BOOK REPORT: FINAL VERDICT: WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE ROSENBERG CASE BY WALTER AND MIRIAM SCHNEIR

 

I read Final Verdict, to better understand a trial story that for some reason always sat in my brain pan. The fate of the Rosenbergs always brought back memories that I could not possibly have had, since I’d been born a couple of months later in 1953 after the American couple had been tried and executed for treason. I guess it’s because they were of my parent’s generation and they reminded me of them—their clothes, they had the same colouring; all the photographs taken of them were in black and white, something that gives a sense of history and place to a photographic image no matter when or where it was taken. (By the way, notice how people dressed back then! It wasn’t that long ago, and everybody wore suits and ties and their Sunday best—even when being arrested or marching in a protest!)

Of course, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are the famous couple executed by electric chair in New York State, having been found guilty of espionage and sending classified information, in 1945, to the Russians about atomic bomb research in Los Alamos, New Mexico (the site of the first atomic bomb test in 1944).

There’s much to unpack about that era in American (and world) history. It was the beginning of the cold war with Russia and the “Red Menace” scare. Senator Joseph McCarthy was just beginning his infamous communist witch-hunts and show trials. Fears of atomic bombs being dropped on American and western-nation cities were palpable and much in everyone’s mind at the time. It was in this heated time of doubt and suspicion that the Rosenbergs were arrested and tried. The full weight of American jurisprudence, along with the FBI and the nascent intelligence community, served to try and convict the couple in a trial lasting less than two weeks. It was interesting to learn that Roy Cohn was the Prosecutor in the case. He’s infamous in his later role of Chief counsel to the investigations subcommittee during Senator Joseph McCarthy’s tenure as Chairman of the Senate government Operations Committee. I guess he earned his 'street creds’ trying the Rosenbergs, and moved up the slimy pole of success.

 

Walter and Miriam Schneir believed in the Rosenberg’s innocence and in 1965 wrote a best-seller detailing the known evidence against them, coming to the conclusion that they were innocent of the charges. Decades later, after two or three additional troves of documents were released by both the FBI and Russia’s KGB, along with additional interviews, their conclusions changed: Julius was guilty of sending wartime secrets concerning certain weapons being manufactured by America, but was only tangentially connected with the 1945 transmission of atomic bomb secrets to the Russians. His wife, Ethel, was even further removed from the plot. It’s a complicated case and a complicated read, to be honest, and rather dry. But Schneir doggedly pursued the story for years, even if in the end his conclusion about the innocence of Julius was challenged. And the role played by co-conspirators is examined in a new light with the release of the new evidence. Their testimony sealed the Rosenberg’s fate and communication logs, released by the KGB in the early ‘90s during Perestroika, when Russia and the United States had a more relaxed relationship, show that they were more involved than their testimony suggested. It looks like they saved themselves by throwing Julius and Ethel under the bus. One of the co-conspirators was Julius’ brother-in-law. Go figure.

New York rally in support of Rosenbergs

The book is ‘inside baseball’ for history buffs and journalism wonks and, as I’ve said, it is a bit dry to read. But what I come away with is that the Rosenbergs were indeed part of a Communist conspiracy to steal secrets from America. Julius certainly had contacts with Russian intelligence. He seems to have operated a “spy cell” for a number of years, passing along low-grade industrial secrets to the Russians. They were also members of the Communist Party of America (but so were many people at the time).

But I am challenged by what the Schneirs present. The book makes me ask: Should the secrets of the atom bomb have been kept from the world? Should America have continued atom bomb development after WWII? Did America’s sole possession of the weapon’s secrets (at least until 1947 when the USSR conducted its first atomic test) lead American political leaders to favour a more aggressive foreign policy approach towards the Soviet Union? Would there have been such intense rivalry between the two nations if a freeze on production of atomic weapons had occurred following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

And lastly, of course, did the Rosenbergs deserve the death penalty for their crimes? In a less heated political climate, I think Julius would have served a significant number of years in a federal penitentiary, while Ethel would probably have been found not guilty. And of the atomic bomb “secrets” themselves, documents and drawings passed on to the Russians, the playwright Arthur Miller commented they were, “naïve caricatures of scientific diagrams with little or no value…the execution of the Rosenbergs seems more meaningless than ever.” Rallies for the Rosenbergs, such as the one in New York City, occurred throughout the trial and sentencing of the couple, and against the death penalty.

