BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thursday marked the 50th anniversary of the execution of the Rosenbergs in the electric chair at Sing Sing for allegedly selling atomic secrets to the Soviets. It was the first execution of civilians for espionage in U.S. history, and for a long time where you stood on the Rosenberg defined you as a political and moral being. For many who remember, their guilt or their innocence is perfectly clear. To most of us though, it's still murky. Julius, it is probable, did sell secrets, but not the atomic ones for which he was executed. Ethel, it seems increasingly clear, was used as a pawn to extract a confession and was innocent. WNYC's Sara Fishko takes stock of the myths that have evolved across the decades around the Rosenbergs.

SARA FISHKO: There was never anything simple about the Rosenberg case. The basic facts of the legal proceedings were staggering enough, [NEWSREEL MUSIC UP AND UNDER] but beyond that, there were the reverberations -- everywhere.

ANNOUNCER:One of the greatest peacetime spy dramas in the nation's history reaches its climax as Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobel [sp?], convicted of revealing atomic secrets to the Russians, enter the Federal Building in New York to hear their doom. Another of the spy ring, Mrs. Ethel Rosenberg, who with her husband was convicted of...

SARA FISHKO: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been arrested in the summer of 1950, the Cold War in full swing.

AARON KATZ: After the Rosenbergs were arrested--

SARA FISHKO: Aaron Katz is director of the Committee to Re-Open the Rosenberg Case.

AARON KATZ:--the Congress of the United States passed a law that every member of the Communist Party and all members of a hundred different Communist-front organizations were agents of the Soviet Union.

SARA FISHKO:In an atmosphere of terror of the so-called "Red Menace," the Rosenbergs were proclaimed by judge and jury guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and sentenced to death.

AARON KATZ: Most Americans, maybe 95 percent of the American people, were convinced that the Rosenbergs were guilty, because a hundred percent of the media said that they were guilty and because J. Edgar Hoover said so.

SARA FISHKO:"The Crime of the Century" Hoover had called it. To be fair, there was protest in the leftist press and a movement to free the Rosenbergs, but what protest there was did not deter the court.

GRAMS AARONSON: There was a v--enormous demonstration, vigil, down on Union Square--

SARA FISHKO: Artist Grams Aaronson [sp?] was there in New York on June 19th, 1953.

GRAMS AARONSON: -- and finally word came across that they were executed. And there was a moan throughout the whole audience. I'm sure we couldn't believe that they would execute them.

SARA FISHKO:The death penalty was unexpected. After all, by that time Klaus Fouks [sp?], a German-born later English scientist convicted of passing secrets to the Soviets, had received a prison sentence of 14 years.

ANNOUNCER:Julius and Ethel Rosenberg have gone to the electric chair. First to go into the death chamber [BEEP TONE] was Julius Rosenberg. He entered the death chamber at approximately 2 minutes past 8. And the first jolt of electricity was sent through his body at 8:04 tonight.

SARA FISHKO:As the lives of the Rosenbergs ended on that evening in June, so began 50 years of impassioned debate, media stories and myth-making. Books started to come out almost immediately. First those by Wexley and Schneer [sp?] arguing the Rosenbergs were innocent and had been framed. Then the other side, Nizer and Radosh and Milton [sp?] proclaiming Julius Rosenberg guilty as charged, Schneer and Radosh finally winding up in public debate.

MR. SCHNEER: The entire case rested on stories that were by their nature irrefutable. This Rosenberg/Sobel case that I have described has largely crumbled.

MR. RADOSH: By cynically exploiting the fact that McCarthyism existed and having people pursue the Rosenberg case, as if Julius Rosenberg was just another innocent victim of McCarthyism, the Communists clearly...

SARA FISHKO:As I said, not simple; not at any time. [CROWD CHANTING "FREE THEM"] On the more personal side of things, E. L. Doctorow's fictionalized Book of Daniel appeared in 1971. It was later made into a movie. [CLIP FROM MOVIE BASED ON BOOK OF DANIEL]

MAN: All the world looks on in horror at this blatant...

SARA FISHKO: In that story, the Rosenbergs became the Isaacsons, a family much-maligned by a vindictive, hysterical establishment seen through the eyes of their children. [CLIP FROM MOVIE BASED ON BOOK OF DANIEL]

MAN: I thought you said the evidence was phony!

MAN: That's right! Those guys had to bring in a conviction. That was their job! In this country people don't get picked out of a hat to be put on trial for their lives. Your parents were up to something! They had to be.

SARA FISHKO:Truth and fiction kept twisting and turning. For a while the case seemed to settle into history. Then a retired KGB agent surfaced with information about his encounters with Julius Rosenberg, affectionately admitting they had friendly dealings in low-level espionage. By that time, the Rosenberg case had indeed become the stuff of history books, doctoral theses and educational films. [EDUCATIONAL FILM MUSIC]

NARRATOR: The Rosenbergs were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage, and...

SARA FISHKO: Including the Discovery Channel film and teacher's guide for schoolchildren.

NARRATOR: Do you think that sentence was just?

SARA FISHKO: The Rosenberg File: Case Closed, they called it.

NARRATOR: ...defend your position using evidence from the documentary.

SARA FISHKO:Case Closed? Not in the minds of the public. Never closed. Just a little further away. And what has even greater distance from this 50 year old trial brought? Greater mythologizing. What was a serious field of obsessive study now enters the popular culture as a satire of a serious field of obsessive study. [CLIP FROM YOU'VE GOT MAIL]

WOMAN: Joe, this man is the greatest living expert on Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

SARA FISHKO: Cocktail party chatter among New York intellectuals in the film You've Got Mail. [CLIP FROM YOU'VE GOT MAIL]

WOMAN: You know what always fascinated me about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is how old they looked when they were really just-- our age! [LAUGHS]

SARA FISHKO:Robert Meeropol, one of the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who was 6 years old when they were put to death has just written his own book about growing up in the swirl of the Rosenbergs' myth and reality. An Execution in the Family, it's called. The odd position his parents occupy is not lost on him. They keep cropping up.

ROBERT MEEROPOL: I must say my favorite is the X-Files version in which it turns out that Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were killed because they were aliens, not because they were Communists. You know, from another planet.

MAN: [WHISPERING] Because they had to do something to cover up what they'd done to him -- label him a Communist - say he killed himself and put him up someplace...

SARA FISHKO:If only it were true. But it is on our planet that the last 50 years have chewed up, swallowed, exalted, vilified and martyred the Rosenbergs.

WOMAN: Ethel and Julius had a choice to make.

SARA FISHKO: This past week, to mark the occasion of the 50th anniversary of their execution, some New York thinkers, activists, artists and audiences have attended daily events of remembrance.

WOMAN: ...that the Rosenbergs held dear.

SARA FISHKO: Trying to sort out what has become a more nuanced position on their guilt or innocence, Robert Meeropol.

ROBERT MEEROPOL: There's overwhelming evidence that my mother was never a spy for anyone. But the evidence about my father, Julius Rosenberg, is much grayer. It is possible that he was involved in non-atomic, military-industrial espionage during World War II.

SARA FISHKO:So the Rosenberg case is still open to new facts, new analysis and interpretation and new myths about loyalty, dissidence, fear, crime and punishment that may 50 years later speak to us more directly than ever. For On the Media, I'm Sara Fishko.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Coming up, Radio that seeks to overthrow. This is On the Media from NPR.