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 working on the Manhattan
Project during the Second World War.
The FBI were desperate to discover the names
of the spies who had worked with Klaus Fuchs
while he had been in America. Elizabeth
Bentley, a former member of the American
Communist Party, had in 1945 given FBI agents eighty names of
people she believed were involved in espionage. At the time it had
been impossible to acquire enough information to bring the suspects
to court. These people were interviewed again and one of them, Harry
Gold, confessed that he had acted as Fuchs's courier. He also
named David Greenglass as being a
member of the spy ring. Greenglass was now interviewed and he named
his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel Rosenberg
and Julius Rosenberg.
At this point the confessions stopped. The Rosenbergs both denied
they had been involved in spying for the Soviet Union. However, it
was decided couple were nevertheless charged with conspiracy to commit
espionage. Virtually the only evidence against them was supplied by
David Greenglass. He claimed that
Julius Rosenberg had given him atom
bomb secrets that he in turn passed to Harry
Gold. The defense attorney, Emmanuel Bloch,
argued that Greenglass was lying in order to gain revenge because
he blamed Rosenberg for their failed business venture.
The jury believed the evidence of David
Greenglass and both Julius Rosenberg
and Ethel Rosenberg, were found guilty
and sentenced to death. A large number of people were shocked by the
severity of the sentence as they had not been found guilty of treason.
In fact, they had been tried under the terms of the Espionage
Act that had been passed in 1917 to deal with the American anti-war
movement.
Afterwards it became clear that the government did not believe the
Rosenbergs would be executed. J. Edgar Hoover,
head of the FBI, had warned that history
would not be kind to a government responsible for orphaning the couple's
two young sons on such poor evidence. Rumours began to circulate that
the government would be willing to spare the couple's life if they
confessed and gave evidence about other Communist
Party spies.
The case created a great deal of controversy in Europe where it was
argued that the Julius Rosenberg and
Ethel Rosenberg were victims of anti-semitism
and McCarthyism. Nobel prize-winner,
Jean-Paul
Sartre,
called the case "a legal lynching which smears with blood a whole
nation".
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel
Rosenberg 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.
(1)
Judge Irving Kaufman, sentencing Ethel
Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg
to death (5th April, 1951)
The
evidence indicated quite clearly that Julius Rosenberg was the prime
mover in this conspiracy. However, let no mistake be made about the
role which his wife, Ethel Rosenberg, played in this conspiracy. Instead
of deterring him from pursuing his ignoble cause, she encouraged and
assisted the cause. She was a mature woman - almost three years older
than her husband and almost seven years older than her younger brother.
She was a full-fledged partner in this crime.
Indeed the defendants Julius and Ethel Rosenberg placed their devotion
to their cause above their own personal safety and were conscious
that they were sacrificing their own children, should their misdeeds
be detected - all of which did not deter them from pursuing their
course. Love for their cause dominated their lives - it was even greater
than their love for their children.
The sentence of the Court upon Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is, for
the crime for which you have been convicted, you are hereby sentenced
to the punishment to death, and it is ordered upon some day within
the week beginning with Monday, May 21st, you shall be executed according
to law.
(2)
Ethel Rosenberg, letter to Julius
Rosenberg, on hearing that their conviction had been upheld by
the U.S. Circuit Court (26th February, 1952)
Last night at 10.00 o'clock,
I heard the shocking news. At the present moment, with little or no
detail to hand, it is difficult for me to make any comment, beyond
the expression of horror at the shameless haste with which the government
appears to be pressing for our liquidation.
(3)
Julius
Rosenberg, letter
to Ethel
Rosenberg (13th
April, 1952)
Keep your chin up Ethel if we
must suffer through this nightmare then in the manner we conduct ourselves
we will contribute to the general welfare of the people by serving
notice on the tyrants that they cannot get away with political frame-ups
such as ours. It takes a lot of time and hard work to get them to
overcome their inertia but now that grass root sentiments are aroused
public opinion will have its effect. We've left a big chunk of suffering
behind us these last two years and we are coming closer to our emancipation
from all this torture.
(4)
Julius
Rosenberg, letter
to Ethel
Rosenberg (31st
May, 1953)
What does one write to his beloved
when faced with the very grim reality that in eighteen days, on their
14th wedding anniversary, it is ordered that they be put to death?
Over and over again, I have tried to analyze in the most objective
manner possible the answers to the position of our government in our
case. Everything indicates only one answer - that the wishes of certain
madmen are being followed in order to use this case as a coercive
bludgeon against all dissenters.
I know that our children and our family are suffering a great deal
right now and it is natural that we be concerned for their welfare.
However, I think we will have to concentrate our strength on ourselves.
