GOTTA KNOW THE TERRITORY:

"I bet on the wrong horse," an elderly Sobell avuncularly admitted to a reporter in 2011. He was recruited by Julius Rosenberg to spy for the Soviets during WWII when they both worked in the defense industry. Although he later claimed they only intended to help an ally against the Axis, his espionage for the Soviets continued after the war.

The Rosenberg and other collaborators were arrested in 1950, prompting Sobell to flee with his family to Mexico, only to be returned by Mexican police. He was sentenced to 30 years but was released early in 1969. Although denying guilt for espionage, he joyfully visited the Soviet Union, East Germany, Vietnam, and Cuba. The global left championed his cause as martyr wrongfully imprisoned for his politics, and he insistently wrote and spoke about his innocence.

Not until 2008 at age 91 did Sobell admit his espionage for the Soviets, acknowledging the Rosenbergs' guilt also, though minimizing the documents he shared as mostly unimportant and not threatening U.S. security. In fact, the secrets he stole likely helped shoot down U.S. pilots in Korea and Vietnam. His memoir described America as the guilty party in the Cold War.

Sobell was raised by Russian emigre Communist parents and was himself apparently a believer from his boyhood in Marxism as an inevitable historical force. The Rosenbergs also were youthful Communist zealots. They saw themselves as servants of history. Not even Stalinist mass murder discouraged their ardor. "That comes with the territory," Sobell explained.

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