[We call on Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to
follow her own wise counsel and direct the NSA and the National
Archives to open all files relating to Ethel Rosenberg to us and to
every American. Let the chips fall where they may.]
[[link removed]]

ROSENBERG EXECUTIONS: LET THE FULL TRUTH BE KNOWN  
[[link removed]]


 

Michael Meeropol and Robert Meeropol
June 16, 2023
Just Security
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ We call on Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to follow
her own wise counsel and direct the NSA and the National Archives to
open all files relating to Ethel Rosenberg to us and to every
American. Let the chips fall where they may. _

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg found guilty: 1950, by Washington Area
Spark (CC BY-NC 2.0)

 

Seventy years ago, on June 19, 1953, our parents, Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, were executed after being convicted of federal charges of
conspiracy to commit espionage. They were in their 30’s, and we were
10 (Michael) and 6 (Robert) when we last visited them at Sing Sing,
the prison north of New York City where they were electrocuted. Today,
compelling doubts about our mother’s guilt persist, and we call on
the U.S. government to immediately release all documents related to
her prosecution and execution, so that we and all Americans can
finally know the truth about her case.

Though we grew up believing in our parents’ innocence, as adults we
adjusted our views as we learned more about the case. We came of age
in the post-Watergate climate of the 1970’s, when, like today, there
was great concern about government secrecy and the over-classification
of government documents. In 1975, we rode the wave of the strengthened
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to file a precedent-setting FOIA
request for files related to our parents’ case.

Some questioned our demand to open the files. They queried, “You are
asking for the government’s documents — what if they show your
parents were guilty?”  We responded that the truth was more
important than our beliefs. Our slogan was “Open the files,” and
our approach was “to let the chips fall where they may.”

And they did. Some files bolstered our claims that our parents were
framed. For instance, we learned that the trial Judge, Irving R.
Kaufman, secretly communicated with the prosecution team,
including the infamous late Roy Cohn
[[link removed]---------------------------],
an assistant U.S. attorney who helped prosecute our parents and played
a crucial role in convicting our mother by orchestrating what may have
been perjurious testimony
[[link removed]].
After his victory in the Rosenberg trial, Cohn went on to advance the
anti-democratic Cold War excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI),
consort with organized crime figures and serve as an attorney for and
mentor to the young Donald Trump. Before his death in 1986, Cohn, was
disbarred in New York State for “unethical” legal behavior.

Conversely, the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) release in
1995 of the VENONA transcripts
[[link removed]] of
secret Soviet communications demonstrated that our father engaged in
military-industrial espionage for the Soviet Union in the 1940’s.
This revelation was disturbing, but we’re our parents’ children,
not their attorneys, and knowing what happened was more important than
our initial belief. We have never regretted our commitment to freedom
of information, and it still guides us today.

But while the VENONA transcriptions incriminated our father, they also
contained exculpatory evidence related to our mother
[[link removed]].
For instance, we learned that the KGB gave all its agents code names,
but our mother was not given one. We have since had to grapple with
the possibility that the U.S. government knew our mother was not a spy
but charged, convicted, and executed her in a failed effort to
pressure our father to cooperate.

Although our detailed 1975 FOIA request covered 18 federal agencies,
we did not include the NSA in it, because we did not know at that time
that the agency was involved. Moreover, the government did not offer
any hint in response to our FOIA request of a role for the NSA. After
the NSA’s 1995 release of the VENONA files, we thought it had made
public everything it possessed, including a memo from the chief
decrypter of secret Soviet communications, which indicated that he did
not believe our mother was a spy. It took us more than 20 years to
realize that the NSA may not have released all accompanying materials
to the transcripts of secret Soviet communications. That realization
prompted us last July to file two FOIA requests with the NSA and the
National Archives to release all files related to our mother.

The response to our requests has been slow. In December, the National
Archives informed us that they had as many as 500,000 pages in more
than 200 classified boxes that could be relevant to our request. The
NSA responded that they had other boxes as well. We were told that it
will take years just to review the documents, let alone declassify
them and make them public.

