The Rosenberg Case

...So far, in this phase of the cold war at home, as in the cold war abroad, our public agencies show the prejudicial effects of having to act as judges in their own case...

...Delayed stimulated total recall seems a less simple and likely explanation of Gold's testimony, and the evidence relating to it...

...Reviewed by Malcolm P. Sharp 'HPhe principal prosecution witnesses against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were her brother David Greenglass, Mrs...

...and it was perfected over some seven months in prison...

...Wexley's argument, which would have relieved me of the necessity of publishing, very carefully...

...The competing theory called attention to the weakness of the evidence relied on to establish any plot at all...

...I found I was not convinced, and expressed my doubts with much respect for Mr...

...The one practically unfortunate aspect of this book is that it continues a tendency to be preoccupied with the Rosenbergs and to subordinate the case of Mcrton Sobell, still serving a thirty-year sentence...

...Material made public soon after the publication of my essay, together with material newly made available to Walter and Miriam Schneir, indicate convincingly that Gold was in the process of inventing the whole story of the plot when he was first under interrogation, at a time after the Greenglasses had come under FBI observation...

...The theory now seems better substantiated than the theory of the defense...

...For the first time a critical book on the case has been published by a substantial commercial publisher...

...It was already known, on Wexley's account, for example, that Gold was capable of this sort of invention...

...This theory, while accepting provisionally at least the existence of a plot including Gold, the Greenglasses, and Yakovlev, called attention to the defects of the evidence relied on to connect the Rosenbergs with the plot...

...The arrests took place a few months after Senator Joseph R. McCarthy got his start, in February, 1950, by charging the presence of a significant number of Communists in the State Department...

...There are, however, so many additional weaknesses in the case against Mr...

...Greenglass, and Harry Gold...

...Roy Cohn was second among the prosecuting lawyers at the trial, on his way from an original association with the Bronx Democratic organization to his association with the Senator...

...In view of the new evidence which came to light shortly before the execution, there can be no doubt that Gold and the Green-glasses did not in fact testify honestly at all points, whatever the precise significance of their plain misstatements may be...

...The weakness of the case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is weakness in the case against Morton Sobell...

...Harry Gold did not claim to know the Rosenbergs or—in the end—anything about them...

...This book confirms my own views about the innocence of the defendants and the insufficiency of the evidence to sustain their conviction or justify their execution...

...Each theory supplements and supports the other in raising objections to the convictions and the executions...

...John Wexley (with William Reuben) has been the principal proponent of this view, and he published a formidable argument for it in 1955, in his book, The Judgment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, about the time my own book on the subject [Was Justice Done?], written in 1953-54, had finally found a publisher willing to take it...

...I considered Mr...

...Walter and Miriam Schneir, experienced and responsible journalists, have written what is now the definitive book on the case, Invitation to an Inquest...

...The Rosenberg trial took place in the first year of the Korean War...

...The Greenglass story begins haltingly under stimulus from the FBI, which already had Gold...

...It has convinced me, at the same time, that the theory used by the defense is less probably true than an alternative theory which some friends of the defense urged the defense to adopt in the later stages of the case...

...They had an opportunity to cooperate in planning their testimony...

...Moreover, the authors by careful research have confirmed an opinion that Wexley reached without the facilities for research which were apparently assured by the authors' association with a publisher of "respectable standing...

...The execution took place about a year before the beginning of Senator McCarthy's decline...

...The defense theory was that the leading scientist, Klaus Fuchs, and Gold, who testified that he worked with Fuchs, under direction from Yak-ovlev, and Yakovlev himself, may well have played the part in the story which Gold attributed to them, and that the Greenglasses may also have played approximately the part in the story which Gold attributed to them...

...Greenglass escaped prosecution...

...The choice between them depends on an appraisal of evidence about which persons favorable to the defense may reasonably differ...

...Even Mr...

...The authors do not do justice to Emanuel Bloch, the principal defense attorney, in failing to recognize the obstacles he faced, with limited resources, isolated even by a good many somewhat like-minded lawyers...

...David was sentenced to fifteen years (and served ten...

...The Greenglasses confirmed Gold's account of their contribution and in addition implicated the Rosenbergs as instigators and go-betweens...

...Sobell that it is to be hoped the public and the authorities will find it possible to give that case appropriate attention on its own account...

...He confessed to participation in the steps toward espionage which were charged against all five, particularly to getting from the Green-glasses and giving to Anatol Yakovlev, gone since to Russia, information about the detonating devices used in the first two atomic bombs, devices on which Greenglass worked as a machinist at Los Alamos...

...and Mrs...

...Bloch and Mr...

...Wexley was not able, in my opinion, to sustain the position which is now vindicated...

...All the principal witnesses were subject to the familiar temptations of the accomplice in turning state's witness...

...Schneir show how the temper of the times combined with the variegated and bizarre characteristics of the witnesses to contribute to our mistrust of the proceedings...

...The times and his own training and experience prepared for the trial judge's statement, on sentencing, that the defendants "caused" the Korean War...

...During much of the time Gold was in the same prison with Greenglass and apparently at times in the same "singing quarters...

...That further evidence, in convincing form, appears in Invitation to an Inquest, particularly in Chapters 27, 29, and 31...

...and Mrs...

...The senior prosecuting lawyer was Irving Saypol, who by reputation and performance may well have been Mr...

...His bizarre and imaginative character seems to have combined with the strong and dominating character of Ruth Greenglass to drill David Greenglass in a fabrication designed to save David and Ruth from threats, or supposed threats to David, made plausible partly by the temper of the times...

...Cohn's principal mentor...

...Schneir devote a large part of their volume to recreating, as far as it can be done, the temper of the times...

...This is the opinion that the government found it necessary to rely on a fabricated registration card, falsely indicating Gold's presence at the Albuquerque Hilton, to show his presence in Albuquerque on the Sunday when, according to his and the Greenglasses' testimony, Greenglass there gave Gold material describing Greenglass's observations at Los Alamos...

...In that review I indicated, I hope, a receptive attitude toward further evidence on the subject...

...Wexley, but firmly, in a review later published as an appendix to my book...

...Wexley have both contributed, with Walter and Miriam Schneir, in ways beyond adequate praise, to our understanding of a critical case...

...the Rosenbergs—denying the Greenglasses' story to the end—were executed...