A Spy Among Us Essay, Research Paper
In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of
passing information to the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics (USSR) concerning the construction of nuclear
weapons. In 1953, the United States Government executed
them. Some say, the Rosenbergs received their just
punishment. Many historians feel that the trial was unfair,
and that international claims for clemency were wrongly
ignored. These historians claim that the Rosenbergs were
assassinated by the US government. This report will be an
analysis of the trial, the events which led up to it, and its
aftermath. What Led to the Arrest? The first clue America
had that a Russian spy ring existed in the US was the
discovery of a KGB codebook on the Finnish battlefield
during World War II. When compared with Germany’s
machine-scrambled codes, the code appeared to be
relatively primitive; a certain set of numbers corresponded
to a word, letter, or essential phrase. There was a little
catch though; the codebook was to be read with a
corresponding page that every KGB officer was given.
Because the American ciphers did not have the
corresponding page, there were an infinite number of
possibilities that could have corresponded to the book,
making deciphering it impossible. (Milton 7) Klaus Fuchs
In 1944, the FBI raided the New York offices of the
Soviet Government Purchasing Commission, a known front
for the KGB industrial espionage operations. When the
FBI began to go through what they had taken, they found
that many KGB officers did not adhere to their orders
diligently. They were told to dispose of all their
“corresponding sheets.” Many memos and other letters
were carelessly stored away, instead of being destroyed
after their use. After much studying of all the confiscated
letters of the KGB, including the new sheets, the ciphers
were now able to elucidate some of the codebook they had
found earlier. In 1949, a report by Klaus Fuchs was
deciphered. This was America’s first solid evidence that
there was a spy ring operating within the US. borders. The
American authorities had some doubts, however. It was
possible that Fuchs was not a spy and somehow the KGB
had obtained his report. After much investigation, the FBI
arrested Fuchs. Along with other evidence, a letter
deciphered by the FBI had a reference to a British atomic
spy, whose sister was attending an American University.
Fuchs sister, Kristel, had been a student at Swarthmore
College at that time. The FBI appointed James Skardon to
confront Fuchs. Skardon was a renowned spy-catcher,
who had obtained confessions from many, including the
traitor William Joyce. On December 21 1949, Skardon
went to talk with Fuchs in his laboratory at the Harwell
Atomic Research Establishment. To Skardon’s surprise,
Fuchs was eager to talk. Apparently, Fuchs wanted to talk
because he was very upset with the Soviet Union’s postwar
policy in Eastern Europe. He did not say everything, but it
was a start. After many meetings, Skardon was able to get
Fuchs to disclose even more. Fuchs thought that if he
owned up to his past, it would be forgotten, or at least
forgiven. He was wrong. Fuchs said, “At first I thought that
all I would do was inform the Russian authorities that work
on the atomic bomb was going on? I did what I consider
the worst that I could have done, namely to give
information about the principle of the design of the
plutonium bomb.” The FBI later found out from Fuchs that
his contact was “Raymond.” They had only met a handful of
times and Fuchs did not know much about him. On March
1, 1950, Fuchs was put on trial. After a trial that lasted
only an hour and a half, he was convicted of four accounts
of espionage and sentenced to 14 years in jail. The reason
he was not killed was that he gave secrets to an ally. If he
had given the same information to an enemy, he would have
been condemned to death. (This contrasts with the current
US treatment of Jonathan Pollard – another spy on behalf
of a US ally, Israel.) The FBI now had the first link in the
chain; the next step was finding Raymond. (Eisenhower
223) Fuchs, in 1945, had been transferred to the
theoretical division of the main Manhattan Project
installation at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Fuchs then left,
without telling his Soviet control that he was leaving. After
Fuchs missed two meetings, Raymond grew very troubled,
so he went to his Soviet chief, Anatoli Yakovlev, at the
Soviet consulate staff in New York. Yakovlev went
through Fuchs’ portfolio and found his sister’s address. He
then told Raymond to go visit Fuchs sister, Kristal, in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Raymond acting as an old
friend of Fuchs inquired as to his well being. Upon her
telling him that he had moved “somewhere down south,” he
left his telephone number. When Fuchs came home for a
vacation with his sister, she called Raymond. Raymond
immediately resumed their secret meetings. When the FBI
was searching for “Raymond”, they asked Fuchs and
Kristal for descriptions. The FBI, with their two
descriptions from the Fuchs, researched into their own files
and produced a suspect: Joseph Arnold Robbins, a
left-wing chemical engineer who graduated from CCNY in
1941. After a background search on him, the FBI rejected
him as a witness. After more intense investigation, two
other suspects were suggested, Abraham Brothmon and
Harry Gold. The FBI thought Gold was a stronger suspect
for multiple reasons, so, on May 9, Hoover ordered a
manhunt to find Gold. On May 23 1950, Gold was
arrested in Philadelphia. The importance the FBI attached
to the capture of Fuch’s accomplice was indicated by J.
