Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell: 1951

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Trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and
Morton Sobell: 1951

Defendants: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell
Crime Charged: Conspiracy to commit wartime espionage
Chief Defense Lawyers: Alexander Bloch, Emanuel H. Bloch, Fyke Farmer, John Finerty and Daniel Marshall for the Rosenbergs; Edward Kuntz and Harold Phillips for Sobell
Chief Prosecutors: Roy M. Cohn, John Foley, James Kilsheimer Ill, Myles Lane, and Irving H. Saypol
Judge: Irving R. Kaufman
Place: New York, New York
Dates of Trial: March 6-29, 1951
Verdict: Guilty
Sentences: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: Death by electrocution; Sobell: 30 years imprisonment

SIGNIFICANCE: The Rosenberg case, coming at the height of the anti-Communist hysteria in America, produced the harshest result possible: the deaths of two defendants who, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter put it, "were tried for conspiracy and sentenced for treason."

On September 23, 1949, four years after the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan to end World War II, President Harry S. Truman announced that an atomic explosion had occurred in the Soviet Union. Until then, most Americans had been confident that the Soviets, allies in World War II but opponents in the Cold War that developed after 1946, could not make an atom bomb. The resulting hysteria found Americans digging basement bomb shelters and teaching schoolchildren how to duck under classroom desks.

The following February, a German-born nuclear physicist, Dr. Klaus Fuchs, who had worked in America's Manhattan Project developing the atom bomb, was arrested in England. In a "voluntary confession," he said he had transmitted atomic information to the Soviet Union. He was tried and sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment.

Meantime in America, former Communist spy Elizabeth Bentley told a federal grand jury that one Harry Gold had been her successor as liaison with the Soviets. Arrested on May 24, Gold confessed that he had served as courier in theUnited States between Klaus Fuchs and the Soviets' New York Vice Consul, Anatoli Yakovlev, in 1944 and 1945.

Invited to Engage in Espionage

Gold implicated David Greenglass, who operated a machine shop in New York City with his brother-in-law, Julius Rosenberg. While in the army, Greenglass had worked in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, where the atom bomb was being constructed. Arrested, Greenglass confessed that he had accepted an invitation to engage in espionage presented by Rosenberg and his wife, Ethel, and conveyed to him by his own wife, Ruth, during a visit to New Mexico in 1944.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) figured out that two of Julius Rosenberg's college classmates, Max Elitcher and Morton Sobell, had been part of a spy ring. Elitcher confessed, implicating Rosenberg and Sobell. The FBI also learned that Rosenberg had belonged to the Communist Party but apparently had dropped out of the party when his unit was dissolved in 1944.

Julius was arrested, then Ethel. Sobell, on a vacation trip to Mexico City with his family, was abducted by Mexican secret police, "deported" across the Texas border, and arrested.

Rather than espionage itself, the Rosenbergs and Sobell were charged with conspiracy to commit wartime espionage. The distinction was important. The standards for a conviction on conspiracy to commit wartime espionage are less onerous: Each conspirator may be liable for the acts of all the others, even without specific knowledge of them, and it is necessary only to prove that they conspired toward a given end, not that they succeeded.

Prosecution Witnesses Provide Details

The trial that opened on March 6, 1951, found both Rosenbergs and Morton Sobell as defendants. Sobell, however, never took the stand. The first prosecution witness, Max Elitcher, connected him with Julius Rosenberg, and another witness testified that the Sobell family trip to Mexico was actually a flight from the United States in which they used aliases.

At the outset, prosecutor Irving H. Saypol warned defense attorney Emanuel H. Bloch, "If your clients don't confess, they are doomed." Saypol's assistant, Roy Cohn, questioned David Greenglass, the first prosecution witness against the Rosenbergs. Greenglass testified that, while stationed at Los Alamos, he gave Julius Rosenberg crude sketches of two lens molds used to focus high-pressure shock waves converging in an implosion—molds that were "new and original" in 1945 and that still merited classified status in 1951.

Greenglass further related how he had obtained a "pretty good description" of the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki for his brother-in-law. Altogether, he had written a dozen pages of description and drawn several sketches, for which Julius paid him $200.

Prosecutor Cohn proposed to introduce one of the sketches as Exhibit 8. Defense attorney Emanuel Bloch immediately demanded that the sketch be impounded "so that it remains secret from the court, the jury and counsel." Judge Irving R. Kaufman cleared the courtroom of press and spectators—thus encouraging the jury to think it was hearing "the secret of the atom bomb." Bloch admitted later that his move was made in the desperate hope of impressing the jury with his clients' concern for national security. The impounded testimony remained under security wraps until 1966.

Ruth Greenglass testified to Ethel Rosenberg's telling her in January 1945 that she was tired from typing David's notes for Julius Rosenberg, whom she said had promised to give the Greenglasses $6,000—and actually provided $5,000—for travel.

Judge Kaufman: Who was as it coming from?

Ruth: From the Russians, for us to leave the country.

Witness Harry Gold, who already had been convicted of espionage and sentenced to 30 years, testified that he had received orders from Soviet Vice Consul Yakovlev to go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to meet a new contact named Greenglass. On a piece of paper that Yakovlev had handed him were the words: "Recognition signal. I come from Julius." He had picked up an envelope from Greenglass, he said, and taken it back to Yakovlev in Brooklyn, New York. In addition, he revealed that Greenglass had given him a telephone number, that of his "brother-in-law Julius," where Greenglass could be reached during his next furlough in New York.

