58 years later, records unsealed in Rosenberg spy case

intangible child · 07-23-2008, 03:40 AM

NEW YORK (CNN) -- After 58 years, historians and journalists will have a chance to examine the secret grand jury testimony of witnesses in the espionage case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

The couple was investigated in 1950, tried in 1951 for conspiracy to commit espionage and convicted and sentenced to death in 1953.

Cold War scholars are hoping the grand jury transcripts will shed light on some nagging questions about the case -- primarily, just how strong the case was against Ethel Rosenberg.

The National Security Archive, the American Historical Association, the Georgetown University Law Center and others have petitioned to have the transcripts of 46 witnesses released to the public.

In an unusual move, federal authorities have said that because of the historic significance of the case, they do not oppose releasing the transcripts of testimony from witnesses who have died or who do not object to their release.

Of the 46 grand jury witnesses, 36 are either deceased or do not object to releasing the transcripts. Three others are thought to have died; four have not been located.

In a partial ruling Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied a request to release the testimony of three other witnesses, including one of the most controversial -- David Greenglass, Ethel Rosenberg's brother and a pivotal witness who testified against the couple.

Greenglass' attorney sent Hellerstein two letters asking that his testimony not be released. He offered to provide information to support that request, but stipulated that that information be sealed.

"The circumstances that led to the testimony of Mr. Greenglass before the grand jury in 1950 were complex and emotionally wrought," his attorney wrote in one letter to the judge.

"Mr. Greenglass and his family were thrust into an ... unwanted spotlight which has dogged their lives ever since," the other letter said.

In the 1940s, Greenglass was an Army sergeant working at the Manhattan Project, the atomic bomb project, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. He eventually confessed to being a spy recruited by Julius Rosenberg and agreed to testify against the couple at trial. Greenglass' wife, Ruth, had also been under investigation and was threatened with indictment.

Ruth Greenglass, who died earlier this year at age 84, told investigators she had seen Ethel Rosenberg type up her brother's notes.
58 years later, records unsealed in Rosenberg spy case - CNN.com

StanFan · 08-11-2010, 09:22 PM

Well, both were executed in the electric chair in Sing Sing prison in New York, for their part in stealing the Manhattan Project secrets and passing them onto the USSR. Neither implicated anybody else in the investigation, which was what the Justice Department really wanted - to see who they passed the information to. Had either one implicated somebody else, probably would have gotten life imprisonment instead of the death sentence.

They had a lot of time to think about it, knew the implications of remaining silent, even turned down plea bargaining deals. The Rosenberg's were professional spies, they got the atomic bomb secrets to Stalin, and the Russians had the bomb by 1949, operational. They never would have developed it that fast, without inside help, and that came from the Rosenberg's. They sacrificed their lives to keep silent about their activities, and protected someone, or several others.

Remember, it also was the height of the Joe McCarthy Communist witch hunt, in what is known in American history as McCarthism today. McCarthy destroyed a lot of reputations, by issuing a subpoena to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which he chaired.

There are few things in American history more un-American than that committee. People with no Communist affiliations were badgered into telling, in public, about somebody else who was a Communist, and admitting they had Communist leanings, to get McCarthy off their back. That was precisely what they wanted from the Rosenberg's. It was a reputation shredding pyramid scheme, as McCarthy never uncovered anybody who actually was a government Communist spy.

McCarthy's tactics were so brutal, that few dared tackle him. Margaret Chase Smith, Senator from Maine I believe, and the first female Senator in U.S. history, was the first to denounce McCarthy on the Senate floor. Than CBS News icon, Edward R. Murrow tackled him on his weekly television show as did President Harry Truman, who could have run for another term as President in 1952, but declined, pushing Illinois Governor Adalei Stevenson to run against Eisenhower, who flattened him in the election - twice.

The end for McCarthy came when he stopped going after government civilians and Hollywood (liberal pinko writers), and tackled the U.S. Army. The televised Army-McCarthy hearings showed the public what a windbag idiot Joe McCarthy was, and the HUAC was disbanded.

One of the alleged "communist" writers McCarthy tackled with a subpoena was Arthur Miller, who was married to Hollywood starlet Marylyn Monroe. Miller refused to cooperate with the committee, admit to being a communist, or implicate anybody else as one, and go on his way with a sullied reputation. He stood up to McCarthy, and paid a price, not getting many good writing assignments in Hollywood for almost 10-years.

Miller spent a lot of that time writing a play he called "The Crucible" about Puritan New England young girls accused of witchcraft, and the havoc and hysteria they brought onto the village of Salem, Massachusettes, with accusations and finger-pointing at their neighbors, leading several to the gallows.

Miller had the notes from his graduate years at Princeton for the play, but finally wrote it after he was humiliated by McCarthy. The play is a standard read in American High School English classes, and it has a direct correlation to mass hysteria brought on in the period we know of today as McCarthism. In addition, it falls under those repeating themes of history I posted before, this one under Pestilence - "Wrath of God." The Puritans were a theocratic society that functioned with no mercy to unbelievers. They believed if anybody in the village didn't adhere to their Puritan, spiritual principles, "God" would wipe out the community........Stan