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JUDGE IRVING KAUFMAN, THE LIBERAL ESTABLISHMENT, AND THE ROSENBERG
CASE  
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Michael Meeropol
January 1, 2024
Monthly Review
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_ The pitfalls of seeing history through the “great man” lens. _

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, separated by heavy wire screen as they
leave U.S. Court House after being found guilty by jury., Roger
Higgins, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. New York
World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection

 

Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they
please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves,
but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted
from the past.

—Karl Marx, _The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte_

This sentence encapsulates what Karl Marx believed was the role of
individuals in history. Nearly all of us have been exposed to the
“great man [or woman]” theory of history, but most readers
of _Monthly Review_ probably accept the more sophisticated view that
history moves because of various forces at work, and that individuals
play roles within the limits set by those forces. The work examined
here, _Judgment and Mercy: The Turbulent Life and Times of the Judge
Who Condemned the Rosenbergs_, by Martin J. Siegel, is a good example
of the pitfalls of seeing history through the “great man” lens.

_Judgment and Mercy_ argues that Judge Irving R. Kaufman, the man who
sentenced my parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, to death, did
something terrible and then “atoned” for what he did by becoming a
progressive stalwart during his over forty years as a judge.1
[[link removed]] By
concentrating on Kaufman as an individual, Siegel plays down the role
of the anti-Communist consensus that included virtually the entire
political spectrum by the end of the 1940s. By emphasizing the
apparent shift in Kaufman’s post-Rosenberg career, Siegel also plays
down the consistency of liberalism. In fact, there is no contradiction
between the virulent anti-Communism of the McCarthy era and
improvements in civil liberties and civil rights over the course of
the 1950s and ’60s.

Kaufman and the Rosenberg Case

When sentencing the Rosenbergs to death on April 5, 1951, Kaufman
stated: “I consider your crime worse than murder.… I believe your
conduct 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…and
who knows but that millions more innocent people may pay the price of
your treason.”2
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With these words justifying the imposition of the death penalty on my
parents, Kaufman made his place in history. Siegel opens his book with
the scene at Kaufman’s funeral. A handful of people picketed while
one brave soul disturbed the tranquility in the synagogue by
interrupting the eulogy and calling out, “He murdered the
Rosenbergs! Let him rot in Hell!!”3
[[link removed]] Siegel’s
goal in his book is to show that Kaufman was much more than his role
in that case. After describing Kaufman’s career up to the execution,
Siegel, who served briefly as one of his law clerks, describes how
“an almost slavishly pro-government judge became a leading liberal
on the federal bench.”4
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To people on the left, Kaufman is remembered not only for the death
sentence, but for putting his thumb on the scales of justice during
the trial, virtually guaranteeing the jury’s guilty verdict. Some
will know about his violations of judicial ethics by having secret
discussions with the prosecution before, during, and after the trial,
as well as his astonishing speech sentencing my parents to death
because their “treason” had caused the Korean War.5
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But there is more to understand about the career of Kaufman. According
to Siegel, Kaufman attempted to redeem himself by becoming a
progressive stalwart in his subsequent years on the bench. Many
speculate that this “change” came after public opinion turned
against the death sentence and after Joseph McCarthy was censured by
the Senate. Kaufman felt the criticism and sought to remake himself.
In a separate article, Siegel writes:

In thirty years on the appellate bench, however, [Kaufman] worked hard
to relegate the Rosenberg case and its ugly ending to the past. His
decisions liberalized the insanity defense, reformed Attica-era
prisons, advocated constitutional protection for poor people, spared
John Lennon from politically motivated deportation, greatly expanded
free speech, brought foreign human rights abusers to justice in US
courts, and more. Broadly speaking, he kept his 1949 promise to make
it easier for people struggling as he once had.6
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In Siegel’s book, Kaufman comes across as a determined self-promoter
in pursuit of success. He pushed to be appointed to the bench, lobbied
to be assigned the Rosenberg case, sought publicity from the _New
York Times_, and cultivated relationships with powerful individuals,
including J. Edgar Hoover and Attorney General Tom Clark. He pushed to
be promoted to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, worked hard for a
Supreme Court seat, and finally made a deal with President Ronald
Reagan to receive the Medal of Freedom.7
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Siegel’s presentation of Kaufman’s behavior in the case of my
parents covers the fifth through eighth chapters, as well as the
fourteenth. Here and elsewhere, we see Kaufman acting as an individual
in pursuit of success. There is no question as to Kaufman’s intense
personal ambitions. However, it is also true that, early on, he
realized that successful self-promotion would depend on how well he
responded to the needs of the powerful people to whom he would be
beholden. The U.S. justice system in the late 1940s and most of the
’50s was dominated by the need to destroy Communism as a political
force within the United States. Kaufman’s wholehearted embrace of a
role in that project, combined with self-promotion, generated his
behavior while presiding over my parents’ trial.

During the late 1940s, the U.S. ruling class sought to roll back some
of the political changes that had occurred during the periods of the
Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Second World War.8
[[link removed]] The
ruling class knew that a strong Communist Party, together with their
liberal allies in the left of the New Deal coalition, were potential
obstacles to prosecuting both the Cold War abroad and the rollback of
the rights of labor unions at home. Thus, they launched a full-blown
assault on Communists and “fellow travelers.”

The positive view of the Soviet Union that was promoted during the
years of the wartime alliance and the (at least partial) acceptance of
U.S. Communists as part of the U.S. political system were to be
consigned to the dustbin of history.9
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Kaufman played a role in the change in public opinion. This can be
seen in a rarely quoted part of his sentencing speech: “The issue of
punishment in this case is presented in a unique framework of history.
It is so difficult to make people realize that this country is engaged
in a life and death struggle with a completely different system.… I
believe that never at any time in our history were we ever confronted
to the same degree that we are today with such a challenge to our very
existence.”10
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Clearly, his sentencing speech was part of a “team” effort to
build an anti-Communist national consciousness.11
[[link removed]] When
we turn more specifically to my parents’ case, it is also important
to note that Kaufman was not an individual flying solo. Before the
trial, the legal and judicial establishment coalesced around the need
to obtain a death sentence for my father as a means of ensuring that
he would confess and name his alleged co-conspirators. Siegel
acknowledges this, but only after emphasizing Kaufman’s individual
actions, thus obscuring the larger context.