While this information is powerfully personal to us, it is also
crucial to our nation and to the rule of law that the truth about this
historic case be known. We agree with Director of National
Intelligence Avril Haines, who said
[[link removed]] in
January 2023, “Over-classification undermines critical democratic
objectives, such as increasing transparency to promote an informed
citizenry and greater accountability.”  We also agree with
Republican U.S. Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, who recently described
the declassification process
[[link removed]] as
“about as effective as using an eye dropper to drain a flood.”

As we requested in writing in our 2022 FOIA request, we now publicly
call on Haines to instruct the NSA and the National Archives, as
allowed by an Obama executive order
[[link removed]] on
national security information, to release all records related to our
mother’s case. We applaud the recent bipartisan effort to reform
the classification system
[[link removed]],
but it will do little to address the current backlog of millions of
documents unless intelligence agencies dramatically alter their
methods of releasing decades-old papers languishing in innumerable
files. What better way to get the ball rolling than to make a
wholesale release, without further delay or review, of materials
related to the 70-year-old case of our mother, Ethel Rosenberg. Doing
this would make clear that the same principle of transparency driving
reformers such as Haines today must apply to the past.

Just as justice delayed is justice denied, so information delayed is
information denied. We are now 80 and 76, and we would like to know
the full truth about our mother’s case before we die. On the 70th
anniversary of our parents’ execution, we call on Haines to follow
her own wise counsel and direct the NSA and the National Archives to
open these files to us and to every American. Let the chips fall where
they may.

Seventy years ago, on June 19, 1953, our parents, Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, were executed after being convicted of federal charges of
conspiracy to commit espionage. They were in their 30’s, and we were
10 (Michael) and 6 (Robert) when we last visited them at Sing Sing,
the prison north of New York City where they were electrocuted. Today,
compelling doubts about our mother’s guilt persist, and we call on
the U.S. government to immediately release all documents related to
her prosecution and execution, so that we and all Americans can
finally know the truth about her case.

Though we grew up believing in our parents’ innocence, as adults we
adjusted our views as we learned more about the case. We came of age
in the post-Watergate climate of the 1970’s, when, like today, there
was great concern about government secrecy and the over-classification
of government documents. In 1975, we rode the wave of the strengthened
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to file a precedent-setting FOIA
request for files related to our parents’ case.

Some questioned our demand to open the files. They queried, “You are
asking for the government’s documents — what if they show your
parents were guilty?”  We responded that the truth was more
important than our beliefs. Our slogan was “Open the files,” and
our approach was “to let the chips fall where they may.”

And they did. Some files bolstered our claims that our parents were
framed. For instance, we learned that the trial Judge, Irving R.
Kaufman, secretly communicated with the prosecution team,
including the infamous late Roy Cohn
[[link removed]---------------------------],
an assistant U.S. attorney who helped prosecute our parents and played
a crucial role in convicting our mother by orchestrating what may have
been perjurious testimony
[[link removed]].
After his victory in the Rosenberg trial, Cohn went on to advance the
anti-democratic Cold War excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI),
consort with organized crime figures and serve as an attorney for and
mentor to the young Donald Trump. Before his death in 1986, Cohn, was
disbarred in New York State for “unethical” legal behavior.

Conversely, the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) release in
1995 of the VENONA transcripts
[[link removed]] of
secret Soviet communications demonstrated that our father engaged in
military-industrial espionage for the Soviet Union in the 1940’s.
This revelation was disturbing, but we’re our parents’ children,
not their attorneys, and knowing what happened was more important than
our initial belief. We have never regretted our commitment to freedom
of information, and it still guides us today.

But while the VENONA transcriptions incriminated our father, they also
contained exculpatory evidence related to our mother
[[link removed]].
For instance, we learned that the KGB gave all its agents code names,
but our mother was not given one. We have since had to grapple with
the possibility that the U.S. government knew our mother was not a spy
but charged, convicted, and executed her in a failed effort to
pressure our father to cooperate.

