALLY admits Rosenbergs were guilty!]

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."

"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."

Sam Roberts, the deputy editor of the Week in Review, is the author of "The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case."

Here's a gem which illustrates an attitude common among ranking scientists of the time, and the amount of information which was already in the public arena

Documents: Niels Bohr

20. Question: Do you know any methods of protection from atomic bombs? Does a real possibility of defense from atomic bombs exist? Answer: I am sure that there is no real method of protection from atomic bomb. Tell me, how you can stop the fission process which has already begun in the bomb which has been dropped from a plane? It is possible, of course, to intercept the plane, thus not allowing it to approach its destination—but this is a task of a doubtful character, because planes fly very high for this purpose and besides, with the creation of jet planes, you understand yourself, the combination of these two discoveries makes the task of fighting the atomic bomb insoluble. We need to consider the establishment of international control over all countries as the only means of defense against the atomic bomb. All mankind must understand that with the discovery of atomic energy the fates of all nations have become very closely intertwined. Only international cooperation, the exchange of scientific discoveries, and the internationalization of scientific achievements, can lead to the elimination of wars, which means the elimination of the very necessity to use the atomic bomb. This is the only correct method of defense. I have to point out that all scientists without exception, who worked on the atomic problem, including the Americans and the English, are indignant at the fact that great discoveries become the property of a group of politicians. All scientists believe that this greatest discovery must become the property of all nations and serve for the unprecedented progress of humankind. You obviously know that as a sign of protest the famous OPPENHEIMER retired and stopped his work on this problem. And PAULI in a conversation with journalists demonstratively declared that he is a nuclear physicist, but he does not have and does not want to have anything to do with the atomic bomb. I am glad to note that today in the local newspaper there appeared a report that [British Prime Minister Clement] ATTLEE and [U.S. President Harry] TRUMAN began a consultation with the USSR on the establishment of international control over the use and production of atomic bombs. Yet, I have to point out I view such reports in local newspapers very skeptically. But the mere fact that ATTLEE, TRUMAN, and [Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie] KING conduct these negotiations is very notable. Let us see where they will lead.1 We have to keep in mind that atomic energy, having been discovered, cannot remain the property of one nation, because any country which does not possess this secret can very quickly independently discover it. And what is next? Either reason will win, or a devastating war, resembling the end of mankind.

My emphasis.

In 1919 or 1920 Bertrand Russell went to the Soviet Union. He wrote a book on his observations, "The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism". I found a review of it

Bertrand Russell and Bolshevism

Re what Alex LoCascio and Doyle Saylor wrote about Bertrand Russell. Here is a bit from my PhD thesis on how the Soviet Union was assessed in Britain. The book in question is Russell's The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (London, 1920). Please note that I am merely describing his views, and not endorsing them. I don't think that his opposition to Bolshevism sprung from his aristocratic background, but rather from his libertarian standpoint.

Apropos his upper-class background, there is a story related in Ken Weller's excellent book Don't be a Soldier, on the anti-war movement in North London (sadly out of print), that Russell was speaking at an anti-war meeting in London during the First World War that was attacked by soldiers and jingo yobs. Russell, who was a member of the House of Lords, a Peer of the Realm, was being attacked by two drunken women armed with a nail-studded board. An anti-war woman called on a policeman to stop the attack, but he did nothing. She said: 'But he is an eminent philosopher.' The copper still did nothing. 'But he is famous all over the world as a man of learning.' Still nothing. 'But he is a brother of an Earl.' He then went to help. Oh, the marvels of the British class system!

+++++

Bertrand Russell was not impressed by his experience of the Soviet republic. First of all, he did not like what he saw. The regime exerted an ‘iron discipline’ over the workers that was ‘beyond the wildest dream of the most autocratic American magnate’. There was no freedom of the press, political opponents were jailed without trial, and ‘ordinary mortals’ lived ‘in fear of the Cheka’. Although Bolshevism was ‘probably more or less unavoidable’ in Russia, it was quite unsuitable for more advanced countries, as it could not be a ‘stable or desirable form of socialism’, and although capitalism may be dying, all that Bolshevism could achieve in the West was ‘chaos and destruction’. Secondly, he rejected the Bolsheviks’ philosophical approach. They treated Marxism as a religion, and had a ‘militant certainty about objectively doubtful matters’. He was worried about this dependence upon what he felt was an inadequate philosophy: ‘Perhaps love of liberty is incompatible with whole-hearted belief in a panacea for all human ills. If so, I cannot but rejoice in the sceptical temper of the Western world.’

