Ruth Greenglass
Ruth Printz, the eldest of four children, was born in New York City on 30th April 1924. She was educated at Seward Park High School. After leaving school she became a typist.
Ruth joined the Young Communist League (YCL). She married David Greenglass, a fellow member of the YCL, in 1942. Later the couple had two children.
During the Second World War her husband joined the United States Army. Promoted to the rank of sergeant, he was transferred to Los Alamos, where attempts were being made to develop the atom bomb.
In 1945 David Greenglass left the army and open a small machine shop in Manhattan with his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. However, the business did badly and Greenglass left the partnership.
On 5th September 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a KGB intelligence officer based in Canada, defected to the West claiming he had evidence of an Soviet spy ring based in Britain. Gouzenko provided evidence that led to the arrest of 22 local agents and 15 Soviet spies in Canada. Some of this information from Gouzenko resulted in Klaus Fuchs being interviewed by MI5. Fuchs denied any involvement in espionage and the intelligence services did not have enough evidence to have him arrested and charged with spying. However, after repeated interviews with Jim Skardon he eventually confessed on 23rd January 1950 to passing information to the Soviet Union. Six weeks later Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
In June 1950 the FBI arrested Harry Gold, who confessed to helping Klaus Fuchs in his espionage activities in the United States. He named David Greenglass as being a member of the spy ring. In July Greenglass was arrested by the FBI and accused of spying for the Soviet Union. Under questioning, he admitted acting as a spy and named Julius Rosenberg as one of his contacts. He denied that his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, had been involved but confessed that Ruth Greenglass had been used as a courier.
Julius Rosenberg was arrested but refused to implicate anybody else in spying for the Soviet Union. Joseph McCarthy had just launched his attack on a so-called group of communists based in Washington. The head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, saw the arrest of Rosenberg as a means of getting good publicity for the FBI. Hoover sent a memorandum to the US attorney general Howard McGrath saying: "There is no question that if Julius Rosenberg would furnish details of his extensive espionage activities it would be possible to proceed against other individuals. Proceeding against his wife might serve as a lever in these matters."
Hoover ordered the arrest of Ethel Rosenberg and her two children were taken into care. Julius and Ethel were put under pressure to incriminate others involved in the spy ring. Neither offered any further information.
Ten days before the start of the trial of the Rosenbergs the FBI re-interviewed David Greenglass. He was offered a deal if he provided information against Ethel Rosenberg. This included a promise not to charge Ruth Greenglass with being a member of the spy ring. Greenglass now changed his story. In his original statement, he said that he handed over atomic information to Julius Rosenberg on a street corner in New York. In his new interview, Greenglass claimed that the handover had taken place in the living room of the Rosenberg's New York flat.
In her FBI interview Ruth Greenglass argued that "Julius then took the info into the bathroom and read it, and when he came out he told (Ethel) she had to type this info immediately. Ethel then sat down at the typewriter... and proceeded to type info which David had given to Julius".
The trial of Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg began on 6th March 1951. David Greenglass was questioned by the chief prosecutor assistant, Roy Cohn. After Greenglass testified to his passing sketches of a high explosive lens mold he provided incriminating detail of the Rosenberg's espionage activity.
Ruth Greenglass testified as to how she was asked by Julius Rosenberg to inquire of her husband, recently stationed in Los Alamos, whether he would be willing to provide information on the progress of the Manhattan Project. She also testified that Ethel Rosenberg spent a January evening in 1945 typing her husband's handwritten notes from Los Alamos.
The Rosenberg's defense attorney, Emanuel Bloch, argued that Greenglass was lying in order to gain revenge because he blamed Rosenberg for their failed business venture and to get a lighter sentence for himself.
In his summation, the chief prosecutor, Irving Saypol, declared: "This description of the atom bomb, destined for delivery to the Soviet Union, was typed up by the defendant Ethel Rosenberg that afternoon at her apartment at 10 Monroe Street. Just so had she, on countless other occasions, sat at that typewriter and struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets."
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death and remained on death row for twenty-six months. They both refused to confess and provide evidence against others and they were eventually executed on 19th June, 1953. As one political commentator pointed out, they died because they refused to confess and name others.
As a reward for his co-operation, David Greenglass was only sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was released after only serving ten years. Greenglass went to live with his wife in the New York area under an assumed name.
In December 2001, Sam Roberts, a New York Times reporter, traced David Greenglass, who was living under an assumed name with Ruth Greenglass. Interviewed on television under a heavy disguise, he acknowledged that his and his wife's court statements had been untrue. "Julius asked me to write up some stuff, which I did, and then he had it typed. I don't know who typed it, frankly. And to this day I can't even remember that the typing took place. But somebody typed it. Now I'm not sure who it was and I don't even think it was done while we were there."
David Greenglass said he had no regrets about his testimony that resulted in the execution of Ethel Rosenberg. "As a spy who turned his family in, I don't care. I sleep very well. I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister... You know, I seldom use the word sister anymore; I've just wiped it out of my mind. My wife put her in it. So what am I going to do, call my wife a liar? My wife is my wife... My wife says, 'Look, we're still alive'."