Although our detailed 1975 FOIA request covered 18 federal agencies,
we did not include the NSA in it, because we did not know at that time
that the agency was involved. Moreover, the government did not offer
any hint in response to our FOIA request of a role for the NSA. After
the NSA’s 1995 release of the VENONA files, we thought it had made
public everything it possessed, including a memo from the chief
decrypter of secret Soviet communications, which indicated that he did
not believe our mother was a spy. It took us more than 20 years to
realize that the NSA may not have released all accompanying materials
to the transcripts of secret Soviet communications. That realization
prompted us last July to file two FOIA requests with the NSA and the
National Archives to release all files related to our mother.

The response to our requests has been slow. In December, the National
Archives informed us that they had as many as 500,000 pages in more
than 200 classified boxes that could be relevant to our request. The
NSA responded that they had other boxes as well. We were told that it
will take years just to review the documents, let alone declassify
them and make them public.

While this information is powerfully personal to us, it is also
crucial to our nation and to the rule of law that the truth about this
historic case be known. We agree with Director of National
Intelligence Avril Haines, who said
[[link removed]] in
January 2023, “Over-classification undermines critical democratic
objectives, such as increasing transparency to promote an informed
citizenry and greater accountability.”  We also agree with
Republican U.S. Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, who recently described
the declassification process
[[link removed]] as
“about as effective as using an eye dropper to drain a flood.”

As we requested in writing in our 2022 FOIA request, we now publicly
call on Haines to instruct the NSA and the National Archives, as
allowed by an Obama executive order
[[link removed]] on
national security information, to release all records related to our
mother’s case. We applaud the recent bipartisan effort to reform
the classification system
[[link removed]],
but it will do little to address the current backlog of millions of
documents unless intelligence agencies dramatically alter their
methods of releasing decades-old papers languishing in innumerable
files. What better way to get the ball rolling than to make a
wholesale release, without further delay or review, of materials
related to the 70-year-old case of our mother, Ethel Rosenberg. Doing
this would make clear that the same principle of transparency driving
reformers such as Haines today must apply to the past.

Just as justice delayed is justice denied, so information delayed is
information denied. We are now 80 and 76, and we would like to know
the full truth about our mother’s case before we die. On the 70th
anniversary of our parents’ execution, we call on Haines to follow
her own wise counsel and direct the NSA and the National Archives to
open these files to us and to every American. Let the chips fall where
they may.

Seventy years ago, on June 19, 1953, our parents, Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, were executed after being convicted of federal charges of
conspiracy to commit espionage. They were in their 30’s, and we were
10 (Michael) and 6 (Robert) when we last visited them at Sing Sing,
the prison north of New York City where they were electrocuted. Today,
compelling doubts about our mother’s guilt persist, and we call on
the U.S. government to immediately release all documents related to
her prosecution and execution, so that we and all Americans can
finally know the truth about her case.

Though we grew up believing in our parents’ innocence, as adults we
adjusted our views as we learned more about the case. We came of age
in the post-Watergate climate of the 1970’s, when, like today, there
was great concern about government secrecy and the over-classification
of government documents. In 1975, we rode the wave of the strengthened
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to file a precedent-setting FOIA
request for files related to our parents’ case.

Some questioned our demand to open the files. They queried, “You are
asking for the government’s documents — what if they show your
parents were guilty?”  We responded that the truth was more
important than our beliefs. Our slogan was “Open the files,” and
our approach was “to let the chips fall where they may.”

And they did. Some files bolstered our claims that our parents were
framed. For instance, we learned that the trial Judge, Irving R.
Kaufman, secretly communicated with the prosecution team,
including the infamous late Roy Cohn
[[link removed]---------------------------],
an assistant U.S. attorney who helped prosecute our parents and played
a crucial role in convicting our mother by orchestrating what may have
been perjurious testimony
[[link removed]].
After his victory in the Rosenberg trial, Cohn went on to advance the
anti-democratic Cold War excesses of Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI),
consort with organized crime figures and serve as an attorney for and
mentor to the young Donald Trump. Before his death in 1986, Cohn, was
disbarred in New York State for “unethical” legal behavior.

Conversely, the National Security Agency’s (NSA’s) release in
1995 of the VENONA transcripts
[[link removed]] of
secret Soviet communications demonstrated that our father engaged in
military-industrial espionage for the Soviet Union in the 1940’s.
This revelation was disturbing, but we’re our parents’ children,
not their attorneys, and knowing what happened was more important than
our initial belief. We have never regretted our commitment to freedom
of information, and it still guides us today.

