DEFENDANTS
Julius Rosenberg: Julius Rosenberg, the son of Jewish Polish immigrants, was born on May 12, 1918 in New York City.  As a boy, Julius attended a religious school in lower Manhattan. His father hoped that he would become a rabbi, but Julius enrolled at the City College of New York to study electrical engineering.
        Many college students in the 1930's were concerned about the economic chaos of the depression. Strikes and violence, loss of homes and jobs, were indicators that the political and economic system was going bankrupt. And overseas fascism was a growing threat. So it was not unusual that some of the best minds and most caring people of that time pursued an interest in politics by  joining socialist or communist organizations. 
        Julius joined the Steinmetz Club, the campus branch of the Young Communist League. There he would meet Morton Sobell. The summer after Julius graduated in 1939, he married Ethel Greenglass. They both became members of the American Communist Party.
        After almost a year of doing freelance work (until the fall of 1940), Julius was hired as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. In 1942 he  was promoted  to the position of inspector. By 1943, the Rosenbergs were not active in the Communist Party.
        Early in 1945, when his past membership in the Communist Party came to light, Julius was fired from his job with the Signal Corps. He took a job with the Emerson Radio Corporation for awhile; and then in 1946 formed G & R Engineering Company with his brother-in-laws Bernard and David Greenglass, and Isadore Goldstein. [partnership disbanded]
Julius lived with his wife and two children (from 1942) in a three room apartment near the waterfront in Manhattan's lower East Side.
        On June 17, 1950, based upon David Greenglass' statements to the FBI, Julius Rosenberg was arrested on suspicion of espionage. He was tried (March 6, 1951) on the charge of conspiring to commit espionage; and after a guilty verdict (March 29, 1951) was sentence to death. The appeal process lasted over two years while Julius was on death row. Here he maintained his innocence and hoped for leniency. It was during these years that the case aroused the attention of the international community.
        Julius Rosenberg was put to death in the electric chair at Sing-Sing Prison in New York on June 19, 1953.

Ethel Rosenberg: Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg, the only daughter of Barnet and Tessie Greenglass was born September 28, 1915 in New York City. The  family was poor and  they lived in a crowded, shabby unheated  tenement apartment on the lower East side of Manhattan. Ethel attended a religious school, then high school and graduated at the age of only 15.
         Almost immediately after finishing school, Ethel became a clerk for a shipping company. Here she was confronted with poor working conditions and low salaries. But instead of accepting her plight and that of her fellow workers, she decided to speak out and to organize. Four years later she was fired because of her role as the organizer of a strike of 150 women workers. Labor issues and politics were combined when Ethel joined the Young Communist League and eventually became a member of the American Communist Party. 
        Besides being an activist, Ethel enjoyed singing, and had aspirations of becoming an opera singer. She was waiting to go on stage to sing at a New Years Eve benefit when she first met Julius Rosenberg. The couple were soon married in the summer of 1939.
         Although still interested in politics, most of her time and energy were spent at home caring for her two sons Michael and Robert. In 1943 she left the Communist Party and a few years later was helping her husband in the business with her brother David Greenglass. 
         During the spring of 1950 David Greenglass, named Julius Rosenberg as a participant in the spy ring. This led to the arrest of her husband on June 17. Almost two months later on August 11, 1950, Ethel Rosenberg was herself arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. On April 5, 1951 after a guilty verdict, she was sentenced to death. The next two years of Ethel Rosenberg's life were spent on death row at Sing Sing prison. Here she maintained her innocence and hoped for leniency. 
        Ethel Rosenberg was put to death in the electric chair at Sing- Sing prison in New York on June 19, 1953.

". . . We wish we might have had the tremendous joy and gratification of living our lives out with you. Your Daddy who is with me in the last momentous hours, sends his heart and all the love that is in it for his dearest boys. Always remember that we were innocent and could not wrong our conscience. We press you closes and kiss you with all our strength. Lovingly Daddy and Mommy"                                                            From Ethel's final letter to her sons.

