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The Trial
| setting | overture | government's script | act one | verdict | sentencing | 
|case for the defense | 
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SETTING THE STAGE
What was the emotional and political climate in America when the Rosenberg trial took place? Fear, paranoia, and anti-communist hysteria were rampant throughout the country. How had this come to happen?
        America had ended World War II by dropping atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. After a decade of depression and four years of wartime shortages, Americans looked forward to an age of prosperity and military security; an age of peace and tranquility and the blessings of democracy. We were the only nation not to have suffered massive damages from the war and we had THE BOMB. Pax Americana was just around the corner.
       However, only four years later, in the Fall of 1949, things were drastically different. Our ex-ally the Soviet Union which had occupied and was now ruling much of eastern Europe, had erected an iron curtain that divided East from West. On the home front, efforts were accelerating to protect the United States from the influence of the Soviets' communist ideology. From the loyalty oath program put in place for federal employees, to the investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and others like it, anyone considered to be a communist or to have communist affiliations, was vilified and considered to be a threat to the United States. More specifically, in contradiction to what our top nuclear scientists claimed, government officials declared that our "atomic secrets" must be protected. Americans should be on the lookout for any suspicious behavior by communists who might give away the secret of the atom bomb.
        In September of 1949, whatever sense of security was left had been shattered when President Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded their own atomic bomb. Suddenly the stakes were much higher and the communist threat much greater. Now we had to solve the riddle of how the USSR had been able to develop their own A-bomb. The only answer that seemed reasonable was that it had to be due to atomic espionage. A massive search was initiated to find the spies responsible for this heinous act of treachery.
 

        In June of 1950, the Korean war began and American soldiers were being killed by the communist aggressors in Asia. It was widely thought at that time that the war had started because the Soviet backed communists of North Korea were emboldened when the USSR had exploded its own A-bomb. 
        The threat of communism was perceived to be so great, that the McCarran Internal Security Act was passed by an 83 percent majority of Congress over the strenuous veto of President Truman. Among other things, the Act declared that to be a communist meant that one's allegiance was to the Soviet Union and not to the United States. It also provided that in an emergency situation, citizens could be imprisoned merely on the suspicion that they might engage in criminal activities.
       The prevailing tensions of being at war combined with the rising anxiety regarding communism was reflected by the media frenzy that preceded the Rosenberg trial. Daily, the details of the gory carnage our troops were suffering in Asia was reported alongside the unfolding story of the "atom spies" who had been captured and were to be tried for what J. Edger Hoover described as "the crime of the century". It was in this milieu of fear and anger that the Rosenbergs entered the courtroom.

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OVERTURE
The curtain goes up in room 110 in the federal courthouse at Foley Square, Manhattan on Tuesday, March 6, 1951. The protagonists in this courtroom drama are: Julius Rosenberg, Ethel Rosenberg and Morton Sobell. They are charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. The supporting cast includes their defense attorneys: Emanuel Bloch and his father Alexander for the Rosenbergs; Howard Phillips and Edward Kuntz for Morton Sobell. Additionally, there is the judge Irving R. Kaufman; and the prosecuting attorneys Irving Saypol and Roy Cohn. 
         Players who will make their entrance later are the star witnesses David and Ruth Greenglass, Harry Gold and  Max Elitcher. Other roles include more defense and prosecution witnesses; and the 11 man, 1 women jury. The curtain to Act One will go down on March 29, 1951 with the jury's guilty (of conspiring) verdict. A week later on April 5, 1951 this is followed by Judge Kaufman's sentencing (for outrageously more than conspiring) of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death and Morton Sobell to 30 years in prison. The play continues with the executions of the Rosenbergs on June19, 1953. Sobell, after serving over eightteen years in prison, of which five and a half years were spent in the notorious Alcatraz, was released in January, 1969. The final act, the re-opening of the case and securing justice for the Rosenbergs and Sobell, has yet to be written.

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THE GOVERNMENT'S SCRIPT
The government charged that in 1944 the Rosenbergs convinced Ruth Greenglass to persuade her husband David (Ethel's brother) to engage in espionage while he was at Los Alamos. (This was the top secret facility where the first two types of Atomic Bombs were built under the aegis of the Manhattan Project.) By engaging in this conversation, the Rosenbergs were guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. It was further charged that in 1945 David Greenglass succeeded in stealing the "secret" of the Atom Bomb and conveying its "important principle" in one key sketch. 

This and other information were transmitted to the Soviets via a man named Harry Gold (who met the Greenglasses in Albuquerque, NM in June of 1945). Finally, in September of 1945, Ethel had typed up David's handwritten notes of espionage data, and Julius passed these along to a Soviet operative.         Although the above charges were the essence of the government's case, it was also mantained that the Rosenberg spy ring (which included Morton Sobell), was in place and active up to June of 1950 (just  before the defendants were arrested).

Harry Gold, witness for the prosecution.

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ACT ONE
Irving Saypol opens the prosecution's case with a highly charged, emotional speech to the jury. The defense objects and at one point moves for a mistrial. This is to set the tone for most of the drama up to the after-trial sentencing speech by Judge Kaufman. Witnesses are called; examined and cross examined; evidence is introduced; objections, motions and rulings - are all part of the script. 
           However, a closer look at these seemingly routine proceedings reveal just a few of the flaws inherent to the legal procedures followed in this case. The two essential witnesses for the prosecution, Ruth Greenglass and her husband David Greenglass (Ethel Rosenberg's younger brother) were accomplices in the alleged conspiracy. Their testimony was never corroborated by any witnesses not facing prosecution by the government. No physical evidence was ever introduced proving that a transmission of information ever took place. The entire case came down to who was more believable: the government witnesses or the defendants. Although it has been revealed that David Greenglass and others perjured themselves, this occurred too late to effect the outcome of the trial.

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THE VERDICT
The jury retired on Wednesday, March 28, 1951 and returned the next day with a verdict of guilty as charged. It is important to note that the charge was neither espionage nor treason, but rather conspiracy to commit espionage. 
        And it was essential that the case be tried in a Federal Court. Only in a federal court can a conspiracy charge be proven using the non-corroborated, accomplice testimony of one witness. In most state courts, conviction of a guilty conspirator requires the testimony of at least two non-accomplice witnesses. This trial never would have taken place in a New York State court.

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SENTENCING
On April 5, 1951 the sentencing was pronounced by Judge Irving Kaufman. This was done after Emanuel Bloch, the Rosenberg's attorney, made a plea for leniency. Part of his statement included the fact that his clients "have always maintained their innocence." He also noted that in 1944 and 1945 Russia and the United States had been wartime allies. Bloch went on to state that the importance of the alleged crime had been grossly exaggerated. 
      After Bloch finished, Julius and Ethel stood side by side quietly awaiting Judge Kaufman's pronouncement: ". . .I consider your crime worse than murder. . .I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason. . . . you are hereby sentenced to the punishment of death, and it is ordered. . . you shall be executed according to law." [NCRRC note: it was a demonstratively anti-law  sentence for crimes not charged at the trial.]
        The very next day, April 6, 1951,  Bloch started the appeal process that was to continue for almost 27 months until June 19, 1953.