Edgar Hoover, “In all the history of the FBI there never
was a more important problem than this one, never another
case where we felt under such pressure. The unknown man
simply had to be found.” The pressure that Hoover was
referring to is unknown, but months just prior to Gold’s
arrest the FBI was criticized for allegedly bungling
investigations in the Redin, Amerasia, Eisler, and Coplon
cases. (Milton 38) Harry Gold In 1915, Tom Black, an old
friend, offered Gold a job in the Manufacturing Company in
New Jersey. Gold immediately took the job. After working
there for a little while, Black began to take Gold to
Communist meetings. Gradually, Gold became a committed
Soviet and when Black asked him (in 1935) to help the
Soviets and give them some information, Gold eagerly
agreed. Although, Gold was not pro-Communist, he was
pro-Soviet. The reason Gold liked the Soviets so much
was because he thought they were benevolent towards the
Jews. Sam Semenov, Gold’s Soviet contact, suggested that
he make his own contacts that had access to more
information than he did. After working for the Soviets for
eight years, Semenov told Gold to break all ties with his
former contacts. Gold was given new contacts, “a group of
American scientists in New York.” This was considered a
promotion, for Gold was assigned a contact who had
access to a lot more information. This new person was
Klaus Fuchs. After four years of working with Fuchs, Gold
stopped working for the Soviets and began to lead a
normal life, cutting all ties he had with his contacts and the
Soviets. A couple of months later, one of Gold’s contacts,
Abraham Brothmon called Gold franticly saying the FBI
questioned him and they were onto them. Days later, the
FBI interrogated Gold. At first, Gold claimed the same
story as Brothmon, but after extremely long interrogations
Gold was worn down, and accidentally slipped, and the
FBI began to catch the inconsistencies in Gold’s story. The
next week, they searched his house. In the middle of the
search, Gold admitted to being the man to whom Klaus
Fuchs passed the information on atomic energy. Despite
Gold’s attempts, after an exhausting week of interrogation,
Gold slipped and mentioned old contact’s and friend’s
names, including his friend Tom Black and David
Greenglass. (Allen 41) David & Ethel Greenglass David
Greenglass was an American solider assigned as a
technician at Los Alamos. For $500 he gave Gold sketches
of the system used to focus high explosive pressure waves
that drove together packets of uranium and produced the
chain the chain reaction of nuclear fission-the explosion of
the atomic bomb. David Greenglass’ sister was Ethel
Greenglass, later to be Ethel Rosenberg. The Greenglass’s
grew up in New York’s Lower East Side, in a small
cramped apartment. Ethel was brilliant. She graduated at
age 15 from Seward Park High School. Even in the poor
economy of that period, when there was an extreme
demand for jobs, she was able to find work within a month
of receiving her diploma, at age 15. She was fired four
years later when she organized a strike of 150 women who
lay down in the street blocking all the company’s delivery
trucks. Ethel then filed a complaint with the National Labor
Relations Board, which she won. She succeeded at finding
a better job, for twice the pay of her previous one. Ethel
was known as a “go-getter”; she did not stop until she was
satisfied. With some training, Ethel started to sing in choirs
and act in plays in the evenings. One evening, before Ethel
went on stage, she met the one and only love of her life,
Julius Rosenberg. (Milton 50) Julius Rosenberg Julius’
background was similar to Ehtel’s; he grew up on New
York’s East Side. He went to the same schools as Ethel,
Talmud Torah for middle school, and Seward Park for high
school. Julius never had to worry about money, and his
father wanted him to further his religious leanings and
become a rabbi. In Julius’ senior year, he grew more
interested in politics and less interested in religion. After
Julius graduated from Seward, he went to the City College
of New York, where he majored in electrical engineering.
This major was favored by politically aware students
because it entitled them to membership in the Federation of
Architects, Engineers, Chemists and Technicians (FAECT),
a militant union for white collar professionals with a
pro-Communist leadership. Julius soon became a member
in the Steinmentz Club, a branch of the Young Communist
League, or YCL. Soon Julius became so involved in
politics that his graduation was in jeopardy. At this time,
Julius and Ethel were becoming very serious about each
other and Ethel made Julius come over to her house to
study so that he would eventually receive his diploma.
Because Julius spent so much time in Ethel’s house, David
(Ethel’s brother) became very friendly with Julius. Julius
kindled David’s interest in politics, convincing him to join
the YCL. (Allen 45) Julius and Ethel were married in 1939.
