Free Republic

BookTV/C-Span2 HEADSUP!!! Tune in at 11:15 PM EASTERN or set your TIVO/DVD Recorder. FR's own "LS" and his latest work-product (book) will be the topic of a segment on BookTV (45 min. in duration). IF you miss this first broadcast, please go to the BookTV/C-Span2 page linked for future date/time of rebroadcasts.

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...

"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...

Dear Robert: It has been fifty years since your parents’ execution, and it is understandable that as the son whom their actions betrayed --along with their country--you should still cling to the idea of their innocence. But in the decades since 1953, we have learned much about your father, Julius Rosenberg, and the contributions he made to the Soviet Union as an active espionage agent. We also know, contrary to what you claim in your new book An Execution in the Family: One Son’s Journey, that your mother -- Ethel Rosenberg -- was not an innocent housewife as many of...