Morton Sobell: Morton Sobell and Julius Rosenberg were students attending  CCNY studying engineering. Here they became friends and both, for a short time, were members of the Young Communist League. (Morton and his wife Helen have stated that they had never belonged to the Communist Party.) Also at CCNY, Morton became good friends with Max Elitcher, a Stuyvesant High School classmate. After graduation (with a degree in electrical engineering) Max and Morton shared an apartment in Washington D.C. where they worked for the Navy Bureau of Ordnance. 
        In 1941 Morton left Washington but still kept in contact with Elitcher. It was in 1943 that Max, who was recently married, took his new wife to Schenectady to meet Morton. Morton at the time was working for General Electric. Two years later Elitcher was best man at Sobell's wedding.

Several years later both Max and Morton were living in Flushing, Queens, New York and both working for the Reeves Instrument Company. In June of 1950 Morton, his wife Helen and their two children left on a trip to Mexico. While living in an apartment in Mexico City, Morton learns of the arrest of Julius Rosenberg. He then tries to find passage for himself and his family from Mexico, but without the proper  documents was unable to do so. In the middle of August the Sobells were kidnapped by Mexican thugs and delivered to  U. S. authorities at border where the FBI arrested him for conspiring with Julius Rosenberg to violate the espionage laws.       The trial began March 6, 1951. Max Elitcher, the government's only witness, testified against his friend Morton Sobell. And as with the Rosenbergs, the jury

delivered a guilty verdict. Morton Sobell was sentenced to 30 years in prison, five of which he served in Alcatraz. He was finally released from prison in 1969. His autobiography, On Doing Time, details his experiences in jail and presents his view of events before, during and after the Rosenberg trial. Morton Sobell is currently involved as a civil liberty activist and maintains his innocence to this day.

PROSECUTORS
Irving Saypol: Irving Saypol was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Chief Prosecutor of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell. Saypol graduated from Brooklyn Law School and quickly rose through the ranks of the United States Attorney's office. Saypol was an experienced prosecutor of Communists, as he had convicted Alger Hiss, William Remington, Abraham Brothman and others prior to taking on the Rosenberg case. Part of his success was attributable to his sincere belief that he was punishing evil. Some of his critics charge that Saypol, who warmed to his task at prosecuting the Rosenbergs, blurred any distinction between the crime charged - conspiracy to commit espionage - and treason. His success in the Rosenberg trial accelerated his career. Saypol was appointed to the New York Supreme Court just months after the trial.

Roy Cohn: Roy Cohn was the son of Judge Albert Cohn of the New York State Supreme Court, joined the U.S. Attorney's office following law school. He became one of Irving Saypol's assistants on the Rosenberg prosecution team (Cohnhad worked with Saypol prior to the Rosenberg case in an trial of eleven Communists).
          In Cohn's autobiography (The Autobiography of Roy Cohn, co-aurthored by Sidney Zion) he reveals his collusion with Judge Irving Kaufman before, during and after the Rosenberg trial. He even reveals his frame-up technique (page 160): ". . . as a young assistant U.S. attorney, I convicted my share of people on uncorroborated accomplice testimony." He describes how the U.S. Attorney offers a deal to a guilty defendant, if he/she agrees to name as an accomplice the person the prosecutor wishes to frame. The jury convicts both, the framed victim is heavily sentenced, while the actual criminal receives a minor sentence.
        During the trial, Cohn was noticed by Senator Joseph McCarthy and  later served as his aide. Senator McCarthy, became infamous for his accusations of Communist infiltration of the State Department and other high government posts. Cohn provided legal guidance to the Senator in his Communist "witch-hunt" which would become known as "McCarthyism." Eventually Senator McCarthy's influence declined and he, along with Cohn, was discredited. 
         From 1954 to 1986, he became a political power broker and
much-sought legal talent with Saxe, Bacon & Bolan (and predecessor firms) in New York City. Known as a loyal advocate, he gave lavish annual parties for his famous, fashionable clients and friends at his Greenwich, Conn., estate. Thrice tried and acquitted on federal charges of conspiracy, bribery, and fraud, he was disbarred two months before his death from AIDS in 1986. He admired dogs and had an extensive collection of stuffed animals.

