Difference between revisions of "Julius Rosenberg"

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[[File:Julius and Ethel Rosenberg PD WC.jpg|thumb|240px|Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.]]
 
'''Julius Rosenberg''' was an [[American]] [[Communist]] and [[USSR|Soviet]] espionage agent who was executed in 1953, along with his wife, for giving nuclear secrets to the [[Soviet Union]]. At the time, the trial and sentence were controversial, as some people argue that the Rosenbergs did not get a fair trial. However, since the [[Venona]] disclosures, all pretense of innocence on the part of the Rosenbergs has been dispelled.
 
'''Julius Rosenberg''' was an [[American]] [[Communist]] and [[USSR|Soviet]] espionage agent who was executed in 1953, along with his wife, for giving nuclear secrets to the [[Soviet Union]]. At the time, the trial and sentence were controversial, as some people argue that the Rosenbergs did not get a fair trial. However, since the [[Venona]] disclosures, all pretense of innocence on the part of the Rosenbergs has been dispelled.
  

Revision as of 13:36, June 26, 2011

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Julius Rosenberg was an American Communist and Soviet espionage agent who was executed in 1953, along with his wife, for giving nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. At the time, the trial and sentence were controversial, as some people argue that the Rosenbergs did not get a fair trial. However, since the Venona disclosures, all pretense of innocence on the part of the Rosenbergs has been dispelled.

For years the Rosenbergs' defenders demanded that the government reveal its secrets about the case. When the Moynihan Secrecy Commission forced the disclosure of documents, the secrets revealed the government's case was even stronger. [1] "Over the years," said Ronald Radosh, "the Rosenbergs' defenders have loudly demanded the release of government documents on the case, only to deny the documents' significance once they are made public." [2]

On September 7, 1942, NKVD officer Semen Semenov recruited Julius Rosenberg to spy for the Soviet Union at a Labor Day rally in New York City.[3] Rosenberg formed his own underground cell, and recruited several people, including his wife Ethel, Joel Barr, Alfred Sarant,[4] Russell McNutt,[5] and his wife Ethel's sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass.

Two weeks after Rosenberg was recruited, an encrypted cable from the NKVD's New York station to Moscow Center implicated him and his wife Ethel in "talent-spotting" for the NKVD. This cable stated that "Ruth GREENGLASS" had been "recommended" to the NKVD by her husband's sister, and by that sister's husband:

LIBERAL recommended the wife of his wife's brother, Ruth GREENGLASS.... She is 21 years old, a TOWNSWOMAN [GOROZhANKA], a GYMNAST [FIZKUL'TURNITsA] since 1942.... LIBERAL and his wife recommend her.... [Ruth] learned that her husband ... is now working at the ENORMOUS [ENORMOZ] plant in SANTA FE, New Mexico.

Notes by U.S. Signals Intelligence Service cryptographers (who partially decrypted this cable in the Venona project) identify the code-names LIBERAL as "Julius ROSENBERG," GOROZhANKA as "American Citizen," FIZKUL'TURNITsA as "Probably a Member of the Young Communist League," and ENORMOZ as "Atomic Energy Project."[6]

The following month, according Ruth Greenglass's 1950 grand jury testimony, made public in 2008,[7] Julius Rosenberg recruited her, and urged her to recruit her husband (Ethel's brother, David Greenglass), into a conspiracy to engage in atomic espionage for the Soviet Union:

[H]e proceeded to tell me that he knew that David was working on the atomic bomb.... that he felt there was not a direct exchange of scientific information among the Allies, and that it would be only fair for Russia to have the information, too... and he wanted to make that possible. He asked me if I would relate this to David and ask him to pass on information through Julius.

She added that Ethel participated in this effort, urging her to comply:

His wife said that I should at least relay the message, that she felt that David might be interested, he would want to do this.... [S]he urged me to talk to David. She felt that even if I was against it, I should at least discuss it with him and hear what he had to say.[8]

Shortly thereafter, on November 4, 1944, David Greenlass wrote to his wife from Los Alamos, "I most certainly will be glad to be part of the community project that Julius and his friends have in mind."[9]

On August 17, 1950, the grand jury returned an indictment alleging 11 overt acts. Both Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were indicted, as were David Greenglass and Anatoli Yakovlev.[10]

After more than half a century of denial, Rosenberg trial co-defendant Morton Sobell “dramatically reversed himself” in 2008, admitting “for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy.” He also implicated Rosenberg in a conspiracy to deliver classified information to the Soviets.[11] Even the Rosenbergs' sons then “admitted to a painful conclusion: that their father was a spy.”[12]

The New York Times was able to hold out for another two years, but finally confronted with overwhelming evidence, in 2010 even it had to throw in the towel, commenting, "Today, with the number of Rosenberg defenders steadily shrinking, let’s stipulate: Julius was a Soviet spy."[13]

See also

References

  1. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy: The American Experience, (New Haven: Yale University Press 1998), pg. 62.
  2. Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File, 2d ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), pgs. 471-72.
  3. Aleksandr Feklisov, and Sergei Kostin, The Man Behind the Rosenbergs (Enigma Books, 2001) ISBN 1-929631-08-1, p. 109
  4. Steven T. Usdin, Engineering communism: how two Americans spied for Stalin and founded the Soviet Silicon Valley (Yale University Press, 2005) ISBN 0300108745, p. 66
  5. John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr and Alexander Vassiliev, Spies: the rise and fall of the KGB in America (Yale University Press, 2009) ISBN 0300123906, p. 36
  6. Venona 1340 New York to Moscow 21 September 1944 National Security Agency
  7. Press Release: National Archives to Open Rosenberg Grand Jury Transcripts, National Archives and Records Administration, September 9, 2008
  8. 1950 Testimony of Ruth Greenglass, August 3, 1950, Records of the Rosenberg Grand Jury Transcripts (National Archives and Records Administration), pp. 09137-09138 (PDF 6-7)
  9. Richard Rhodes, Dark sun: the making of the hydrogen bomb (Simon and Schuster, 1996) ISBN 0684824140, p. 138
  10. The Atom Spy Case, Famous Cases and Criminals (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
  11. Sam Roberts, "Figure in Rosenberg Case Admits to Soviet Spying," The New York Times, September 11, 2008
  12. Sam Roberts, "Father Was a Spy, Sons Conclude With Regret," The New York Times, September 16, 2008
  13. Sam Roberts, "The Rosenbergs Revisited," The New York Times, October 8, 2010

External links