The reason the government wanted my father to cooperate is because
they knew—from an ultra-secret program, codenamed Venona—that he
was an agent recruiter and could identify a number of spies.12
[[link removed]] At
a hearing before the Joint Congressional Committee on Atomic Energy,
months after my parents’ arrests and only weeks before the trial,
members of the prosecution and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
sought support from Congress to have David Greenglass, the chief
witness for the prosecution and my mother’s brother, testify about
the important scientific information that Greenglass had allegedly
supplied to the Soviets through my father. The Venona decrypts had
been unable to reveal any information on what exactly Greenglass had
turned over to my father beyond the layout of the buildings at Los
Alamos, where he had been stationed, and the names of scientists who
“might” be subject to recruitment.

At the hearing, one of the prosecutors testified that you could not
receive a death sentence for describing the layout of buildings at Los
Alamos or listing the names of possible scientists who could be
recruited. Evidence of much more serious crimes was necessary.
Greenglass had already told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
that he had provided a rough description of how the implosion-type
atomic bomb was triggered. Assistant Attorney General Myles Lane (who
later assisted U.S. Attorney Irving H. Saypol with the prosecution),
together with the head of the AEC, Gordon Dean, persuaded members of
Congress to support the AEC’s decision to have Greenglass disclose
this classified information at the trial. Divulging this would
strengthen the seriousness of my parents’ alleged offense and be
sufficient evidence to persuade the judge to impose a death
sentence.13
[[link removed]] Long
before he put his personal stamp on the trial and sentence, Kaufman
knew what the rest of the “team” wanted. There are two documents
that support the idea that Kaufman had agreed to sentence my father to
death before the trial began.14
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Kaufman at the Trial

Siegel describes Kaufman’s secret meetings with prosecutors before
and during the trial.15
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makes it clear that Kaufman’s “apparent pre-judgment of the
Rosenbergs’ guilt led him to…intervene in the trial in ways that
almost always transparently helped the prosecution.”16
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concludes that in doing so, Kaufman betrayed “his basic duty” as a
judge.17
[[link removed]] Nevertheless,
in summary he writes, surprisingly: “Did Kaufman give the Rosenbergs
a fair trial? No and yes.”18
[[link removed]] Despite
his discussion of Kaufman’s _ex parte_ contacts with the
prosecutors as well as his bias during the trial, Siegel then asserts:
“Yet the trial was fair in the larger sense that Kaufman didn’t
fundamentally change the Rosenbergs’ defense or the outcome of the
case. They were convicted by the persuasive evidence against them, the
temper of the times, and their lawyers’ anemic response to the
government’s legal onslaught—not because of Kaufman.”19
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Here Siegel employs a sleight of hand in order to have it both ways.
He admits that Kaufman put his thumb on the scale of justice, but then
states that it did not matter. This is what lawyers call a “harmless
error” argument. That is, the judge erred, but since the error would
not have changed the outcome, the defendant’s rights were not
violated. However, as a law professor, Siegel also knows that allowing
secret communication between the judge and prosecution to plan trial
strategy is such a basic violation of a defendant’s constitutional
due process rights that it could never be considered a “harmless
error.”

The jury’s decision rose and fell on the credibility of the chief
prosecution witnesses, David and Ruth Greenglass, who were confessed
members of the same alleged conspiracy.20
[[link removed]] Kaufman
allowed and abetted the prosecution in presenting evidence that led
the jury to disbelieve my parents. He permitted testimony about the
Communism of my parents, allegedly to establish motive, as well as a
tag-team cross-examination of my mother about her grand jury
testimony. Both sets of testimony helped destroy my parents’
credibility. For the prosecution side, Kaufman promoted Ruth
Greenglass’s credibility when defense attorney Alexander Bloch tried
to impeach her testimony. Thus, the answer “no,” Kaufman did not
give my parents a fair trial, contradicts the “yes,” which
suggests the judge’s behavior made no difference.21
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Eighteen pages after his “no and yes” assertion, Siegel introduces
the broader context—that the leaders of the “team,” composed of
the prosecution, members of the AEC, and members of Congress, were
coming to an agreement. Kaufman knew that a death sentence was
important to the government. Siegel contends that while contemplating
sentencing Kaufman had not fully decided what to do, but the evidence
in his book is that Kaufman had already determined to give my father
the death sentence if he was convicted.22
[[link removed]] Siegel’s
assertion as it relates to my mother’s sentence might be correct,
but he provides no evidence.

While considering the sentences, Kaufman consulted other judges and
prosecutors. He also instructed Saypol to go to Washington and sound
out officials there. All agreed my father should get the death
penalty, but there was conflict about my mother’s sentence. Hoover
opposed the death sentence for her. Siegel notes that Hoover’s memo
recommending against the death sentence for my mother was drafted by
Special Agent Robert Lamphere. He fails, however, to note that
Lamphere drafted that memo because he was the FBI’s special liaison
to the Venona project and that he and the chief linguist-decrypter
Meredith Gardner had concluded that my mother was not a spy, because,
unlike other agents, she had never been given a code name and only two
messages mentioned her.23
[[link removed]] Hoover
could not reveal the existence of Venona before the trial, so he
pointed to the potential fall-out in public sentiment from executing
the mother of two young children. Siegel never makes the connection
between the Venona decrypts and Hoover’s recommendation, even though
the facts about her from Venona are presented.24
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Two things were operating in tandem. First, Kaufman was ambitious, but
he was also part of a broad movement of anti-Communist liberals who
sought to carve out a version of the U.S. polity that was supportive
of individual rights and “downtrodden groups,” but not Marxists.
Given the need for there to be convictions and a death sentence, at
least for my father, Kaufman’s decision-making should be understood
as part of this movement. Second, this leaves the issue of my
mother’s sentence as an open question. Siegel spends significant
time in the book highlighting Kaufman’s disgust that my parents,
children of poverty-stricken Jewish immigrants, had failed to follow
the American dream, as Kaufman himself had done, and instead had
become Communists.

