A US federal judge sentenced a husband-and-wife duo to death on this day in 1951 for passing nuclear secrets to the USSR. But were the Rosenbergs guilty?
Cold War’s ‘scapegoats’
Some of the evidence against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was highly questionable and false, historian Ronald Radosh and author Joyce Milton who conducted many interviews and obtained access to numerous files under the Freedom of Information Act, found. Did the US, caught up in the McCarthy Red Scare frenzy, execute two young idealists? But Radosh and Milton also concluded Julius transmitted nuke secrets and that Ethel knew about her husband’s role
Why did FBI falsify evidence?
The FBI knew for certain that Julius was guilty because they had access to secret intercepts of Soviet intelligence messages, wrote law professor Alan Dershowitz in America on Trial and added, “But prosecutors couldn't use it since the FBI didn’t want the Soviets to know their code had been broken”
Guilty & framed
“So the FBI ‘enhanced’ evidence and got witnesses to ‘improve’ their stories,” Dershowitz adds. The FBI was aware of Ethel’s limited role but exaggerated it to increase its leverage on Julius. Thus the Rosenbergs were both guilty—and framed, the law professor wrote in the LA Times
Of course they were guilty. But you can’t quote me. My public position is that the Rosenbergs were innocent … If I were in their place, I would have done the same thing. What was so bad about helping Stalin get the A-bomb? It was the responsibility of a good Communist to do whatever he could do to help the Red Army gain victory