Yes, They Were Guilty. But of What Exactly? [NYT FINALLY admits Rosenbergs were guilty!]

NY Times ^ | June 15, 2003 | SAM ROBERTS

[Pharmboy]

Robert, left, and Michael Rosenberg in June 1953.

Fifty years ago Thursday, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing. Their execution, originally set for 11 p.m. on Friday, June 19, 1953, was rescheduled for 8 p.m. to avoid conflict with the Jewish sabbath.

"They were to be killed more quickly than planned," the playwright Arthur Miller wrote, "to avoid any shadow of bad taste."

A shadow lingers.

"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.

"She called our bluff," William P. Rogers, the deputy attorney general at the time, said shortly before he died in 2001.

"They had the key to the death chamber in their hands," Mr. Kilsheimer says. "They never used it."

Whatever military and technical secrets Julius delivered to the Russians — and it now seems all but certain that, as a committed Communist, he did provide information — the Rosenbergs proved more valuable as martyrs than as spies.

"The Soviets did win the propaganda war," said Robert J. Lamphere, an agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The war isn't over. David Greenglass is 81; Ruth Greenglass is 79. They live under a pseudonym because their surname has become synonymous with betrayal of kin and country. "Perhaps," Mr. Meeropol says, "this is David and Ruth's final punishment."

On Thursday, Mr. Meeropol, who is 56, and his brother Michael, who is 60, (they took their adoptive parents' name) will attend a program at City Center in Manhattan to "commemorate the Rosenbergs' resistance" and benefit the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which Robert runs.

Michael Meeropol is chairman of the economics department at Western New England College. Would any evidence ever convince him that his father was a spy? "If Soviet documents were verified as historically accurate, I'd certainly believe that," he replied.

Then what? How would he explain his father's behavior? "I would have to do some thinking about my parents being involved in dangerous things, but I can't judge people from the 1940's," he said. "He's not in the Army. He has bad eyesight. He can't make the contribution that others were making. I could argue that this was a way of doing it."

To this day, plenty of people would argue that he's wrong.

Sam Roberts, the deputy editor of the Week in Review, is the author of "The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case."

[liberallarry]

These are the lines that started this line of thought

To the man-in-the-street, who I'm sorry to say, Is a keen observer of life, The word 'Intellectual' suggests straight away A man who is untrue to his wife.

If Stephen Koch's book is but one-tenth true, we might add to Auden's lines that the word 'intellectual' should also suggest a curmudgeon, a traitor, a flaneur, and one with whom you'd never even examine used cars

Such seems to be the attitude of anyone associated with an institution of, risible as it is to write this, 'higher' learning. Intellectuals seem to think of themselves in this wise: whatever we've done to get us in this fix doesn't matter. You're too stupid to understand the 'dynamics' of the situation and therefore must be told how important this procedure is and why. Of course you'll never understand it; besides, we know better.

Such antics not only remind us of a certain political leader and his busybody wife, but they also underscore for us why conservative pundit Bill Buckley often said he'd rather be ruled by the first 500 names in the Cambridge phone book than the Harvard faculty. No, this was not just a Yalie talking. It was experience. Intellectuals are smarter than regular folk. They just aren't any wiser when it comes to politics, as Kock's book explains.

From the Willi Munzenberg link.

I disagree with the author - and you. Intelligence is always an advantage. The dumb are subject to all the faults you've listed. They just don't have the power to do much individually. But there are great numbers of them.

Nor do I think much of Bill Buckley's quip. He is himself an intellectual and has never seriously recommended any such policy.

[js1138]

Nor do I think much of Bill Buckley's quip. He is himself an intellectual and has never seriously recommended any such policy.

Sure he has. Five hundred people is a pretty good statistical sample. Enough to predict all but the closest elections. Something the Harvard faculty certainly could not do. Five hundred people chosen at random would be a microcosm of the country as a whole, it would reflect the tastes, ambitions, diversity and character of the country, and it would be unable to formulate central plans, the kind that result in millions of executations.

[liberallarry]

Here's an example of the kind of problem I encounter immediately

You say

VENONA relied on two lucky breaks: the recovery of PART of an NKVD code book...

But Sobell says

and it goes on to deny that "the battlefield-recovered Soviet codebooks," which hitherto had received the credit, were available to NSA before 1953.

and

"Almost all of the KGB messages between Moscow and Washington of 1944 and 1945 that could have been broken at all were broken, to a greater or lesser degree, between 1947 and 1952."