It is arguable that, unlike in the case of my father, Kaufman’s
decision to sentence my mother to death was not a group decision.
However, at the Justice Department, even before her arrest, the view
was expressed that she could be used as a kind of “lever” against
my father.25
[[link removed]] It
is possible that Kaufman reasoned that the pressure on her and my
father would be greater if she were given a death sentence, rather
than thirty years in prison.26
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Despite Hoover’s misgivings expressed in his sentencing
recommendation letter, once the sentences had been imposed, the
governmental apparatus closed ranks in support, as did almost all the
intellectual and political establishment. By the time of the
executions, the mass media (with few exceptions) and the judiciary
(including the Supreme Court) had played a role in making sure that
the only way my parents would save their lives would be by cooperating
and naming names. This was conveyed in person to both my parents by
James Bennett, director of the Bureau of Prisons, on June 2, 1953.27
[[link removed]] The
Supreme Court had denied _certiorari_ on May 25, and Kaufman had
fixed the execution date for June 18 (my parents’ fourteenth wedding
anniversary).

Kaufman and the Supreme Court in June of 1953

Judicial machinations during the last weeks of my parents’ lives
demonstrate the judiciary’s subservience to political necessity. On
Monday, June 15, 1953, the Supreme Court denied a stay of execution
that would allow my parents to appeal the denial of an evidentiary
hearing under the Federal Criminal Code. That section permitted
convicted defendants to get a hearing based on newly discovered
evidence. Papers submitted to Kaufman the first week of June referred
to three pieces of new evidence that made a _prima facie_ case that
the Greenglasses had committed perjury at the trial. Here is how
Siegel describes the motion: “On June 8 [the papers had actually
been filed June 5] Bloch…brought a motion based on new evidence,
including proof that the Rosenbergs’ console table—not produced at
trial and suddenly located in plain sight at Julius’s mother’s
apartment—wasn’t a special device for copying microfilm but just a
garden-variety item from Macy’s.… Kaufman recessed for fifteen
minutes, came back and read out a thirty-minute oral opinion rejecting
the motion.”28
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This description omits something very important. Among the documents
filed were the so-called Rogge papers. These were internal memoranda
from the law firm of O. John Rogge, who had been hired by the
Greenglasses in June of 1950, immediately after David was arrested. It
was Rogge who negotiated Greenglass’s guilty plea in return for his
and his wife’s testimony against my parents. Years later, Greenglass
told his biographer Sam Roberts that he had warned the FBI that if
they “touched a hair on [Ruth’s] head, I’ll commit suicide and
you’ll have no case!” There is no independent contemporaneous
evidence for this statement by Greenglass, who was described by his
wife in one of the Rogge memos as someone who often talked of himself
as if he were a character in the movies.29
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Importantly, in those memos there was evidence that the Greenglass
story had changed between the time of his arrest to the time of the
trial, directly contradicting trial testimony that the Greenglasses
had “told the truth” from the beginning. These papers had been
supposedly stolen from the Rogge law firm’s office and published in
France. Unknown to Bloch, the FBI had briefed Kaufman about the
content of those documents on May 11, 1953.30
[[link removed]] When
I wrote the chapter about Kaufman in the second edition of my
book, _We Are Your Sons_, cowritten with my brother, I surmised that
the reason Kaufman was able to write much of his opinion before he had
even heard the oral arguments was due to the briefing he had received
from the FBI.31
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The Court of Appeals denied a stay or a hearing in record time on June
11. After denying a stay so the lawyers could present oral arguments,
the Supreme Court went on summer recess. It was at that point that two
outside lawyers, Fyke Farmer and Daniel Marshall, appeared,
representing an individual, who in legalese is described as a “next
friend.” The argument they presented was that my parents had been
tried under the wrong law. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 stated that a
death sentence could only be imposed if a jury recommended it. In
effect, these lawyers argued that this law partially repealed the
sentencing provision in the Espionage Act. On the morning of June 16,
Farmer and Marshall presented their petition to Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas. Meanwhile, Bloch presented his own petition to the
justice.

The night of June 16, while Douglas was considering whether or not to
grant the stay, Justice Robert Jackson arranged for the Chief Justice,
Fred Vinson, to meet secretly with Attorney General Herbert Brownell
Jr. and Solicitor General Robert Stern to discuss what to do if
Douglas were to do so. Kaufman was told about this meeting and he
“very confidentially advised” the FBI that, during the discussion,
Vinson had promised that if Douglas were to grant the stay, he would
call the court back into session on June 18 “to vacate any
stay.”32
[[link removed]] Vinson
was promising to overturn whatever stay Douglas issued without seeing
the reasoning. Douglas granted a stay on June 17, accepting that
Farmer and Marshall had made a substantial point that required full
consideration by District and Appeals Courts, with full briefings by
attorneys from both sides. Brownell then went through a charade of
“asking” for a special session of the Supreme Court (a session
Vinson had already promised him) and Vinson, of course, agreed to
Brownell’s “request.” The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on
June 18 (from Farmer and Marshall, as well as Bloch and his team) and
a six-to-three majority vacated Douglas’s stay on June 19. Justice
Felix Frankfurter wrote that “all minds were made up…before we
met.”33
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was Chief Justice Vinson, together with his Supreme Court majority,
behaving as members of a “team.”34
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Perhaps nothing demonstrates the group nature of the prosecution and
sentencing more than the retrospective statement by William Rogers,
who was deputy attorney general in 1953. Interviewed by journalist Sam
Roberts in the late 1990s, Rogers made it clear that the goal was to
induce my parents to talk, not to kill them. When Rogers was asked why
the government did not achieve its goal, even with my mother, Rogers
told Roberts, “She called our bluff.”35
[[link removed]] The
word “our” in that statement suggests it was a group effort.
Siegel’s focus on Kaufman as an individual misses this.36
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Cold War Liberalism and Anti-Communism

Siegel also misses a key political point when he seeks to analyze the
“transformation” of Kaufman from hanging judge to progressive
jurist. There is no contradiction between the Kaufman of the trial and
the Kaufman who ordered the integration of schools in New Rochelle,
New York, supported the _New York Times_ in publishing
the _Pentagon Papers_, broke new ground in permitting foreigners to
sue their foreign torturers under the Alien Torts Act, and more.37
[[link removed]]

