quest of Julius Rosenberg, brother-in-law, to pass on to the Soviet Union.
Greenglass was one of several star witnesses for the FBI who said they were disillusioned with Also against the Rosenbergs was professional witch-hunt trial witness, Elizabeth Bentley, notorious for helping convict numerous Communist Party supporters 1940s and 1950s.
The Rosenbergs were sentenced to death and electrocuted in 1953, despite worldwide protests demanding clemency. Sobell got a 30 year jail term released until he had served over 18 years.
Pretext The case really had nothing to do with 'atom spies'. This was the pretext the government used in order to launch a massive campaign to terrorize members of the Communist Party and others in the workers' movement. The trial also played an important role in trying to justify US aggression in the Korean War, which had just begun, and at the same helping witch-hunt radicals in the labour movement.
The prosecution knew well the Rosenbergs stolen the atom bomb 'secret'. Prominent atomic physicists have since discredited the lens mould sketch and the notion this could have led to the Soviet developing the bomb.
But the atom spy charge was important to Washington. needed to portray the Union as the real threat to peace in the This smokescreen to cover the fact that it was Washington that dropped the bomb in 1945 and planned to do so again as part of its counterrevolutionary war drive against the spread of socialist revolution.
This government.
'confess' and name other the FBI testifying refusal to do so, and was not time, full had not trying to break them. Appealing Soviet was of anti-semitism munism, not capitalism. labour, racist policies of the US Washington had high hopes that the Rosenbergs would finally 'Spies' out persecute. As the couple became the heroes for their the US secret to police stepped up the pressure, Their President Dwight Eisenhower refused to stop the executions.
One plot conceived by the CIA called for appealing to the Rosenbergs as Jews and trying to convince the couple that the root Play in comCIA director Allen Dulles distributed a memo on this plan in the Rosenbergs would be offered a chance to live if they agreed to 'appeal to all Jews in all countries to get out of the commuist movement and seek to destroy it... The Communist Parties throughout world have built up Rosenbergs as heroes and martyrs "American anti-semitism".
recantation would backfiring of this entire Soviet propaganda effort.
Hangmen The Rosenbergs were about to give that pleasure to the anti-semitic hangmen in the CIA and the White House. It 18 a tribute to their role throughout the case that they spurned all forms of blackmail psychological torture inflicted on to be tools to implicate innocent people to confess never did and help fan the flames of hysteria and help the growing witch hunt,' Julius the months before his death.
the end. entail Barbarity The barbarity murders is only the most heinous aspect of the crimes committed against the Rosenbergs. The entire case was used to carry out a sweeping assault on rights and set a those accused of being 'spies' or 'subversives' tional rights before the law:
prisoned for over from the time of their arrest, and never given bail.
• Codefendant Sobell was kidnapped by agents of the FBI in Mexico, dragged to the border, and arrested there.
the capitalist press, with the help of lurid FBI press releases, before they even came to trial.
the jury, as were several potential jurors who said they opposed the death penalty.
• The FBI former in Julius's section of prison and later had the informer infiltrate the defense team.
not the death penalty evidence that proved about the crime they supposedly had conspired to commit. They were convicted 'classified never lend ourselves crimes we • declared six Supreme They maintained this stand to ing of of their connived democratic precedent that Eisenhower, have no constitu• The Rosenbergs were imthree years Morton there • All three were lynched in movement.
• Jews were excluded from erect placed an inRosenbergs' • The Rosenbergs received based on nothing in on evidence' that and thus unavailable to the defendants on appeal.
• All the defendants' appeals were denied, right up to the US Court and the White House, despite the steady surfaccontradictions in the government's case as the executions drew near.
• FBI files recently released documents that Judge Kaufman with the prosecution and the Justice Department on how to conduct the trial and what sentence to lupuse.
Herbert Brownell, and other top government officials held secret meetings to decide how to handle flatly refused to stop the execu declaring that the couple This was a legal lynching if devastating blow to the workers? ever • In June 1982 Cuba became the first country in the world to monument the Rosenbergs. Designed by sculptor José Delarra, the monument is inscribed with words taken from the 'For peace bread, and roses, we go to meet our executioner.
Socialist Action 18 November 1983