The Rosenbergs a Half Century Later
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)
Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Recently, a new page was added to an old chapter in America’s ongoing campaign against spies, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in the electric chair at Sing-Sing in 1953 for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
Thursday before last, 91-year-old Morton Sobell, who was convicted with the Rosenbergs and spent 18 years in Alcatraz and other prisons confirmed, after 57 years of declaring innocence, that he and Julius did pass military and industrial secrets – not atomic ones - to the Russians. He also said that Ethel was almost certainly framed. Her execution hinged on the charge that she typed up those secrets, but according to grand jury testimony recently released, there’s no evidence to support that claim.
Sobell told The New York Times that Ethel Rosenberg was aware of the espionage but didn't actively participate. What was she guilty of? Of being Julius’ wife, he said.
BOB GARFIELD:
The Rosenbergs’ sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol, conceded that their father must have been guilty, since Sobell would know. But they also insist that the death penalty, imposed largely because their parents were helping Russia build a bomb, was excessive, and they believe their mother was condemned to death on the basis of nothing. The evidence continues to dribble in, and the uneasy feeling that America betrayed itself when trying its betrayers resonates even more strongly today.
In 2003, on the 50th anniversary of the Rosenbergs’ execution, WNYC’s Sara Fishko took stock of the myths surrounding the couple and their case. We thought it was worth replaying.
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.
[CLIP]:
ANNOUNCER:
One of the greatest peacetime spy dramas in the nation’s history reaches its climax as Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell, 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 -
[END CLIP]
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 Reopen 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 100 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 100 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 an enormous demonstration vigil down on Union Square.
SARA FISHKO:
Artist Grams Aaronson 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, Claus Fuchs, a German-born, later English scientist convicted of passing secrets to the Soviets had received a prison sentence of 14 years.
[CLIP]:
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 two minutes past eight. And the first jolt of electricity was sent through his body at 8:04 tonight.
[END CLIP]
SARA FISHKO:
As the lives of the Rosenbergs ended on that evening in June, so began 50 years of impassioned debate, media stories and mythmaking. Books started to come out almost immediately, first those by Wexley and Schneer, arguing the Rosenbergs were innocent and had been framed, then the other side, Nizer and Radosh and Milton, proclaiming Julius Rosenberg guilty as charged, Schneer and Radosh finally winding up in public debate.
[CLIP]:
MR. SCHNEER:
The entire case rested on stories that were, by their nature, irrefutable. This Rosenberg/Sobell 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 -
[END CLIP]
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]:
MAN:
All the world looks on with horror at this blatant –
[CLIP CONTINUES UNDERNEATH]
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]:
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.
[END CLIP]
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.
[CLIP]:
[FILM SOUNDTRACK]
NARRATOR:
The Rosenbergs were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage.
[SOUNDTRACK UP AND UNDER]
SARA FISHKO:
Including the Discovery Channel film and teacher’s guide for schoolchildren.
[CLIP]:
NARRATOR:
Do you think that sentence was just?
[END CLIP]
SARA FISHKO:
The Rosenberg File: Case Closed, they called it.
[CLIP]:
[FILM SOUNDTRACK]
NARRATOR:
You get to defend your position using evidence from the documentary.
[END CLIP]
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.
[END CLIP]
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]
[END CLIP]
SARA FISHKO:
Robert Meeropol, one of the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who was six 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.
[CLIP FROM THE X-FILES]:
DAVID DUCHOVNY AS FOX MULDER:
[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 -
[END CLIP]
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:
- the goals 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:
Sara Fishko’s piece first aired on the program in 2003.
[CLIP]:
ANNOUNCER:
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg will die in the electric chair at Sing-Sing prison tonight. Mr. Eisenhower issued a statement which said in part, “By immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two humans is a grave matter, but even greater is the thought of millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.”
[END CLIP]
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD:
That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Jamie York, Mike Vuolo, Mark Phillips and Nazanin Rafsanjani and edited – by Brooke. We had technical direction from Jennifer Munson and more engineering help from Zach Marsh. We had production help from Michael Bernstein. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts at Onthemedia.org. You can also post comments there or email us at Onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield.
Recently, a new page was added to an old chapter in America’s ongoing campaign against spies, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed in the electric chair at Sing-Sing in 1953 for selling atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.