Siegel seems unaware that liberals Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey,
Frankfurter, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as their
intellectual enablers, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Sidney Hook, were
also virulently anti-Communist. The American Civil Liberties Union,
having purged Communist Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from their board, went
out of its way to assert that there were no civil liberties issues in
my parents’ case. Meanwhile, a lawyer for the organization, Morris
Ernst, corresponded with the FBI, saying he would try to become my
parents’ lawyer and urge them to confess.38
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When Truman took over the presidency, he broke with Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s goal of a postwar partnership with Joseph Stalin’s
Soviet Union. The liberal Truman excoriated the right-wing Republican
Congress of 1947–48 as he ran for re-election. At the same time, his
campaign strategy was not only to attack the Republicans, but to
attack Henry Wallace and the Progressives who had mounted a left-wing
challenge. His red baiting of the Progressive Party worked, and
Wallace obtained just 2.4 percent of the vote.39
[[link removed]] Two
years later, Truman went to war in Korea and started the
twenty-five-year U.S. effort to defeat the Vietnamese Communists.

Liberal icon Humphrey, who had made a name for himself supporting a
tough civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic Convention, introduced
the “concentration camp amendment” to the Internal Security Act
when Congress considered it in 1950.40
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some have claimed Humphrey was trying to defeat the bill with a poison
pill, four years later he introduced a law outlawing the Communist
Party. He also slavishly supported Johnson’s escalation of the war
against the Vietnamese between 1965 and 1968.41
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we all know that it was on Kennedy’s watch that the United States
fully committed itself to defeat the revolutionary nationalist and
Communist forces in Vietnam and Laos.42
[[link removed]] Finally,
let us not forget the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis,
and Operation Mongoose.43
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U.S. politicians beginning in the 1950s, however, also realized that
the Jim Crow South was a burden in the fight for “hearts and
minds” in the international Cold War. Thus, beginning with halting
steps in the 1950s, the federal government began enforcing the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. There was no contradiction
between these progressive steps and a strong pursuit of anti-Communist
policies at home and abroad. Support for civil rights and voting
rights for African-Americans, however, was complemented by the
wire-tapping and harassment of Martin Luther King Jr. and even
stronger repressive activities against more radical elements in the
Black liberation movement.44
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One of the most significant intellectual supports for the dual goals
mentioned above came with the publication of Schlesinger’s _The
Vital Center_ and the subsequent creation of Americans for Democratic
Action. Schlesinger’s argument was that liberals needed to fight
against communists and reactionaries, but readers soon realized that
he felt the right-wing reactionaries were not real threats because
they were “familiar” enemies, whereas Marxists were secretive and
hidden.45
[[link removed]] It
is thus quite consistent with Schlesinger’s worldview that he is on
record publicly supporting the death sentence imposed by Kaufman.46
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In 1950, former Marxist philosopher Hook published “Heresy,
Yes—But Conspiracy, No” in the _New York Times Magazine_.47
[[link removed]] In
that article, Hook presented a detailed argument as to why liberalism
and repression of Communists were compatible. The title says it all:
Communists operate in secret. If they were presenting their ideas
honestly, out in public, they would be no threat—but because they
operated in secret, they had forfeited their rights.

Returning to the case of the Rosenbergs, we have the behavior of
Frankfurter, who, according to Brad Snyder’s masterful biography of
the justice, wanted the Supreme Court to grant _certiorari_ and
subject the original trial to Supreme Court review. However, his
reason was that granting a review would show the world that the U.S.
justice system had been “fair” to the Rosenbergs. Unlike the
situation with Justice Hugo Black, it is unclear if Frankfurter would
have voted to overturn the conviction.

Frankfurter’s career on the Supreme Court demonstrates the
consistency of the liberal belief in civil liberties with the
recognition that control of communism and communists is essential. As
a Harvard law professor, Frankfurter was, in the 1920s, a
full-throated supporter of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who
had been convicted in a state-level court. He later acted as an
unofficial adviser to Roosevelt. During his Supreme Court career, he
began to take stronger positions in favor of government activity
restricting certain dangerous behaviors. For example, in 1960, he
wrote the opinion upholding the constitutionality of the Internal
Security Act of 1950. As the Warren Court warmed to the (originally
minority) views of Black and Douglas on civil liberties, its new
majority ultimately turned both the Internal Security Act and other
repressive laws into dead letters. Frankfurter then found himself
dissenting from the increasingly liberal majority.48
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By the mid-1950s, the political destruction of the Communist and
fellow-traveling left was complete. Accordingly, the new majority on
the Supreme Court could loosen the bonds on freedom of association
that had appeared necessary in the late 1940s. Nevertheless, the
“stick” of repression remained available if needed. At least two
impeccably liberal Supreme Court justices, Robert Jackson and Arthur
Goldberg, articulated the need to have that “stick” at the ready.
They explicitly supported the assertion that “the Constitution is
not a suicide pact.” What they meant by that is that the rights
protecting dissenters enshrined in the Bill of Rights—particularly
the First Amendment protections regarding speech and assembly—cannot
be used to protect people hell-bent on destroying our society. Two
examples are worth noting.

The first is Terminiello v. Chicago, in which the Supreme Court
majority struck down a Chicago “breach of peace” ordinance as a
violation of the First Amendment. It was a close decision. Arthur
Terminiello had delivered an incendiary speech that led to a riot.
Jackson dissented at length, and his concluding paragraph has this
version of the “suicide pact” argument:

This Court has gone far toward accepting the doctrine that civil
liberty means the removal of all restraints from these crowds and that
all local attempts to maintain order are impairments of the liberty of
the citizen. The choice is not between order and liberty. It is
between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger
that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little
practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights
into a suicide pact.49
[[link removed]]

In 1963, in a case involving the forfeiture of citizenship by a U.S.
citizen who left the country to avoid being drafted, Justice Arthur
Goldberg wrote for the majority that “while the Constitution
protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide
pact.”50
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Johnson provides a final example. He began his political career as a
New Deal Democrat and, as president, pushed the public’s concern for
the poor with his “war on poverty.” As a Southerner who understood
the political direction of the majority of the country in the 1960s,
he did not have to be dragged kicking and screaming (as Kennedy was in
1963) to support civil rights legislation. However, he also understood
anti-Communism.51
[[link removed]] It
was that anti-Communism that led him to fully Americanize the war
against the peoples of Indochina in 1965.

