Free Republic

Last week Robert Meeropol visited the University of Maryland to excoriate the United States’ War on Terrorism. Don’t fret if the name doesn’t ring a bell. Meeropol isn’t a mainstream figure in American politics, academia or the arts. His opinion was sought not for any particular experience or expertise he can bring to the subject. Meeropol was selected for the forum on a more superficial basis: His parents were Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, the American Communist Party members turned Soviet spies who were executed for helping Soviets acquire the secrets of the atom bomb.Meeropol (he took the name of the...

Here we are, a half-century on since the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs are truly historical figures now, but for a small fraction of the population their fate still has the power to generate yesterday's heat. Were the Rosenbergs framed? Did they do anything? If they did do anything, was it anything much? Robert Meeropol, the younger son of the Rosenbergs, has lived his life close to home -- that is, among people who believed his parents were innocents, martyrs to a government bent not on catching Soviet spies but on crushing political dissent. Given the evidence...

"It was taken for granted among us that [Julius and Ethel Rosenberg] were guilty. We had this kind of double thinking. While they were guilty, of course they were innocent. They were framed. Because anyone ... indicted by the capitalists was ipso facto framed." -- Ronald Radosh quoting John Gates, member of the U.S. Communist Party's central committee, in The Rosenberg File. You'd think this verdict, coming from a bona fide red-diaper New York intellectual, would end the argument over this notorious duo, who went defiantly to their execution in 1953. But the campaign to deify the Rosenbergs and other...