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."
Wrong. They are better. Much, much better. Just not good enough to forecast 20, or 10, or even 5 years into the future with high probability in many situations.
You are obsessed with the notion that things are predictible
This is completely off the wall, not even remotely related to anything I've posted, and said only because you don't like Szilard's views and can't find any other way to criticize them.
Keep in mind that your criticism's apply equally to the decisions which were actually made, and to those who made them. In fact, we are all called upon to make these kinds of decisions all the time - in our daily as well as national lives; Shall I invest for the long term? Should I take on a big mortgage? Shall I buy health insurance? Should I save for the kids' education? etc., etc., etc.
I do. Much of the general public has better sense, ethically and philosophically, than "intellectuals." They are just not as well read.
I wonder if I haven't misunderstood you on this one?
If thought you were arguing against improper influence of men like Szilard. You may have thought that I was justifying spying.
To be clear.
I think Szilard, and other scientists, exercised their influence to the extent they could. Quite properly. Lots of groups have influence far beyond their numbers. That's how the system really works.
In no way did I mean to justify the actions of spies or those who illegaly violated the secrecy laws. My arguments were meant to show that it was extremely unlikely that first-rate scientists would have sympathized with the Russians enough to betray America. They had other motivations. In those few cases where that motivation led them to treason I have no problem with punishment. They deserved it.
Another old saw...and don't you mean left-wing intellectuals? Or do you include people like Milton Friedman, Frederick Hayak, Bill Buckley, many of the Founding Fathers, Horowitz, Limbaugh, etc. amoung the ethically and philosophically defective?
I had first rate scientific training as an undergrad - probably as good as it gets. But I was a high-school basketball star in the NBA - so no, I am not a scientist.
That's it. That's the game and how it's played. Nothing wrong with your strategy - and that's what it is: a strategy - but it doesn't stop the game. It continues. It's the only one in town.
ROFLMAO!!!
I bet Dr. Szilard could have been more specific. This world-class scientist who knew for years what an atomic bomb could do probably had his first misgivings about using it by sometime in April of 1945. No doubt after 11:01 p.m. on May 8, 1945 his concerns intensified greatly.
Poor General Groves, he had serious problems keeping these patriots working on the bomb focused after May 8th 1945.
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