It is unfortunate that Siegel, who has done a prodigious amount of
research for this book, did not see the consistency in Kaufman’s
liberal anti-Communism. Instead, the book primarily focuses on the
apparent contradiction between Kaufman’s behavior in the 1950s and
his subsequent career. If Siegel had pursued this seeming disjuncture
by examining or even just referencing the careers of some of the
individuals just highlighted, he might have realized that Kaufman’s
behavior was consistent in his liberalism _and_ his virulent
anti-Communism—and, for a brief moment, he does.52
[[link removed]] Here,
Siegel acknowledges that his subject’s liberalism was consistent
with his virulent anti-Communism. Siegel also hints at the consistency
between tough robust anti-Communist liberalism and the expansive role
of the state in protecting individual rights. He even references
Schlesinger, Hook, the Americans for Democratic Action, and Truman’s
1948 campaign. Unfortunately, for the rest of the book, Siegel focuses
his attention on the “curious path from Sing Sing in 1953 to
progressive champion in 1992.”53
[[link removed]] In
referring to Kaufman’s life story as a “curious path,” Siegel
buries his brief insight about the consistency between strong
anti-Communism and progressive liberalism, as exemplified by the
careers of the individuals just mentioned.

This is because Siegel, a liberal himself, does not see the
contradictions within such a system. Liberal democracy is fine as long
as the basis of the system is not threatened. When it is, well,
liberals can always fall back on the cliché that the Constitution is
not a suicide pact and make sure that the truly “dangerous”
people—Communists and other leftists—are dealt with by any means
necessary.