Ruth Greenglass died on 7th April 2008.
Primary Sources
(1) Michael Ellison, The Guardian, (6th December, 2001)
One of the most enduring controversies of the cold war, the trial and executions of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as Soviet spies, was revived last night when her convicted brother said that he had lied at the trial to save himself and his wife.
"As a spy who turned his family in, I don't care," David Greenglass, 79, said on his first public appearance for more than 40 years.
"I sleep very well. I would not sacrifice my wife and my children for my sister."
Mr Greenglass, who lives under an assumed identity, was sentenced to 15 years and released from prison in 1960.
He said in a taped interview on last night's CBS television programme 60 Minutes that he, too, gave the Russians atomic secrets and information about a newly invented detonator.
He said he gave false testimony because he feared that his wife Ruth might be charged, and that he was encouraged by the prosecution to lie.
He gave the court the most damning evidence against his sister: that she had typed up his spying notes, intended for transmission to Moscow, on a Remington portable typewriter.
Now he says that this testimony was based on the recollection of his wife rather than his own first-hand knowledge.
"I don't know who typed it, frankly, and to this day I can't remember that the typing took place," he said last night. "I had no memory of that at all - none whatsoever."
(2) Harold Jackson, The Guardian (14th July, 2008)
David Greenglass, a technical sergeant involved in machining parts at the Manhattan Project, originally attracted the FBI's attention for stealing small quantities of uranium as a souvenir. Under questioning, he admitted acting as a Soviet spy at Los Alamos and named Julius Rosenberg as one of his contacts. But he flatly denied that his sister, Ethel, had ever been involved. Though he told the FBI at the time that his wife Ruth had acted as a courier, he said in his 2001 television interview that he had warned the bureau: "If you indict my wife you can forget it. I'll never say a word about anybody."
The difficulty with Hoover's proposed strategy of using Rosenberg's wife as a lever was that there was no evidence against her. Nonetheless, she was arrested and her two children were taken into care. The Rosenbergs' bail was set at $100,000 each, which they had no hope of raising, and the pressure on them to incriminate others increased. Neither offered any further information.
Ten days before the start of the trial, the FBI re-interviewed the Greenglasses. In his original statement, David had said that he handed over atomic information to Julius on a street corner in New York. In this new interview, he said that the handover had taken place in the living room of the Rosenbergs' New York flat. Ruth then elaborated on this by telling the FBI agents that "Julius then took the info into the bathroom and read it, and when he came out he told [Ethel] she had to type this info immediately. Ethel then sat down at the typewriter... and proceeded to type the info which David had given to Julius."
Ruth and her husband repeated this evidence in the witness box and it became the basis of Ethel's conviction as a co-conspirator. However, the court verdict failed to induce a confession from Julius, as Hoover had hoped it might. There were innumerable unsuccessful appeals, and up until the night of the execution President Dwight Eisenhower was on standby to commute one or both of the Rosenbergs' sentences. But the couple remained silent.
(3) Dennis Hevesi, The New York Times (10th July, 2008)
A main element in the prosecution was the threat of indictment, conviction and possible execution of Ethel Rosenberg as leverage to persuade Julius Rosenberg to confess and to implicate other collaborators. Those collaborators had already been identified, largely from what became known as the Venona transcripts, a trove of intercepted Soviet cables.
But with little more than a week before the trial was to start, on March 6, 1951, the government's case against Ethel Rosenberg remained flimsy, lacking evidence of an overt act to justify her conviction, much less her execution.
Prosecutors had been interrogating Ruth Greenglass since June 1950. In February 1951, she was interviewed again. After reminding her that she was still subject to indictment and that her husband had yet to be sentenced, the prosecutors extracted a recollection from her: that in the fall of 1945, Ethel Rosenberg had typed her brother's handwritten notes.
Soon after, confronted with his wife's account, David Greenglass told prosecutors that Ruth Greenglass had a very good memory and that if that was what she recalled of events six years earlier, she was probably right.
The transcripts of those two crucial interviews have never been released or even located in government files. But at the trial, David Greenglass testified that his sister had done the typing. Called to the stand, Ruth Greenglass corroborated her husband's testimony.
(4) The Daily Telegraph (17th July, 2008)
Ruth Greenglass, who has died aged 84, provided crucial evidence in a notorious espionage trial that led to the execution of her sister-in-law, Ethel Rosenberg, in 1953; her testimony, and the conviction, was later called into question.
During the Second World War Ruth's husband, David Greenglass, had worked as a machinist on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, New Mexico.
He was said by prosecutors at the trial to have been persuaded by his sister, Ethel Rosenberg, and her husband Julius, to give them top-secret data relating to atomic weapons, which Julius then transmitted to Moscow. Both couples were avowed Communists.
Following a tip-off by a Soviet defector, in 1950 Klaus Fuchs, head of the physics department of the British nuclear research centre at Harwell, was arrested and charged with espionage. Fuchs confessed that he had been passing information to the Soviet Union since the Manhattan Project. It was clear that he had not worked alone and, during subsequent investigations by the FBI, suspicion fell on David Greenglass.
