Potus Geeks Summer Reruns: Eisenhower and the Rosebergs
[Originally Posted on February 11,2011]
On February 11, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused to grant clemency to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were a couple who were arrested and tried for spying on behalf the Soviet Union.
In January of 1950, the FBI agents discovered that Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee theoretical physicist working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, had given key documents to the Soviets throughout the war. Fuchs identified his courier as Harry Gold, who was arrested on May 23, 1950. Gold identified Sergeant David Greenglass, a former machinist at Los Alamos, as an additional source. In turn, Greenglass confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR through Gold.
Greenglass was the brother of Ethel Rosenberg. He implicated his brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg as the source of his information. At first he denied that she was involved his his illegal activities, he later claimed that she knew of her husband's dealings and that she had typed some documents for Greenglass. He claimed that Julius had convinced his wife Ruth Greenglass to recruit David while on a visit to him in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1944. He said Julius had passed secrets and thus linked him and Ethel to the Soviet contact agent Anatoli Yakovlev.
The trial of the Rosenbergs began on March 6, 1951. The judge was Irving Kaufman and the attorney for the Rosenbergs was Emanuel Hirsch Bloch.The prosecution's primary witness, David Greenglass, testified that his sister typed notes containing U.S. nuclear secrets in the Rosenberg apartment in September 1945. He also testified that he turned over to Julius Rosenberg a sketch of the cross-section of an implosion-type atom bomb (the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device as used in the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima). The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was relevant to the Soviet atomic bomb project and some suggest Ethel was indicted along with Julius so that the prosecution could use her to pressure Julius into giving up the names of others who were involved. However, neither Julius nor Ethel Rosenberg named anyone else and during testimony each asserted their right under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment to not incriminate themselves whenever asked about involvement in the Communist Party or with its members.
The Rosenbergs were convicted of spying on March 29, 1951, and on April 5 they were sentenced to death by Judge Irving Kaufman. The conviction helped to fuel Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations into anti-American activities by U.S. citizens. While their devotion to the Communist cause was well-documented, the Rosenbergs denied the espionage charges even as they faced the electric chair.
After the publication of an investigative series in The National Guardian and the formation of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, some Americans came to believe both Rosenbergs were innocent or received too harsh a punishment, and a grassroots campaign was started to try to stop the couple's execution. Between the trial and the executions there were widespread protests and claims of anti-semitism. The charges of anti-semitism were widely believed abroad, but not among the vast majority in the United States, where the Rosenbergs did not receive any support from mainstream Jewish organizations nor from the American Civil Liberties Union as the case did not raise any civil liberties issues at all.
Many famous people of the time, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein Nobel-Prize-winning physical chemist Harold Urey, Jean Cocteau, Dashiell Hammett, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, protested the position of the American government. In May 1951, Pablo Picasso wrote for the communist French newspaper L’Humanité, "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place." The union International Longshoremen’s Association Local 968, a union containing only African-American members, stopped working for a day in protest. Pope Pius XII appealed to President Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953, and all other appeals were also unsuccessful.
The Rosenbergs were executed at Sing-Sing Prison on June 19, 1953.
On February 11, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused to grant clemency to Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The Rosenbergs were a couple who were arrested and tried for spying on behalf the Soviet Union.
In January of 1950, the FBI agents discovered that Klaus Fuchs, a German refugee theoretical physicist working for the British mission in the Manhattan Project, had given key documents to the Soviets throughout the war. Fuchs identified his courier as Harry Gold, who was arrested on May 23, 1950. Gold identified Sergeant David Greenglass, a former machinist at Los Alamos, as an additional source. In turn, Greenglass confessed to having passed secret information on to the USSR through Gold.
Greenglass was the brother of Ethel Rosenberg. He implicated his brother-in-law Julius Rosenberg as the source of his information. At first he denied that she was involved his his illegal activities, he later claimed that she knew of her husband's dealings and that she had typed some documents for Greenglass. He claimed that Julius had convinced his wife Ruth Greenglass to recruit David while on a visit to him in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1944. He said Julius had passed secrets and thus linked him and Ethel to the Soviet contact agent Anatoli Yakovlev.
The trial of the Rosenbergs began on March 6, 1951. The judge was Irving Kaufman and the attorney for the Rosenbergs was Emanuel Hirsch Bloch.The prosecution's primary witness, David Greenglass, testified that his sister typed notes containing U.S. nuclear secrets in the Rosenberg apartment in September 1945. He also testified that he turned over to Julius Rosenberg a sketch of the cross-section of an implosion-type atom bomb (the "Fat Man" bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, as opposed to a bomb with the "gun method" triggering device as used in the "Little Boy" bomb dropped on Hiroshima). The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was relevant to the Soviet atomic bomb project and some suggest Ethel was indicted along with Julius so that the prosecution could use her to pressure Julius into giving up the names of others who were involved. However, neither Julius nor Ethel Rosenberg named anyone else and during testimony each asserted their right under the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment to not incriminate themselves whenever asked about involvement in the Communist Party or with its members.
The Rosenbergs were convicted of spying on March 29, 1951, and on April 5 they were sentenced to death by Judge Irving Kaufman. The conviction helped to fuel Senator Joseph McCarthy's investigations into anti-American activities by U.S. citizens. While their devotion to the Communist cause was well-documented, the Rosenbergs denied the espionage charges even as they faced the electric chair.
After the publication of an investigative series in The National Guardian and the formation of the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case, some Americans came to believe both Rosenbergs were innocent or received too harsh a punishment, and a grassroots campaign was started to try to stop the couple's execution. Between the trial and the executions there were widespread protests and claims of anti-semitism. The charges of anti-semitism were widely believed abroad, but not among the vast majority in the United States, where the Rosenbergs did not receive any support from mainstream Jewish organizations nor from the American Civil Liberties Union as the case did not raise any civil liberties issues at all.
Many famous people of the time, including Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Einstein Nobel-Prize-winning physical chemist Harold Urey, Jean Cocteau, Dashiell Hammett, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, protested the position of the American government. In May 1951, Pablo Picasso wrote for the communist French newspaper L’Humanité, "The hours count. The minutes count. Do not let this crime against humanity take place." The union International Longshoremen’s Association Local 968, a union containing only African-American members, stopped working for a day in protest. Pope Pius XII appealed to President Eisenhower to spare the couple, but Eisenhower refused on February 11, 1953, and all other appeals were also unsuccessful.
The Rosenbergs were executed at Sing-Sing Prison on June 19, 1953.