Notes

* ↩
[[link removed]] This
article combines analysis with a very personal reaction. For details
of what I believe happened in my parents’ case, see Michael
Meeropol, “‘A Spy Who Turned his Family In’: Revisiting David
Greenglass and the Rosenberg Case,” American Communist History 17,
no. 2 (2018): 247–60.
* ↩
[[link removed]] The
transcript from the Rosenberg trial is available in two forms. The
earliest involve eight printed volumes from the first application to
the Supreme Court for certiorari. These include the trial record plus
the decision of the Court of Appeals affirming the convictions. Copies
are available in a number of law school libraries, and it has been the
source for my quotes from the record since my brother and I wrote We
Are Your Sons (University of Illinois Press, 1986). (This edition is
available online with free access.) Page references to the
eight-volume version will be referred to as “transcript of
record.” In the book under review, the author refers to what he
calls “the Rosenberg Transcript” (which he abbreviates RT). The
full reference is: United States v. Rosenberg, 109 F. Supp. 108 at
C134–245 (SDNY, 1953), and is available at
casetext.com/case/united-states-v-rosenberg. In referencing the trial
record, I will use the eight-booklet version as well as the reference
made by Siegel. The quote from Kaufman is available in the transcript
of record, 1614–15. Siegel quotes from the Rosenberg Transcript on
pages 111–12 of Judgment and Mercy.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel
continues: “I was dumbstruck. Protesting a dead man from the grainy
gray-and-white yesteryear of the McCarthy era? I was twenty-five.… I
couldn’t believe actual living people still cared—still hated the
man enough to find and infiltrate his funeral and hound him one last
time, literally into the grave” (Martin J. Siegel, Judgment and
Mercy: The Turbulent Life and Times of the Judge Who Condemned the
Rosenbergs [Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2023], 2).
* ↩
[[link removed]] Linda
Greenhouse, “Not How He Wanted to be Remembered
[[link removed]],” New
York Review of Books, June 22, 2023.
* ↩
[[link removed]] For
a summary of Kaufman’s activities with detailed footnotes to FBI
documents, see Michael Meeropol and Robert Meeropol, We Are Your
Sons, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975), chapter 14. Note the
word “treason”—because the Soviet Union was an ally during the
Second World War, my parents could not have been charged with treason.
Nevertheless, Justice Hugo Black always believed that they had been
tried and sentenced, in effect, for treason without any of the
protections of the treason statute in the Constitution. On the day my
parents were executed, Black read his dissent from the Supreme
Court’s hasty disposal of a stay that had been granted by an
individual justice (William O. Douglas) after the Court recessed for
the summer. In it, Black wrote: “I may add that I voted to grant
certiorari originally in this case. That petition for certiorari
challenged the fairness of the trial. It also challenged the right of
the Government to try these defendants except under the limited rules
prescribed by the Constitution defining the offense of treason”
(Rosenberg v. United States, 346 U.S. 273 [1953] [Black, H.,
dissenting]
[[link removed]],
hugoblacklibrary.org).
* ↩
[[link removed]] Martin
J. Siegel, “A Haunted Judge Kept His Promise
[[link removed]],”
Jewish Book Council (blog), March 13, 2023.
* ↩
[[link removed]] The
“deal” involved taking senior status on the Court of Appeals so
that Ronald Reagan could appoint a new judge to fill Kaufman’s slot.
* ↩
[[link removed]] When
I use the term ruling class, I am following in the tradition set by
G. William Domhoff with his 1968 book Who Rules America? The most
recent (eighth) edition was published in 2022 and is entitled Who
Rules America?: The Corporate Rich, White Nationalist Republicans, and
Inclusionary Democrats in the 2020s (New York: Routledge, 2022).
* ↩
[[link removed]] During
the Second World War, two open Communists had been elected to the New
York City Council. Peter Cacchione served from 1941 to 1947 and
Benjamin Davis served from 1943 to 1947. For details, see Liza
Featherstone, “Socialism Has a History—and a Future—in New York
City,” Jacobin, July 12, 2021.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Transcript
of record, 1613–14.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Interestingly,
in a letter to his attorney Emanuel Bloch, my father recognized the
political context of his case and Kaufman’s role as a member of a
“team.” Echoing the Communist Party view that “finance
capital” had taken control of the U.S. economy, he wrote, “there
are eight large financial units in the American economy which in
recent years have assumed a…degree of power over here.… These
so-called ‘honorable men’ are very powerful.… They control the
political parties and appoint as errand boys such men as [Prosecutor
Irving H.] Saypol and Kaufman to create a big lie that we could
possibly threaten the peace” (Meeropol, ed., The Rosenberg Letters:
A Complete Edition of the Prison Correspondence of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg [New York: Garland, 1994], 480–81).
* ↩
[[link removed]] In
1995, the government declassified information about the hitherto
secret Venona Project, through which the U.S. government decrypted
Soviet communications from the Second World War era. The material was
collected and published in Robert Louis Benson and Michael Warner,
eds., Venona: Soviet Espionage and the American Response,
1939–1957 (Washington, DC: National Security Agency, Central
Intelligence Agency, 1996). Venona documents that reference either or
both of my parents are on pages 275, 301, 327, 335, 341, 365, 381,
385, 387–89, 393, 395–96, and 413.
* ↩
[[link removed]] The
transcript of the hearing before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
on February 8, 1951, is available in the AEC documents, which are
located in the FBI reading room in Washington, DC. It is also
available in the Rosenberg Prosecution Documents in the Boston
University Library’s Howard Gotlieb Special Collections. This set of
documents includes over three hundred thousand pages (mostly FBI
documents) won by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit my brother and
I filed in 1975. The final judgment was entered in 1986. For details,
see Meeropol v. Meese, 790 F. 2nd 942 (DC 1986)
[[link removed]],
open.jurist.org.
* ↩
[[link removed]] One
is a reference to a February 7, 1951, entry in the diary of AEC
chairman Gordon Dean where he notes that he had conferred with James
McInerney, the head of the Criminal Division of the Justice
Department. Dean had asked McInerney if there was any indication my
father was “breaking.” Dean wrote: “McInerney said there is no
indication at this point and he doesn’t think there will be unless
we get a death sentence. He [McInerney] talked to the Judge and he is
prepared to impose one if the evidence warrants.” The Dean diary
entry is in the AEC documents available both in Washington and Boston.
The other evidence is from an FBI report from the middle of the trial,
in which Justice Department official Raymond Whearty told an FBI agent
that he knew that Kaufman would sentence my father to death, “if he
doesn’t change his mind” ( H. Belmont to D. M. Ladd, memorandum
[[link removed]],
March 16, 1951, file no. 894, Julius Rosenberg files, FBI
Headquarters, Washington, DC). Note particularly that the date of
Dean’s diary entry is one day before the hearing before the Joint
Congressional Committee of Atomic Energy. The focus of that hearing
was on making sure Greenglass testified to stealing very important
information in order to get a death sentence for my parents. Dean knew
what his job was going to be at the hearing.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 61.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 101.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy,104.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 100.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 100.
* ↩
[[link removed]] In
affirming the conviction, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
wrote: “Doubtless if that [Greenglass] testimony were disregarded,
the conviction could not stand” (transcript of record, 1654; also
available as United States v. Rosenberg et al., 195 F. 2nd 583 [2nd
Cir. 1952
[[link removed]]],
law.justia.com).
* ↩
[[link removed]] During
the cross-examination of Ruth Greenglass, attorney Alexander Bloch