JUDGE
Irving R. Kaufman: Irving R. Kaufman was born in New York City in 1910. He graduated from Fordham University at the age of 18 and then attended Fordham Law School. Although a Jew, he earned the nickname "Pope Kaufman" from his fellow students for his excellence in the school's required Christian courses. Kaufman finished Law School at 20, a year before he was eligible to take the Bar exam.
          He then worked for a private firm, and, as a government attorney in the mid-1930s, prosecuted several notorious New York City cases and became known as the "boy prosecutor." He was named to the federal bench for the Southern District of New York in 1949. 
          Judge Irving R. Kaufman was just 40 years old when he presided over the Rosenberg case. In March 1951 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were tried in his court and found guilty of conspiring to commit espionage. Judge Kaufman sentenced both Rosenbergs to death, the first such peacetime sentences in U.S. history. After a series of appeals, the Rosenbergs were executed. 
         Kaufman's trial rulings, harsh sentences, and post trial interference in the Rosenbergs-Sobell case earned him the enmity of critics including Justice Frankfurter, and probably delayed his elevation to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by several years. In 1961, he was finally promoted to the Court of Appeals, where he would finish his judicial career. He died in 1982.

DEFENSE ATTORNEYS
Emanuel Bloch: 
Emanuel "Manny" Bloch, along with his father Alexander, was the defense attorney for the Rosenbergs. Though not really a criminal trial lawyer, he was known in the legal community as a defender of leftist sympathizers. With the passage of the McCarran Act, Manny found work and  defended the leader of the Communist party of Pittsburgh and the Trenton Six. 
        During the course of the trial and the many appeals, Bloch grew very close to the Rosenbergs and their children. The relationship went further than attorney and client. Bloch was totally involved. He cast aside his other caseload to focus entirely upon the Rosenbergs. His efforts in the final frantic days to spare his clients
from execution were nothing short of heroic. Bloch delivered the eulogy at the Rosenberg  funeral and served as guardian for their two sons.
        The Rosenberg case would be the culmination of Bloch's legal career. It was his most infamous as well as his last case. In early 1954 Bloch was found dead in his apartment, dead of a heart attack at age 52.
Another victim of the Rosenberg case.
 

WITNESSES
David Greenglass: David Greenglass, known as "Doovey" to his older sister Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg, was born in 1922. A machinist who had learned his trade at Manhattan's Haaren Aviation High School, he was married Ruth Prinz at the age of twenty and shortly after was inducted into the Army. He was stationed in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and then later in the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico. 
        In late November 1944, David got a few days leave to see his wife, Ruth in Albuquerque on their second wedding anniversary. It was from her at this time that he he allegedly learned the nature of the secret project at Los Alamos. "She told me that Julius has said that I was working on the atom bomb." [NCRRC: if the Manhattan Project was a secret, and it was top secret, how did Julius at the end of 1944 know about it.]  It was when David was on furlough in January of 1945 that he prepared some sketches and a written description of lens mold experiments that he gave to Julius. Ruth mentioned "that David's handwriting would be bad . . . and Julius said . . . Ethel would type it up." [NCRRC: David was a draftsman and his handwriting was extremely legible.] 
          When his leave ended, David returned to Los Alamos. Several Months later, Ruth followed him to New Mexico and rented an apartment in Albuquerque, where David spent weekends. It was in June of 1945 that the supposed exchange involving Jello boxes,  money and passwords took place. 
          In September of 1945 David was again on leave and supposedly he and Ruth bought material to the Rosenbergs for filming and typing in their living room. [NCRRC: David Greenglass admitted he lied about this meeting on 60 Minutes II, December 5, 2001.]