What's going on?

[Poohbah]

Sobell is engaging in deliberate misdirection here.

The absolute earliest date that the NSA could have had access to the NKVD codebooks was November 4th, 1952--which was the day Truman signed the order establishing the NSA. Prior to that date, the NSA did not exist and could not have received that codebook. In practical terms, this means that the NSA acquired the book in 1953 as they became an operating agency.

The vast majority of VENONA decrypts centered on intercepts from the Washington rezidentura were made by the Signal Security Agency (the US Army signals intelligence shop) and the Armed Forces Security Agency in the 1947-1952 timeframe.

A nice little bit of strategic misdirection, eh?

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Are you sure?

Dick Morris is Jewish? Feiffer and Cohn are.

Cohn was *weirdly* closeted who died of AIDS.

Morris was also *weird*.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

Thank you for translating.

The leftmediacollegeprofessors have always told us that McCarthy was:

1. Wrong

2. Scared people to death

3. Got the wrong people

4. Innocent people suffered

5. Ruined lives

I think we can do some deconstructing here a bit.

McCarthy was:

1. Right

2. The people he scared was the Left...and Dems

3. He got the CORRECT people

4. The only innocent people who suffered were the kids of the commies. And who's fault was that?

5. Didn't really *ruin* innocent lives. Plenty of the Left wrote under pseudonyms. And then there were those that actually had to *work* for a living again..and then there were those that didn't want to *work* for a living with the common people so they killed themselves and left their kids.

Great people the Left. Just great. Caring. Really care about the working classes...just never want to be one.

I'm going to post the lyrics to a great song called Common People here....feel free to scroll by:

Common People

Pulp

She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College
That's where I caught her eye
She told me that her Dad was loaded
I said "In that case I'll have rum and coca-cola
She said "fine" 
And then in 30 seconds time she said
"I want to live like common people
I want to do whatever common people do
I want to sleep with common people
I want to sleep with common people like you"
Well what else could I do?
I said "I'll see what I can do"
I took her to a supermarket
I don't know why 
but I had to start it somewhere
so it started there
I said "pretend you've got no money"
but she just laughed 
and said "oh you're so funny"
I said "Yeah
Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here
Are you sure
you want to live like common people
you want to see whatever common people see
you want to sleep with common people
you want to sleep with common people like me?"
But she didn't understand
she just smiled and held my hand
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'cos when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
if you called your dad he could stop it all
yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
and then dance and drink and screw
because  there's nothing else to do
Sing along with the common people
Sing along and it might just get you through
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along although they're laughing at you
and the stupid things that you do
because you think that poor is cool
Like a dog lying in a corner
they will bite you and never warn you
Look out
they'll tear your insides out
'cos everybody hates a tourist
especially one who thinks 
it's all such a laugh
yeah and the chip stain's grease
will come out in the bath
You will never understand
how it feels to live your life
with no meaning or control
and with nowhere else to go
You are amazed that they exist
and they burn so bright
whilst you can only wonder why
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'cause when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
if you called your dad he could stop it all
yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
and then dance and drink and screw
'because there's nothing else to do
I want to live with common people like you...

[liberalnot]

you just reminded me of a date i had when i was in college. we parted. she was a commie, and now a tenured professor at a state university.

the movie as i remember it romanticized the lives of these people but when it got to the soviet union, it fell apart. how could you romanticize such a dump?

the movie ended with a heroic view of a train. i didn't get it.

most everyone in the college town audience jumped up and yelled, identifying with the people on the train.

i was just depressed. it was stupid.

[I_Love_My_Husband]

You've got to hear the song. It's one of the best *ever*. The lyrics sound soo good too...hehe!

Remember Chelsea Clinton and 9/11?

She's so clueless...

[liberalnot]

speaking of which, didn't chelsea bomb out of the pre-med program at stanford, but she got into oxford, and now has a $100,000 job in nyc?

who hires dumb people?

[Doctor Stochastic]

There was a reason. The Rosenbergs (according the the books on Venona) were also running a spy ring stealing radar information. The Rosembergs allowed themselves to be executed to protect their people in these rings.

[liberallarry]

A nice little bit of strategic misdirection, eh?

Very nice. Very, very nice...if that's what's really going on. Too much for me to follow without a great deal of research that I'm not willing to do.