Thursday before last, 91-year-old Morton Sobell, who was convicted with the Rosenbergs and spent 18 years in Alcatraz and other prisons confirmed, after 57 years of declaring innocence, that he and Julius did pass military and industrial secrets – not atomic ones - to the Russians. He also said that Ethel was almost certainly framed. Her execution hinged on the charge that she typed up those secrets, but according to grand jury testimony recently released, there’s no evidence to support that claim.
Sobell told The New York Times that Ethel Rosenberg was aware of the espionage but didn't actively participate. What was she guilty of? Of being Julius’ wife, he said.
BOB GARFIELD:
The Rosenbergs’ sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol, conceded that their father must have been guilty, since Sobell would know. But they also insist that the death penalty, imposed largely because their parents were helping Russia build a bomb, was excessive, and they believe their mother was condemned to death on the basis of nothing. The evidence continues to dribble in, and the uneasy feeling that America betrayed itself when trying its betrayers resonates even more strongly today.
In 2003, on the 50th anniversary of the Rosenbergs’ execution, WNYC’s Sara Fishko took stock of the myths surrounding the couple and their case. We thought it was worth replaying.
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.
[CLIP]:
ANNOUNCER:
One of the greatest peacetime spy dramas in the nation’s history reaches its climax as Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell, 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 -
[END CLIP]
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 Reopen 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 100 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 100 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 an enormous demonstration vigil down on Union Square.
SARA FISHKO:
Artist Grams Aaronson 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, Claus Fuchs, a German-born, later English scientist convicted of passing secrets to the Soviets had received a prison sentence of 14 years.
[CLIP]:
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 two minutes past eight. And the first jolt of electricity was sent through his body at 8:04 tonight.
[END CLIP]
SARA FISHKO:
As the lives of the Rosenbergs ended on that evening in June, so began 50 years of impassioned debate, media stories and mythmaking. Books started to come out almost immediately, first those by Wexley and Schneer, arguing the Rosenbergs were innocent and had been framed, then the other side, Nizer and Radosh and Milton, proclaiming Julius Rosenberg guilty as charged, Schneer and Radosh finally winding up in public debate.
[CLIP]:
MR. SCHNEER:
The entire case rested on stories that were, by their nature, irrefutable. This Rosenberg/Sobell 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 -
[END CLIP]
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]:
MAN:
All the world looks on with horror at this blatant –
[CLIP CONTINUES UNDERNEATH]
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]:
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.
[END CLIP]
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.
[CLIP]:
[FILM SOUNDTRACK]
NARRATOR:
The Rosenbergs were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage.
[SOUNDTRACK UP AND UNDER]
SARA FISHKO:
Including the Discovery Channel film and teacher’s guide for schoolchildren.
[CLIP]:
NARRATOR:
Do you think that sentence was just?
[END CLIP]
SARA FISHKO:
The Rosenberg File: Case Closed, they called it.
[CLIP]:
[FILM SOUNDTRACK]
NARRATOR:
You get to defend your position using evidence from the documentary.
[END CLIP]
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.
[END CLIP]
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]
[END CLIP]
SARA FISHKO:
Robert Meeropol, one of the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who was six 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.
[CLIP FROM THE X-FILES]:
DAVID DUCHOVNY AS FOX MULDER:
[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 -
[END CLIP]
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:
- the goals 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:
Sara Fishko’s piece first aired on the program in 2003.
[CLIP]:
ANNOUNCER:
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg will die in the electric chair at Sing-Sing prison tonight. Mr. Eisenhower issued a statement which said in part, “By immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two humans is a grave matter, but even greater is the thought of millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.”
[END CLIP]
[MUSIC UP AND UNDER]
BOB GARFIELD:
That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Megan Ryan, Jamie York, Mike Vuolo, Mark Phillips and Nazanin Rafsanjani and edited – by Brooke. We had technical direction from Jennifer Munson and more engineering help from Zach Marsh. We had production help from Michael Bernstein. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl.
BROOKE GLADSTONE:
Katya Rogers is our senior producer and John Keefe our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. You can listen to the program and find free transcripts at Onthemedia.org. You can also post comments there or email us at Onthemedia@wnyc.org. This is On the Media from WNYC. I'm Brooke Gladstone.
BOB GARFIELD:
And I'm Bob Garfield.
Produced by WNYC Studios