First, we want to make sure that we stand up under the terrific pressure,
and then we ought to try to contribute some share to the fight.
(5)
Alice
Hamilton, letter to Felix Frankfurter, a member of the Supreme
Court (15th July, 1959)
Why are we the only western
country that lives in terror of native Communists. All the European
countries have open and above-board political Communist parties some
even have members of Parliament or whatever, and they do not have
Un-Dutch Activities Committee. Look at the contrast between the English
treatment of Klaus Fuchs and our treatment of the Rosenbergs. Fuchs
is a scientist (which Rosenberg was not) he gave valuable atomic secrets
to the Russians (Urey testified that Rosenberg did not know enough
to do that) he confessed (the Rosenbergs refused to, though offered
their lives as reward) Fuchs acted during the war, the Rosenbergs
during peace.
(6)
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."
(7)
William A. Reuben, review of The Secret World of American Communism
in the journal Rights (1995).
As if progressives had not in recent years been battered
and bludgeoned enough already, we now learn that J. Edgar Hoover,
Senator Joseph McCarthy, Roy Cohn, Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers
& company really got it right: all Communists are/were actual,
or wannabee, Russian spies. We also learn that during the Cold War
years (and even before) hordes of leftists were abroad in the land,
stealing "our" atomic secrets (and God only knows what else)
for delivery to Joseph Stalin.
In recent days, this message
has been dunned into our ears by such opinion-makers as William F.
Buckley, Jr., George Will, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Theodore Draper,
Michael Thomas, Edward Jay Epstein and David Garrow in the pages of
The New York Times, The New Republic, Commentar,
Wall Street Journal, The National Review, the "McNeil-Lehrer
NewsHour," and lots more (without a dissenting voice to be heard
anywhere).
This all-out blitz has
been fueled by The Secret World of American Communism, written
by Professor Harvey Klehr, of Emory University, John Earl Haynes,
of the Library of Congress, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov, formerly
of the Comintern Archives in Moscow at the Russian Center for the
Preservation and Study of Documents in Recent History. The authors
claim to have put together a "massive documentary record"
from the hitherto secret Comintern archives, revealing "the dark
side of American communism." These documents establish, they
say, proof both of "Soviet espionage in America" and of
the American Communist Party's "inherent" connection with
Soviet espionage operations and with its espionage services; and that
such spy activities were considered, by both Soviet and the American
CP leaders, "normal and proper."
Such assertions are not
all that different from what J. Edgar Hoover (and his stooges) were
saying half a century ago. But what reinforces the authors' statements
are not only the documents from the Russian archives they claim to
have uncovered, but also the imposing editorial advisory committee
assembled to give this project an eminent scholarly cachet. This editorial
advisory committee consists of 30 academics whose names are listed
opposite the title page. They include seven Yale University professors,
along with professors from Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, Chicago, Brandeis,
Southern Methodist, Pittsburgh and Rochester universities. There are
also an equal number of members of the Russian Academy of Sciences
and of officials of various Russian archives.
Reproduced in the book
are 92 documents offered by the authors as evidence of what they say
is the United States Communist Party's continuous history of "covert
activity." These documents, according to Professor Steven Merrit
Minor in The New York Times Book Review, reveal that American
Communists "relayed atomic secrets to the Kremlin" and also
support the testimony of Whittaker Chambers and others that the American
Communist Party was engaged in underground conspiracies against the
American Government. The authors also say that the documents suggest
that those "who continued to claim otherwise were either willfully
naive or, more likely, dishonest."
In actuality, many of the
documents are ambiguously worded or in some sort of code known only
to the senders and recipients. They often contain illegible words,
numbers and signatures; relate to unidentifiable persons, places and
events; and are preoccupied with bookkeeping matters, inner-party
hassles or with protective security measures against FBI and Trotskyite
spies. Most importantly, not a single document reproduced in this
volume provides evidence of espionage. Ignoring all evidence that
contradicts their thesis, the authors attempt to make a case relying
on assumption, speculation, and invention about the archival material
and, especially, by equating secrecy with illegal spying.
The book's high points
are sections relating to what the authors call atomic espionage and
the CP Washington spy apparatus. As someone who has carefully examined
the archives at the Russian Center, and who over the past four decades
has studied the trial transcripts of the major Cold War "spy"
cases, I can state that "The Secret World of American Communism,"
notwithstanding its scholarly accouterments, is a disgracefully shoddy
work, replete with errors, distortions and outright lies. As a purported
work of objective scholarship, it is nothing less than a fraud.
