The Rosenberg File revisited

[Valin]

Power Line:

Scott Johnson

October 15, 2016

 

 

Tomorrow night 60 Minutes will broadcast a story on the Rosenberg spy case featuring the Rosenbergs’ two sons, Michael and Robert Meeropol. 60 Minutes has posted a preview of the segments here. According to the preview, Michael argues that Ethel Rosenberg was “collateral damage” – framed by prosecutors for a crime she did not commit in an effort to get their father to cooperate with FBI investigators. Robert asserts: “Our mother was killed for something she did not do, she was taken away from us.”

 

60 Minutes interviewed Ronald Radosh to dispute the Meeropols. Ron wrote the book on the case (with Joyce Milton), first published in 1983 (a second, revised edition was published by Yale in 1997). According to the preview, Ron points out that Ethel was not an innocent victim; she assisted Julius. “She was an accessory to spying,” he says, “by helping, identifying people, urging people to be recruited, suggesting that her own brother be recruited, this is aiding those who are spying.”

 

On March 1, 2015, C-SPAN recorded an outstanding panel including Ron, Harvey Klehr, John Haynes, Steven Usdin, Allen Hornblum and Mark Kramer discussing the Rosenberg case. Collectively, these participants know just about everything there is to know about the case.

 

The video appears to be unembeddable, but it is accessible here. Ron summarizes new evidence in the case since the first edition of his book was published at 00:12:45. At 01:12:00 of the video, an audience member asks about Ethel Rosenberg in particular. At about 01:24:00, Allen Hornblum specifically addresses the Meeropols, “who continue to trot out this canard.” He adds: “They’ve been running a confidence game.” Ron Radosh wraps up with comments about the the persistence and animus of the left. In his concluding remarks Harvey Klehr addresses the Rosenbergs’ abiding Communist mania maintained at the expense of their children.

 

 

(Snip)

 

[Draggingtree]

Rosenberg Lies Never Cease

 

Sons seeking to exonerate their long-dead parents for their spying for Stalin are resorting to dishonest evasions

 

By John R. Schindler • 10/17/16 4:00pm

 

On Sunday night, CBS broadcast a moving segment on its 60 Minutes program. Entitled “The Brothers Rosenberg,” the piece delivered a deeply personal account of how the young sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg—the Soviet spies executed in 1953 for passing secrets to Moscow—coped with that terrible event and got on with their shattered lives.

 

Robert and Michael Meeropol (they took the surname of their adoptive parents), just 6 and 10 years old when their birth parents went to the electric chair, are now old men, and they have campaigned for decades to clear Julius and Ethel, the only people executed by the United States for espionage during the Cold War.

 

None can deny that their story is chock-filled with pathos. CBS has them explaining how they asked to see the electric chair where their parents were soon to die, then recounting how there wasn’t exactly a long line of volunteers to take in the orphans of traitors back in 1953.

 

We can debate whether the Rosenbergs ought to have been executed until the end of time—but there is no debating that they were guilty of espionage on behalf of the Soviet Union

http://observer.com/2016/10/rosenberg-lies-never-cease/