But while the VENONA transcriptions incriminated our father, they also
contained exculpatory evidence related to our mother
[[link removed]].
For instance, we learned that the KGB gave all its agents code names,
but our mother was not given one. We have since had to grapple with
the possibility that the U.S. government knew our mother was not a spy
but charged, convicted, and executed her in a failed effort to
pressure our father to cooperate.

Although our detailed 1975 FOIA request covered 18 federal agencies,
we did not include the NSA in it, because we did not know at that time
that the agency was involved. Moreover, the government did not offer
any hint in response to our FOIA request of a role for the NSA. After
the NSA’s 1995 release of the VENONA files, we thought it had made
public everything it possessed, including a memo from the chief
decrypter of secret Soviet communications, which indicated that he did
not believe our mother was a spy. It took us more than 20 years to
realize that the NSA may not have released all accompanying materials
to the transcripts of secret Soviet communications. That realization
prompted us last July to file two FOIA requests with the NSA and the
National Archives to release all files related to our mother.

The response to our requests has been slow. In December, the National
Archives informed us that they had as many as 500,000 pages in more
than 200 classified boxes that could be relevant to our request. The
NSA responded that they had other boxes as well. We were told that it
will take years just to review the documents, let alone declassify
them and make them public.

While this information is powerfully personal to us, it is also
crucial to our nation and to the rule of law that the truth about this
historic case be known. We agree with Director of National
Intelligence Avril Haines, who said
[[link removed]] in
January 2023, “Over-classification undermines critical democratic
objectives, such as increasing transparency to promote an informed
citizenry and greater accountability.”  We also agree with
Republican U.S. Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, who recently described
the declassification process
[[link removed]] as
“about as effective as using an eye dropper to drain a flood.”

As we requested in writing in our 2022 FOIA request, we now publicly
call on Haines to instruct the NSA and the National Archives, as
allowed by an Obama executive order
[[link removed]] on
national security information, to release all records related to our
mother’s case. We applaud the recent bipartisan effort to reform
the classification system
[[link removed]],
but it will do little to address the current backlog of millions of
documents unless intelligence agencies dramatically alter their
methods of releasing decades-old papers languishing in innumerable
files. What better way to get the ball rolling than to make a
wholesale release, without further delay or review, of materials
related to the 70-year-old case of our mother, Ethel Rosenberg. Doing
this would make clear that the same principle of transparency driving
reformers such as Haines today must apply to the past.

Just as justice delayed is justice denied, so information delayed is
information denied. We are now 80 and 76, and we would like to know
the full truth about our mother’s case before we die. On the 70th
anniversary of our parents’ execution, we call on Haines to follow
her own wise counsel and direct the NSA and the National Archives to
open these files to us and to every American. Let the chips fall where
they may.

_Michael Meeropol
[[link removed]], an economist,
author and activist, taught economics for 38 years at the Western New
England College (now University). From 2009-2014, he taught at the
John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New
York. _

_Robert Meeropol
[[link removed]], a progressive
activist and author, has long campaigned with his brother, Michael, to
uncover the truth about the case of their parents, Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg. They successfully sued in the 1970s to force the FBI and
CIA to release 300,000 previously secret documents about the case.
They are now requesting that the National Security Administration and
National Archives release all records pertaining to Ethel Rosenberg,
whom they wish to see exonerated. After working as a professor of
anthropology and an attorney, Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for
Children (RFC) in 1990, serving as its Executive Director until
2013. _

_Just Security [[link removed]] is an online
forum for the rigorous analysis of security, democracy, foreign
policy, and rights. Founded in 2013, we aim to promote principled and
pragmatic solutions to problems confronting decision-makers in the
United States and abroad. Our expert authors are individuals with
significant government experience, academics, civil society
practitioners, individuals directly affected by national security
policies, and other leading voices. Our Board of Editors includes a
broad range of leading experts on domestic and international law and
policy. Just Security is based at the Reiss Center on Law and
Security [[link removed]] at New York University
School of Law._

* Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
[[link removed]]

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*
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