In this context, certain
facts ought to be noted:
* The Moscow archives contain
no material relating to these key figures in the Cold War "spy"
cases: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Morton Sobell, Ruth and David Greenglass,
Harry Gold, Klaus Fuchs, Elizabeth Bentley, Hede Massing, Noel Field,
Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers, Colonel Boris
Bykov and J. Peters. In my possession is a document, responding to
my request, and dated October 12, 1992, signed by Oleg Naumov, Deputy
Director of the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents
of Recent History, attesting that the Center has no files on, or relating
to, any of the above-named persons.
* Despite the authors'
assertion that the documents in this volume show that the CPUSA's
elaborate underground apparatus collaborated with Soviet espionage
services and also engaged in stealing the secrets of America's atomic
bomb project, not one of the 92 documents reproduced in this book
supports such a conclusion.
* The authors claim the
documents corroborate Whittaker Chambers' allegations about a Communist
underground in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s, and while the authors
concede that Alger Hiss's name does not appear in any of the documents,
they assert that the "subsequent documentation has further substantiated
the case that Hiss was a spy." Yet, not one document from the
Russian archives supports any of these damning statements.
A total of 15 pages in
"Secret World" have some reference either to Hiss or Chambers.
By my count, these contain 73 separate misrepresentations of fact
or downright lies. For example, the authors claim that J. Peters "played
a key role in Chambers' story" that Hiss was a Soviet spy. Peters
played no role in Chambers' story about espionage. Chambers said that
the key figure in his espionage activities with Hiss was a Russian
named "Colonel Boris Bykov," a character whose identity
the FBI spent years futilely trying to establish.
The authors claim Chambers
testified he worked in the Communist underground in the 1930s with
groups of government employees who "provided the CPUSA with information
about sensitive government activities." In fact, Chambers testified
to the exact contrary on 12 separate occasions.
References to Ethel and
Julius Rosenberg and their case can be found on five pages. In those
pages, by my tally, are 31 falsehoods or distortions of evidence.
For example, the authors say the Rosenbergs' conviction was for "involvement
in...atomic espionage." In fact they were convicted of conspiracy,
and no evidence was ever produced that they ever handed over any information
about anything to anyone.
The authors also say the
Rosenbergs were arrested as a result of information the authorities
obtained from Klaus Fuchs, which led to Harry Gold, who led them to
David Greenglass, who implicated the Rosenbergs. All of these statements
are based on an FBI press release. In fact, no evidence has ever been
produced that indicates that Fuchs, Gold or Greenglass ever mentioned
the Rosenbergs before their arrests.
Discussing one other "spy"
case, that of Judith Coplon, against whom all charges were dismissed,
the authors in typical contempt of official court records write that
"there was not the slightest doubt of her guilt." In comments
running no less than half a page, they invent a scenario of the Coplon
case that contains 14 outright lies and distortions. For instance,
the authors say she "stole" an FBI report and she was arrested
when she handed over' the stolen report "to a Soviet citizen."
All these statements are false; in her two trials, no evidence was
ever adduced that she ever stole anything or that she ever handed
over anything to anyone.
(8)
Eric Alterman, The Nation
(29th April, 1996)
Here
we go again. New York Post editor Eric Breindel, writing in
The New Republic and The Wall Street Journal, insists
that the recent release by the National Security Agency of an encrypted
document sent by a Soviet spy in Washington to his superiors in Moscow
on March 30, 1945, constitutes "the smoking gun in the Hiss case,"
proving "beyond doubt" that Hiss "was still a Soviet
agent in 1945."
Since I
am writing in what Breindel (who has died since this article was written)
preemptively calls "America's leading forum for Alger Hiss apologia,"
one could be forgiven for expecting yet another plea for justice for
Hiss. Sorry. I take no position on guilt or innocence (in truth, I
still can't make up my mind). Today's lesson deals instead with a
disturbing nexus of scholarship, journalism and Cold War fanaticism
that, based on either a careless or a deliberately malicious reading
of declassified national security documents, threatens our ability
ever to make sense of the past half-century of our history.
The drill
has become a familiar one: Hitherto secret documents or ex-spy confessions,
often backed up by a major publishing campaign, reveal that so-and-so
was a spy all along. Journalists trumpet the charge, calling on "respected"
academics to either endorse or debunk the charges. Depending on the
usually predictable political orientation of the academic in question,
a person's reputation is either destroyed or merely damaged. The story
then goes away until the next batch of documents appears or the next
spy gets religion.
The latest
cycle began back in 1990 with a book co-written by KGB defector Oleg
Gordievsky, and Christopher Andrew, a respected British intelligence
historian, titled KGB: The Inside Story. Though he did not
endorse the charge himself, Gordievsky argued, in Andrew's words,
that as a young agent he had been reliably informed by many important
Soviet intelligence officials that Harry Hopkins, FDR's most trusted
adviser, had been a Soviet "agent of major significance."