(the father of chief defense counsel Emanuel Bloch) asked her to
re-state what she had originally described in her direct examination
earlier in the trial. After she had repeated it virtually verbatim,
Alexander Bloch stated, “Are you aware of the fact that the
narrative you just gave us is almost identical with the verbiage used
on your first giving of the testimony of that particular
occurrence?” Saypol objected and Kaufman interjected, “I don’t
know exactly what the point is. If the witness had left out something,
Mr. Bloch would say that the witness didn’t repeat the story
accurately. And the witness repeats it accurately, and apparently that
isn’t any good.” Attorney Bloch responded that he was referring to
the “verbatim” repetition. Kaufman stated “we don’t know that
it is verbatim.” Attorney Bloch said that once the record is written
up, we will have it (transcript of record, 728). During summation, the
younger Bloch stated that Ruth Greenglass repeated her testimony
“word for word” (transcript of record, 1477). During jury
deliberation, they asked to have Ruth Greenglass’s testimony read
back to them. In discussing what part of her testimony to re-read, to
the jury, Saypol said that the jury had not asked for the
cross-examination. Kaufman responded, “I am not going to read the
cross to them unless they request it” (transcript of record, 1571).
Both Blochs argued that if the jury wanted testimony about a set of
particular instances, they obviously wanted the cross-examination that
pertained to that testimony, but Kaufman would not budge. For details
on my mother’s cross-examination, see the online appendix to this
article, available on request at [email protected].
* ↩
[[link removed]] First
on page 118 and then in endnote 27 on page 370, Siegel presents some
of the material described in the text above and note 17 in this
article. He then fails to accept the significance of this information.
* ↩
[[link removed]] For
details on the Lamphere-Gardner relationship and their specific belief
that my mother was not a spy, see Howard Blum, In the Enemy’s
House: The Secret Saga of the FBI Agent and the Code Breaker Who
Caught the Russian Spies (New York: HarperCollins, 2018).
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 120.
* ↩
[[link removed]] This
was the opinion of Assistant Attorney General McInerney, even though
he told the FBI that there was “insufficient evidence” to indict
my mother. McInerney is quoted in A. H. Belmont to D. M. Ladd, June
17, 1950, file no. 894, Julius Rosenberg files, FBI Headquarters.
Later of course, in February 1951, both Greenglasses suddenly
“remembered” that my mother had typed up spy materials. On this,
see telegram, New York to Washington, February 26, 1951, file no. 813,
Julius Rosenberg files, FBI Headquarters, in which David Greenglass
contradicts his earlier testimony and agrees with his wife’s
“memory.” Years later, David Greenglass admitted on the television
show 60 Minutes II (broadcast December 5, 2001) that he had
committed perjury at the trial when he testified that my mother had
done the typing.
* ↩
[[link removed]] The
Espionage Act did not provide for a prison sentence longer than thirty
years.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Bennett
said he was speaking on behalf of Attorney General Herbert Brownell
Jr. The message was clearly “talk or die.” For details, see
Meeropol, ed., The Rosenberg Letters, 673–83.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 138.
* ↩
[[link removed]] The
exact quote was from an early interview of Ruth Greenglass with the
Rogge law firm right after David had been arrested: “She [Ruth] had
known him since she was ten years old. She said that he would say
things were so even if they were not. He talked of suicide as if he
were a character in the movies, but she didn’t think he would do
it” (quoted in Emily Arnow Alman and David Alman, Exoneration: The
Rosenberg-Sobell Case in the 21st Century , 243).
* ↩
[[link removed]] See
C. E. Hennrich to A. H. Belmont, memorandum, May 13, 1953, file no.
1641, Julius Rosenberg files, FBI Headquarters. For my summarization,
see Meeropol and Meeropol, We Are Your Sons, 375.
* ↩
[[link removed]] The
third charge made in the motion was that David Greenglass had
committed perjury at the trial when he denied he had stolen anything
from Los Alamos. His brother Bernard submitted an affidavit testifying
that David had said he had stolen a sample of uranium from Los Alamos,
thereby proving he had lied at the trial.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 143; A. H. Belmont to D. M. Ladd, memorandum, June 17,
1953, file no. 1823, Julius Rosenberg files, FBI Headquarters. For a
detailed discussion of the meeting and the various sources describing
it, see Brad Snyder, “Taking Great Cases: Lessons from the Rosenberg
Case [[link removed]],”
University of Wisconsin Legal Studies Research Paper No.
1099, Vanderbilt Law Review 63, no. 4 (May 2010): 884–956,
ssrn.com. For a spirited defense of the point raised by Farmer and
Marshall, see Joseph Sharlitt, Fatal Error: The Miscarriage of
Justice that Sealed the Rosenbergs’ Fate (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1989). For Sharlitt’s analysis of the meeting,
see 66–70 and 75–77.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Michael
Parrish, “Cold War Justice, The Supreme Court and the
Rosenbergs,” American Historical Review 82, no. 4 (October 1977):
835.
* ↩
[[link removed]] According
to Snyder, “Douglas knew that the lifting of his stay was a fait
accompli. Vinson’s comment about the White House believing that the
Rosenbergs ‘had to fry’ surely tipped him off. Douglas also
suspected that Vinson had lined up five votes to vacate the stay ‘in
advance of argument and in advance of any exposure or explication of
the point!!’ This was no small feat. The Court had never voted to
vacate the stay of a single Justice. It had always waited for lower
courts to hear argument and rule on the merits of the underlying legal
issue” (Brad Snyder, Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the
Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment [New York:
W. W. Norton, 2022], 924–25). He then quotes Frankfurter.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Here
is how Roberts described the interview with Rogers in a 2006 podcast:
“Shortly before he died, I interviewed William Rogers.… I guess, I
said to him, the government got what it wanted: the Rosenbergs were
indicted, convicted and executed. No, he replied, the goal wasn’t to
kill the couple. The strategy was to leverage the death sentence
imposed on Ethel to wring a full confession from Julius—in hopes
that Ethel’s motherly instincts would trump unconditional loyalty to
a noble but discredited cause. What went wrong? Rogers’s explanation
still haunts me. ‘She called our bluff,’ he said” (Sam Roberts,
“Podcast: Spies and Secrecy,” transcript and recording, New York
Times, June 26, 2008).
* ↩
[[link removed]] I
have collected other deficiencies in Siegel’s discussion of
Kaufman’s activities in relation to my parents’ case in an
appendix available from the author at [email protected].
* ↩
[[link removed]] Beginning
in the tenth chapter, Siegel details the role of Kaufman as a liberal
stalwart. Right up through the end of chapter 15, the reader is
treated to a detailed discussion of Kaufman’s very progressive
opinions—the last of which is his decision that the Alien Torts Act
of 1789 could be used by foreign nationals to sue their torturers.
Siegel calls it “Kaufman’s greatest liberal contribution”
(Siegel, Judgment and Mercy, 298).
* ↩
[[link removed]] For
details of the role of Attorney Morris Ernst, see Ronald Radosh and
Joyce Milton, The Rosenberg File, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1997), 357–59. Ernst stated that he had conducted a
“psychological study of the Rosenbergs” and had concluded that
“Julius is the slave and his wife, Ethel, the master” (Radosh and
Milton, The Rosenberg File, 358, quoting L. B. Nichols to C. A.
Tolson, memorandum, January 9, 1953, Julius Rosenberg files, FBI
Headquarters). Ernst had never met my parents. In June of the same
year, as Eisenhower was preparing to deny clemency to my parents for a
second time, he repeated Ernst’s ridiculous canard in a letter to
his son: “in this instance it is the woman who is the strong and
recalcitrant character, the man who is the weak one. She has obviously
been the leader in everything they did in the spy ring” (letter,
Dwight D. Eisenhower to John Eisenhower, quoted in Stephen Ambrose and
Richard Isserman, Ike’s Spies [New York: Doubleday, 1981],
182–83).
* ↩