Russell’s prognosis was not optimistic. The ‘natural and instinctive’ forces of nationalism were already undermining the Bolsheviks’ internationalism. Even if they managed to ward off foreign intervention, they would lose their ideals, and the regime would degenerate into ‘Napoleonic imperialism’. As Marxists, the Bolsheviks did not understand that the ‘love of power’ was as strong a motive and as great a source of injustice as the ‘love of money’. They would become accustomed to wielding power, develop a consciousness and interests that would be ‘quite distinct from those of the real proletarian’, and become ‘a bureaucratic aristocracy... creating a regime just as oppressive and cruel as that of capitalism’.

Paul Flewers

It's important because his views would have been very influential among scientists of the '30s and '40s.

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Joe McCarthy Was Right
Submitted by Don Capron

Joe McCarthy Was Right
Submitted by Don Capron

[Author's Note: The following is part of a lecture being given this Thursday at the SUNY-Oswego Library at noon. All are invited.]

Joe McCarthy was right. Now that I've grabbed your attention, let me tell you why.

For fifty years I trust there isn't an educator in either the academy or high schools who hasn't failed to castigate Joe McCarthy as a hate-monger, liar, destroyer of careers, and someone who routinely accused innocent people of wrong doing.

"McCarthyism" has become the reflexive adjective among those on the American Left when accused of anything of less than patriotic motives or, for that matter, taken to task for questionable behavior. McCarthy was not only right, he's been given a bad rap by history.

For four years, from 1950 until 1954, McCarthy was the only voice in America speaking out against those in government that were Communists, fellow-travelers (liberals who believed in but did not join the Communist Party), Russian sympathizers, and Stalin apologists. His enemies, consistent with the Left today, chose to attack the messenger rather than the message.

From the earliest years of the New Deal until the late 1940's the government was deeply infiltrated with Communists and their supporters. There was no shortage of either messages to the President or evidence to support such infiltration. Yet, Roosevelt then Truman chose to ignore such evidence.

Adolph Berle, Undersecretary of State for internal security at State, went to Roosevelt in 1940 with a list of Communists in government provided by Whittaker Chambers, a party member who'd defected. Roosevelt, according to all accounts laughed it off and refused to deal with it.

J. Edgar Hoover, in 1943, informed Roosevelt of Soviet spying both within the government and at the Russian Embassy. On this occasion Roosevelt not only disregarded the evidence, he sent Harry Hopkins, his Domestic Affairs advisor, to warn the Soviet embassy that their phones were tapped.

In 1946 Hoover again went to the White House, this time providing Harry Truman with a list of known Communists and sympathizers still in the government. Truman's response was: "What am I going to do? Give those @#%&* Republicans up on the Hill something to bash me with."

McCarthy's detractors, Communists, and Soviet sympathizers never anticipated two things: One, the Venona intercepts and their subsequent release; Two, the collapse of Communism and the opening of Soviet files.

From 1943 until 1980, unbeknownst to virtually everyone, the National Security Agency intercepted every Soviet message going from or to the United States. It was not until 1994 that their existence was even acknowledged, and 1995 when the first 1,400 of 240,000 intercepts were released to the public. Their content was damning and supportive of the contentions of not only McCarthy but Whittaker Chambers, Elizabeth Bentley, Hoover, and others.

The collapse of Communism opened files of not only internal Soviet spy documents but also gave the FBI, CIA, and American scholars access to the files of the American Communist Party that had been hidden in a Russian warehouse since 1950. The cat was out of the clichéd bag.

Just who was exposed by these documents. Alger Hiss who had been the number three man at State behind Dean Acheson and Dean Rusk, and who, most assuredly, at some point, would have eventually been Secretary of State. Harry Dexter White, Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, who purposely withheld allocated funding for the Chinese Nationalists, during their Civil War, that destroyed their currency and, thus, their efforts against Mao's Communists.

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been conduits for even more damaging information than the atom bomb, for which they were executed. Lauchlin Currie, Special Assistant to F.D.R. Samuel Dickstein, member of the House of Representatives from Brooklyn.

William and Martha Dodd, son and daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Germany in the 1930's. Lawrence Duggan, State Department Director of Latin American Affairs. Harold Ickes, Sr., father of Clinton's impeachment flack, who was Secretary of the Interior. Finally, William Weisband, U.S. Army Signal Security Agency. This is just a very few, the most prominent or household names one might say.