With this strong testimony on the connection between the defendants and a Soviet agent, spectators and journalists alike looked eagerly to the defense attorney. But Bloch declared, "The defendants Rosenberg have no cross-examination of this witness."

Ex-Communist Elizabeth Bentley testified that, as confidential assistant to Jacob Golos when he was chief of Soviet espionage operations in the United States, she had received several phone calls as early as 1943 from a man who said, "This is Julius," and who wanted Golos to get in touch with him.

A Jell-O Box Cut in Two

Taking the stand in his own defense, Julius Rosenberg denied a number of accusations made by prosecution witnesses. A Rosenberg console table that both Greenglasses charged had been a gift from the Russians, and which they said was adapted for microfilming, had been purchased at Macy's department store for "about $21." He testified that he had not given Ruth $150 for a New Mexico trip in November 1944, had not received information on the atom bomb from Greenglass, and had not introduced Greenglass to a man in New York who sought details of the bomb. He denied introducing a neighbor to Greenglass as an espionage courier. He had not cut a Jell-O box into two irregularly shaped pieces and given one to Ruth to be used as a recognition signal if she was succeeded by another courier, and had not said, "The simplest things are the cleverest," when David admired the idea. When Judge Kaufman asked whether he had ever belonged to "any group" that had discussed the Russian system of government, he said, "Well, your Honor, I feel at this time that I refuse to answer a question that might tend to incriminate me."

On cross-examination, Rosenberg defended his denials. But in response to questions from prosecutor Irving Saypol about his conversations with David Greenglass about money, he referred to "blackmail." Judge Kaufman asked about that word.

Rosenberg: He threatened me to get money. I considered it blackmailing.
Kaufman: Did he say he would go to the authorities and tell them you were in a conspiracy to steal the atomic bomb secret?
Rosenberg: No.

The defendant's choice of words, jury members said afterward, seemed like an admission of guilt.

Ethel Rosenberg tersely denied all accusations. Like her husband, she took the Fifth Amendment when asked any questions about the Communist Party. Following cross-examination, defense attorney Bloch said, no more witnesses would be called.

On rebuttal, Saypol produced a surprise witness. Found by the FBI only the day before, photographer Ben Schneider testified that in June 1950 the Rosenberg family, saying they were going to France, had him shoot a large order of passport pictures. Another rebuttal witness testified that the Rosenbergs had told her the console table was "a gift from a friend," and that, despite the fact that it was their finest piece of furniture, they had kept it in a closet. (It was not put into evidence because the Rosenbergs said they did not know where it was at that time.)

The jury deliberated from late afternoon until nearly midnight, and for an hour the next morning, before finding both Rosenbergs and Sobell guilty as charged. A week later, on April 5, 1951, Judge Kaufman sentenced Sobell to 30 years and the couple to the electric chair.

Appeals Extended Two Years

The executions were stayed pending appeal. In February 1952, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the convictions. In October, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to review the case, with Justice Hugo L. Black dissenting. December brought a motion for a new trial based on the contentions that photographer Schneider had committed perjury and Saypol had conducted an unfair trial. The motion was denied.

A motion to reduce the sentences as "cruel and excessive" because the charge was not treason and the indictments did not include "intent to injure the U.S." was denied.

In January, the executions were stayed again pending review by President Harry Truman of a petition for clemency. After Truman left office January 20, President Dwight D. Eisenhower refused clemency. Meantime, the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case had mounted a worldwide effort to save them. It filled an eight-car train that took protesters from New York City to Ossining, where the Rosenbergs sat in Sing Sing's death row. Three million letters and telegrams flooded the White House. Pope Pius XII twice appealed for clemency. Albert Einstein and atomic scientist Harold C. Urey appealed.

A third execution date was stayed as appeals for clemency poured in from around the world. With Justices Black and William 0. Douglas dissenting, the Supreme Court again refused to review the case. New evidence on June 8—the discovery of the missing console table in the apartment of Julius Rosenberg's mother—failed to justify a new trial or a stay of execution.

The Supreme Court again refused to review the case or stay the execution. Then, on June 17, Justice Douglas, questioning whether the defendants were correctly tried under the Espionage Act of 1917, granted a stay. The next day, Eisenhower received clemency appeals from hundreds of organizations representing millions of people in Europe, while U.S. embassies mounted police cordons to hold back the crowds, and the Supreme Court was recalled from vacation into unprecedented session. With Black, Douglas, and Felix M. Frankfurter dissenting, it vacated the Douglas stay. Eisenhower rejected another clemency plea.

The Rosenbergs ware executed precisely at sundown on June 19, 1953. That night, New York's Union Square filled with 10,000 protesters, while throngs in capitals around the world expressed their shock.

For decades after their execution, the guilt of the Rosenbergs remained a topic for discussion in books, newspapers, and magazines. However, in the mid-1990s most of the doubts about Julius Rosenberg's guilt were finally put to rest. In 1997, Alexander Feklisov, a retired KGB colonel, said that Julius Rosenberg served as an undercover agent for the Soviets between 1943 and 1946. Feklisov also said that Rosenberg had recruited other spies for the Soviets. Indeed, he even called Rosenberg a hero of the Soviet Union and "a true revolutionary who was willing to sacrifice himself for his beliefs." Feklisov added, however, that as far as he knew, Ethel Rosenberg was not an active agent for the Soviet Union. Despite Feklisov's claims about Ethel Rosenberg, many feel that her reluctance to acknowledge her husband's role as a Soviet spy still made her compliant in his espionage.

—Bernard Ryan, Jr.