Trial Without End : The Rosenbergs
As teenagers, Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Greenglass personified 1930s New York City. She was a gifted student and aspiring singer; he was a budding electrical engineer. Both were children of Jewish immigrants. But shortly after their promising paths crossed, they began a journey that would end prematurely in international notoriety.
In the 1940s, appalled by Hitler's atrocities in Europe, the Rosenbergs joined thousands of other Americans in becoming active members of the Communist Party. By now married, they led otherwise ordinary Lower East Side lives. Julius, after a stint in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, opened a machine shop; Ethel kept house and cared for their two young sons.
But it was the cusp of McCarthyism, and nothing was as it seemed. A war in Korea was likely, the Soviets had built an atomic bomb, and details of the Manhattan Project had been leaked. J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was determined to uncover an American spy ring. The feds were eventually led to Ethel's brother, David Greenglass, who had worked on the Manhattan Project before joining the family machine shop. Greenglass, in turn, fingered Julius and Ethel, who adamantly proclaimed their innocence.
Devastating. Greenglass's dramatic story unfolded in March 1951 in what even then was being called "The Trial of the Century." He said Julius persuaded him to share details of his work at Los Alamos National Laboratory with an informant, who then delivered the information to Julius. Ethel typed up the messages, her brother said, and Julius passed them to the Soviets. The prosecution was devastating, and it had no match in the defense--which was presented by a sole practitioner who was clearly overwhelmed by the case. (In a move that dumbfounded the court, he asked the press to leave while Greenglass detailed the information he had shared with Julius, giving the impression his story was incontrovertibly true.) In less than a month, the jury delivered a verdict of guilty. And in a move that stunned even Hoover, Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced the couple to death.
The Rosenbergs never wavered from their denials. And much of the country was in an uproar over the trial's unanswered questions. The Communist Party fueled countless more protests abroad. Still, the verdict stood. On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed, one after the other, in the electric chair at Sing Sing.
The debate has hardly ended with the Rosenbergs' deaths. As recently as 1993, the American Bar Association staged a mock Rosenberg trial, using evidence withheld from the defense at the time. The jury found the pair not guilty. "I think they clearly did not get a fair trial," says Harry Reasoner, a partner at Vinson & Elkins who provided defense. "They were not permitted adequate defense to show the insignificance of the material they were accused of giving to the Russians."
In 1995, however, many of the most ardent Rosenberg supporters were forced to change their minds. The United States declassified key KGB correspondence that clearly connects Julius to a Russian spy ring. Ethel's role remains controversial; David Greenglass, who served 10 years in prison for his role in the affair, recently said he lied about his sister's activity under pressure from prosecutors.
The effort to clear the Rosenbergs will most likely never die. There is more evidence yet to be uncovered. The private papers of Judge Kaufman may be unsealed by the Library of Congress in 2026. And Aaron Katz, the 87-year-old director of the National Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case, recently requested a congressional hearing on the case. After 50 years, he says, "It's not going to be easy."
-Megan Barnett
This story appears in the January 27, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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