US Government memo shows Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy but executed her anyway | Hacker News Reader

US Government memo shows Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy but executed her anyway

bloomberg.com

33 pointsck229 comments

A more accurate headline would be "Sons of convicted spy find a sentence in a document they interpret as saying she's innocent if you ignore all the other evidence."

It's important to note this document was not disclosed to her defense. Law enforcement suppressing evidence that might exonerate, even in part or lead to a lesser charge, is a well worn trope, and should outrage us all.

Not to mention the objections many of us have about capital punishment, which is a topic for another day.

Yes, this is far more accurate. She was clearly aware and complicit.

I don't blame them for wanting this to be vindicating... it's just not though.

Intercepted Russian communications, however, suggest otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project

Well, better safe than sorry.

TFA mentions the Venona files and the cable that was the basis for this memo.

You obviously didn't read the article, since the FOIA memo referenced was from that.

The memo says:

"she knew of her husbands work, but that due to ill health she did not engage in the work herself."

As an accomplice, she might have deserved a lesser punishment, but she was not innocent.

Moreover, supposing that what the memo says was correct, she was willing to contribute actively, but her health had prevented that.

“Well she was still guilty of something” “Well she would have spied if she could” Feeling relieved HN comments sections aren’t responsible for handling death row appeals

She was actively recruiting other sources to obtain access to nuclear design materials.

She lied about her involvement and her husband’s spying.

She perjured herself in court with full knowledge of their complicity

The assistance the Rosenbergs “provided very significant help in accelerating the production of [the Soviet Union’s] atomic bomb” (Khrushchev)

One memo doesn’t disprove the orgy of evidence in her treachery

If you know your spouse is committing treason and you continue going about being their spouse, is that a crime?

Can spouses testify against their spouse in court on a crime that is external?

Even the Soviet article 58-1c, which introduced criminal penalty specifically for the family members in case they did not report the treason to authorities, only applied a) if the traitor was in the military service; b) only in cases when the treason consisted of fleeing the country. Otherwise, 58-12 would apply which did not have the capital punishment as an option.

In the US this is known as "misprision of treason" which is a crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misprision_of_treason

From wikipedia:

> "It is punishable by a fine and up to seven years in federal prison."

Not death.

What's interesting is that she was damned, at least in large part, by testimony from her own brother, who claimed that she typed up memos on nuclear weapons for the Soviets. But then, in a plot twist, he recanted in 2001, saying:

> “I don’t remember that at all,” Mr. Greenglass said. “I frankly think my wife did the typing, but I don’t remember.”

> “My wife is more important to me than my sister. Or my mother or my father, O.K.? And she was the mother of my children.”

Such honor, such integrity.

See: https://archive.ph/yIrwV

Who is around now who actually did worse? I can't think of the name.

AIPAC?

EDIT: Aside from the obvious pernicious foreign interference in our elections which is absolutely staggering, not many people remember this scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc...

Or their role in our invasion of Iraq: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/10/aipac-a...

Maybe this guy, but he died last year

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

Jonathan Pollard stole an eyewatering amount of secrets for Israel, including the most-critical US nuclear blueprints and designs. The intelligence community wanted him to die in jail, but the Israeli Lobby, 70 Knesset members, President Shimon Peres, countless Jewish groups and figures kept applying pressure until he was paroled after 30 years served. Was such a storm in the intelligence community (because of the sensitivity of stuff stolen) that CIA chief tenet threatened to resign if he was pardoned.

This seems like pretty weak evidence compared to what’s shown in other sources like Venona. Regardless - if someone does not do the spy work themselves, but is aware of, married to, and likely supports in some way a spy.. have they committed any crimes?

Pour encourager les autres. That is all that criminal punishment has ever been.

Berg.

That memo shows no such thing. The persistence of this story is crazy. The article even links to the ample evidence of her participation. Just because she was physically unable to meet assets or whatever "work" means, doesn't mean she isn't guilty of espionage. Now, maybe you can argue the chair wasn't an appropriate punishment for her, but she is definitely guilty of conspiracy at a minimum.

This is the sad story of children unable to come to terms with the fact that their parents were Soviet spies.

A tale as old as time...

How many times was the atomic bomb developed? I think it might have been only once. Oppenheimer invented it, the Rosenburgs leaked it to the USSR, and if I understand correctly the communists leaked it to other communist countries. There were a few bad choices that led to MAD and I really regret that as a society we made those choices.

The Rosenburgs leaked it to the USSR,

The Soviets developed their first nuclear devices largely on their own; though findings from espionage certainly accelerated the effort, it wasn't like the entire conceptual design was simply "leaked" to them. As to the Rosenbergs - the article you just read makes it clear that while she apparently knew of her husband's doing, “she did not engage in the work herself” (per the leaked memo). But of course she had to be sent to the chair anyway.

And whatever help Julius did provide was apparently of minimal value:

  The notes allegedly typed by Ethel apparently contained little that was directly used in the Soviet atomic bomb project.[63] According to Julius's contact Feklisov, the Rosenbergs did not provide the Soviet Union with any useful material about the atomic bomb: "He [Julius] didn't understand anything about the atomic bomb and he couldn't help us."

  General Leslie Groves, who developed the American nuclear program as part of the Manhattan Project, said during a United States Atomic Energy Commission hearing on Robert Oppenheimer that he thought that "the data that went out in the case of the Rosenbergs was of minor value" and that he "always felt the effects were greatly exaggerated, that the Russians did not get too much information out of it". Groves requested that this "should be kept very quiet" as he still believed the Rosenbergs deserved to die. This part of his testimony was redacted from the publicly released 1954 transcript of the Commission's hearing on Oppenheimer and remained classified until 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

You know the USA aren't the only non-communist country to develop nuclear weapons?

The possibility of constructing a bomb was known probably since the '20s. The USSR most certainly could have done it themselves, alone.

What the leak most probably did was reduce the number of nuclear tests done by the USSR and probably nuclear accidents too (USSR were really prone to accidents). Which is good for the entire planet.

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