Time trumpeted the charges
in a much-publicized excerpt but, owing to both the unbelievability
of the charges and the authors' unwillingness to stand by them, they
did not cause much of a stir. Most reviewers were decidedly unimpressed
with the work. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. scored Time for publishing
the excerpt and said "the whole Hopkins passage smells of sensationalism
on the part of the book's authors." The great military historian
Sir Michael Howard noted that nothing in the book was likely to surprise
Western intelligence services, though "there is probably much
that they know not to be true." The only reputations to suffer
significant damage were those of Time and Andrew. (Being a
KGB defector, Gordievsky did not have much to lose, reputation-wise.)
Recently, it is U.S. intelligence
releases that have been making news. After classifying its intercepts
as top secret for decades and refusing all scholars' entreaties for
access, the National Security Agency called a press conference in
July 1995 to announce the release of forty-nine intercepts, dubbed
the Venona papers, that dealt with the case of the Rosenbergs. Sanho
Tree, a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, had applied
for these same documents under the Freedom of Information Act in 1993
but was informed that they were properly classified as top secret.
Tree received the documents by Federal Express just hours before the
press conference began. Apparently, the NSA decided it would endanger
national security if an IPS scholar saw the material before it had
a chance to invite favored journalists to a screening, complete with
fancy booklets and brochures.
This first batch of transcripts
convinced many (including me) that Julius Rosenberg was indeed a spy.
Even committed Rosenberg partisans Walter and Miriam Schneir were
convinced. But Ronald Radosh, transformed from obscure New Left historian
to well-funded, right-wing hatchetman during the Reagan era, crowed
that the documents proved "the Rosenbergs were not only Communists"
but "were recruited right out of the party for Soviet espionage."
Radosh, however, only proved once again his ability to read into documents
what he wished to believe in the first place. The intercepts did nothing
to prove Ethel's espionage involvement or mitigate the accusation
that the government executed an innocent woman in a failed attempt
to extract a confession from her husband. (Radosh and Joyce Milton,
his coauthor of "The Rosenberg File," had contended that
"it seems almost certain that (Ethel) acted as an accessory.")
Nor did the intercepts prove that Julius operated a spy ring on the
order necessary to have carried out the plot for which he was executed,
though this may have been the case.
(9)
The National World (7th March, 1997)
Breaking decades of silence on
perhaps the most sensational espionage case of the Cold War, a retired
Soviet spy says Julius Rosenberg helped organize a 1940s espionage
ring for Moscow but was not directly involved in stealing U.S. secrets
about the atomic bomb.
Rosenberg
and his wife Ethel were executed in the Sing Sing electric chair in
1953 for what FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover called the "crime
of the century" - helping the Soviet Union get their hands on
blueprints for the atomic bomb in World War II. The Rosenbergs went
to their deaths, the only Americans ever executed for spying, insisting
they were innocent.
The new twist in the long-argued
story of treachery comes from Alexander Feklisov, 83, a retired KGB
officer who has stepped forward with a detailed account of the Rosenbergs'
role. Feklisov said he held clandestine meetings with Julius Rosenberg
in New York from 1943 to 1946 and claims to be the only Soviet intelligence
officer alive with first-hand knowledge of the Rosenberg case.
He told The Washington Post
and The New York Times that Rosenberg passed valuable secrets
about U.S. military electronics but played only a peripheral role
in Soviet atomic espionage. And he said Ethel Rosenberg did not actively
spy but probably was aware that her husband was involved.
He said neither he nor any other
Soviet intelligence agent met Ethel Rosenberg. "She had nothing
to do with this. She was completely innocent," Feklisov said
in an interview with The New York Times in Moscow. The retired
KGB officer also told his story to The Washington Post.
The Rosenbergs were convicted of
spying and conspiracy mainly on the testimony of Ethel Rosenberg's
brother, David Greenglass, and his wife, Ruth, who were arrested for
conspiracy and confessed. Greenglass named Julius Rosenberg as his
recruiter and also implicated Rosenberg's wife.
Feklisov said Julius Rosenberg recommended
David Greenglass to him as a possible recruit in 1944. Greenglass
worked as a mechanic at Los Alamos, N.M., where the first atomic bombs
were assembled. Feklisov insists that Greenglass provided little of
use to Moscow, which had other valuable spies at Los Alamos.
Feklisov says the principal contributions
by Rosenberg were secrets about U.S. military electronics. He cited
Rosenberg's passing of a fully functioning proximity fuse, a secret
World War II U.S. innovation that enables an anti-aircraft missile
to bring down its target without hitting it. Rosenberg assembled a
duplicate proximity fuse from discarded spare parts and smuggled it
out of the Emerson Radio Factory in New York City in December 1944.
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