Free Republic

Morton Sobell, who was convicted in the Cold War spy trial that delivered Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to their deaths and divided the nation for decades, died in December in Manhattan, a relative confirmed on Wednesday. He was 101. Mr. Sobell, whose death was not reported at the time, had lived for many years on the Upper West Side and had recently been in nursing care. The family member asked not to be identified. Serving 18 years in prison until he was released in 1969, Mr. Sobell proclaimed his innocence until 2008, when, in an interview with The New York...

Freedom's Enemies: A collaborator of the Rosenbergs admits his previously unknown Soviet espionage more than 60 years after the fact. It's just the latest revelation that the anti-communists of that era were right. The "innocent victims" of the Red Scare were once legion — like suave U.S. envoy Alger Hiss, who doubled as a Soviet spy chief, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who gave Moscow A-bomb plans. The latest debunking of this myth is Rosenberg fellow spy Morton Sobell, who finally admitted it in 2008. But in a December interview with Ronald Radosh and Steven Usdin, Sobell, 93, added that...

Ever since he was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges in 1951, Morton Sobell has maintained his innocence. A U.S. Marshal escorted Morton Sobell, left, to Federal Court in New York in March of 1951. Until now. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy. And he implicated his fellow defendant, Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets vital classified military information and what the American government claimed was the...

Aaron Katz, who for more than 50 years relentlessly and publicly sought the exoneration of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, the central figures in the nation’s most controversial spying case, died on Sept. 28 in Venice, Fla. He was 92 and lived in North Port, Fla. The death was confirmed by his wife, Cynthia. Mr. Katz was director of the National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case for 42 years, repeatedly leading demonstrations outside the federal courthouse on Foley Square in Manhattan on the anniversary of the couple’s execution in Sing Sing’s electric chair on June 19, 1953. They had been...