If you're correct - meaning that Sobell knew the government cryptographers had the code books during the period 1947-52 but they were the possession of an agency other than the NSA - then Sobell is one hell of a liar.

I guess he would be if he really was a clever spy. So the next step would be to see whether these other agencies had the code books during the period in question.

On and on through the details until finally one forms an opinion. I say again - I'm not willing to do the research so I cannot form an independent opinion and have to withdraw from this discussion.

Thanks for the info.

[DPB101]

My view is that the Rosenbergs were a small piece of the Cold War. Many spies were operating. . .

Yes. Which was why it was imperative to do almost anything to get the Rosenbergs to talk. Venona had uncovered "349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies."¹ But the our intelligence services had no idea who most of them were. Nearly 200 were tucked away under cover names. They were doing incalculable harm and we knew it. The recently unsealed executive McCarthy transcripts are astounding. The radar lab at Ft. Monmouth, N.J. was a nest of suspected Soviet agents (many of whom had been classmates of Julius Rosenberg at City College). But people were taking the fifth and were lawyered up way beyond their salaries. McCarthy didn't care if someone had been a communist or not. He made that clear during the executive sessions. Those who did admit they had joined and who cooperated were never exposed by the committee until the transcripts were opened this month. No one ever did get to the bottom of the treason at Ft. Monmouth. Too many high paid lawyers telling everyone to shut up. In disgust, Eisenhower shut the facility, let most every go and Goldwater passed legislation opening a new lab in Arizona.

As the Moynihan commission reported, most of the spies were Russian or Central European immigrants or their grown children. As did Rosenberg, many had attended City College and recieved educations which allowed them to prosper. Was it too much to ask them not to try to overthrow the government which gave them shelter? They should have kissed the American flag and told everything they knew about a regime and a party, the CPUSA, which was engaged in the worse atrocities the world had ever seen.

But they didn't. I have zero sympathy for any of them. For 50 years they and their defenders have castigated and demonized the good guys--those trying to end communist terror. If there is justice, there is a hell and those who claim taking the fifth protected civil rights and was the patriotic thing to do are in it.

¹Chapter One: Venona and the Cold WarJohn Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. Yale University Press.

[liberallarry]

Well, if the "first 500 names in the Cambridge phone book" or 500 people chosen at random, are more capable of running the country than those chosen by present methods (which invariably include a strong record of success in difficult endeavors involving intelligence) then they are certainly good enough to run large corporations. Why then do stockholders waste all that money on CEOs and other expensive officers?

Also, slaughters by mindless mobs are common as dirt in human history. When they're led by intelligent people they just do a better job of it.

[Grampa Dave]

Besides the media, their spawn slithers around the state department, justice and every other federal department/service. They are civil servants and they basically can't be fired.

Nothing can be done until we have 60 senators willing to pass a law requiring everyone in government GS7 and above to submit their resignations in writing when each president is sworn in for a term. Those resignations could be activated at anytime when one of the slithering spawn misbehaves.

[Bonaparte]

Michael Meeropol: "But I can't judge people from the 40s."

I take it that Mr. Meeropol, a Jew, has no unkind words for the Nazi war criminals of the 1940s either.

[liberallarry]

Which was why it was imperative to do almost anything to get the Rosenbergs to talk...Venona had uncovered "349 citizens, immigrants, and permanent residents of the United States who had had a covert relationship with Soviet intelligence agencies."1 But the our intelligence services had no idea who most of them were...They were doing incalculable harm and we knew it

If that's true then a good case can be made for abrogating constitutional protections. I'm not up on the current evidence and can't argue it with you. Sorry.

[liberallarry]

Sobell is engaging in deliberate misdirection here

No. I think you're wrong. I went back and reread Sobell's statement. He's saying that the government denied that the NKVD codebooks were available to cryptographers prior to 1953...and they did so in order to claim that the cryptographers achieved what they did through analytical brain-power alone.

[Bonaparte]

"...it was certain that the secret of the atomic bomb could not be kept after it's existance was revealed. Not a single scientist thought it could be. Technology of all kinds spreads like wildfire in the modern world."

If that were so, then why would the Soviets have bothered to plant and recruit atomic spies like the Rosenbergs? That was a lot of trouble to go to, just to get ahold of secrets that were already on their way to Moscow. According to you, the "wildfire" would bring them all this information just as fast as espionage would. Are you suggesting the Russians were too stupid to know this?