 

The "cartoon" diagram of the Atom Bomb

And atomic scientists at the time agreed the so-called secrets the couple passed along would be of little aid in the actual construction of an atomic bomb. It should be noted that during the trial, information was held back by the FBI that would have shone a more favourable light on the Rosenberg’s participation in the plot. Their trial, with its paucity of evidence and loose attention to legalities, as well as overwhelming public scrutiny and hysteria surrounding anything “atomic”, was by all accounts a travesty of justice. I don’t think they were innocent, but I also don’t think they were guilty as charged, nor do I think their actions deserved the death penalty.

Thus, there are secrets, and secrets within secrets; opacity instead of transparency, and possession instead of sharing. The Rosenbergs believe—hopelessly, idealistically, with the naïve optimism of their generation--in a socialistic world; they held Russia as its exemplar. It was not to be, of course. They died for their convictions and because of their faith that a better world could somehow be made. Today, nine countries possess nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to launch them. How many are on “hair-triggers” or have a “dead-hand switch”? Will the United States and Russia begin again the insanity of another arms race? It is too soon to tell.

I’ll close with a couple of quotes by the book’s authors on the functioning of courts in a time of social unrest and political conflict. Their thoughts on a trial some seventy years in the past are disturbingly relevant for today:

 

“How can an investigation of a case have any semblance of a case have any semblance of fairness or be conducted within the bounds of due process when those charged with the investigation are convinced that they already know the truth beyond any possibility of doubt? The problems posed for law and justice are not small. For secret evidence is a faceless accuser. It is unimpeachable. Its validity cannot be disputed, its contents scrutinized, its allegations subjected to cross-examination. It exempts itself from public criticism and perhaps from ridicule. It arrogantly demands belief, but evades the responsibility of proof. It makes a mockery of trials.” (164, Walter Schneir)

 

“In the aftermath of 9/11, a season of fear settled in once again, bringing with it an erosion of constitutional liberties, infringements of due-process rights, and increased government surveillance. Yet with an administration committed to ending such abuses now in place*, the moment may have come for a reconsideration of the trial and executions of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. To acknowledge the injustices committed in this historic cause célebrè would be a meaningful step toward declaring to the world America’s determination to uphold the rule of law.

In his 1978 novel The book of Laughter and Forgetting, Czech author Milan Kundera described the loss of liberties that followed the takeover of his country by a repressive communist regime. He showed that despite the existence of a constitution that guaranteed freedom of speech, the courts operated as an arm of the government to stifle dissent. Defiantly, Kundera memorialized in his book the names of some of the men and women who were falsely charged with crimes against the state, convicted in sham trials, and hanged. Those in power had hoped by murdering them to erase their names from history; indeed, had hoped to wipe out history itself. But that they could not do. For as Kundera explained, ‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ ” (“Afterword”, 179-80, Miriam Schneir.)

 

Cheers, Jake

 

 

*Miriam Schneir is 87 years old living in New York City, still writing and editing. I wonder if she is satisfied with how the Obama administration handled “infringements of due-process”, “increased government surveillance”, the “erosion of constitutional liberties” and other governmental abuses? Would she give his administration a passing grade? I wonder. (She would need to factor in his failure to close Guantanamo Bay, his use and expansion of the Patriot Act, drone warfare, his “whistle-blower” prosecutions, and so on.)  

 

 

 

 

Walter Schneir, Final Verdict: What Really Happened in the Roseberg Case, Melville Publishing House,  Brooklyn, New York, 2010.