After struggling for a few years with no substantial job,
Julius was hired as a civilian employee of the U.S. Army
Signal Corps in the fall of 1942. In 1942, David married
Ruth Printz. In 1943, the Greenglasses joined the YCL,
and the Rosenbergs were full members of the Communist
Party. Julius was chairperson of Branch 16B of the Party
Industrial Division and often held meetings in his house.
Party members were encouraging everybody to do
everything they could to support the wartime effort. When
David was admitted to the American army, he looked
forward to helping the Communist cause in any way he
could. Julius, however, was physically unfit for the army, so
he looked for other ways to help his party. (Milton 70)
According to Ruth Greenglass’ testimony, Julius and Ethel
dropped out of the Communist party in 1943 to take their
own “initiative” in helping their party. She claims that Julius
told her that he began to form contacts to help him enter a
new kind of activity. David later claimed that Julius
approached him about the subject of espionage. Even
without David Greenglass’ testimony, one can understand
why the Rosenbergs dropped out of the party. Ethel had
her first child in early 1943, and Julius was working for the
government, so he was afraid he would lose his job if his
Communist affiliations were discovered. (Eisenhower 224)
In the beginning of 1945, Julius was dismissed from his job.
Sometime before this, the FBI had sent to the U.S. Army
Intelligence a copy of a Communist Party membership card
showing that in 1939, Julius had been involved in the Party.
The Army felt this was not sufficient evidence to dismiss
Julius because there was no reason for them to assume it
was the same Julius Rosenberg who was their Signal Corps
employee. In the fall of 1944, the FBI sent the Army more
information on Rosenberg, including his address. This time
the evidence sufficed and Julius was dismissed. (Milton 83)
On July 17, 1950, David told the FBI that Julius was
talking freely about his “secret work” in order to make
David more comfortable helping him. Julius confided in
David that the first move he made in espionage was while
he was working as a signal corps inspector. Julius told
David that he knew that soviet radios and electronics were
floundering (David realized that Julius was talking about
their radar technology) and had tried to help the Soviets by
picking up copies of tube manuals. David said that Julius
bragged to him many times about the network of contacts
he had built in Cleveland, Ohio, and upstate New York,
and about information about certain top secret weapons.
(Milton 84) On July 16, 1950, two uniformed police
officers, William Norton and John Harrington, came to
Julius’ apartment and took him down for questioning. Julius
remained very calm while being interrogated but refused to
allow his apartment to be checked without a warrant.
When Julius was taken to the base, Harrington asked him,
“What would you say if we told you that your
brother-in-law said you asked him to supply information to
the Russians?” Julius responded sharply, “Bring him here,
and I will call him a liar to his face.” (Sharlitt 3) Soon after
being taken to the station, Julius asked to call his lawyer.
When Victor Rabinowitz answered the telephone, his first
question was, was he under arrest. When they told Julius
that he had not been arrested, he immediately stood up and
walked out of the station. When Julius left the station, he
saw the newspapers screaming that Greenglass had been
arrested that day and was being held on $100,000 bond.
From the station, Julius went straight to Rabinowitz.
Rosenberg wanted the FAECT counsel to represent him,
but because Rabinowitz had recently defended the alleged
spy Judith Coplon, he felt his involvement would be
detrimental for Rosenberg’s case, so he gave Rosenberg
another lawyer, Emanuel Hirsch Bloch. Bloch was a very
eminent lawyer; he was a member in National Lawyer’s
Guild and the Civil Rights Congress. He served on the
defense team of Willie McGee and was also serving as one
of the three CRC attorneys assigned to the case of the
Trenton Six. Bloch was also well known for his
representation of Steve Nelson, a leader of the Communist
Party in Pittsburgh. The real reason though, that Rabinowitz
appointed Bloch, was that Bloch was a good friend of O.
John Rogge and shared an office building with him. Rogge
was Greenglass’ attorney and Rabinowitz wanted to stay
well informed of Greenglass’ situation, and if possible,
prevent him from becoming a government witness. (Sharlitt
6) The first time Bloch met Rosenberg he thought this
would be a simple open and shut case. He thought that if
Rosenberg would respond to all questions with the Fifth
Amendment, then the prosecution’s case would become a
lot weaker. He missed some obvious hints though, that
would have led him to think otherwise. For example,
Greenglass was nicknamed by the media as the
“atom-spy.” (Sharlitt 6) After being released, Julius
continued his normal routine while the FBI conducted what
they call a “discreet surveillance.” Agents Norton and
Harrington were permanently assigned to Rosenberg’s
case. Without David Greenglass expanding on his
accusations from June 15-16, they could not justify