After his army discharged, David joined his brother Bernard and Julius in a machine shop business. The business did last long and the partnership broke up; not all that amicably.        Shortly after Klaus Fuchs was arrested in England, David and Ruth Greenglass were interrogated by the FBI arrested in the United States. Greenglass under the threat of a long prison sentence and possibly a death sentence, decided to be a prosecution witness against his sister and his brother-in-law. He did this because in exchange for

immunity for his wife Ruth, so that she might remain with their two children; and a light sentence for himself. To his surpass he received a 15 year sentence. He served only 10 years and remained together with with Ruth when he was released in 1960. 
          Even though the Greenglasses changed their name and address, they were found in 1987 by Sam Roberts of the New York Times. David was living under an assumed name in a single-family house in the Queens, New York. After fourteen years, for monetary reasons alone, he decided to be interviewed by Roberts.  These interviews resulted in the book The Brother, published in the fall of 2001. In this book Greenglass admits that he lied on the witness stand. "My wife is my wife. I mean, I don't sleep with my sister, you know."  From David Greenglass's point of view, such fidelity was commendable.
          Further admission of perjury came on 60 Minutes II, December 5, 2001. It was this perjury that strapped his sister Ethel into the electric chair. According to Roberts, Greenglass, when asked if he would have done anything differently, replied "Never."And when asked on 60 Minutes, why didn't the Rosenbergs talk (lie) and give names like he did, he said "In one word - stupidity."

Ruth Greenglass: Ruth Printz, born in 1925, grew up in the same New York City neighborhood as her future husband, David Greenglass. In late November 1942, Ruth married David Greenglass in November , 1942 before he was drafted. Both Ruth and David had an interest in politics and together they joined the Young Communist League.
          The couple had not been married long before David was drafted in 1943. He was eventually stationed at Los Alamos working as a machinist on the Manhattan Project. The two had always been a close couple and Ruth tried to see David as much as possible. To do this they rented a house in nearby Albuquerque, where David would spend weekends. 
          At the end of the war Ruth and David  moved back to New York City and became parents. From 1946 to 1950 Ruth had two miscarriages and had a near fatal accident. Most of her time was spent caring for her children.

When the FBI questioned David Greenglass in 1950 about suspected espionage activities, he agreed to confess and to be a witness against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. This was done in exchange for immunity for Ruth so that she could remain at home with their two children. The FBI threatened the couple with imprisonment and even death. (Even though the FBI claim that she was never arrested, there does exists a mug shot of Ruth.) And while in custody during the seven months before the trial, they changed their story with regard to the Rosenbergs.          Ruth eventually testified against the Rosenbergs at trial stating that Ethel Rosenberg had typed up the notes that David

Greenglass had provided, implicating Ethel in the espionage ring. FBI documents and later admission by her husband indicate that this was perjured testimony. And was her testifimony that it was Julius and Ethel who urged her to convince David Greenglass to become involved is espionage also perjury? Ruth Greenglass , a confessed spy, was never even incicted. She rejoined with her husband after his release from prison, changed her name and sought anonimity.

Harry Gold: Harry Gold was the son of poor Russian Jewish immigrants. He was a small quiet boy abused by his schoolmates. As a young man both he and his family became interested in Socialism, which probably led him to make contacts within the Communist movement. 
In 1935, Gold, a nondescript chemist working for a sugar company, decided to act on his Communist sympathies by stealing industrial secrets from his factory and passing them on to the Soviets.
         As Gold escalated his espionage activities he began to tell his various contacts elaborate tales of his family life. But Gold's tales were all fantasy, he was actually a bachelor. He was an inveterate liar. (His own attorney  John Hamilton disclosed that his client sometimes supplied the Soviets fictitious names and delivered fabricated reports about these nonexistent contacts.) Gold also began drinking heavily and was sloppy with the evidence of his illegal activities. Perhaps he wanted to be caught. 
        Gold, after given several days warning that the FBI were going to search his home (without a warrant), did not get rid of any incriminating evidence. Was Gold mentally tired of continuing with deceit and intrigue? And why did the FBI allow Gold to get rid of any evidence in his home? Even more mysterious is the Gold-Fuchs connection. Fuchs never identified Gold as his contact. The physical description of the courier that Fuchs is said to have used definitely did not fit Harry Gold. Gold had the ability to perpetrate fantastic deceptions and lies. His statements regarding people, places, dates, meetings, conversations are later denied or altered. 
        When the FBI caught up with him, he surrendered meekly, "confessed" and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. He then offered to be a witness for the government in the Rosenberg trial.