[[link removed]] On
the Wallace campaign, see Curtis MacDougal, Gideon’s Army (New
York: Marzani and Munsell, 1965).
* ↩
[[link removed]] Title
II of the Internal Security Act reads in part: “the President,
acting through the Attorney General, is hereby authorized to apprehend
and by order detain, pursuant to the provisions of this title, each
person as to whom there is reasonable ground to believe that such
person probably will engage in, or probably will conspire with others
to engage in, acts of espionage or of sabotage” (Internal Security
Act of 1950, Pub. L. No. 81–831, 64 Stat. 987 [1950]).
* ↩
[[link removed]] Humphrey’s
political career in Minnesota began in the 1940s. He played a major
role in the 1944 merger of the (rather tiny) Democratic Party of
Minnesota with the vigorously radical Farmer-Labor Party. Throughout
that decade, he played a very prominent role in defeating the
Communists, who had followed a popular front strategy of supporting
Roosevelt and played prominent roles in the pre-merger Farmer-Labor
Party, as well as the merged Democratic Farmer Labor Party. In 1947,
he helped found the explicitly anti-Communist Americans for Democratic
Action. The anti-Communist activities of Hubert Humphrey and other
well-known liberal Minnesotans, including future senator and vice
president Walter Mondale (and future senator Eugene McCarthy) is
detailed in John Earl Haynes, Dubious Alliance: The Making of
Minnesota’s DFL Party (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1984). See especially the section headlined: “Humphrey and the
Revival of Anti-Communist Liberalism,” starting on page 136, where
the role of Humphrey as an anti-Communist warrior who upheld the
liberal values of support for labor unions and civil rights for Black
U.S. citizens is spelled out.
* ↩
[[link removed]] The
most detailed account remains The Pentagon Papers (Senator Gravel
edition), but also see Ralph Stavins, Richard Barnet, and Marcus
Raskin, Washington Plans an Aggressive War: A Documented Account of
the United States Adventure in Indochina (New York: Random House,
1971).
* ↩
[[link removed]] Sabotage
and terrorist activities against the Cuban regime of Fidel Castro were
authorized even before Kennedy took office, though he finalized and
approved the Bay of Pigs invasion and the continuation of Operation
Mongoose after that failure. The National Security Archive has
collected a treasure trove of documents entitled “CIA Covert
Operations III: From Kennedy to Nixon, 1961–1974
[[link removed]],” available at
proquest.libguides.com/dnsa.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Hoover’s
FBI sought to discredit King. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was
persuaded by Hoover that there was a danger that King had communists
advising him. Kennedy thus authorized wiretaps of King. On this issue,
see Victor S. Navasky, Kennedy Justice (New York: Atheneum, 1971).
The FBI engaged in COINTELPRO activities in an effort, in Hoover’s
words, to prevent the emergence of a “black Messiah.” This
involved heavy surveillance of Malcolm X. At the local level, police
worked hard to disrupt the activities of the Black Panther Party—up
to and including assassination, such as with the 1969 murders of Fred
Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago. (On that, see Jeffrey Haas, The
Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police
Murdered a Black Panther [New York: Lawrence Hill Books, 2011]).
There are some who would argue that liberals were incapable of reining
in Hoover, but in Navasky’s study of Kennedy, it is clear that his
support for civil rights was circumscribed by his anti-Communist
inclinations. Let us recall that Kennedy began his public career as a
staffer on Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Investigations
Committee.
* ↩
[[link removed]] In
his book The Vital Center, Schlesinger spends most of the book
attacking communism both in the Soviet Union and in the United States.
Here is one of his exemplary assertions: “The health of the
democratic left requires the unconditional rejection of
totalitarianism. The line must be held fast for all time” (Arthur
Schlesinger Jr., The Vital Center , 149). This sentence appears
after detailed analysis of the totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union
and the undemocratic, secretive, and dishonest nature of U.S.
Communism. Because The Vital Center was published in 1949, it is
also filled with vitriolic denunciation of Wallace’s 1948 campaign
as being entirely controlled by Communists. See Schlesinger, The
Vital Center, 115–20 for examples.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 113–14. Siegel here references a Schlesinger column in
the New York Post (“History of the Week”) from January 1953:
“He [Schlesinger] labeled the Rosenbergs ‘professional spies,
whose work may yet result in the murder of millions of Americans,’
and quoted a passage from Thomas Jefferson arguing that ‘traitors’
should ‘get what they deserved.’”
* ↩
[[link removed]] Sidney
Hook, “Heresy, Yes—But Conspiracy, No,” July 9, 1950, New York
Times Magazine. (The article was also republished by Dissent
[[link removed]] in
2009.) At the time, the Korean War had just begun.
* ↩
[[link removed]] See
Snyder, Democratic Justice. On Frankfurter’s willingness to balance
the “competing interests” of “free speech in a democratic
society” and “national security,” see the discussion of
Frankfurter’s concurring opinion upholding the conviction of
Communist Party leaders under the Smith Act, particularly pages
539–43.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Terminiello
v. Chicago, 337 U.S. 1 (1949).
* ↩
[[link removed]] Kennedy
v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144 (1963). In this case, the Supreme
Court majority found for the appellant and declared the laws under
which citizenship was forfeited unconstitutional. Yet notice how
important it was for Goldberg to remind everyone that when issues are
really serious—as when national security is really threatened—the
“suicide pact” argument comes to the fore. One could imagine the
Supreme Court majority who gave Douglas’s stay of execution in my
parents’ case the bum rush consoling themselves with this supposedly
self-evident aphorism.
* ↩
[[link removed]] In
a very telling set of chapters in Robert Caro, Master of the
Senate (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2002), the third volume of
Caro’s magnum opus on the life of Lyndon B. Johnson, the author
shows how Johnson curried favor with the “old boys” in the Senate
by carrying water for the Texas oil industry and then destroyed the
career of Leland Olds, a liberal public servant who was up for
reappointment to the Federal Power Commission. Olds had been a tough
regulator of prices in the electric power industry and had raised the
ire of the Texas oil and gas interests. When he came up for
reappointment, Johnson orchestrated a smear campaign to suggest that
Olds might be a Communist. Olds lost reappointment and his career in
government was over, but Johnson earned the favor of the powers that
be in Washington. See Caro, Master of the Senate, 223–303. Militant
anticommunism once again was perfectly consistent with a career that
(once Johnson achieved the presidency) made tremendous gains for what
liberals wanted to do for U.S. domestic policy.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 72–73.
* ↩
[[link removed]] Siegel, Judgment
and Mercy, 4.

_MICHAEL MEEROPOL is professor emeritus of economics at Western New
England University in Massachusetts. He is the author of Surrender:
How the Clinton Administration Completed the Reagan Revolution
[[link removed]] (2nd
ed., University of Illinois Press, 1986, available free online at
library.oapen.org). He also coauthored, with Robert Meeropol, We Are
Your Sons, about the lives and legacy of their parents, Julius and
Ethel Rosenberg._

_The author thanks Phillip Deery, Gerald Markowitz, Ivy Meeropol,
Robert Meeropol, and Alice Radosh for reading early versions of this
paper and making many valuable suggestions. They should not be held
responsible for any errors that remain._

_Throughout its history, MONTHLY REVIEW, an independent socialist
magazine, has relied on the support of our readers. We have no deep
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visit the MR Subscriptions page for details
[[link removed]]._

* Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
[[link removed]]
* History
[[link removed]]
* state repression
[[link removed]]
* biography
[[link removed]]

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