Greenglass was called in for interrogation and confessed. He claimed that the Rosenbergs had also been members of the spy ring and agreed to testify against them. It was important for the prosecution that Ethel Rosenberg should be implicated as it was thought that her husband might be persuaded to spill the beans if he felt he might spare her execution.
But up until shortly before the trial was due to start in March 1951, the case against Ethel Rosenberg remained flimsy. In his initial statements, David Greenglass had said that she had not been involved at all.
In February Ruth Greenglass, who had already been interrogated on several previous occasions, was called in for further questioning.
After reminding her that she was still subject to indictment and that her husband had not yet been sentenced for his confessed espionage, the prosecutors extracted a recollection that her sister-in-law had typed up David Greenglass's handwritten notes on her Remington.
Soon afterwards Greenglass, confronted with his wife's account, said that if that was what she recalled, then she was probably right. At the trial he testified that his sister had done the typing and his wife confirmed his testimony. On June 19 1953 the Rosenbergs were sent to the electric chair.
The case generated a great deal of controversy, especially in Europe, where it was argued that the Rosenbergs were victims of anti-Semitism and McCarthyism and had been framed solely on account of their politics. The couple had never confessed and went to their deaths protesting their innocence.
In the late 1990s, however, a reporter for The New York Times interviewed David Greenglass while doing research for a book and got him to acknowledge that he had lied on the witness stand at the behest of prosecutors to save his own life and keep his wife out of jail, and that he had no recollection of his sister typing his notes.
"I frankly think my wife did the typing. But I don't remember," he said. "You know I seldom use the word 'sister' any more. I've just wiped it out of my mind." He admitted that he was sometimes haunted by the Rosenberg case, though he steadfastly refused to apologise to the Rosenbergs' orphaned sons. After all, he reasoned, "My wife says, 'Look, we're still alive'."
(5) The Times (11th July, 2008)
The prosecution’s case against Ethel Rosenberg, who had been repeatedly interviewed, was a flimsy one. It seemed on the face of it far more likely that Greenglass, who had already confessed to spying and agreed to testify against the Rosenbergs, would have employed his wife for the task. Indeed, he had consistently asserted his sister’s innocence under questioning.
But in February 1951, with the scheduled start of the trial less than a month away, prosecutors interviewed Mrs Greenglass again, reminding her that her husband had yet to be sentenced. At that point she remembered that in the autumn of 1945 it had been Ethel Rosenberg who had typed the notes in a Manhattan apartment. Later confronted with his wife’s account, Greenglass agreed that she had a very good memory and that her version of events that had taken place almost six years before was almost certainly the right one. The admission was to send his sister to the electric chair along with her husband.
(6) Rupert Cornwell, The Independent (11th July, 2008)
Today, as a result of the Venona decrypts of 1940s cable traffic to Moscow from the Soviet Consulate in New York, and previously unavailable Soviet sources, there is scant doubt that Julius (codenamed "Liberal" in the Venona transcipts) was a leader in the plot to pass over information on the Manhattan project to develop an atom bomb. Among his accomplices was David Greenglass, brother of Julius's wife Ethel, who was working as a machinist on the ultra-secret programme at Los Alamos in New Mexico. But, then as now, the evidence of Ethel's involvement was tenuous in the extreme.
None the less, as the US government built the case against Julius, it threatened to bring capital charges of espionage against his wife as well, as a lever to extract a full confession that would reveal details of the ring. But the strategy failed, when Julius refused to co-operate, even though his two young children risked losing not only their father but their mother too. Their bluff called, prosecutors had no choice but to produce evidence showing Ethel was an active participant in the ring. Thanks to Ruth Greenglass, they secured it.
Confronted in 1950, David Greenglass quickly admitted his role as a spy, and agreed to testify against the Rosenbergs to avoid the death penalty. But he offered little that linked Ethel directly with the espionage operation. Ruth, however, did. Still facing indictment herself, she told prosecutors that, one September afternoon at the Rosenberg apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1945, she had watched Ethel typing up hand-written notes from her brother about the atom bomb project. When prosecutors asked David Greenglass to confirm Ruth's recollection, he replied that since she had a good memory, she was probably right.
At the Rosenbergs' trial, which began in March 1951, David Greenglass testified that Ethel had been the typist. So, crucially, did Ruth when she was called to the witness stand. Thus could the chief prosecutor proclaim, in his closing statement to the court, that on that September day in 1945, and "on countless other occasions," Ethel "sat at that typewriter and struck the keys, blow by blow, against her own country in the interests of the Soviets". The jury agreed. Both Rosenbergs were found guilty. After their last appeals were rejected by the Supreme Court, they went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison on 19 June 1953.
If the evidence against Ethel was already slender, it became even more so with publication in 2003 of The Brother: the untold story of the Rosenberg case, in which David Greenglass effectively admitted to the author Sam Roberts that he had lied at the Rosenberg trial.
