THE ROSENBERGS LIVE

Yes, They Were Guilty. But of What Exactly? (SAM ROBERTS, June 15, 2003, NY Times)

"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.

Well, that's fairly odd, the sources for the story are a co-conspirator and a son?

Here's an excerpt from Alan Dershowitz's NY Times review of the authoratative book on the case, THE ROSENBERG FILE: A Search for the Truth. By Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton:

From their study of extensive Government files opened under the Freedom of Information Act, and from hundreds of interviews, Mr. Radosh, a historian who teaches at Queensborough and the Graduate Center of the City University of New Alan M. Dershowitz, who teaches at Harvard Law School, is the author of ''The Best Defense.'' York, and Miss Milton, a freelance writer and critic, have reached six major conclusions:

* Julius Rosenberg played a central role in the Soviet espionage ring and transmitted material that he believed contained important atomic secrets.

* Klaus Fuchs had already given those secrets to the Russians, but David Greenglass's amateurish sketches provided some confirmation of his information.

* Ethel Rosenberg was not deeply involved in her husband's espionage activities but she knew about them and may have typed the notes he passed on.

* The F.B.I. was aware of Mrs. Rosenberg's limited role but deliberately exaggerated it and insisted that Federal prosecutors demand the death penalty for her in order to increase the bureau's leverage on her husband to cooperate in its investigations.

* Some of the evidence against the Rosenbergs was highly questionable and probably false.

* Nearly all those involved - from the Soviet intelligence agency K.G.B. to the F.B.I. to some of the Rosenbergs' own ''defenders'' - were willing to see the Rosenbergs die so their case could be used to serve partisan interests.

You can argue the fine points--like whether you favor the death penalty and what should have be done about prosecutorial misconduct--but it seems inarguable at this late date that the Rosenbergs conspired to commit espionage against the United States for the Soviets. That justified their execution, whether it was a necessary measure or not. Posted by Orrin Judd at June 15, 2003 8:45 AM