[I_Love_My_Husband]

http://Michael Meeropol Statement on Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

Date: Tue, 25 Jul 1995 09:26:30 -0700

Subject: Michael Meeropol Statement on Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

---

PLEASE NOTE: THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT WAS ISSUED BY ROBERT AND MICHAEL MEEROPOL, SONS OF JULIUS AND ETHEL ROSENBERG, AS AN INITIAL REACTION TO THE RELEASE BY THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY OF THE "VENONA" DOCUMENTS PURPORTING TO PROVE THAT THEIR PARENTS WERE INDEED SOVIET SPIES. THE STATEMENT WAS ISSUED JULY 17 and AS FAR AS WE KNOW, HAS NOT BEEN REPORTED BY THE MAINSTREAM PRESS.

---

ROSENBERG FUND FOR CHILDREN
1145 Main Street
Suite 408
Springfield, Ma. 01103
(413) 739 - 9020
FAX: (413) 746-5767

RELEASED "VENONA" DOCUMENTS DEMONSTRATE GOVERNMENT DUPLICITY.

     Nothing in the 49 VENONA documents released by the National
Security AGency and the CIA (The Agencies) on July 11 cause us to
alter our positions that:  1. our parents Ethel and Julius
Rosenberg were not guilty as charged; 2. their conviction was based
upon perjured testimony and fabricated evidence; 3. that government
agents and agencies orchestrated our parents' frame-up which
resulted in their execution.

     We have sought the release of these documents sicne 1975.  The
Agencies explanation that they were not used at our parents' trial
for national security reasons does not explain why they have
refused to release them to us for the last 20 years.  It is much
more plausible that the documents were only released now becauset
htye prove nothing and do not helpt justify our parents' execution.

     Thew documents' nature and contents explain why They Agencies
kept them secret for over 40 years.  The Agences have released no
physcal evidence to support their claims. The public is asked to
accept just upon their say so that the documents really are
translations ofr encrypted Soviet diplomatic communications that
the translations faithfull reflect those communications, and that
the individuals referred to in code n the documents are the people
The AGencies say they are.  None of this should be taken for
granted.  The Agencies are some of the major architects of our
parents' legally sanctioned murder and so have a tremendous stake
in justifying their execution.

     The booklet The Agences released to "explain" the documents
("Introductory History of VENONA and Guide to the Trnaslations),
demonstrates that they have even lied about the contents of these
documents in this carefully staged effort to misinform the public.
For example the following statements appear on page 10 of the
Guide:

     "These messages disclose some of the clandestine activities of
     Julius and Ethel Rosenberg ..." and "KGB officer Leonid
     Kvasnikov ... like the Rosenbergs ... had many other high-tech
     espionage targets..." (emphasis added)

     Our mother is barefly metnioned in the 49 documents The
Agencies claim are KGB transmissions, and nowhere in them is it
stated that she engaged in clandestine activities.  TAhe major
reference to her states:  "Knows about her husband's work and the
role of METR and NIL.  In view of delicate health does not work.
Is characterized positively and as a devote dperson."

     Our father's name never appears in any of the documents.

     The Agencies would have us believe that they identified many
spies long before our parents' arrests and did nothing about it but
give the FBI a few tips while the vast majority of them either
disappeared or were never prosecuted.  They can not explian why
neither the CIA nor the FBI acted as if it had this information
prior to our parents' arrests.  Therefore, we suspect thyat The
Agencies "cooked" whatever information they had after the arrests
and trial to bolster the government's scenario.  While we can't
prove this, The Agencies certainly had the motive, means and
opportunity to do so.  This helps explain why the "Guide" is so
vague about the timing of the "decoding" of thses "transmissions."

     The Federal Judiciary, the FBI, the Departmnet of Justiec, the
CIA and other government agencies ahve engaged in a course of
misconduct concerning our parents' case for over 40 years.  Unlike
the Agencies, we, as private citizens have not had the media access
necessary to present our side.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, contact:  Robert Meeropol:  413 - 739 - 9020.

There is a documentary film on the Rosenberg case.

---

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[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Then what? How would he explain his father's behavior? "I would have to do some thinking about my parents being involved in dangerous things, but I can't judge people from the 1940's," he said. "He's not in the Army. He has bad eyesight. He can't make the contribution that others were making. I could argue that this was a way of doing it."

Yeah, some contribution. Good grief.