Harry Gold at the Rosenberg trial.

He often readily agreed to change his testimony to suit the FBI. "I come from Ben from Brooklyn" becomes "I come from Julius." "Information from Greenglass was of no value" to it was "extremely excellent and very valuable."  Even Gold's connection with Anatoli Yakovlev, the absent co-defendant, is suspect. Many personal details (given at pre-trial hearing) about Yakovlev, later proved to be false. Gold later admitted that during pre-trial hearings he could not recall Greenglass's name. That he had "completely forgotten" his meeting with Yakovlev in New York; his visit to David

Greenglass in New Mexico; and the password "I come from Julius."   Needless to say the FBI helped him to remember these details. 
        Gold later admitted that during pre-trial hearings he could not recall Greenglass's name. That he had "completely forgotten" his meeting with Yakovlev in New York; his visit to David Greenglass in New Mexico; and the password "I come from Julius."  Needless to say the FBI helped him to remember these details. 
        Other inconsistencies are Gold's registering at the Albuquerque Hilton under his own name; and possibly forged registration cards with wrong dates. And if Gold, as a courier picked up classified material from Fuchs, why would he then, on the same trip, stop at the Greenglass's? This goes against any type of espionage protocol. 
        Unfortunately Harry Gold was not cross-examined by Bloch. Thus, the truth behind Harry Gold's testimony lies buried in the files of the FBI and in a Philadelphia cemetery; he died August 28, 1972, seven years after he was released from prison. 

Max Elitcher: 

OTHER PLAYERS
Klaus Fuchs: Klaus Fuchs was born in Germany into a Quaker family, and lived through the rise of Nazism. His anti-Nazi politics evolved into communism. He emigrated to England in 1933, and received his professional education there. He was recruited into the `Tube Alloys' (nuclear) project in 1941, and became a British citizen in 1942. He was, according to his own statements, passing information to the USSR as early as 1941. He was sent to the US in late 1943, part of the group of British scientists who joined the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. He was present at the Trinity test (first a bomb), and had been involved in important theoretical work - from gaseous diffusion to bomb design.

A year after the war (1946) Fuchs returned to England to become head of the Theoretical Physics Division at the new British atomic energy center at Harwell. In 1949, the FBI passed on to British Intelligence some evidence that a British scientist had provided information to the Soviets from Los Alamos. Fuchs came under suspicion because of his prewar communist background. Fuchs was interrogated by British security officials, culminating in January, 1950, in a confession. He was arrested February 2, tried on March 2, and sentenced to 14

years in prison. (The FBI got permission to interview Fuchs in prison in May of 1950.) His crime was not treason, because the USSR was not an enemy.  Released in June, 1959, he emigrated to Dresden, East Germany, where he was employed as a physicist until his death in 1988. 

Marshall Perlin: [From his New York Times obituary, January 4, 1999.]
Mr. Perlin was born in Manhattan and graduated from Rutgers University. He finished Columbia Law School in 1942, but his degree was deferred until 1947, while he served in World War II
        He was a first lieutenant and navigator in the Army Air Force, flying bombing  missions in the Pacific. He earned the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with two oak leaf clusters and two battle stars. 
      He practiced in Federal Court in several states, and tried a case that was admitted to the United States Supreme Court in 1955. Although he had a solo practice much of the tome, he at one time was a partner of Arthur Kinoy, a retired professor of constitutional law at Rutgers. 
        Mr. Perlin did his most famous work representing the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell, the Rosenbergs' co-defendant.
        Mr. Perlin argued court motions that resulted in the  public release of hundreds of thousands of pages of documents on the Rosenberg case and help change the way the FBI handled documents.
        Mr. Perlin pursued Mr. Sobell's appeals of his original 30 year sentence and served as counsel to the Rosenbergs' children, Robert and Michael Merropol. . . .In an effort to have the case reopened and show that the couple were framed, he began in the mid-1970's to challenge the FBI, the Justice Department, the CIA and other offices to release classified documents. [Note: was done using the Freedom of Information Act.] 
      The collection of these documents, now known as the Perlin Papers, is stored at Columbia Law School.
       Marshall Perlin was 79 when he died and lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan

J. Edgar Hoover:  J. (John) Edgar Hoover was Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), lawyer, criminologist. Born January 1, 1895, in Washington, D.C. Hoover studied law at George Washington University, while working as a clerk at the Library of Congress. 
         After being admitted to the District of Columbia bar in 1917, he became special assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer and led the controversial "Palmer Raids" against alleged seditionists. In 1924, Hoover advanced from assistant to director of the Bureau of Investigation
(which became the FBI in 1935). He remained director under every president from Calvin Coolidge to Richard Nixon. 
        Hoover emphasized modern technological investigative techniques, improved training, and obtained increased funding from Congress. During the 1930s, FBI exploits against notorious gangsters made him a national hero. He never missed a chance to use the media to enhance the image of the FBI.
         It was the aftermath of the Union Street Masacre that the FBI created physical evidance and had their agents and other witnesses commit perjury. This precedence was to continue up until the Rosenbergs and beyond. The ends did justify the means and conviction was more important than justice.
          In the 1940s and 1950s Hoover became well known for his anti-Communist and anti-subversive views and activities. Hoover used the weight of his office and the media to pursue the case against the Rosenbergs. Afterall the FBI's duty to God and Country was to destroy any threat to America. At the same time, he consciously failed to restrict Mafia activity, which was conducted with minimal interference from the FBI. 
        In the 1960s Hoover became a problematic political figure due to his lack of sympathy for the civil rights movement and the Kennedy administration. His reputation declined in later years following revelations concerning his vendettas against liberal activists (notably Martin Luther
King Jr.) and widespread illegal FBI activities. 
        Hoover published a number of books detailing his work with the FBI. His writings include Persons in Hiding (1938), Masters of Deceit (1958), A Study of Communism (1962), and Crime in the United States (1965). Hoover died on May 2, 1972, ending his 48-year tenure as the director of the FBI. He was 77 years old.

Harry Truman: Harry Truman was the Thirty-third president of the United States. Born May 8, 1884 in Lamar, Missouri. He went to high school in Independence, Missouri. From 1900 until 1905 he held
various small business positions. During the next 12 years farmed on his parents' land near Independence. In 1917, soon after the United States entered World War I, he enlisted in the artillery, serving in France and achieving the rank of captain. On returning from the war, he joined a friend in opening a haberdashery. The haberdashery went bankrupt, but he adhered to hard work, accepting misfortunes serenely. In 1919 he married Bess Wallace; and together they had one child, Margaret.
           A staunch Democrat and admirer of Woodrow Wilson, Truman entered politics in 1922 by being elected county judge in 1922 and served from 1922 to 1924. He was presiding judge from 1926 to 1934, giving close attention to problems of county administration. He was elected Senator in 1934, reelected in 1940. When Roosevelt was nominated for a fourth term in June 1944, the President bowed to the wishes of influential state and city leaders and named Truman for vice president.
        After Truman had served only 82 days as vice president, Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12, 1945. Truman quickly took command and  continued Roosevelt's policies. He authorized the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 (and on Nagasaki a week later), and approved the surrender of the Japanese government on Allied terms in a treaty signed on the battleship Missouri on September 2, 194
        In 1947 Truman instituted a loyalty program for federal employees; the Red scare was starting and would soon be a feature of American life. Congress carried the concept of "loyalty" beyond what the President envisioned when it enacted the the McCarran Internal Security Act in 1950. This was vetoed by Truman but overridden by Congress by an 83 percent  vote.
         On January 9, 1953 each of the Rosenbergs submitted clemency petitions to President Truman. Thousands thoughout the world wrote or cabled the White House urging that the Rosenberg's lives be spared. Harry S. Truman vacated the Presidency on January 20, 1953, without acting on the Rosenberg's clemency appeals. Like a 20th century Pontius Piolot, he "washed his hands" of the whole affair.
       Truman died on December 26, 1972 and was buried in the courtyard of the Truman Library.

