Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case
Contents:
- Rosenberg Case Overview?
- See a Problem?.
- You are here.
- Final Verdict.
- Rosenberg Trial, Case Overview?
- Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case by Walter Schneir.
Supreme Court nine times, but the Court refused to review the record. Neither President Truman nor President Eisenhower granted their requests for clemency.
Gold testified that he was a spy courier transmitting information from atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs to the Soviet Union, but that on this one occasion he received information from Greenglass. The Rosenbergs testified in their own defense at their trial and denied all charges.
They invoked their Fifth Amendment rights and refused to answer repeated prosecution questions about their political affiliations. During the McCarthy period, many felt that such a refusal to answer was an admission of Communist Party membership and that all Communists were spies for the Soviet Union. Following the three week trial, both Rosenbergs were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage, as was their co-defendant Morton Sobell. Sobell received a year sentence while the Rosenbergs were given the death penalty.
Judge Kaufman justified the death sentence as follows: I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding fifty thousand and who knows how many millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.
Another significant development in the Rosenberg Case came in , when the transcripts of the testimony of 43 of the 46 witnesses who appeared before the grand jury that indicted the Rosenbergs, were released to the public.
In this section
This material included the testimony of Ruth Greenglass, who was deceased at that point, but not that of David Greenglass, who was still alive. Before the grand jury, neither Greenglass mentioned:. The KGB files indicate Julius engaged in no further espionage activities in Thus, the supposed espionage meeting between the Rosenbergs and David Greenglass, which the Greenglasses testified took place in September , would not have occurred.
Maryka rated it it was amazing Aug 05, Kevin rated it really liked it Feb 27, To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. I knew nothing about the Rosenberg Case going into the book, but I felt the author laid out the case, the decades of subsequent research, and his ultimate conclusion quite well. However for me it was a necessary read and did put some closure on the case. Adele rated it really liked it Aug 13,
Thirty years after the publication of Inquest , Walter Schneir was back on the case after bits and pieces of new evidence started coming to light, much of it connecting Julius Rosenberg to Soviet espionage. Over more than a decade, Schneir continued his search for the truth, meeting with former intelligence officials in Moscow and Prague, and cross checking details recorded in thousands of government documents.
Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Rosenberg Case
The result is an entirely new narrative of the Rosenberg case. The reality, Schneir demonstrates, is that Rosenbergs ended up hopelessly trapped: As it happened, Julius Rosenberg was only marginally involved in the atomic spy ring he was depicted as leading—while Ethel, critically, was not at all involved. The two lied when the contended they knew nothing about espionage. A Long Journey by Miriam Schneir. A Mysterious Date December 27 Afterword by Miriam Schneir.
He is the co-author, with his wife Miriam Schneir, of Invitation to an Inquest , long considered the definitive book on the Rosenberg case. The Chicago Riots and editor of the collection Westmoreland v.