Was Robert Oppenheimer, the Director of the Atom Bomb Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, a member of the Communist Party? Quite emphatically, no! His wife was. His brother was. His mistress was. As were many of his closest associates at the University of California. In addition, Oppenheimer was one of those scientists in the 40's who thought that all scientific information should be shared universally for the good of mankind.

Were any of the aforementioned exposed by McCarthy? Not one. He'd been too late at the spy discovery game. After all, Alger Hiss got Richard Nixon the Vice-Presidency. White had been shifted to that historical ashbin where failures are allowed to "resign" to, the International Monetary Fund.

Hiss, unquestionably the most brilliant of the rising stars at State at the age of 43, in 1947 became the head of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace; a position usually held by a senior citizen with insufficient retirement funds. Lawrence Duggan, as the FBI closed in on him, had the presence of mind and good sense to jump from a window and commit suicide. Of course, he was considered a "victim" of a non-existent "Red Scare".

Just how many did McCarthy catch? Darn few. Of the 10,000 government employees who were exposed as Communists, security risks, or of questionable loyalty and lost their jobs, at the least, only forty can be attributed to McCarthy.

Any of the major players? None, as most had either been moved laterally by Truman or snared by the FBI.

Most of the forty were small time functionaries such as Owen Lattimore, John Stewart Service, Philip and Mary Jane Keeney, and Howard Shapley; and these were the most prominent. In every case, of the forty, they were all accorded trials and attorneys before their dismissal.

Lattimore had been Director of the School Of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University, advisor to FDR on China in 1941, advisor at State in 1946-1947, preached that Mao's Communists were "agrarian reformers", in 1948 encouraged George Marshall to stop aid to Chiang Kai-Shek and his Nationalists, and in 1949 urged U.S. withdrawal from Korea.

Lattimore was a McCarthy "coup". Lattimore was the individual who coined the term "McCarthyism" in response to and defense of the charges brought against him. In a feeble attempt to attack the messenger, Lattimore went so far as to write a book declaring his innocence while, at the same time, attacking McCarthy.

There was only one problem in all of this for Lattimore: Hoover had given Lattimore's FBI file to McCarthy and McCarthy had Louis Budenz as a witness, a former Communist, who'd worked with Lattimore. McCarthy carried the day but was forever stuck with the sobriquet "McCarthyism".

John Stewart Service was another who had managed to hang on, long past FBI and other snares, only to be "outed" by McCarthy. Service was at State and had leaked secret documents to a "front" magazine called "Amerasia" that were used to damage the Chinese Nationalist cause. Again, Service was caught only as a result of a Hoover/FBI "black bag job" (breaking into the offices of "Amerasia").

Philip and Mary Jane Keeney had been fired from the University Of Montana in 1938 for subversive activity. In spite of this Philip, within two years, was at the Library of Congress and, during the war, was with the OSS (forerunner of the CIA). Mary Jane, meanwhile, was at the Bureau of Economic Warfare during the war and subsequently became part of the U.S. delegation at the United Nations. Again, when McCarthy was challenged on these charges, Hoover had already provided him with their FBI files.

McCarthy's discoveries were in inverse proportion to his notoriety. What McCarthy really did was breach the gentlemen's agreement and game of using Communists prior to and during the war while they were slowly dispatched after the war. Many of these were part of the Eastern Establishment in that they came from the "right" families, went to the correct prep schools and universities, belonged to the right clubs, and had the right connections.

Hiss had gone to Johns Hopkins, Harvard Law, and had clerked at the Supreme Court for Felix Frankfurter. They all had impeccable credentials.

It was one thing to catch a handful of Communists outside of government, as in the case of the Rosenbergs. It was quite another to expose the dirty secrets of the 1930's and 40's. That was McCarthy's sin.

Was he a pillar of virtue? Hardly! He was a dreadful alcoholic and eventually died from cirrhosis of the liver. He was a bully, unkempt, crude, and a lout. He once unmercifully pummeled Drew Pearson, his antagonist in the press, after a dinner party, in the coat room of a Washington doyenne. He had many physical and character shortcomings. But he was right.

For all those rushing to put pen to paper to denounce any of the above, you'd be best advised to first do your "homework". Read "Venona" (Yale University Press); "The Secret World Of American Communism" (Yale University Press); "The Haunted Wood" (Random House); "The Venona Secrets" (Regnery); "The Secret History Of the KGB" (Basic Books); "Whittaker Chambers: A Biography" (Modern Library); and "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the life and legacy of America's most hated Senator" (Free Press). If at first you haven't read the above, then you are coming unarmed for a battle of wits.

See you next week.

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