Dwight Eisenhower: Dwight David Eisenhower was born in 1890 in Denison, Texas. After gaduating from West Point in 1915, he undertook further military studies and became a fast-rising staff officer in
Washington, D.C. During World War II he and was assigned to command the allied forces during their invasions of North Africa, Sicily, and Italy (1942--43). 
           His talent for both strategic planning and staff coordination led him (December 1943) to be named supreme commander of the allied invasion of Normandy and he directed the campaign from D-Day (June 6, 1944) to the surrender of Germany (May 1945). After  commanding the U.S. occupation forces in Germany, he returned to the U.S.A. to serve as army chief of staff (1946--48) before retiring from active duty. He served as president of Columbia University (1948--50) and head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1951--52) before the Republicans drafted him as their presidential candidate in 1952; under the motto "I like Ike," he won by a landslide over Adlai Stevenson and become the thirty-fourth U.S. president.
            He twice rejected clemency pleas for the Rosenbergs: February 11 and June 19 1953. He thought, or was led to believe that the Supreme Court reviewed the case which they never did. Advisors from the Justice Department convinced Eisenhower that they had secret evidence against Ethel. So his initial qualms about executing a woman and a mother of two young children were overcome. He also found no trouble ignoring the world wide protest against the executions of the Rosenbergs. It is no wonder that he did little to restrain the Cold War machinations of his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles or the McCarthy red-scare.
 

Herbert Brownell: 

Alexander Feklisov: Retired career KGB agent. In 1997, he announced that, while attached to the Soviet Consulate in New York, he was the Soviet intelligence officer who had recruited and handled  Julius Rosenberg and his network of spies. He claimed to have had over 50 meetings with Rosenberg in 1943-1946, but that Ethel Rosenberg never met with any Soviet agents and did not directly participate in her husband's activities, although she probably knew about them. Later in his career, Feklisov, now working under the name of Fomin, was the KGB resident in Washington in the early 1960s, and came up with the idea for resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis whereby the Soviets would remove their missiles in return for a  US promise not to invade the island. 

Date: 19 March 1997  From: Timothy Naftali <timothy.naftali@yale.edu> Agreeing with David Welch, I would caution anyone from accepting Aleksandr Feklisov as a reliable witness. Aleksandr Fursenko and I were able to compare Feklisov's field reports from Washington in the Cuban missile crisis period with his current memories of 1962. He seems to have completely forgotten his actions in the crisis. The most important example of this amnesia involves his "recollections" of meetings with John Scali. We confronted him on these contradictions and he refused to accept either John

 Scali's version (understandably, perhaps) or the version outlined in his contemporaneous reports and the summaries that went to Khrushchev. 
I doubt he can remember much of consequence from the late 1940s. 
Timothy Naftali, Yale University 

Date: 26 March 1997 
From: Morton Sobell <nancmort@igc.apc.org>
Insofar as Feklisov's credentials are concerned, one can examine the gathering in Moscow in 1989 to discuss the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 in which Feklisov played a role as Mr. X. John Scali his U.S. counterpart is dead. But those present at this event can testify that Mr. Feklisov did not have all his marbles at that time. He "remembered" events about the missile crisis that simply did not happen, and did not remember events that actually took place. Feklisov had a tenuous grasp on reality, and in the end John Scali threw him out of the room, to everyone's embarrassment. Obviously Feklisov's memory has not improved since 1989.
Morton Sobell

Michael Meeropol: 

Robert Meeropol: